A Mission in Paradise by Julian Singleton (Gambit113 - Short, Psychological Thriller - The three survivors of an ill-fated voyage to the New World must trek to their settlement before the start of a deadly thunderstorm. 23 pges - pdf, format

Howdy, Julian

"A Mission in Paradise" - No quotations. ALL CAPS

Delete that date and draft info. And that song extract stuff, too.

Gotta begin with a superfluous left justified FADE IN:
(I don't know why. Just do it. Yeah, it's seems stupid to me, too. moooovin' right along... )

You're going to need to redo your dream sequence stuff in the proper format.
Page 18/56 http://www.scribd.com/doc/12721428/Professional-Screenplay-Formatting-Guide

Pretty much have to hit the Enter key after each sentence.
Buncha "white space" freaks are gonna choke their eyes on all those honkin' blocks of descriptive text.

Speaking of descriptive text, chainsaw that stuff down to toddler-talk.

An endless field of wheat. The sky is a beautiful twilight
of purple and gold. A faint cart trail dissects the field.
Suddenly, a black horse speeds down the path. Its helmeted
rider, RICARDO (35), guides it along.

A small cabin-like hovel rests in the heart of the field.
SANTI (7), chases a clucking chicken around the yard. He
stops when he hears HOOFBEATS.

Ricardo comes to a stop at the end of the clearing. Ricardo
dismounts and removes his helmet to reveal a weary smile.
Santi leaps with joy and runs towards Ricardo. Ricardo picks
him up with one arm in a single movement and kisses him on
the cheek.

Ricardo and Santi look towards the front door of the
homestead: it’s LUCIA (late 20s), Ricardo’s wife. Ricardo
sets Santi down and they both race toward her. When Ricardo
reaches her, he brings her into a passionate, romantic kiss.

Wave of the princess's magic chainsaw... and it becomes something like...

Beneath a purple sky, RICARDO, 35, races his black stallion
across endless wheat fields towards a small cabin.

SANTI, 7, stops chasing chickens in the cabin yard, turns to
the sound of HOOFBEATS.  

Ricardo stops at the yard, dismounts, removes his helmet to
reveal his weary smile.

Santi leaps with joy, runs to him and is lifted for a father's kiss.

Both look towards the cabin door where LUCIA,  20s, grins.

Ricardo sets Santi down, both race to her.  Lucia is pulled in for
a passionate husband's kiss.

And five bucks says, someone's gonna come in and chainsaw what I just did.
Now, read both of these and tell me if a director is gonna film pretty much the same thing or not?

Go back.
Redo.
Re-submit.

Thank you for the story Julian, I enjoyed it.  You're knowledge - or perhaps research - of the period shows well.  

The paragraphs were a bit too lenthy. I think you could also cut the dream scene down quite a bit. Also the dialogue could be cut back quite a bit. The story was ok for me. It's just been done a lot. Keep writing and I wouldn't mind reading it if you rework it.

The story is rather well written, but for me it lacks the kernel, the main point. The author was so much absorbed with the visualization that he really missed motives and hardly looked for logic and cause-and-effect relations. As the story ends I can only say: "well... okay... and what now?"

Beautiful, excessive and... well, useless as a movie script.

Better luck next time, Julian.