2 Minute Noodles by Sahil Nayar & Abbas Alwani - Short - While you cook your noodles. 4 pages - doc, format

A shucks. What happened to it? It's not here and I wanted to read this.

Sandra

Quoted from Sandra Elstree. A shucks. What happened to it? It's not here and I wanted to read this. Sandra

Sandra,

Fixed the link.

Don

i honestly dont know where to begin. this is awful. terribly written and doesnt follow any of the proper guidelines for screenwriting.

first and foremost, this is in doc format. should be pdf.

secondly, your title isnt even properly capitalized.

third, read some screenplays and learn from them.

this is all just for starters. this needs a lot of work. read and learn gentlemen. sorry i couldnt be more positive.

I wouldn't be that harsh, myself.

Yes, there are several formatting and writing issues with this script  It's not standard - and that's something that needs to be tightened up (given the length of the script, that's easily done, once the writers have the know-how.)

On the other hand, it's an interesting little concept for a script.  IE: how many things can happen in the amount of time it takes to boil some noodles.  Worth a rewrite, IMHO.

First things first. The title caught my attention. Good on you for that.

Second things second. The jumps between locations are very interesting and sustain attention as we are trying to establish links between the man in the car, the woman in pain in the dim lit room and the woman cooking noodles in the kitchen.

Third things third. (But really is first) there are many surface issues in the formatting department that need to be addressed; so work on fixing some of
the basic issues that I won't go into detail here, but simple things like all capitals for character intros is a start.

Fourth things fourth and everything else yada-yada-yada...

Too much detail in things like the type of spice added to the noodles. Not really relevant for this particular story. I think you need to establish how and why the noodles are relevant since that is the name of the piece.

Is it... let me guess:

It only takes two minutes to make the noodles and that's how fast the child was born? (since the time we entered the picture of course)... but I know, my babies all came quick once they were actually coming.  

*Remember: Don't use a whole pile of "We sees". They are sometimes acceptable (IMHO) but in most cases people will tell you to flush those
things down le toiletta.  

What I found interesting is the fact that the man in the car, (who I guessed
was the father, but needs naming as such) was racing to get home and wound up killing a child just as his child was born.

You messed up with the location though because the woman appears to be at home near THE KITCHEN where those lovely little noodles are being cooked-- but at the end... He's in front of a hospital.

I suggest that you begin this where FATHER gets "the call" from WOMAN making noodles. Perhaps she's a nanny or something? I don't know who she is.

Also, if you could really emphasize the time elapsing. Show the clocks. On the kitchen microwave. In the car's radio. And I would love to hear the BEEP BEEP BEEP right before the FATHER hits the BOY and is struck to the ground.

I think that you have really good ideas working in this. You just need to keep working on it.

Sandra

The man looks to the rear seat of the car, and parks up - he is then crying over the boy, and it's pointed out that the passenger door of the car is open - the boy, it is implied, was in the car.

Sounds to me like a director has written this script - good visual imagination, but no comprehension of how to write it down on paper.

First of all would like to thank all you guys for taking time out to read and give valuable feedback. The idea for us to post the script here was to learn from all the positive criticism. The first learning for us was that we need to convert the file to pdf before uploading. We thought that its done automatically

I'll touch upon each of your feedbacks later but I think I'll explain what we were really trying to convey.

Our concept was to show how 2 minutes could impact someones lives in different ways.The preparation of noodles was used as a point of reference. Story 1 shows a pregnant woman enduring the pain which finally results in "life" in the form of a new born.Story 2 which runs in parallel shows how a father fails to get his young son to the hospital on time which finally results in death.

@albinopenguin: although your feedback was absolutely direct it was very constructive. Thanks

@wonkavite: Yes, agree on the formatting issues and we are reading and learning a lot from other scripts. The last line you wrote was very encouraging.

@Sandra: Thanks for the effort you took in writing the feedback. As you would have read that the man driving the car and the woman at the hospital are not related. Thanks for the idea on how to represent time elapsing. Although we realise that there is a lot of opportunity in writing this better however we are happy that you were close to understanding what we were trying to say.

@SiColl007: Absolutely spot on. So far we've just been shooting impromptu. This was the first time we have made a concious effort to write something before we shoot and we realise that there is a lot of homework to do.

Thanks All

Quoted from Sahil.Abbas @SiColl007: Absolutely spot on. So far we've just been shooting impromptu. This was the first time we have made a concious effort to write something before we shoot and we realise that there is a lot of homework to do. Thanks All

You need to be commended for doing this because I think that the two worlds are completely different: the filming compared to the writing.

Pia gave some mention of this in the work on Finders Keepers and the filming inside of the vehicle. Questions regarding the camera. Four people in the car. Where's the camera going to go? Going to move it around? Then you've got to split the takes in time. More time = more money. There's always all kinds of issues regarding the filming that purely writer-writers might not consider; thus, although format is important, I will always pay attention to story before format. There's always going to be some guy/gal that can fix format.

If you guys are good at the filming side, you don't need to be super writers.

Writers who write and write often often imagine a whole slew of things, (sometimes at once!) and the question comes:

How do we convey that (for instance) into a minute block of time, rendering the maximum amount of effect that we want to produce? An infinite amount of variables can come out of that one question and that question might come at various stages in the project over and over again. So yeah... I guess what I'm trying to say is that even when it's written and re-written, still you're writing it
as you're filming it.

I truly would be interested in seeing 2 Minute Noodles on screen. I think it really makes an excellent statement on time and our perception of time inside of our "seemingly modern" environments with microwave cookery and next up, quantum computers. How far away those suckers are is anybody's guess.

Sandra

Yeah, it's good.  Interesting premise.

I'm not sure that I like ending on the little girl eating the noodles.  I can see why it has to end with the noodles, but the image comes across as underpowered as we don't really have any sort of arc for the girl making the noodles.  I don't think you want to push this much at all, but I do think the noodles should have something going on with them.

The noodles are necessarily an undramatic story, but at the same time, I think you have a chance to add something to the story here if you decide what exactly that story means.

The other two stories are extremely visceral, which I might argue could be seen as a cheat.  Very high emotion, very high drama.  The pain of birth, the pain of death.  How does the one inform the other?  How do both inform the noodles?  What does it say about our lives that these three things can be happening at the same time?  Is death natural, even when it's of a child?  Why is giving birth to life such a painful experience, and what does that mean?  Why is our little girl making noodles on her own?

The premise is good but there's a lot more to be gotten out of this one.  A lot more.  It's not enough to be visceral.  You have to guide the viewer.  What do these transformative experiences mean to you, and what do you think they should mean to the viewer?  

There is an award winning short film called 10 minutes (by Ahmed Imamovic) that was made in 2002 (you can find it on YouTube). It is a very powerful piece of work. It is almost identical to the concept of your story. It shows a Japanese tourist in Rome who cannot believe that his photos will be developed in 10 minutes. The film then cuts to events in Sarajevo (during the war). What happens there in 10 minutes is life changing.  

As the concept of your script is unoriginal it would need to have a new angle or very good writing to make it stand out as an original piece. Unfortunately neither of these were present in the screenplay.

Good luck and keep writing