Project: Reeden by Luke Jones - Short, Sci Fi - Kidnapped and thrust into an oppressive society, Reeden discovers that he has been given power over electronic devices and must use them to evade the authorities and find his brother. 15 pages - pdf, format

Only read the first few pages of this - looks like it had some potential with some nice visual ideas (wispy forests contrasting with harsh metallic scenes); had a bit of a problems with some of the descriptions - found it a little difficult to visualize some of them - also, there was a tendency to give characters dialogue, before they had been introduced; and finally - some of the chunks of dialogue were a little too long - probably need breaking up a little.

Thanks very much for the feedback. Could you be more specific about the descriptions? I see what you mean about the character dialogue. The idea behind the script started out as something much lengthier and structured differently and got very condensed down to make it viable to shoot, I felt it got a bit wordy and expository because of it.

I'll be using all of this feedback to help with the screenplay I'm working on now! Thanks.

I think having the two voices in vo at the beginning in a bit much.  I'd drop shani.  
I'm pretty sure there're format issues with how you explain the looking into camera and what not, along with the series of shots,  but I couldn't tell you the proper way to do it.  Though with the series of shots, I've never seen them numbers, usually. 'series of shots:  then List then in action lines.'

The immediate problem is there is way too much going on for fifteen pages.  You start off with reedens parents, setting it up for us to see a movie along the time frame of reedens life.  Then you reverse and suddenly were talking about the whole history of the universe.  The bit with his parents and harsh planet doesn't really seem to matter much since immediately the characters are going planet to planet.  Then suddenly were back with him being an assassin, etc.  

I think it's pretty obvious you have some kinda feature in your head in this universe, you just need to find a way to introduce us to it without totally compromising the flow of the story.  And even though this is a short, it still needs a story arc, rather than just being basically a teaser.

All the bad aside, your vision seems interesting, and if this was a feature i would definitely be interesting in reading it.  The problem is cramming all those ideas into 15 pages just doesn't work.

As you expand this, assuming that's the idea, just keep in mind that as much fun as it is just to show off your imagination this needs to be a complete story, and each scene just needs to be in service of that story.  Reeden has an interesting past, why not let him be mysterious in the beginning, instead of all the flashbacks and what not?

Anyways, I like the ideas and the visuals, good luck with it.

Good script, but there are a couple of things that I would like to bring up.  The dialogue seems almost always in the form of voice-over. However you still were able to develop a good connection between Redeen and Shani.  You put a couple of "Cut to's" in there, but not enough to be concerned about.  I did feel that there were too many fade in and fade out's though.  I would get rid of them.  Also, you used "we" a lot in your descriptions during the first few pages of the script.  I would stay away from doing that unless you will be the one directing this. Also, the plot of this story kind of felt like the plot to an Anime show.  It felt a little odd, but that could just be me.  Overall, it was good.  The script was detailed and it looks like you know exactly how you want this to turn out.  Keep up the good work!

Thanks guys. Jack you're right. This is from a series that I will begin to post up. This story was much longer but I cut it down to bare bones in an effort to create something I could film (which I did, I will upload it once the edit is finished). So by its nature it has lost a lot. I ironically the problems that have been picked out have appeared in the footage, particularly the dual voice-overs.

Branzig do you know which anime?

I will put up the first episode of the main series in a week or two. Thanks again!