Bruja by Benjamin Pearce - Short, Horror - Set in 1979, Natalie Wright is a troubled teenage girl who is unable to get over the death of her parents, who were murdered in their house over a year ago. She lives with her two friends in an apartment across town from her old house. However, she slowly starts to become drawn to the house. After she goes and looks around in her old house, she discovers her parents were part of a coven of witches and were murdered by the notorious Warlock Stills, a witch hunter hired by witches to kill witches, after the parents murdered the powerful and infamous Sirena Quaid for using her powers for evil. Now the spirit of Sirena Quaid wants Natalie's soul so she can live again. However, not only does she have to save her soul, she has to save her life when the coven of Wiccan worshipers discover she knows about her parents and want her dead to keep the Covenant remaining a secret to the world. 66 pages - pdf, format

Its a log LINE, not a log ESSAY.  That's all I have at the moment...  

read page 1 and this is riddled with mistakes.

first, you're not a member of the boards. so i'm not sure if you'll ever read this (hence why I'm not going past page one).

a few pointers

eliminate your -ing words

get rid of the camera angles

work on character descriptions. they're awful.

strengthen your opening scene. its super cliched.

descriptors should never exceed 4 lines

tighten your descriptors

and thats as far as I'm going to go. i feel like this is the tenth script i've commented on where the writer is absent and he/she is making beginner mistakes.

I tried, until I got to "School's out, bitches!"  I'm sorry, the whole "bitches," thing fills me with rage every time I hear it.

penguin pretty much covered the rest.

66 pages is way too long btw... or too short.  

Your title page says "Written and Directed"  have you filmed this already?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIGtDeXWVOk

Teaser trailer for the upcoming occult/supernatural horror feature film "Bruja" written & Directed by Benjamin Pearce.

Benjamin Pearce's
"BRUJA"

Set in 1979, Natalie Wright is a troubled teenage girl who is unable to get over the death of her parents, who were murdered in their house over a year ago. She lives with her two friends in an apartment across town from her old house. However, she slowly starts to become drawn to the house. After she goes and looks around in her old house, she discovers her parents were part of a coven of witches and were murdered by the notorious Warlock Stills, a witch hunter hired by witches to kill witches, after the parents murdered the powerful and infamous Sirena Quaid for using her powers for evil. Now the spirit of Sirena Quaid wants Natalie's soul so she can live again. However, not only does she have to save her soul, she has to save her life when the coven of Wiccan worshipers discover she knows about her parents and want her dead to keep the Covenant remaining a secret to the world.

Courtney Bergman- Natalie Wright
Brianne Varljen- Taylor Jenson
Tayler MacCready- Rachael Ward
Ashlyn Smilowitz- Zoe Dawn
Josh Boyer- Kyle Haze
Julie McBride- The Witch/ Sirena Quaid
Ajay Sea- Librarian
Josh Lockwood- The Watcher
Matthew Pearce- Rodney Wright
Debbi Pearce- Christine Wright
Hunter Pataski- Warlock Stills
Kate Nelson- Jodie Hills


Written & Directed by
Benjamin Pearce

Soundtrack

"Hey You"
Pink Floyd

"School's Out"
Alice Cooper

"You Are Experienced"
Jimi Hendrix

"Helter Skelter"
The Beatles

"The Prodigal Sun"
The Black Angles

"El Paso"
Marty Robbins

"Witchy Woman"
The Eagles

"Suspicious Minds"
Elvis Presley

"The End of the World"
Skeeter Davis

"Superstition"
Stevie Wonder

"My Generation"
The who

"Strange Brew"
Cream

"Somebody to Love"
Jefferson Airplane

"I got my Eye on You"
The Brian Jonestown Massacre

"Burn the Witch"
Queens of the Stone Age

(C) Copyright Cigarette Burn Entertainment LLC

Mr Pearce,

Looks like you joined a year ago and only posted 14 times. Shame on you sir.

For some odd reason, I feel like I've seen this trailer before. I think you've posted it already.

Needless to say, I highly doubt you have the rights to use all those songs. Given the quality of your film, I can confidently say that this was not a big budget production.

Why the "red band" trailer?

Is that strawberry jelly? Honestly, ketchup would have looked better.

WHY IN GOD'S NAME DID YOU NOT USE A TRIPOD???

Wait, is this film coming out on Christmas or in January? I await with baited breath.

Kudos to you if you're in high school. Seriously, a decent effort at a young age. However if you're in college, well, you might want to switch to a business major instead.

Now go buy a g odamn tripod.

I read a few pages of it and, no offense, the dialogue is horrible. It seems like you're really interested in film and being a part of the industry which is great. But since you seem to be such a hands on kind of guy, why not stick with the directing? In my experience, it seems that if someone is writing, producing, directing, editing, whatever else-ing a film, the film goes to crud. It's important to have multiple people working on projects with various points of view to point out flaws or offer up new ideas. Let others do the writing or at least have someone critique and refine the writing before shooting it.

I'm new here so I may be wrong, but isn't this section for unproduced scripts? If you already produced it yourself, I don't really see the why you posted it here. But maybe I'm wrong.

Ben,

Mad props on finishing a feature.  The difference between a filmmaker and the rest of the world is, filmmakers make films.  (The rest of the world, perhaps, complain that the filmmakers did it wrong).

Gotta echo Penguin in suggesting that you not use music that you don't have the rights to (or for that matter, the MPAA red band if your film hasn't been rated).  That sorta thing tends to put your film in a certain category, and since everything else in the film is the product of your hard and original work, that's a category you don't wanna be in.  Plus, the classic rock singles lineup is a little obvious, don'tcha think?

Some of those frames are striking and some of 'em just look lazy.  Even if you don't have much time, never hurts to at least compose well.  Y'know, thirds 'n' that.

Clear that you put all sorts of effort into this.  Nice job.  Perhaps we'll see it, sometime...