Swell by Dan Ball - Short - A young boy must use his "superpowers" to protect the neighborhood from bad guys on an otherwise-peaceful summer day. 4 pages - pdf, format

Dan,

Somehow I had a feeling this was going to go in the direction of being about a young superman. Was it my own superpowers telling me that? Haha! No, maybe I was thinking that because you donned the famous superhero as your avatar when you first started here. Anyways, I liked it. It was simple and to the point. It would have been cool if maybe one of the bullies was bald like ol' Lex Luger as a youth. How about ended the story with the girl mentioning her name (Lois). Just a thought.

One error I found on page. 3 - Girl's line - Not really. Just scared me some. Isn't that supposed to be the boy's line?

Good stuff, man.

- Dirk

Thanks for the read, Face! Yeah, I hate when creatives call their work a "love letter" to something that inspired them, but this is like a love Post-It to Donner's Superman.

Mainly, I wrote this because of that, but the idea's pretty simple, but it's fun and it allows me to sort of touch upon qualities in film that I like. Although, WC Fields would have a field day with it, because it deals with children and animals. But if you can wrangle those two for a bit, then you're golden. It would be super-cheap to produce otherwise. Even if I wanted to make it myself, I could do it.

I'll be checking to see if I can return the read, man. Thanks.

Hey Dan

Are Bully #1 and Teen #1 the same person as it had me confused?

Typo on page 3 'They keep run down the street' should be 'running'.

Also page 3 the Girl asks the Boy if the cat scratched him but she replies, think it should be the Boy that says 'Not really.  Just scared me some'?

I enjoyed this hugely.  It's a simple story but it's nicely written and has a great feel to it.  I've nothing mush else to say, apart from the few niggles I mentioned I just really liked this.  Good work.

Hey Dan,

Nice to see some more of your work.  Been awhile.  After I finished this I had no idea  it was a script about a young Superman, although it sure sounded that way.  I thought --hoped-- that you might have been going for something else.  But this piece wouldn't have made any sense whatsoever if that were the case!  Now I know.

That being said, I enjoyed this very much.  Some of your action lines could use a touch up, I feel.  Actually, the very first one where you talk about the sycamores and the maples I felt could have been shortened and more to the point.  I know it's three lines, but perhaps tighter.

And I could be wrong, I don't like to nitpick, but I think your mini slug on pg 1 --TREE is wrong because after it we immediately see the boy jumping to a halt, but we don't see the tree yet.  Make sense?

He looks back up at the cat, which is lying on a branch -- this sounds a little awkward, IMO.

Nice visual on the alley and the bullies messing with the little girl.  I effin hate bullies!

On pg 2, after the FADE TO BLACK, I think the bullies dialogue should come after the action block and not before.  

I like how the boy, after taking care of the baddies, gets shaken up by the cat while in front of the girl.  Kinda shows a little humanity, I think, after the display he'd just put on in the alley!

Nice ending, too.  I think it really captures the innocence of youth, as well.  There's nothing better than doing something that makes a girl awe struck!

Steve

Alffy and Steve: Thanks! Since Don linked the script to the one on my website, I went ahead and made the changes to the mistakes you guys found. The "girl's" line on pg 3 was actually meant for the boy and Bully #1 is the same as Teen #1. Steve, I also made the changes to the cat lying on a branch line and the pg 2 FADE TO BLACK. The first two about the trees I wanted to keep.

Steve, you'll appreciate this, but this was an experiment for me. Superman is one of my favorite movies of all time and it's one of the select few movies I watched repeatedly as a kid (well, as an adult, too). I was wanting to create a minimalistic piece that took the qualities I love about Superman and paint a picture using those qualities as paint. Judging by the reactions, I think the experiment was a success.

Now, the challenge is to actually film this and try to make those qualities come through my directing. Fun!

Hey Dan,

I think I owe you a read from the OWC.  It was pretty refreshing to read this.  Just a fun, easy scene with that works.  It's not hard to connect with, because I'm sure everyone has wished to have superpowers at some point to deal with life's curveballs.

Good exercise, keeping it simple but interesting.  Let me know if you got any thing else you need a read on.

Later,

Johnny

Thanks for the thoughts, Johnny!

Might have another one coming soon, but it might be done next week or it could be done next year.

Even though I've written for years I never had much time to read and respond to the discussion forum. I looked for a short screenplay and came across yours. Contained below are a few of my notes.

I dread reading screenplays. They're filled with too many unnecessary words, therefore I loose interest quickly. If I had to rewrite your first paragraph, here goes.

EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD - DAY

Summer day.  Wind blows through mature trees in manicured yards of (description) styled homes.
-
If I counted properly, I took your twenty-nine words and condensed them down to fourteen. If you plan on shooting SWELL, you may want to eliminate the need for WIND. Makes too much noise and not needed for the story.

If you give important characters (BOY) names we feel more personable with them.

Hair and eye descriptions don't mean anything to the reader unless it is important to the story.

Confusion with action sentence. "A CAT (capitalize characters) MEOWS (capitalize sounds, if you want) and he (male cat or boy?) to a halt, trying (passive verb, use concrete verb) to find it (find what?)"

I read the whole story.  I offer you my opinion on the first third of page one. Wish you great success in your rewrite.

Hey Dan, I know you're not a huge fan of my reviews, but I do want to offer a few words here for you, which hopefully help, not hurt.

I did read the entire script, as it's only 3 pages and the initial reviews were all very positive.  But, the reality is for me, that I would have stopped long before Page 1 had ended, had I not known there were only 2 more pages to go.

The writing here isn't very good, sorry to say.  The reviewer above me pretty much hit the nail on the head in his brief review.

Your first 3 passages and Slugs are a perfect example of what's wrong here and my advice is to seriously read these over and take what I'm saying to heart.

Opening Slug - NEIGHBORHOOD - Zero visual strength here, 100% generic Slug that IMO, is just a bad way to jump out of the gate.

Opening passage is 3 lines of pretty much nothing, as many of the details are completely unimportant, really.  If you don't know exactly what I mean, ask and I'll provide details.

Passage 2 - 3 lines again, and here all we have is a description of an unnamed character.

Next, you go to a mini Slug of a TREE, followed by very awkward writing involving action not only in the tree, but also below it, in the "neighborhood".  If you think about this, you may now understand why I said your opening Slug was poor.  This is 3 lines again and it's overwritten, poorly written, and awkwardly written.

From here, you decide to stay in the mini Slug "TREE", even though the action that follows is clearly not in the tree.

As I said, I did finish, but my comments will stop here.  Hope this makes sense and helps.  Take care.  

The protag didn't even need his Red Ryder. Nice.

It has a good feel for me because I grew up in a similar neighborhood under what I can easily imagine are similar circumstance. Watching just such stuff on B&W TV. There's your audience... aging Azzholes. Its good because everyone see's their childhood like that in some fashion.

I could see this being a series. He could wear a funny hat and be named Young-Neighbor-Hood. Ha! He knows there's mischief afoot when the Cat calls. ~ I'm gonna need a check for that.  

Pg1
Should "TREE" be" CUT TO: TREE"? I'm asking not telling.
Neither Boy or girl are introduced in Caps.
The first Cat paragraph should be re-written. Also, the cat "is" way up there, no possessive.
So the girl can see him but he cant see her?
"around the corner" or into the alley? "Into the alley" wouldn't need a slug would it?. I dont know but it sound a bit funny going around the corner into an alley if following a sidewalk.
What's a synonym for "swat"?

Pg2
7th paragraph lose the "but"
Same TREE question.
The Cat "is" still stuck...
Again, consider them "coming out of the alley" instead of around the corner.

Pg3
...running down the street "and" or "then" into one of the houses.
"Around the corner walks the girl with the boy"?


Nothing but nits to pick.

M//

Hey Jeff,

Sorry I've taken so long in responding. I read your post almost immediately after you posted it, but I've had a few false starts at replying. Each time I start again, I've softened toward your critique because it's soaked in more. Since you knew how I'd take your critique but still gave it anyway, I figured you had a good reason for doing that.

The reason I've softened to it is because I've actually tried to use it as a lens through which I see my other works and my writing as a whole. However, I don't know that I fully understand the objective of your critiques or what the end goal is supposed to be.

It seems like you're either pushing me to write more clearly or write with a voice...maybe both? If it's an issue of clarity, I can see that because some of my expressions were clunky. If it's about having a voice in my descriptions that match the dialogue and the tone of the story, my concern is that that's going a bit too far for a script. I can see how it would certainly enhance the appeal, but it seems like the lean and simple approach would be best.

I will admit that maybe I'm a little lost on how to use mini-slugs. I used to consult Script Toolbox quite a bit when I ran into problems, but that's been taken down and I'm kinda stuck without it. The philosophy I've gone by is that you use a full slug to introduce the general location of the story, but then you can use the mini to localize it to the specific action. This isn't always necessary, but in this case, I wanted to establish the neighborhood as being mostly tranquil/boring/idyllic until the boy comes on the scene and does his small part in keeping it that way.

Overall, your critique seemed to focus on the technical aspect of the script, but not the metaphysical aspect, per se. If I knew you were going to spend so much time poring over this, I would've asked you to point out the flaws but also do your best to look past them and evaluate the story itself. If I fixed all the problems you cited, I'm not sure what the end result would be. Would Swell be a great script worth a few bucks or would it just be a technically-perfect piece of mediocrity?

Regardless, I've taken these critiques to heart and really tried to work on writing more clearly and maybe imbue more life into my descriptions without overdoing it.