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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    Unproduced Screenplay Discussion    Short Scripts  ›  The Everland Moderators: bert
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Don
Posted: February 6th, 2005, 10:50pm Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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The Everland by Ziggy W - Short, Sci Fi, Thriller - A down on his luck writer finds himself in a futuristic world. - html, format


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You will miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
- Wayne Gretzky

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Don  -  February 7th, 2005, 9:43am
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Chris_MacGuffin
Posted: February 6th, 2005, 11:38pm Report to Moderator
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This is an updated draft of a script I wrote.
Could someone review this?
Thanks.  

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Chris_MacGuffin  -  February 6th, 2005, 11:40pm
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Chris_MacGuffin
Posted: February 10th, 2005, 7:48pm Report to Moderator
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A little note on the update.

I've changed the scenes a bit and the ending has been lengthened.
There's a little more about the International Congress.

Fun side note
- Jerry has a brief appearence in the script "Virus"  
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dogglebe
Posted: February 11th, 2005, 5:30pm Report to Moderator
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I had to read this two or three times, thinking I overlooked some things.

In regards to your formatting, I found a couple of easily fixed problems.  First is, you don't have to list each character at the beginning of a scene.  This may be the case in shooting scripts, but not here..

Some of your direction is a little wordy and you break the paracgraphs up too much.  An example of this would be on page 2:



She smiles and places a bulky purse on the counter.

She rifles through it.

                                    OLD WOMAN
                        This should cover it.

She slides the quarters towards the clerk.

He scoops them up and turns to Jerry, dismissing the Old
woman.

She shrugs and then ambles out of the store.



This can easily be written as:

She places her bulky handbag on the counter and rifles through it for change.

                                      OLD WOMAN
                 This should cover it.

She slides a small mountain of loose change on the counter and ambles out the store.  The clerk SIGHS as he scoops the change into his till.


This except I cut from thirteen lines to nine (more than a 25% cut).  With screenplays, one page of script should roughly translate to one minute on the screen.  When you describe things with too many words and space it out too much, you throw off the timing.

Now, onto the story....

I found numerous and serious problems with this story (which is why I had to read it over and over).  To put it in a nutshell, Jerry is a writer who, after getting shot by bank robbers, finds himself forty years in the future where he joins freedom fighters in their fight to overthrow a Big Brother type government.

You don't explain how Jerry wound up in the future; I couldn't even find hints how he wound up in the future.  To make matters worse, Jerry doesn't even try finding out how.  He just accepts his fate and quickly gets into the swing of things.  I was under the impression that, if this script was ten minutes longer, he would've ended up leading the revolution without thinking about what happened to him.  I'm more phased with I miss my stop on the subway than he was by time travelling.

Was Jerry supposed to be the hero of this story?  I found nothing likeable about the character.  He's a one-hit wonder writer; he cheats on his girlfriend; he tries running during the bank robbery.  he is not hero material.

Onto the freedom fighters....  You refer to them as the LBOC, but you don't explain what this means.  That drove me crazy.    Add to the fact that there were too many of them for such a short story.  In the twenty-five, or so, pages that Jerry was in the future, you had him and seven freedom fighters.  There was no room for character development and all the characters sound alike, except for one character who uses slightly bigger words.

I found it extremely unbelieveable that these freedom fighters would just take someone off the street, into their headquarters.  This is especially true after Dante said that Jerry supposedly died forty years earlier in a bank heist (the odds of him knowing that is ridiculous)

With all the bickering that this group has, it's surprising that they haven't shot each other a long time ago.

The first three or so scene, agent's (office, apartment, convenience store, outside bookstore) have nothing to do witth the story.  They don't contribute to the story.  Jerry being a writer doesn't even contribute to the story.  Usually, when someone occupation is brought up, it's to lay the ground down later on when he uses his talents to save the day.  Jerry could easily have been a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker.  It wouldn't have mattered and it should to some degree.

Your dialogue is what's known as 'on-the-nose.'  What this mean is that you tell us exactly what we have to know.  On page ten, Mitch explains forty years of  history better than an encyclopedia could've.  The same on page eleven when he explains the Neptune Virus.

At the risk of shamelessly patting myself on the back, read my screenplay, 'The Burnout' in the drama section.  You don't find out everything about the main character, Whitey, until the end.  You learn about him a little at a time.  I didn't start out by him saying to someone, "You may think I 'm just a homeless man, but there's a lot more to me than that.  In fact, ten years ago..."  I took my time in telling you who he was and I didn't do it through dialogue only.  I didn't tell his story, I showed it, which is what screenwriting is about.




SPOILER SPACE

You completely lost me on page twenty-four.  Was everything an elaborate hoax, done with virtual reality?  Reading this was like starting another script in the middle..

The radio bit at the end was extremely preachy.  It was like watching the end of Davie and Goliath shows when they beat you over the head with the moral of the story.



Phil
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Chris_MacGuffin
Posted: February 11th, 2005, 10:55pm Report to Moderator
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Thanks for the review.
I appreciate it.

I do actually hate the ending - originally I wanted to end the film with a raid and in an ironic twist. Once  I get done with another rewrite I'll change it.

At risk of spoiling it at other readers, Jerry actually falls into a coma and is subjected to an experiment that puts him in a cryogenic freeze. - The scientist needed a human lab rat.
Coincidently the whole, "I.C" deal went down during the time he was frozen.
_______________________________________________________________________________
I found it extremely unbelieveable that these freedom fighters would just take someone off the street, into their headquarters.  This is especially true after Dante said that Jerry supposedly died forty years earlier in a bank heist (the odds of him knowing that is ridiculous)
_______________________________________________________________________________

Not really, they're sympathetic to this guy who obviously has no idea what's going.
"Ares" (who manages the weapons) even says, to this extent: the way this guy coward when I had my gun drawn on him tells me he's no threat.
The "International Congress" is cold and heartless, their guards are even downright sadistic. Note the scene when the guy on the street is shot - the Cerberus says: You'd better go before I make this a "two for one" deal.
The LBOC represents people who sympathize with those under the control of the "I.C." They saw him as no threat - yet are still mindful of him.
Consider that before, when he was shot, he was a one time celebrity.
It would have been in the newspapers and what not - so I don't see it that implausible that Dante would know who he was.

_______________________________________________________________________________
The first three or so scene, agent's (office, apartment, convenience store, outside bookstore) have nothing to do witth the story.  They don't contribute to the story.  Jerry being a writer doesn't even contribute to the story.  Usually, when someone occupation is brought up, it's to lay the ground down later on when he uses his talents to save the day.  Jerry could easily have been a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker.  It wouldn't have mattered and it should to some degree.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Those scenes were flashbacks along with him walking to the bank. I think at least they set up how he got to where he was. You know, I wanted people to get a sense of who he was.

_______________________________________________________________________________
Onto the freedom fighters....  You refer to them as the LBOC, but you don't explain what this means.  That drove me crazy.    Add to the fact that there were too many of them for such a short story.  In the twenty-five, or so, pages that Jerry was in the future, you had him and seven freedom fighters.  There was no room for character development and all the characters sound alike, except for one character who uses slightly bigger words.
_______________________________________________________________________________

The "LBOC" stands for the "Last Beacon of Condor" which is a codename for group.
I do agree the characters need to be fleshed out a bit more and the story needs to be lengthened.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Was Jerry supposed to be the hero of this story?  I found nothing likeable about the character.  He's a one-hit wonder writer; he cheats on his girlfriend; he tries running during the bank robbery.  he is not hero material.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Yeah, he was the hero. Though I think the script needs to be longer in order to give his character enough time to turn around and take center stage.

SPOILERS:
_______________________________________________________________________________
You completely lost me on page twenty-four.  Was everything an elaborate hoax, done with virtual reality?  Reading this was like starting another script in the middle..
_______________________________________________________________________________

Actually it was a solitary experiment on a city. There never was a "International Congress" so, yes it was a hoax. Sort of like in "Dark City" how they were studying us.

All in all thanks for the review,
I'm going to do a major rewrite and try to lengthen it quite a bit.  
Thanks

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Chris_MacGuffin  -  February 12th, 2005, 3:06pm
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Shonagh
Posted: February 14th, 2005, 6:21am Report to Moderator
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I was actually really enjoying the beginning of this script set in the 'present', and I thought you set up the character of Jerry really well, but it then seemed to turn into a completely different story. Not only did the time and place change with no explanation, Jerry stopped being the main character.

Honestly I was expecting the final scene to pull it all back together - e.g. set in the present again with Jerry dead or in a coma and his girlfriend reading his manuscript that had just been rejected which was called 'Rouge Nations' or 'Last Beacon of Condor'.
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dogglebe
Posted: February 14th, 2005, 9:06am Report to Moderator
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And why would freedom fighters name themselves after makeup?    


Phil
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Maybe the first act of the oppressive government would be to ban cosmetics... I for one could never leave the house -  "Worried about the threat from the deadly virus that has wiped out half of the worlds population?" "No, I just can't face the world without lipgloss."
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dogglebe
Posted: February 15th, 2005, 8:36am Report to Moderator
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Quoted from Chris_MacGuffin

I found it extremely unbelieveable that these freedom fighters would just take someone off the street, into their headquarters.  This is especially true after Dante said that Jerry supposedly died forty years earlier in a bank heist (the odds of him knowing that is ridiculous)
_______________________________________________________________________________

Not really, they're sympathetic to this guy who obviously has no idea what's going.
"Ares" (who manages the weapons) even says, to this extent: the way this guy coward when I had my gun drawn on him tells me he's no threat.


But this is incredibly unbelieveable.  Don't you think that the IC would have spies trained in acting dazed and confused and scared?  Your freedom flighters are way too trusting.

Your explanation regarding how Jerry winds up in the future is also unbelieveable.  I'm assuming he was shot at the bank.  Why would he be turned into an experiment like what you describe.  You couldn't keep this a secret if he's as popular as you made him out to be.


Phil


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Chris_MacGuffin  -  February 17th, 2005, 11:22pm
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Chris_MacGuffin
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It's actually their mistust of him that dissolves the LBOC.

He was shot at the bank - and then went into a coma.
The entire thing is actually just a experiment, and they needed a subject - it's a case of "wrong time, wrong place", you know.
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dogglebe
Posted: February 20th, 2005, 9:13am Report to Moderator
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Quoted from Chris_MacGuffin
It's actually their mistust of him that dissolves the LBOC..


They mistrust (and hate) each other, but they welcome a perfect stranger into their secret headquarters.  They ask him one or two questions.  They think he's lying from his answers.  And they make him feel at home.

Do you see the problem here?


Phil
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Chris_MacGuffin
Posted: February 20th, 2005, 11:20am Report to Moderator
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Yeah, I do.
Like I've said before this is in need of a rewrite.
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Chris_MacGuffin
Posted: March 1st, 2005, 5:54pm Report to Moderator
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Wes, is helping out with a rewriting this and turning this into a feature length script.
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