Three, Two, One by Joe Snyder ()  (OWC name - Emily Boll)  - Short, Thriller - Tables are turned when the bank robber becomes the victim.   August '07 One Week Challenge entrant. - doc, format 8)

I hope you don't think I'm being mean here.... there are 40 scripts to read so I'll be very brief.

Read some scripts and maybe a book or two. Your format is way off standard.

Don't use itallic or bold text and your dialogue is not in the correct margin.

Yep, the format is way off so I´ll focus on the story...

Quoted Text A dirty man, John, has a disparate look on his face.

¨Disparate¨ usually means ¨separate, unconnected¨ not sure what it meant here.

You have large blocks of desriptions that... well, aren´t very good. I don´t mind reading but it has to be interesting and well written. This isn´t.

Quoted Text She sips the wine slowly as the last bit of sun shines across the lake. She suddenly hears something drop. She jumps, dropping her glass of wine. She turns on a light. She looks around and goes to a drawer. She grabs a gun and loads it with bullets. She cocks the hammer.

Every sentence within this paragraph begins with ¨she¨. Change it up a little.

The boat that was shown (before the contest) didn´t look like it´d float much less be used for joyriding by some woman.

What !? Not sure what to say about the entire thing except concentrate on a good story instead of shock. Good try, but keep writing. Good writing comes from practice!

Joseph

People have already brought up the numerous format violations. I’ll just reiterate that they do make reading very difficult. Readers get very accustomed to the format.

There are also some spelling errors. Loosing instead of losing is a very common one.

This is extremely violent and gory without any substance behind it. It’s like Last House on the Left. It has a criminal commit a horrid crime and then horrid vengeance is exacted upon him. That’s essentially it.

I think you should cut the part about Becky tripping over someone’s foot. That just looks too convenient. I think it would be better if she just simply can’t get the money in time no matter how hard she tries.

Shooting a little boy in the face is about as violent as you can get. I know you want to make John as horrible as possible to justify the impending resolution but wow. Shooting a kid point blank in the face is a bit too much for a visual medium.

You’ve got to work on breaking up blocks of description. You have way too much action taking place in one paragraph with the getaway.

Why would Lydia lower her gun - especially after it’s confirmed to her that John is the bank robber? It doesn’t make sense for anyone to do that.

I can’t believe that a vicious murderous bank robber such as John would give in to Lydia’s demands, gun or no gun. It didn’t make sense to me that John would take the chance of having her call the police or simply take his money.


****SERIOUS SPOILERS****

With the ending, I found it just way too convenient that John should happen to hide out on that particular boat. What are the odds? He ends up on a boat belonging to a good friend of the mother of the boy he shot earlier that day. She happens to be someone with a gun who happens to be extremely unnaturally comfortable in the presence of a vicious bank robber. She just happens to have a diaper handy as though she planned the whole thing even though it was totally unexpected that John would show up there. A little too convenient.

You need to work on format but you also need to work on story structure. Not because this story was so simple. But because you need to work on interweaving threads so that events come together without such convenient devices.


Breanne

First:

Quoted from Breanne Mattson Shooting a little boy in the face is about as violent as you can get. I know you want to make John as horrible as possible to justify the impending resolution but wow. Shooting a kid point blank in the face is a bit too much for a visual medium. Breanne

I get what your saying but I'm not prepared to say anything is too much for any medium. Also, a lot my generation (I assume you're older, I'm younger) is desensitized to to violence so we need to up the ante to have the same effect. I think there is a place for extreme violence in art, I even think there is a place for the indulgence in extreme violence which is what I would categorize most of, if not all, of this as. I don't intend to come off as hostile if I have, I'm just saying to each his own.


Now to " Three, Two, One":

I didn't like it.

Others have pointed out the formating so I'll leave you alone on that.

A lot of it entered into the realm of ridiculous  which I think ruined the tone. It almost became amusing, which as its suposed to be a thriller, I assume is a bad thing.

I didn't get when John the deranged bank robber started taking orders from Lydia, and as someone else pointed out , when he confirms that he just robbed a bank she lowers the gun.  

There were a lot of things like that that seemed ridiculous and interfered with my being thrilled.

John's dialog in the bank was pretty good, however he seemed like a different person on the boat.

As others have suggested, I think you should study some more scripts before you give it another go.

Good effort, old chap.

The story had several problems. Format is less since that's easy to fix.

The characters didn't seem real to me. For example, the robber; the guy shoots a kid in the face, yet surrenders to the female owner of the boat. he has a gun, why not pull it out immediately before she gets her's out?

Description was good, but still needs some work.

the ending seemed to come out of nowhere. how odd is that the mother gets her revenge? I understand the intent (good ending) but I ddin't see that hinted within the story.

hope this helps,
Gabe

I don't like to be negative, but this is really bad.  The format, which is entirely off is the best thing about it.

I'm really sorry, because I wouldn't be so negative if it wasn't darn right stupid and poorly executed to the nth degree.

I'll only spend a little time on this.

Firstly, why the heck would this John character change from being this terrible robber who'd just as soon shoot the face off of a little boy, to speaking to Lydia with a begging "please"?

This is the worst review I've had to do.  Sorry.

Sandra

Premise: Violent revenge. Been done before lots of times but the dominatrix thing was a welcome addition. There is scope in there. 6/10

Relation to Theme: Boat is a bit tagged on, it could have been anywhere. Probably could class it as a thriller though.  6/10

Story: I didn't think this was half as bad as some of the others. The format didn't particularly bother me and the story tinkled along at a fair pace. It was a bit predicatble though and very conventional. There were far too many coincidences as well. Not a shambles however and with a bit of work could find much deeper places to go.  6/10

I'm not even gonna go into the format issues - I think you already know that it's way off. The story itself wasn't very good, I found it to be...well, somewhat childish. I mean who the hell just off's a child for 50 bucks? Even if you managed to tie John's actions with his persona (which you were no where near doing) it still would have come across as excessive and forced. At first he acts all tough and Samuel L. Jackson-like but then he turns into a pussy. The character development here was simply not believable.

It makes no sense that he suddenly just appears at the boat. Likewise, it makes absolutely no sense that the mother of the child would simply just pop up on this boat.

Then you turn the whole thing into a slasher at the end. It didn't really ruin anything cuz' there was nothing left to ruin. But it definitely fell outside of the box in respect of theme.

Okay, I really didn't like this one very much. First off, your formatting was way off, which others have already picked up on, so I'm gonna go straight for story. There really wasn't very much to like in this script. There were no likable characters, hell there weren't really any characters, just people who all acted the same. You should spend a little more time on development. It is only a short, and there was a limited amount of time, but it has been done by other shorts and there's really no reason why it couldn't have been done here.

The ending was sort of eh. I just got the feeling of, they cut him to pieces, but so what? It really didn't hit me at all. The one thing I did like was the mother's line just before she attacks John:

Quoted from Page 8 ....I’ll give you five seconds to bring my little boy back to life....

That I enjoyed quite a bit. I wish there had been a better set up of the mother for it to pack more of a punch, but I enjoyed it all the same. Please don't be discouraged by any of this. I think there is a good script in here somewhere and I think there's a good writer behind it. Keep trying, get better, submit more scripts and please take all the advice you're being given into consideration because it's good stuff and it will help. Three, Two, One just didn't work for me.


Matt.

The author, I think, attempted to construct an interesting story, and in many ways succeeded. All the elements are there. On one level, it's a well constructed story with a clear beginnig, middle, and end. The problem, as others have said, is in the execution.

As for format, there are free programs, available online. For example, Celtex(sp) or RoughDraft, that'll assist in that area. As for story, I encourage you read scripts, both produced and unproduced. Look for what works and what doesn't.

We're all learning -- if we weren't, we wouldn't be here.

Good luck,

Seth  

Call me crazy, but everything about this script was right up my alley - not only the good lines, like 5 - 4 - 3...but the ridiculous stuff like the mother coming out of nowhere to wreak revenge on her son's killer.  Of course, the chronology of events makes no sense and so many events occur without precedence.  But, whether intentional or not, it was hysterical and cartoony and if a surreal director tackled this script, I bet he could turn it into a nightmarish macabre comedy.  Now I think the writer was going after this, but he simply failed to connect all the events and thus, the reader would laugh at some junctions of the script going, "what the hell.  Where did that come from.  Haha, are you kidding me."  But I was really, really entertained.  And I agree with the previous poster - all the elements for a good macabremedy (alright, corny word) are there.  Keep it up.

Well the good thing is...at least you took the time to enter the challenge. Kudos for that! I've never once read 'mother f%cking' in any script, usually just 'f&cking'.

Okay, now i've just finished it. And yeah there are quite a few problems. But they've all been discussed to no end here. All i can offer is to read more scripts, learn more, soak everything up. And i can't wait to see what you bring up in future challenges or w/e. Just keep writing.