Famine by Tyler Higgins and Thomas Pascal (higgonaitor, tommyp)  writing as:  Wolfman vs Frankenstein's Monster - Short, Sci Fi - In a future where famine has taken away humanity's food supply forcing people to live on pills, a team of revolutionaries rise up against injustice in the hope of creating a better life. 15 pages - doc, format 8)

Famine by Tyler Higgins and Thomas Pascal (higgonaitor, tommyp)  writing as:  Wolfman vs Frankenstein's Monster - Short, Sci Fi - In a future where famine has taken away humanity's food supply forcing people to live on pills, a team of revolutionaries rise up against injustice in the hope of creating a better life. 15 pages - pdf, format 8)

I'm gonna say this is Gary and Stebrowns. It was similar to the way Gary writes.

A few typos here and there, no big deal for a script that was written in a couple of weeks. I'll let it slide.

The format was a bit smashed. A lot of thing going on without a lot of description. This made the script a little hard to follow, but I more or less sorted it out.

Didn't really like the dialog between Nathan and his Mum. Seemed a bit forced and on the nose. The next scene in the Warehouse was much better. You managed to distinguish 4 new characters rather quickly. Rosco was pretty funny.

The story was interesting. It feels like it'd be a lot better if the length was doubled, but that is no fault of yours. You did a good job with what you had to work with.

An interesting premise held back by the challenges requirements.

6 Out Of 10

~Zack~

Not sure which team wrote this, but I think it's pretty poorly done.  Tons of mistakes of all kinds.  Story is completely ridiculous, unrealistic, and very immature.  Did I say I didn't like this?  OK, I guess I did.

Sorry to be so blunt, but this doesn't work at all IMO.

This one was pretty odd in that it takes a little bit to see that the theme was followed.  I never got the sense that there was a food shortage, other than in a literal way because the pill itself sustained life, even if it was somewhat dangerous.

I can see the characters goal in wanting to take down Barton and ultimately bring back real food in the form of animals and what not, but it needs more.  Something where Barton is hoarding these pills he's created for his own welfare, and the main characters are trying to break in and get their hands on them for themselves.

The writing could have been a bit tighter as well, but things like this can sometimes be problematic at first.

A decent effort, but could have been a little better and more in line with the theme.

I thought this fit the theme without issue.  I thought it had a good bit of suspense going as well.  I liked it but I did find a few other issues with it, mostly in regard to it's length - I didn't think it was long enough.

Stories like these require a bit more build up.  The kid says to his mother he'll show her and then boom, next you see him there's a team.  We need to see some of this team forming.

For a lot of the rest of it you are depending on complex relationships between teammates that you haven't taken the time to form.  When Kayla has a gun and it isn't a surprise - it was more a surprise to me that it wasn't a surprise.   And again when Steve betrays everyone - nothing - because I never got a chance to suspect he would.

I think this story needs to be longer in order to be effective.  Otherwise, well done.

this was ok. i couldn't really get into it, even though the ideas were promising. there were a few too many errors which didn't help. maybe as a longer feature with expansion it would be better. still alright though.

I think that with some work, you could take this and cartoonify it. Ease up on anything too serious and go with the "kids save the world" idea.

Kids like the idea of being put into adult situations and I think that's what you could do with this one-- that and just generally fix it up. For example: In the set up, show Barton more clearly as being the big bad guy. It wasn't clear enough by the Nathan and his mother's dialogue what was going on at first.

There were problems with clarity and a lot of "stuff", but I can see the attempt here and that's a good thing.

One thing I did like was Rosco and Nathan's dialogue here:

ROSCO
Oh! Guys! Let's synchronize watches.

NATHAN
Umm, why?

ROSCO
Because... Well I don't know! They do it in the movies though. Anyway mine says ... around elevinish.

And I also really liked the end with:

Well, to be honest, I never really liked tomatoes.

Good effort.

Sandra

To me is was just so "Atypical."

Lots of misspelled words.  

I'm not a teacher...but if I could teach something about script writing...it would be to drive home just how important grammar and spelling are.  We're peddling words...after all. :)  

Near the end you also noted it was six months later and animals were back, along with apples and other vegetables.  I think realistically that it didn't make sense,,,animals take longer than 6 months to grow and apples have to grow a season from a tree. :)

Good effort though and certainly entertaining.  

These are just notes as I read.

What's the point in the slugline 'EXT. OUTSIDE..'?

There's quite abit of repeating the location in the action. If you say in the slugline where we are then you don't need to repeat this.

I thought the whole 'mate' was a bit overused, especially having the security guard say it too. I'm guessing one of you are either English or Australian. Makes it sound too casual.

When Barton is giving his speech I think you should cut to the stage so that there are two different locations. You have Kayla climbing the stairs to the stage so it sounds like the speech is all off screen, so what'll be going on on screen while that's happening? Would just be easier to show Barton giving the speech. Actually you seem to do that but just don't put new sluglines up - think you need to do that.

You should write out fully in dialogue per cent, instead of using %.

The ending (from 6 months later) was pretty false. Why would they get together 6 months later to talk about what they already know? With the joke at the end then everyone laughing it reminded me of Thundercats, when Snarf would end it with a joke and everyone would laugh.

Some of the dialogue was pretty funny and it was quite a light-hearted script in general, which I don't think matched what you were going for, content-wise.

I thought it was quite light on the sci-fi to be honest.

I had a lot of trouble reading this. Not sure if it is because I am on a Mac but based on the comments above nobody else seemed to have trouble so weird, but I do not have MS Word on my Mac but usually can read scripts in .doc format fine so dunno. Please try and convert your scripts to .pdf because honestly this was really difficult, the formatting was all over the place with dialogue only two words per line.

I have not made any comments really on the writing for these TWC scripts, I think the genre, story and collaboration aspect of this is a big enough challenge but I will just point out the amount of times you said "Nathan does this, Nathan does that" was a little off putting. Unless someone else is introduced to the scene then once we know it is Nathan then it flows much better to just use "he'.

Anyway, niggles aside, It was a decent enough story, very borderline sci-fi but it worked okay, I thought the ending was quite good and it was nice to end on a joke and a laugh. Not many of those in the TWC.

I have to be really honest and say not among the best of the entries I have read today, but to be fair the formatting kind of ruined it for me. Sorry.  Good effort though.

Quoted from Famine                BARTON I know... that with your support... we can make a better world... for everyone.

Sorry, just had an sudden urge to hear We Are The World (what the fuck does that even mean).

I thought the script was more of a comedy than sci-fi I guess - and those sort of "dumb" heroes that were used here seems a little cliché. The theme was there though - although a little stretched. I thought the dialogue in general was a little too much tell and don't show - when it should be the other way around.

And for God sake, learn these three little letters... P D F.

It it probably my computer but this one opened up all screwy and was difficult to read, but ima gonna blame that on my comp not the writters cuz I dont think anyone would type out a script that way.  Anyways, that outta the way, this script was alright, it fit the theme just fine, but it felt a bit rushed and was pretty slow, The characters were kinda bland but I did like the twist with Steve,  The dialogue also felt a bit weird.  I did like the part with the tomatoes I thought that was funny, guess no spaghetti for us in the future then...lol

This was sort of disappointing. First, I think you guys have too many characters. The only person that stood out was Kayla and that’s because she wasn’t a dude. Second, the dialogue felt clunky in places, particularly with Nath and his mom. Third, almost every attempt at humor made me cringe (especially the Madonna comment). I think this bothered me the most. The character’s comments and behavior didn’t ring true. For a group of people who were about to bring down a corrupt public figure and change the world drastically, everyone seemed quite jovial.

Overall this was a pretty poor offering considering you had two weeks.

I read it and then read the comments. I didn't go into a lot of detail when I read it, and maybe that's just me, but I thought it was ok. You have a setup far too big for a short, but that's how things go sometimes. I think your premise is fine, and they way you played it out, while very quick, did make sense to me. I actually wasn't confused at any point, though I think you should have refrained from using the name "Steve" as the bad guy and as one of the team.

I did chuckle at "Steve Barton," though, and I had to do a double take to make sure I understood what was going on. Why? Because Steve Barton is a Broadway / Musical Theatre actor. You can find him as Raoul on the original cast recording of Phantom of the Opera as well as Count Von Krolock on the Vienna cast recording of Tanz Der Vampire. Granted these have been awhile, but I still have Tanz Der Vampire on my iPod (I enjoy Steinman), so I remember.

What this could benefit from the most is a severe expansion of just about every point, and maybe that's why I was ok with it. I could see that it could be better than it is, and definitely wanted to give credit for that.

Does it fit the challenge? Well, I figure I'll compare it to our food shortage template: Soylent Green. It does address a food shortage, sort of, in the way of this pill, just as SG addresses the shortage with its product. It's about as sci-fi as SG is in that it takes place in the future, though there's not much more than that. It feels more like a government conspiracy action flick, in all fairness, though.

In the end, though, I though you did good with it.