Swat by Stephen Brown (stebrown) - Short, Comedy, Animation - The extermination of a minuscule pest 1 page - pdf, format 8)

So what do you say about a single page?

I liked how you handled the cover page, before I even read the story.

And then I thought the story was pretty average until the very, very end -- that was enough to save it.

Not a big fan of the single page scripts, but this was alright.

Ste,

Write this anonymously?? I agree with Bert that the very end is the best part.

I had a problem with the human/ fly head being as big to Jack as he was to the fly, yet this all seemed to take place in a living room. It would be like Godzilla in your living room.

Writing style was clean though, not much else to say. I could never pull off a one pager.

James

This reminds me of Christopher Nolan’s Doodlebug. I guess great minds think alike. :)

Thanks for the reads.

I wrote this for last month's moviepoet competition and someone over there pointed out the similarities with Nolan's short. I think there are enough differences for it not to be a problem but I guess people can judge for themselves. I hadn't seen that short before writing this though.

For the logical problem of how the monster would fit in the living room- I saw this kind of like the borrowers, where a tiny corner of a room could be made to look like a room itself. I think it would work as an animation.

Ste

I immediately thought of “Doodlebug” as well, its very similar to this. However, since you say you never saw it prior to writing this I must give you props on an inventive 1 pager, Ste.

I agree too that's it’s perfectly suited for animation.

Cheers Col.

Yeah, it's a bit of a gutter when you write something and later find out it's very similar to something that already exists. It's happened to me before with a Nickleback video of all things. Ha!

My brother does a fair bit of animation so I might see if he's interested in having a go at this next time I speak to him.

Thanks again for taking a look.

Ste

Hey Ste,

I rated this one an excellent over on MoviePoet, it was one of my favourites for the month and I expected it to rate higher. I think some people graded it down because they didn't think it was a complete story, but I think it works really well for what it is. Loved the ending here.

Cheers,
Tim.

I rated this one a VG at MP. Nicely done, Stephen.  :)

Pretty good, worth the read.

I have no problems about the size thing as it's about perspective and a different situation, but same location same problem.

I gave it a VG too!
Never heard about Nolan's short but my child's friend's mom said to her child once - Don't kill that fly or one day you'll turn around and see a giant one staring at you. It happened just a day before I read yours... - what are the odds - she just made a joke, she has to start writing perhaps.

Hey, Ste.

Man, this shit dragged on for, like, ever. Seriously, nicely done. You got a never ending story going in one page. Impressive. I haven't seen Nolan's short but this sort of gag is often used in cartoons, you know, small fish gets eaten by bigger fish gets eaten by even bigger fish gets eaten by much bigger fish etc.

Cheers folks.

Yeah, the never-ending aspect of this was a last minute addition that I made. I think it's a good final twist that gives the whole script a sort of circular feel.

There's been two similar shorts pointed out to me - Nolan's 'Doodlebug' and one with Ewen McGregor called 'Desserts'. Worth checking out.

Thanks again, and sorry for taking up so much of your time there, Rob ;)

Lol.

Usually, I laugh whenever I come across a one pager and don't take it too seriously.  However, I actually have come across two or three that weren't actually too bad.  One even had a beginning, a middle, and an end!

This one I could file under 'enjoyable one pager'.

Plus, it reminded me of when I was younger, and thought that we are all just part of a larger picture that we don't even know about, and one day, someone's going to smack the earth like a pinata at a party.

Thanks for the read, Mark.

Yeah, one pagers are difficult. This was for last month's moviepoet 1 pager competition - I've only ever written ones this short for those comps as they are so hard to do right.

Pleased you enjoyed it.

Ste