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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board  /  Action/Adventure Scripts  /  Footprint
Posted by: Don, March 25th, 2011, 6:23pm
Footprint by Andrew Hartley - Action, Adventure - After a poison gas attack on a subway train in Washington DC, a young FBI agent and an ageing botanist are sent to a remote location in Northern Australia to try and find the perpetrators. What they find is a deadly enemy in a hostile environment and only a local aboriginal tracker to help them defeat their foe - in America.   121 pages - pdf, format 8)
Posted by: Forgive, April 13th, 2011, 4:33pm; Reply: 1
I think this has potential, but there are a number of problems with it that really need to be ironed out before it can go any further:

First Impressions Count: There's no feedback for this script, yet it has 54 views. Why? Soon as you start reading you think "uh oh". This is because your sluglines are incorrect, and that puts people off pronto. Try:
INT. SUBWAY CAR - NIGHT
...is all you need; your slugline immediately implies you haven't got a swing on this, and usually in this game, things don't get better when they start off poor. Google Lynne Pembroke - she did an article on Simply Scripts on sluglines.

Second: your action sequences... do they have the correct spacing? They looked too close together and were difficult to read.

Three: be careful about what you CAPITALIZE - 'faces', for example, doesn't need capitals.

Four: POV shouldn't (to my knowledge) appear in parantheticals in the middle of an action line, but should appear on a new line as:

BEN'S POV

...or similar.

Five: Break things up a little - some of the action lines are too much of a big clump; break them up into smaller, relevant chunks:

The train pulls in.

Only a solitary passenger, a young black woman, BETH, awaits the train near the platform edge.

Confused, she watches the terrified faces in the subway car, which stops in front of her.

Six: For future reference, people often get worked up about active and passive verbs - don't ask me to explain them, but it usually consists of replacing:

Collins sitting at his desk, with - Collins is sat at his desk (avoiding too may 'ings').

Seven: Big dollops of dialogue. Always pretend you're on a dialogue diet:

JONES
You're in command on this one, Sean. We've had a report of some stolen Russian plutonium...

HANSEN
Plutonium..?

JONES
...making its way down from Russia via Alaska.

HANSEN
Have we still got assets in Russia?

JONES
From my days with the C.I.A. If it wasn't for them we wouldn't know it was coming.

I hope this doesn't come across too harsh - I do think that your script has a lot of potential - it has strong visual clarity, but this has to be put across accurately via the written script. Best of luck to you.
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