A Night in Berlin by Nema - Short, Comedy, Drama - Two best friends on a eurotrip, spend a memorable night in Berlin. 16 pages - pdf, format 8)

I thought the logline was decent so I gave this a read. Unfortunately, there isn't much of a story here and the 'memorable night' was not so exciting. It's really drawn out and there's just a bunch of stuff happening that doesn't really amount to anything. The dialogue is very boring and not well suited to film. Ultimately, I just thought what is the point of any of this?

Would be a good idea to read a few scripts and learn from them. You've got a lot of mistakes going on here, such as having your first scene header before you fade in. And your scene headings throughout are all incorrect. Typos, grammar issues and all sorts of stuff littered in here as well.

It's not a complete disaster, but it does need a lot of work to bring this up to scratch. But spend some more time figuring out if these are characters you want to write about, and then try and get to the heart of what the real story is here and then focus on that. At the moment it is jumbled and all over the place, and doesn't really work. Good luck with it.

Cheers,
Tim.

Hi

I'm afraid i'm gonna have to mirror the comments above.  Not a lot happened, there's not a lot of story going on here, which is never good for a short. Without a strong story it places far more emphasis on being able to create interesting characters, dialogue and even humor, and i feel these are areas which need considerable work.  

It almost feels like a diary entry, maybe something which is far more interesting or meaningful to the author. I did find myself asking whether this really a story that needs to be told?  

Overall, simply put, this needs something to make it more interesting, whether it be story or characters.  Good luck with it.  All the best.

Leon

I appreciate the read and contstructive criticism. It seems a little unfocused, I was trying to show a contrast between the two friends and the different approach they took to the night.

I'll go through and edit! once again, appreciate the read.

Hi, Nemo.

I'm going to write this review as I read, noting problems chronologically, so it may seem overly critical but it's just the note taking style :).

First thing I've noticed is lazy grammar - uncapatilized words, "yea" instead of "yeah", no full stops in some parts - and I'm only on page 2. Fix these up and readers can take your script much more seriously.

"marijuana cigarettes" - I hope Dean was being condescending with this line, otherwise that line is just stupid.

pg 12 - the conversation with Anna, whether it be because you are attempting to fracture her english, was awkward to read. There are tricks to writing "bad english" without stopping conversational flow.

page 13 - The bit/s with the bartender and the vomiting made me laugh.

Okay, overall your script had many problems that I haven't listed here. No tension until the quarter, awkward structure and Rob had almost no defining characteristics. But what you've written is a nice, funny and whimsical short that I assume you could expand, with some effort, into a feature.

Rodrick was a funny character, and like I said, Dean's drunkeness contrasted with Rob's experience was funny. Anna leaving Rob a note was sweet and romantic, but we never really get to see WHY he made her experience so nice. All we saw was meeting eachother, talking a little, and some fractured English. What exactly about Anna and Robert made their meeting so special?

I think you have elements of something good here, but you probably haven't read nor wrote enough to figure it out. Writing from your own ideas and experiences (as I get the feeling this script is somewhat autobiographical) is weird, and the finished product is often weird as a result.

I'm echoing Trojan by saying that you will need to completely rewrite this, and think hard about what you want to do with this script.

Hmmm I didn't see much comedy in it..and it just didn't seem like it had much of a story to me. There are typos that could have been easily corrected. In some of your descriptions you use verbs like looking and standing..try to speak more in present terms. On page 2-3 I thought the whole dialoge about "are you sure" "I'm pretty sure" "are you 100% sure" that was a lot of the same thing. The dialoge seemed "not real" to me. I'm very amateur so study more what the others are saying about your script, but the dialoge seemed more like writing instead of talking to me. One part where they hear the AZAN go off ...I'm not sure what an AZAN is or how it sounds, so I had a hard time visualizing that. I think it needs work. Keep writing though.