The Tent by A K C - Horror - An innocent camping trip turns into a nightmare when two friends discover an insidious plot.  ( R ) - pdf, format 8)

Good opening, but all of page 4 is pointless.

I was expecting more to happen but it just never did.

The dialogue was excellent, and the story was building nicely, but some parts were on the nose and others were unclear.

This would be a great short film if it was tweaked ever so slightly.

Jordan

Very, very talky. Maybe a bit too much. Almost felt like the writer was stallling. Not holding for suspense or character quirks, but just stalling. I was about to give up until they found the necklace and Sarah was talking about her lineage. Not a horrible effort, but I felt that it needed to be tighter.

Other than that, nice job.
Kist turn off the mores/cont'ds as headers-footers.

Very disappointing again.

Writing isn't bad, but it's all filler and the banter doen't sound that great.

The finale is OK, in terms of the reveal, but it's so obvious and in reality, nothing even happens...that we see.

Not terrible, but not good, either.

Thanks for entering.

I thought for sure the story itself would be the part that involved witches, but the real witch is one of the girls. I liked that aspect of it. I think you can cut it back by a page or two. Great job on this!

Hey -

There were some admirable things about this one.  The humor was great.  The writing was sparse and flowed.  Admittedly, there were typos here and there - you can tell this one was rushed.  But I can also tell that the writer's got a good ear for intelligent dialogue... I chuckled at a lot of the banter back and forth.

The ending?  Left me flat.  Everything up to it was fun...but the conclusion was too abrupt...I didn't feel satisfied.  This is someone who can write.  But it needed to really end on a bigger bang.

Cheers,

-J (W)

I also liked that there's a misdirection regarding who the witch is.

However, I'm with some others in that it seemed to take a bit to get to the payoff at the end. Good start, good ending, in-between a little so-so.

This seems like a good idea in the making, but not fulfilled.

I liked the tent setup and where it was headed with the voodoo stuff, but throughout I didn't really get anything from it.

There was no real payoff to the story telling either - Angela tells them that they are both going to live out their stories but we didn't get to hear any major parts of a story that would make us understand their fear/ horror in the end. You set us up for a great story from Debbie, but then left us hanging. In all reality you could cut the banter in the middle down and add some story telling instead to clear this up.

Speaking of horror - the way it is, i would not call it a horror - more suspense than anything.

The writing itself is clean and easy to read, except for a few little niggly typos that made it feel rushed.

I do like the twist with Angela and a few little things that tied together, for instance her asking about the time, etc.

It has potential, but as it is needs work.

Hope this helps :)
Renee


  

Grammar errors, typos, capitalization, and double-hyphen abuse aside, it wasn't a bad story.  Where's the mythology for all of this coming from?  It would have been great to use some of those pages at the start to lay some more mystery to connect it at the end.  

The dialogue wasn't bad, it came across instinctive but I never grasped the pace of it.  A few too many interruptions for my tastes.

The end was a decent revelation.  Couldn't they have investigated the outside?  That would've been kinda ironic.  Overall, it feels pretty rushed and needs a cleanin'.

Solid effort,

Johnny

nice job! this script harkens back to the days of those 80's slasher flicks.

great dialogue and atmospheric suspence with a bang up finale.

keep at it!

A worthy effort. Dialogue was crisp and flowed for the most part. I have to agree with the others that some of the dialogue goes on a bit too long. I get that the horror aspect came from the atmophere presented throughout. A big time storm ripping through a lonely tent out in the middle of nowhere. Nicely done but the ending had a chance to be great if Sara's character had done more than just having one of the girls reading her note to say they're going to die.

Congrats on completing the OWC!

- Dirk

All of this is a setup for the story I'd rather see, which starts after this one ends. Instead we got the back story, all talk and no action.

The dialogue is pretty good but the characters aren't distinct enough, they all sound the same. It's not visual enough, for something this sparse on detail you should have at least given us a good idea of where they'd pitched tent.

Good effort, now go and write the story of revenge this should have been.

Initially I thought this was another script with bad adolescent dialogue with "bitch" and other profanity are overused by full blown adults. This turned out to be a lot more realistic though and the people using it are at least close to being teenagers. They should be, by the way. They read like teenagers and their whole activity seems better suited for that age.

Still, there was a major problem with the dialogue. That is, Sir Basil Exposition. So much backstory is explained with seemingly no attempt to make it come out naturally. If it emerged in little bursts when it came up organically in conversation, it might've worked. There'd still be a lot of it but it'd be preferable to these huge blocks of mongo exposition that are shoehorned in here. The letter at the end is especially epic exposition that feels even more awkward given how late it comes into the story.

The payoff is weak, pure and simple. I'm not sure if it was expected to have more impact or if the build up just ate up all the space that could've been reserved for something more satisfying. I'd guess the latter. Dialogue takes up a lot of page count and this script is almost all dialogue. The end result isn't terrible but it's a meager, insubstantial meal when it's over.

That's about it. Really not much to this one at all. I'd do away with a lot of this excess dialogue and work on the payoff.

At page 6 so far, this better not be one of those stories where Angela is the one making the noises and having fun until the characters discover the 'last noise' wasn't her.

A few mistakes littered around.

Well, the dialogue lapsed between full on the nose expositional mode to 'I'm a cliched character'. The story was simple but like the characters, cliche as can be. I don't buy the dialogue and it's a poor way to set a revenge story up. The script is clear, it works if you look at it from just the story's POV but it needs to be a little more smoother with better flow for it to work.

Grade: D+/C-

No comments read before.
Non-native speaker – take it or leave it.


The tent

Hello.
A screenplay which confused me nearly most concerning of all plays I read in life.

"Have to break my rules first time regarding to avoid dialogue"

3 clichéd girls in a tent. Stereotypes, but who cares. No problems if you are able to build some subtle dialogue within this combination. It' a girl talk, all right.

Dialogue at its best and worst at the same time.

You explain far to much the context that you've been build in such an amazing way before.

WE CAN FOLLOW EVERYTHING BECAUSE OF THE ENORMOUS KONTEXT/METAPHORS YOU BUILD.
YOU START TO SPEAK THAT KONTEXT OUT RIGHT AFTER THAT. COMPREHENSIVE.

Why? It is all there!

You don't trust me to get it. And I feel that clearly. Worst impression you can do in a movie ever ever ever. Absolutely no-go. We feel dumb. You has to make us feel smart, cool, beautiful.

I don't know if you can handle this in the future. Hard lesson to learn: Preventing  distance between you and your audience. You have to get this together.

I give you an advice-

Every second you work on film say to yourself: My audience are the most smart, most beautiful, most intelligent people on earth.

If you change that I think you got the talent to do it.



+ where I live- girls wouldn't say bladder anytime; girls don't use such words, there are yukki
They would eventually say: I got an inflammation of bladder

I forgot something about the concept itself. The idea is solid. It's also a creepy situation. A shortfilm is definitely possible to make.  It could be nearly a no budget project.

It is also possible to turn the ending. Think about. Angela could prepare a heavy shocking moment which freaks Debbie and Sarah out. Aafter that Angela could declare: Girls, now I forgive you. We're friends.

Mosby

This wasn't bad at all. The dialogue was decent, and the suspense was effective. The characters had some conflict which gave them a bit of life. And unlike many of the OWC's, the world did not open up and spill out creatures from a video game.

It could stand for a little more imaginative ending, however. Nothing too over the top...but something.

Good OWC effort.

The tent

Logline - insidious plot, not sure what that means

A gale force winds howls..
Light illuminates

Not sure what to make of that. It kind of mocked itself, taking a cliche and still doing it.

The witch craft was somewhat absent.

And what were the scissors for?

It felt like there was the opportunity for more depth.

All the best

I'm not voting just offering my review.

Spoilers!

It has a witch. However, you only have it in the story the characters tell and hint at it at the end.

It has elements that can be considered horror. But it didn't affect me. To be truthfully I found this script to be funny like Scary Movie.

Problems:

Debbie sounds like a guy to me. Is she one of those macho lesbians?

Never understood how Debbie and Sarah can get duped.

Hope this helps,
Gabe

There's a lot of talking going on here. Quite a bit too much. The story's not bad, a bit too straighforward. Too many typos too. My apologies, I think I'm petagrammed, Hecated and Salemed out.
This wasn't bad. Just that the note was was way too long to be believed.
There were some good things in here. It needs a good trim and pepping up a bit.

Creepy, though little by way of real horror (that said, my own was horror-lite...) and the set-up felt thin which didn’t lend the ending much weight.

Be careful not to rely on the same word(s) (in this case ‘force’) as it tends to stand out to the reader.  Most writing software allows you to search for a given word and how many times its been used.

Think you missed an opportunity to use the witch burning story as the basis for this whole set-up.  As it was I was left somewhat confused as it’s Sarah’s family history that involves witches, yet Angela who lures them there to exact revenge via some (I’m left to assume) witchcraft.

A simple enough idea, nicely contained; though for me the story felt loose with too much talk and too little action.

Some half-decent banter, but that banter doesn't really move the story along at all.

Many spelling errors and grammar goofs that were distracting. Some description was a bit overwritten. I'm sorry, but this almost made me laugh out loud: "A realisation expressed on Sarah’s countenance."

Not horrible. Just didn't work for me.

Notes as I go:

The word 'force' used close together in the first sentence. Watch for this when proof reading your work.

Like the reference to the lame thing in especially old horror -- why do they always go see what's out there!!!!! LOL

Finally by page 6 we get to why they are out there. I think the thing is a bit talky ...I know they are telling stories by the fire but it felt like the beginning dragged a bit.

It seems to easy when they find the necklace and Sarah just happens to know what it is and what it is used for. That was hard to buy into for me.

The whole no reception on our cell phones is sort of irritating to me. I've read it so much over the two years.

I do like the way this ended so kudos on that :) Good job for an owc.

Writer,

The writing itself is pretty good, but overall this story was not for me. It sorta had like a non ending, leaving too much hanging. There was only a mention of a witch, but no real witchcraft or witch-liake powers on display here. This just took too long to develop before the reveal. It's just the girls talking, needing to pee,
Etc.

Congrats on entering the challenge!

Steve

This started out decently, but I kept waiting for it to get to something and it didn’t seem to. Debbie starts to tell a story, but doesn’t. Angela talks about going to pee for about a page, but she never actually does. I also think you missed a perfect opportunity to deliver a lot of your later exposition through one of the girl’s ghost stories.

Pg. 8 Debbie “heard” the voice over?

I think there ‘s too much mystery at the end of this. We have no real sense of what’s coming for them or what their fate is (or what the scissors are for). I thought it could still turn into a practical joke gone bad. It was a fast read though and I thought the dialogue was good. Just make sure it’s leading us somewhere too.

Congrats on completing the OWC!

Weighted Matrix: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsBznn8D13zOdGJValQtbHU1LUNPVWQzY0gzajRTTUE&usp=sharing

Producer's Notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NNGaVlrrpkjIfp-BRGjpTE03W1e5lZuRceJ3wQECYaI/edit?usp=sharing

1. The Tent by A K C - Horror - An innocent camping trip turns into a nightmare when two friends discover an insidious plot.
Brief - Three young women in a tent, one goes missing, might be a bad guy.

Location(s)  - Open field
Cast - 3
Protagonist(s)  -  
SARAH, 20's, the brain
DEBBIE, 20's, the sass
Antagonist(s)  -
ANGELA, 20's, the (vengeful) peacemaker
Genre & Marketability - Horror Suspense, super light. Too deathly for minors, too juvenile for adults. I don't know who the market is for this.
Comments  -  FYI, shooting outdoors at night is a PITA. Turn off your screenwriting program's mores and continued's feature. Page 5 is done and there's still no witch. Page 6 there's TALK of witchcraft. Sigh. "A realisation expressed on Sarah's countenance." OMG. Pg 8 (O.S.) is supposed to be a (V.O.). Off screen is when the character in that scene is not on camera but can still be heard. How does Debbie hear Angela's voice over? "THE END" for really? Nice usage of common household objects: tent, sleeping bags, flashlight/torch, scissors, note. Good use of a single location and three cast members.
Script format - Needs some work.
Final word - Economic but missable. Not interested in producing.

$500 - 1,000      Lo/Hi Estimated Budget Range
/ 8.6          Screenplay Pages
= $58 - 116     Estimated Cost Per Screen Minute

Adherence to Given Criteria:
Modern Witches and/or Warlocks - Nope. Reference to witches does not count as using them.
Horror - Only if you're younger than 10yrs old.