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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board  /  Comedy Scripts  /  The Art House Audience
Posted by: Don, August 17th, 2014, 8:12am
The Art House Audience by Austin Swain - Comedy - Set in 1966, A musically inclined freshman at a prestigious arts college deals with depression, relationships, the Vietnam War, and his mother's death with the help of his English professor.  93 pages - pdf, format 8)
Posted by: CameronD, August 18th, 2014, 5:05pm; Reply: 1
A couple things I noticed to help out.

Lose all the CUT TO. Nobody uses them anymore and they just eat up pages. I imagine without all of them you'd have a 80 page script. That's a little lean for a feature. Not even an hour an a half.

Introduce charterers the first time we see them in caps followed by age in parenthesis. ROSS (19) works just fine. Even minor characters. The first time we see them put them in caps. Ross's mother should be capitalized when he hugs her.

You describe Ross as  ..."over the top when it comes to women and actors." This is called an unfilmable. Don't tell us Ross acts like this. Show us later on through action and dialogue. You do this often I see. Don't.  

Page 3 you have a slug that reads EXT. OUTSIDE OF CHICAGO TRAIN STATION We know it's outside already, no need to repeat it. What time of day is also? The slug should be rewritten as
EXT. CHICAGO TRAIN STATION - DAY

You have Ross gesturing a lot but don't explain anymore than that. It doesn't add anything to the story, lose it. Mathew stutters a lot. I would just include a description with his charterer that he speaks with a nervous stutter and don't write it all out. It's a little annoying to read it constantly. Unless there is something very specific that needs to be stuttered according to the story.

A lot of the dialogue is just banter. What is ok for normal conversations in real life is not acceptable for movies. It is boring which is the last thing you want it to be. Cut to the point. Dialogue needs subtext. It needs to reveal charterer, build story, foreshadow, or be ironic.

Also, you have this listed as a comedy. I'm not saying you need jokes flying at you from page 1 but from what I've read so far combined with your logline I'm not sure if a comedy is what you have on your hands.

Not trying to be harsh. We all have to start somewhere. Still learning here. As other member here will let you know, read some more scripts to learn more about how they read and look like. Comment on others work and they will give more feedback to you. Good luck!
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