Print Topic

SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board  /  October 2K16 One Week Challenge  /  Brer - OWC
Posted by: Don, October 15th, 2016, 12:15pm
Brer by Spooky McSpooks

Brer Rabbit is a witty, savvy businessman. He does however have his moments where he resorts to his uncivil, animalistic origins.

Short Slasher Horror based on Brer Rabbit
Posted by: Warren, October 15th, 2016, 2:31pm; Reply: 1
First one in for me.

I thought it was relatively well written despite the large chunks of dialogue.

Some dialogue was OTN.

I felt the rabbits actions were not really warranted for what actually happened. It all seemed extreme for the sake of it.

Was some great imagery along the way.

I would recommend keeping your scene heading time of day to DAY or NIGHT.

My main issue is the lack of horror and I feel that the fact that you went with real animals had something to do with that.

This is a pass for me.
Posted by: khamanna, October 15th, 2016, 4:48pm; Reply: 2
A nod to Psycho?

I read Psycho Psycho. Then it went to the murder scene - he killed them in cold blood just out of love for blood just like the Psycho character.

I wish he had a reason though. As with the Psycho - I wasn't completely satisfied with the movie. The movie has comedy elements and a great actor that's why I could sit through it.

The dialog didn't surve much purpose for me. I think it could be about Penny or something. I guess I want a more rounded story.

It's well written and an easy read though. Just not my cup of tea.
Posted by: AnthonyCawood, October 15th, 2016, 5:52pm; Reply: 3
I thought this was a good idea but it went off the deep end for me... there's not enough set up of Brer been psychotic to justify his actions imho.

The dialogue is overlong in places and there's a few errors that would be fixed with a re-read/re-write.

Nice try

Anthony
Posted by: Nolan, October 15th, 2016, 6:09pm; Reply: 4
Same here for me.  I couldn't figure out why Brer killed everyone.  He didn't seem to have any reason to do so, other than just being psychotic, so it seemed out of place.  

Overall the writing is alright.  It could be good with some more added to it other than the restraints that were placed on the competition.  
Posted by: oJOHNNYoNUTSo, October 15th, 2016, 9:49pm; Reply: 5
You gotta admire Spooky McSpooks' creative vision. In the context of what's going on, the story doesn't give me a horror vibe, but somewhat there so I'd say the challenge was met. Plus you could also make a case with the blended imagery of animals and f'ed up stuff.

With the exception of some excessive dialogue at start, I was hooked when Brer got to fox's mound... I was wondering what would happen next... made me forget about horror altogether. But when the horror kicked in, it felt that way for the sake of horror. After the slaughter, the zippy-doo-dah gives it a darker note, but nothing closer to how Brer arrived at his deadly choice.

Mega points for creativity!
Posted by: Reef Dreamer, October 16th, 2016, 9:49am; Reply: 6
Refreshing to have a rabbit as the lead character.

Story wise this didn't do much for me - they have some kind of argument over a business deal, so the bunny goes round and slighters the whole family, trying to frame the fox. Not my kind of thing I suppose
Posted by: Conz, October 17th, 2016, 9:12am; Reply: 7
ok, Brer Rabbit... yeah, I remember that dude.  

Dig that logline, sounds like I may be into this one.

2 pages in, can't even imagine how this becomes a horror.

Not a big fan of these animals cursing at eachother, it just feels off.

... ok, so just like that Brer is an ax murderer.

i can't even imagine the visuals of all this carnage with animals.  as sick as it sounds, the thought actually makes me laugh a little.  it's so ridiculous.

i guess the moral of the story is don't mess with Brer.

really all this was was an argument about land, and a staged murder-suicide.   can't say i recall the Brer from the stories being like this, but hey, that's fine.  i guess it fit the criteria for the challenge.

this won't be one of the my favorites, but i can appreciate the effort.
Posted by: MarkRenshaw, October 17th, 2016, 9:54am; Reply: 8
I liked how this was a role reversal. Normally the fox character would be the bad guy, yet they are portrayed as the victims here which is refreshing. It also threw me in a disturbing way how these characters from my childhood swear like troopers lol!

Easy to follow but some of the descriptions were telling instead of showing and repetitive e.g. "visibly angry yet silent" closely followed by " visibly distressed yet Brer’s face is as cold as ice."

What lets this interesting idea down for me was the actual story. It's basically 'Brer Rabbit Goes Completely Psycho'  and that wasn't enough I'm sorry to say.


-Mark
Posted by: Dreamscale (Guest), October 17th, 2016, 11:16am; Reply: 9
I think it's a mistake to use actual animals here, but who knows...let's see.

The description given to the characters is overdone and unnecessary.

Seems to wan to be taken seriously, but it's hard to with these creatures and the dialogue involved.

Just too much dialogue going on.

Numerous mistakes cropping up in punctuation, words running together, orphans, etc.

Page 6 - very little is happening.  Words and lines are being repeated to pad the length.  Writing is going downhill very quickly.

"No damage is shown, only the blood splattering around Brer’s frame." - Huh?  Everything you write, in theory, is being shown.  If you don't to show violence, you need to write it that way, not add a note that disregards all you've just shown.

Damn...now killing the fox's children?

Very mean spirited script here...and really, I don't see the reasons.  I don't see any story, any characterizations, nor any connection to the source material, other than Brer's name.

Writing is poor throughout, which never helps.

Grades

Challenge Parameters - D-

Script/Story/Execution - D


Posted by: PrussianMosby, October 18th, 2016, 8:21am; Reply: 10
Cool logline.

P1,2  too much dialogue not moving things forward. It's also too far in the comedy corner for my taste.

Slugs: MIDDAY, LATER ON
Don't know why people can't just let it be DAY or NIGHT. It's just irritating. For sure it's LATER, why shouldn't it?

Okay, slightly it drifts to something suspicious and valuable then. I like how the tone and atmosphere eventually switched in the mound.

It looks very clean on the page but I notice lots of "ings" I completely dislike because they slow my read and serve passivity only.

A brutal ending. The ending needs more irony or something else. Its essence cannot be ultimate bad things happen for three minutes screen time and FADE OUT.

Though, when he looked at the set up scene in the mound and what he just has done… this is a quite strong, scary image you build. Heavy. Still, there's something missing I cannot explain. If stories would work with wholly theories, this pattern isn't completed. As said, there's too much one way "down" in the end. Opening should be reduced a lot. Act 1 was not good at all imo. Solid script, partly a good one.
Posted by: irish eyes, October 18th, 2016, 8:04pm; Reply: 11
Interesting concept, was starting to get bored up to 6 pages and then it all went haywire lol

From one extreme to the other. Not sure what kicked Brer over the edge... was it the kettle boiling?

And besides he's been best friends with the Foxes so i'm sure they should know about his psycho
tendancies..

no real flow but I'll give you creativity
Posted by: SAC, October 20th, 2016, 12:58pm; Reply: 12
Writer,

Okay, well this one took a sharp left at Gruesome! Problem is, it just didn't make much sense for Brer to do all that. I'm guessing you through it in to meet the horror requirement, but nothing was foreshadowed, and there doesn't seem to be a reason Brer would do this. Nice try, though.

The writing isn't bad, but you need some touch up. You shouldn't tell us what is seen or not seen. If you don't want us, the reader, not to see it then just don't show it. It can be implied. Somewhere you had a one word orphan. Normally, I don't bust chops on orphans but that one was so unnecessary.

Anyway, good effort.

Steve
Posted by: Gum, October 20th, 2016, 4:22pm; Reply: 13
Well, you could have been onto something here, I was really getting into this; I love the whole stop motion animation thing, seriously. I especially dig Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, I watch it every Halloween, along with Sleepy Hollow... it's kind of a ritual.

Anyways, like I was saying, I was getting all excited thinking you cooked up some funny/spooky " Brer in Sleepy Shire" type theme. I even got my popcorn all ready, my soda, opened this up and  - f*ck this! - f*ck you! - f*ck  that! ... huh? Sorry, that bummed me out... thanks pal.

If that wasn't enough, you had to add insult to injury with a senseless bloodbath of women and children, why? What if Fox was home when Brer went there and it became instantly confrontational, as I assume it would have. The logistics of the story were off too, Penny had to tell him where the bathroom was like he had never been there before, yet he put his hatchet outside the bathroom window.

There's a myriad of things that could be nixed from this to clean it up , but I'll leave that for the script Nazis and the like.

I(seriously) think you had a fun idea here, but it somehow went south on you based on the assumption you package horror in the same barrel as gore. Too bad, this might have been a novel idea... sans the psychotic episode.
Posted by: PraneelNand, October 21st, 2016, 12:44pm; Reply: 14
This one went south really quick lol. I wish there was more of a reason for Brer to go off the deep end like that. I think whats lacking is any type of character development, it would be nice to be able to connect with Brer on some sort of level, before we are shown his true colors.

I got a real Patrick Bateman feel from Brer, a psycho for the sake of being a psycho. I think it would've had more of an effect if we could relate to Brer, adding a creep factor because that would make us believe anyone could be a pure psycho.

The writing wasn't bad at all, I just think the characters need to be fleshed out, you do keep in spirit of the challenge so I say well done.

I'm going to pass on this one simply because I didn't feel for the characters or really get any sense of them. (I know it's hard considering the amount of pages we can write)

Good luck in the future
Posted by: MarkItZero, October 21st, 2016, 1:54pm; Reply: 15
Well, this is kind of creative. I don't really understand the point of the confrontation between Brer and Fontaine. They delve into a complex property dispute where I learned a lot about animal construction company business practices. But his rampage doesn't seem to have anything to do with that or anything else. He just goes on a killing spree for no particular reason. Unless I misread something.

I would say one thing to work on is give subtle hints there's something "off" about Brer.

FONTAINE FOX
I’m giving up because you’re a
fucking psycho, Brer. A fucking
PSYCHO.

More subtle than this. Look up some common characteristics of psychopaths and try and weave that stuff in. Things you can show, maybe physical mannerisms, stuff like that. Particularly with the scene between Brer and Penny, it should be very clear Brer has issues by this point. That whole scene could be filled with tension. Maybe even she knows somethings off and she's trying to talk her way out of the room or something like that.

It was a creative effort though.
Posted by: Cameron (Guest), October 21st, 2016, 2:05pm; Reply: 16
Funny how music makes a difference. I had Venus in Furs on in the background there at the beginning and it seemed to make sense, however it turned quite quickly and descended into a hell of a lot of gore just as the song finished.

Anyway, music aside, it was reasonably well written, and had a really good first movement which could have been expanded, basically because there was more gore than require in the second. Maybe I just didn't like the second act because Joy Division came on...

Mixed for me, I did quite like it but not sure if it's a consider or not
Posted by: James McClung, October 24th, 2016, 6:19pm; Reply: 17
Good choice on fairy (or perhaps folk) tale here. I heard a lot of these stories when I was a kid and enjoy them to this day. Super underrated.

That said, more of the same from me, I'm afraid. I actually liked the first half. Didn't think it was slow or anything. The ending indeed renders it meaningless, though. As far as I can tell, you drop no hints that Rabbit would do something like this and even if you did, the meaning of it is lost on me.

Wouldn't it have made more sense that Fox kill Rabbit's family? Or switch the two so that Fox is the coldhearted businessman (I agree with a previous comment that the role reversal is cool, but even so, this would be an option)? Both options would shift the story from a horror to a revenge/thriller context, but at least it'd have some sort of logic to it.

I'll echo Jeff's comment that I found this mean-spirited. I do NOT object to that in and of itself. If there were some meaning behind it (moral or otherwise), it could work, even if it made a lot of readers upset. As of now, it's just senseless.

Even from a gore perspective, I'm disappointed in how mundane it all is. You haven't taken advantage of the tea kettle in the scene either, which would've at least brought something memorable to the grisly proceedings. You should've used it on Fox, to be honest. It's been documented that strangling someone takes a long, *long* time.

Good writing. Good choice of source material. Not even *that* bad, honestly. Just feels like a waste. As I mentioned in another thread, though, I didn't make the deadline for this one, so as with the others, a congrats is in order.
Posted by: ChrisBodily, October 24th, 2016, 11:14pm; Reply: 18
I've only heard of Brer Rabbit because of Song of the South.

Anyway, here goes...

Shouldn't it be McSpooks instead of Mcspooks?

Right out of the gate, no "FADE IN:" at the top of the page, and...


Quoted Text
EXT. ANIMAL VILLAGE[]- MIDDAY


You need a space after "Village." Stick to DAY and NIGHT.

Semicolon should be a comma.

"Over" is an orphan. Some writers/readers hate this, as the word takes up its own line. Too many of these waste a page or more's worth of space.

Why is "Desk" capitalized?

Um, of course FONTAINE FOX is a fox? Why wouldn't he be a fox? I'm not saying Michael J. Fox is a fox, but in this universe you're setting up for us, we can just assume Fontaine Fox is a fox. It goes without saying.


Quoted Text
FONTAINE FOX
[..] Screw you,
Brer.

[...]

BRER RABBIT
Get to the point, asshole. [...]


There goes your G rating.  ;D


Quoted Text
What happened to your fucking
morals!


Hell, there goes your PG-13 rating!  ;D

"Fontaine [is] visibly distressed."

Eight lines! I say trim it.


Quoted Text
FONTAINE FOX (CONT’D)
You went too far. My father’s
without a fucking mound, he’s old,
he needs somewhere to live, he’s
using whatever gold he has left to
find somewhere cheap.
Hm, Brer
Rabbit Construction’s new line of
top quality mounds being built over
his land. FUCK YOU!



Quoted Text
FONTAINE FOX
You went too far. My father’s
without a fucking mound, he’s old,
he’s using whatever gold he has left
Hm, Brer Rabbit Construction’s new
line of top quality mounds being
built over his land. FUCK YOU!


I just removed two lines worth of dialogue. Also, CONT'D is unnecessary. Turn these off in your program except for page breaks.

You could even remove:


Quoted Text
Hm, Brer Rabbit Construction’s new
line of top quality mounds being
built over his land.


And that'll give you four lines:


Quoted Text
FONTAINE FOX
You went too far. My father’s
without a fucking mound, he’s old,
he’s using whatever gold he has left
FUCK YOU!


When Fontaine says "A fucking PSYCHO," I can hear those screeching strings in my head: "EEE! EEE! EEE! EEE!" Will the Psycho reference be relevant to the story? So far, I'm getting shades of Citizen Kane, Donald Trump, and Ebenezer Scrooge.

You keep forgetting to put a space before the hyphen in your slugs.


Quoted Text
Outside Brer Rabbit Mound Construction Co.[, a]nimals gather
around watching Fontaine walk out with items. Most gossip
among each[]other.


Pretty sloppy writing here, even for a one-weeker.


Quoted Text
INT. BRER’S OFFICE- LATER ON


Better yet, is it day or night?


Quoted Text
‘Wednesday[,] 8th of June[,] 1900’


Commas.


Quoted Text
Brer rubs his hand against his wooden desk. His sharp claws
scratch.

Screech, screech, screech. He carves into the wood, going
deeper with each scratch.


I'd merge these two paragraphs.

"[...]a late[-]night fishing trip."

You can remove "Casually."

If you're simply repeating a slug, you might benefit from replacing the whole second slug with LATER.


Quoted Text
PENNY[,] a petite female fox wearing a blue dress[, s]tands in
the kitchen, cleaning pots and pans.


Very awkward as written.


Quoted Text
The door [is] open.


Complete sentences; avoid what Richard Walter calls "Tarzan talk." Or at least keep to bare minimum.

"the door behind
him" is an orphan.

I don't think "If you don't mind" needs a question mark.

Your "(pointing down the hallway)" parenthetical is too long. Use an action line instead.

If the story weren't this interesting, I probably would have stopped by now.

Okay, at this point, you can just use mini slugs (or intercut) to speed up the pace.


Quoted Text
Brer pulls the hatchet out and [s]now slams its multiple times
into her head as she withers on the floor, back to the stove.


Wrong word choice.

"Brer grunts" and "No damage is shown" should be merged.

"GRAAAH" "YAAAAHHHH"  ;D Nah, just Brer screams would suffice. Writing it out smacks of rank amateur. I speak from experience.

Nice gore visuals.  8)


Quoted Text
Zippedy-doo-dah-zippety-day.


Close, very close. It's actually


Quoted Text
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah! Zip-a-dee-ay!


My, oh my, what a wonderful script this would be if you could clean it up and polish.

"CUT TO BLACK." should be capitalized and right-aligned, with a period at the end.

Speaking of "The End," it should be formatted as a character heading, capitalized, no period.

Anyway...

My, oh my, what a wonderful script this would be if you could clean it up and polish. That's not to say your script is terrible, but it definitely needs more work. Just keep that Uncle Reemus smile on your face and song in your heart and you can deliver an even-more-knockout script.

Strong consider. A-
Posted by: StuartJ, October 25th, 2016, 5:12pm; Reply: 19
Well that took a turn for the worst. I feel almost too much so, a lot of the violence seemed out of place and just too full on.

I enjoyed the rest, I think if it was tonex down slightly it would make for a better read but that's just my opinion.

It is well written though, well done.


Congratulations
Posted by: Jeremiah Johnson, October 28th, 2016, 12:13am; Reply: 20
Notes:
Midday and Later On in the slugs is probably not good.  Just Day or Later, plus many instances those scenes were Continuous.  Look at all of them and fix them now that you have time.  I understand that some of this was because of time restraints.  I think the opening scene does nothing for the story and should be removed.

Speaking of the story, Brer is one pissed off rabbit!  At first, I was thinking there was no real reason for all the violence at Fontaine’s mound.  Then, I remembered this is horror and you really don’t need a reason for the mayhem.  If he could do this to his friend, what do you think he could do to his enemies! :)

Some of the dialogue was a bit clunky and long.  Some of the writing was pretty good and the pacing was good with the gore in the mound.  Liked showing the violence with the mix of showing Fontaine fishing and returning to the mound.  With some of the mistakes in the slugs just keeps this from being a recommend.  It really didn’t follow the tale except for the Brer character.  If this was animation, it’s expensive to make but not unheard of.  Good job on getting this done on time.

Met Challenge?: Yes, barely.
Horror: Oh yeah.
Overall: Pass w/re-write could be Consider
Posted by: c m hall, October 28th, 2016, 3:34pm; Reply: 21
SPOILERS

I think the logline might reveal too much of the story.  

The descriptions that introduce the characters, especially their clothes and their surroundings, are quietly clever, brought a smile.

The dialogue between characters and descriptions of their actions, particularly Brer Rabbit waiting while the kettle comes to a boil, have the tone and the timing that the original Brer Rabbit Tales had -- the audience will be spellbound,  this is real story tellin' time.

The violent actions Brer Rabbit takes against Mrs. Fox are detailed in full for the audience, where the violence against the fox children is known only by the evidence left.  Similarly, the original tales had lessons to teach but were meant to be entertaining.  

All in all, I think this is a very good script that might benefit by being expanded, a little, to make an entertaining film.  As it is now, this story is quite stark and if that is the intention, that is achieved.  
Print page generated: March 19th, 2024, 3:25am