Furious Factions Strong Reactions

[ghalied]

Furious Factions Strong Reactions
"When you run with the big dogs, sometimes you have to lift a leg."



The script's looking more Pulp Fiction than Pulp Noir at the moment. I'm trying to stay true to the genre with a hint of subtle cheese.


http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/picture.php?albumid=60&pictureid=447

[ghalied]

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[DarkElastic]

I'm looking forward to the Fest and the chance to read everyone's scripts, including this one.

[ghalied]

First attempt at a poster ever is up.

[seansshack]

Looking forward to the read.

[ghalied]

Thanks for the motivation. Looking forward to your guys entries too.

[pauly_the_hitman]

Cool poster looking forward to reading it man. Good luck.
Pauly

[ghalied]

Uploaded. Not sure about this one but we'll see I suppose.

[DarkElastic]

Good man. I will be uploading as soon as possible.

[jamiejay]

poster looks great :)

jamie

[DarkElastic]

Good script mate, I enjoyed the read. I did get confused half way through with all the jumping about and flash backing and forwarding. But, it all came together well at the end with some good action and explosions. I will say that the ammount of characters made it hard to follow and also made it hard to like them, as there seems to be so much going on.

[alex whitmer]

This …

INT. PARTY – NIGHT

The kitchen of a college house party

*Techie speaking you can’t be ‘INT’ a party. I’d call this one INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT

This …

turns around to look at the guy

*… should be turns around to look at Joe.

This …

bottles empty

*Oops!

This …

EXT. CAR PARKED AT SCENIC SPOT
Joe smiles as he exhales a huge cloud of smoke. His smile
turns to worry.

*Kind of odd usage of slugs. Maybe …

*EXT. SCENIC SPOT – (DAY OR NIGHT?)

Joe leans against a car, smiles as he exhales a huge cloud of smoke. His smile turns to worry.

Page 2

INT. SAM’S HOUSE

Joe, Jimmy and Shaun follow Sam’s Henchman through the
lounge towards the kitchen.

*Back to Sam’s house and the opening scene. Was the party/scenic spot a flashback?

*Also, as in the opening scene, no time of day.
Page 3

the two biggest gang leaders in the city

*Are they wearing name tags?

This …

his slut-draped chair

*That’s pretty funny!

Page 4

ROY
How about you be the one to play
fetch with my shipment or you’re
the one with one nephew less.

*Who is he talking to?

Page 5

Funny this …

JIMMY
I’ll go get the dog.

This …

middle to upper class house.

*Also known as upper-middle class.

This …

Across from him is WALTER, the
head of the Congolese mafia.

*How do we know he’s the head of the Congolese Mafia?

Page 6

Gets out. Walks over to Sarah, grabs her and gives the mother of all kisses. He grabs some ass too for good measure.

*At this point you need an EXT slug. Also, hard to like a guy that grabs a fistful of ass uninvited. Kinda lost my wavering sympathy for the guy. He's your main character, and we should like the guy for some reason another.

This …

We don’t try to
bureaucratise our poo pooen
criminality with their poo pooen
white philosophy.

*By now I’m really confused who is what race.

Page 7

EXT. NEXT TO PARKED VAN AND CAR

*Okay, so like, where is he? Scenic spot, car park, street somewhere?

Page 8

EXT. DELIVERY VAN
Joe, Jimmy and the dog drive off. A flustered, half-smiling
Sarah watches. People give her looks. She doesn’t notice.

I’m really lost. A lot of characters running all over the place, INT, EXT and other.


Cont ...

[alex whitmer]

Cont ...

This …

Joe goes to him

*I know you mean he goes to Roy, but it reads like he goes to Shaun.

Page 10

Behind him people are dead

*He was aiming at the group. How can they be behind him?

This …

The vans plunge though the bushes, the Congolese guys
follow.

*Vans or off-roads? I thought they were all Congolese?

This …

JIMMY
You guys maybe looking for a ride
somewhere?

*Where did he go? Did they plan this escape? What weed?

Okay, well it’s a difficult story to follow. I get the plot was to get good enough weed to win the girl’s heart. Simple enough, but then you have the ass-grab scene that Sarah seemed to enjoy, so it kinda knocks the wind out any urgency to win her.

I think you need to work on your slugs so they are very clear as to place and time.

Lot of characters for a short. Everybody had a role, so it was difficult to distinguish the main character (Joe).

Regardless, a fun read. It really reminded me of my younger days and the pursuit of weed no matter the risk or distance.

[ghalied]

Warning: Plenty of Spoilers!

Dark Elastic: Thank you, much appreciated. Believe it or not, the jumping around slowly clearing up was what I was going for.

Alex: Thanks for the review! Not only are you thorough but generally you’re also spot on. I really need to convince you to read my other scripts! You spotted two of my main worries for the script: ease of understanding and the “grab ass” line. For the latter I wracked my brain and then decided to err on the side of extreme. I can see how that didn’t work.

For the former, tons of rereading and my variegated timeline didn’t help. My slug line use can definitely improve. (Inexplicably I hate changing the location names because the unused ones still show up in the Final Draft pop up lists but I should just get over that).

Two things that you bring up make me wonder. First is that I tend to name my characters if I need them to be more than just a face (e.g. SAM and ROY) but I don’t go out of my way to name them in the dialogue or visuals if I don’t find it natural. Does this not work?

Second thing is that I might just give a title in lieu of a description if I feel it’s enough to give a title to the character (e.g. head of the Congolese Mafia). Didn’t seem to work either?

I also leave DAY and NIGHT if it’s not important. In fact, I leave almost everything out that’s I think is not important. I’m starting to thing I need to be more verbose in my scriptwriting (which means unlearning a lot of things I taught myself).

Couple of points:

We don’t try to
bureaucratise our poo pooen
criminality with their poo pooen
white philosophy.

*By now I’m really confused who is what race. This line is left over from some of the depth which, along with some cheesiness, ended up on the cutting room floor. He is actually accusing them of thinking like white people. As an immigrant he is disgusted to find the people of colour sucked into a way of thinking that colonialists used to exploit colonies.

Where did he go? Did they plan this escape? What weed?It’s the same bag of weed that’s on Walter’s desk when Joe and Walter smoke together. That whole scene is a foreshadowing of them working together. I should maybe have expressly said that it’s the same bag of weed.

Thank you for the feedback!

[lawriejaffa]

Hey Ghalied well done on writing the script.

I found the story confused me a little bit, I understand the quest to get dope for a girl, but that threw me (genre wise) it was difficult to get 'frat comedy' out of my head. I see the pulp fiction angle with some of the later dialogue, (the philosophical type parts) but it didn't perhaps gel with the overall style (at least how I took it!)

There were also too many characters for me to follow and understand properly the roles they were supposed to be playing in the narrative. Overall this could be a cute farce in my book, but not so much a hard boiled pulp movie!

That said it has many original little flourishes and the scenes and locations give us a colourful canvas to enjoy while reading it!

So well done mate

[alex whitmer]

Two things that you bring up make me wonder. First is that I tend to name my characters if I need them to be more than just a face (e.g. SAM and ROY) but I don’t go out of my way to name them in the dialogue or visuals if I don’t find it natural. Does this not work?


Second thing is that I might just give a title in lieu of a description if I feel it’s enough to give a title to the character (e.g. head of the Congolese Mafia). Didn’t seem to work either?


I also leave DAY and NIGHT if it’s not important. In fact, I leave almost everything out that’s I think is not important. I’m starting to thing I need to be more verbose in my scriptwriting (which means unlearning a lot of things I taught myself).

1.
No, because pronouns can be applied to some or all of the characters. If Roy has a dialogue followed by a 'He moves to the door' but that action was for Sam, I need to stop and re-read to sort out who the 'he' belongs to. This is true also for 'he' and 'she'. If say MARY has a dialogue followed by 'He moves to the door', it should seem obvious that I am referring to a male charcter and not Mary, but alas, he and she can be easily 'typoed' and I read them as such and have to go back to double check. Not good to send your reader back to figure out who a pronoun belongs to.

2.
The audience won't have the script to read, so it's useless information. If you tell me a character is the biggest, meanest wipe on earth, I can envision that, but if you tell me he's the leader of the Congolese Mafia, I have no idea what that looks like. Leave 'titles' off. You have to reveal that via dialogue or action or some visual. Also ask yourself it it even really matters. In this case, I don't see where it really mattered. He was scary, that's the the audience needs to see.

In the God Father it mattered, but it was obvious he was the big cheese.

3.
It's very important. Night and day action is very different. Also, if you ever market a script, night and day shots are a big part of budgeting.

[themightyshrub]

I agree with what else has been said in this thread - I got really confused until about the last scene, when I just about figured what was going on, but only just. I get that the sense of confusion was what you were aiming for, but I was just too confused. If I was just reading for enjoyment as opposed to reviewing for this fest, I probably would have stopped reading about halfway through.

I also think you have too many characters. You could have had exactly the same story without Jimmy I think, and just removing one character would have made it a lot easier to follow.

Having said all this - once I finished reading and got my head around what had gone on, I did enjoy it. Some of your lines are really well written - especially "slut-draped chair"

I think this script could be really good if you gave it a few more rewrites and tried to simplify it a little more - It's a great story, I just think it was overcomplicated and cluttered.

[ghalied]

I'm really stoked at the feedback I get when I enter these fests!

Jimmy was written in specifically to fetch the dog; I knew I could leave out but didn't want to at the cost of losing the dog. I think it was a big mistake name Jimmy and Joe both starting with "J". Small things like that make a difference.

I need to add pronoun checking to my proofreading. And stay visual in my descriptions. Jeez, I'm learning a lot. Thanks guys!

[themightyshrub]

That reminds me actually - I still don't understand the point of the dog! Maybe I missed something, but I totally didn't understand what was going on with the dog. I thought they were going to get a shipment of drugs, then they said they were getting a dog, then there was loads of drugs, then a dog. Very confused

[ghalied]

Honestly, I just thought the dog was cool. A non-gangster element that humanised everyone a little. I'm sure I could I could think of a point somewhere but I wasn't very cognitive about the dog when I wrote it.

[Redcloak]

Yeah guess same for me. Got lost, but got carried along by it just enough.

The fact there's three of the normal guys (I think) would seem to be 1 if not 2 too many. If the starting hook is this girl Sarah then you need to remember that, and then any ass-grabbing would be better suited to the end, not the Deus Ex Machina Congolese thing...

Kudos for the head of the Congolese mafia using bureaucratise in a line.

[krestofre]

I basically share everyones' opinion regarding the confusing nature of the script. Maybe lose or condense a few characters to make the structure of the story a little more clear.

[CallaghanFilms]

Nice little concept:beer:

I also had trouble finding the story buried within...but it's nothing a spit shine and polish couldn't fix. After all, my major qualms are all technical ones.

I am really trying not to Monday-morning-quarterback here, but I do have a suggestion. Bring the story full circle, and have him (at the very end) produce the weed for the hottie. She could say something to the tune of, "You didn't have any trouble getting it, did you?" To which he could reply, "No. No trouble at all," or some such jazz. Take it or leave it, just my pair of copper coins.


***SPOILER ALERT***
Favorite Line:
"That bitch took half my money, my house, and my dog she didn't even like - I should kill him myself."

[ghalied]

I definitely see now that writing a script as meandering as the stoned guys in it can be confusing. A stoner equivalent of Flowers for Algernon doesn't seem to carry across well.

[MiataFilmSomething]

Yeah, got a little lost as well, but I liked the characters. Nothing really new that I can add. For some reason, and it's my fault I'm sure, I kept thinking this as a type of comedy or dark comedy script. I guess that's because so many movies with stoners in them are comedies.

Great effort, though!

[GrizzlyGuy]

Very creative, ghalied. I was a bit confused as I read it. I think it was mostly due to the jumps in time as opposed to the number of characters. But as you intended, things became more clear as the ending approached. I loved the suspense and action at Tucker's field near the end.

[conlanforever]

There were some good action pieces in this one. I have to echo what others have said about the amount of characters and confusion in the middle of the script.

I think you have a really good story here, its probably just too big for the amount of pages you had to work with. I don't have much else to say I think everyone covered what I was thinking.

I like your idea of such a big plan for such a simple reason. I think you have all the ingredients for a good story here.

[Brandon Rice]

Sorry but I was confused by the script...

Also... another thing I didn't like is the amount of cursing you used... I feel that using curse words is a cheap way of writing... just throw in some strong language and it makes a scene "intense" I don't buy that...

Keep working on writing... condense some of the characters, and write a better setup to this, and it could be interesting.

Good job on submitting something!

[seansshack]

Structure wise I would lose using tagline on title page, included time of day in scene slugs (i.e. day/night) - helps us to visualize scenes.


Dialog need some polish. In early scenes I had trouble telling the difference between characters. Did like the line "quadrophonic-whacktack-tation"

Descriptions and action well well written. But I did find myself confused by it and needing to read and go back to read again. Not sure if this is just me and how I perceived/understood your story.

Good luck and well done.

[jasonthewho]

I actually understood almost the entirety of the story, BUT, I do think clarification would help really sell this. I thought this was a really fun, Pineapple Express-esque script.

Good work on all the set-ups and pay-offs. Liked all the post-colonialism as well.

[ghalied]

Thanks guys. All these comments are making see where extra explanation is needed for a jumping timeline so this is much appreciated. This fest is definitely a good place for pushing limits and getting feedback for what works and what doesn't.

I was a bit ashamed of glorifying drug use (fortunately enough I don't have a problem with cursing and violence) so I tried to add some social commentary on xenophobia and colonialism et al. And people don't seem to be noticing those lines as forced (as I thought it might be) or cheesy (which would be pretty cool in this genre), so I'm pretty happy in that regard. (Bodes well for my vision of embedding positive/thought-provoking messages in my work).

[Horncastle]

I actually quite liked this. I had problems following like everyone else, but there was enough (too much!?) interesting stuff going on that I still enjoyed it. You had some really good dialog and the basis for a whole lot more. "Dude, the world is messed up enough without me trying to understand it" was a great line. I think the whole story was pretty linear and worked OK until the Congolese get pulled into the story. After that I have the feeling you had too many themes you were trying to get into too small a space. There were some nice ideas being bandied around on the colonialism and race but I felt you didn't really manage to control them and got sidetracked in too many directions away from your main story. Thanks for the read.
Jason

[ghalied]

Thank you. I like that line too. Always trying to slot it into real life conversation but haven't managed as yet. :)

[jamiejay]

I think I pretty much understood the story, but with so many people and such common names, I kept losing track of who was who.

It was pretty funny that all of this happened for something as ridiculous as getting a girl some weed. I liked that. In my script, it was for donuts... :beer:

Everyone else has basically covered everything and I think you get the point about clarification.

Thanks for the entertainment. :)

[ghalied]

Thanks JamieJay, I'm glad you liked it. Hmmm, now if I could have made the Congolese Mafia be smuggling doughnuts... now that would have been a story!