Furious Factions Strong Reactions
- Thread starter ghalied
- Start date
DarkElastic
Well-known member
I'm looking forward to the Fest and the chance to read everyone's scripts, including this one.
seansshack
Well-known member
Looking forward to the read.
pauly_the_hitman
Veteran
Cool poster looking forward to reading it man. Good luck.
Pauly
Pauly
DarkElastic
Well-known member
Good man. I will be uploading as soon as possible.
DarkElastic
Well-known member
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
Veteran
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 ...
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
Veteran
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.
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.
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:
Thank you for the feedback!
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:
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.
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
Veteran
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
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
Veteran
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
Active member
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.
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.
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!
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
Active member
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