Red Rope

Yo Conlan thanks for the review mate - glad you liked it, and yep i think you would probably have to be a paranoid neurotic to guess the ending (at least in its full magnitude of horribleness!)

How did you think it was going to end if you didn't see it coming - did you have any alternative endings in mind! :)

Yep good point you make about the promotion - someone else also mentioned perhaps adding more importance to the need for the candidate for promotion being otherwise 'perfect.'

Certainly i tried to put across the idea that nobody has seen the baby yet (and maybe that needs to be more obvious) so that we get a hint of a secret that our lead is keeping. As the point is that if the baby was discovered then our lead thinks it would damage his prospects for future promotions there-after etc.

Of course even in a society where appearances were everything, where girls would have backstreet abortions for the fear of ostracising in society... such a crime as the one this chap commits would have been abhorred by all! It is an utterly selfish act, as is the permanent mutilation of his wife.

Yet the story is about our man - his desperation to be part of a brave future yet futile to escape the prejudices of the past. He is the 'victim' (of course the baby by circumstance) but it is him we see getting destroyed - by himself.

The remenants of the infant corpse is the remenants of his humanity. // forgive the typos in my post!
 
not sure if that would make me a paranoid neurotic... haha... but it wasn't an obvious ending by any means, and i hope you didn't think i was saying that. it's just that i've come to expect a twist, i guess... and it is called red rope, and your tag line did mention a dead baby... so between those things and the fact that the main character seemed to be more interested in his work than in his wife and kid and something odd was definitely going on... you see what i mean...

but it's an interesting and gruesome subject, and, unfortunately, too often a reality.

whether or not you enjoy writing, it seems like you do and that's a good thing. :)

in response to your response about not wanting the wife and baby seen earlier, i see what you're saying. i guess i just wanted to feel more of a sense of loss, like alex said. but not seeing them ahead of time does almost belittle their importance just as the main character seems to belittle their importance in the grand scheme of things. neat.

it definitely poses some interesting questions and stirs up good discussion. :beer:
 
Hey there mate! I was only kidding about the paranoid neurotic - though i er didn't even make my jokey remark very clear doh.

I was referring more to how impossible it would be to guess (i think) the particular 'extent' of his crime unless one was as paranoid and neurotic (and perverse) as me probably! I think personally speaking (this is speculative) that if i was reading this script, that i would suspect that we're going to find out something about this 'wife and baby' and with the cops, id probably guess this must have something to do with our lead.

What i hope works with the revelation is less that he is connected, or that he is even the cause - but that it is the 'reason' and his justification - and hopefully in his somewhat theatrical monologue the irony of his er intentions (and of his pillar of society type stuff) despite the nature of his crime.

Not having the wife and baby does belittle their importance as 'characters' but thats fine as in this story they are not really characters (we never see/speak to them anyway) they serve as demonstrations simply of what this man would sacrifice for his own ambition (and in doing so destroying himself.)

And so the point is this (for this particular script of mine)

The emotional reaction I want is repulsion - and to attach that to an element of social commentary (revealed by our leads monologue.) I'm calculating that there is enough 'loss' for the baby based simply on our predisposition to babies anyway (without us needing a scene with it.)

But the readers emotional attachment to two characters - the wife and kid, is not necessary for the scripts social point to be made, so i think trying to develop that takes away from the 'intellectual' objective and goes more towards the emotional/cathartic result. Which i think would lead to melodrama in this case especially given how dramatic the ending is already - and worse may make our character look too much like a psycho in the hollwood suburban sense (one day a perfectly normal husband...) - worse, it could make people think i was just being sadistic in my writing - ie. setting up this perfect family just to destroy them -

Let the world be brutal - no family breakfast scene necessary to make us cry when they die because there not the point as it were.

// Oh a short film with a script WAY BETTER than anything i could consider - that plays with this idea, is called World of Glory - definately definately worth checking out.
 
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Hey someone rated my thread - thanks - ive no idea how to rate others - but id rate them a 5!

As this is the last day just wanted to thank everyone that took the time to read/review my script - feedback totally appreciated, and as you know i've returned the favour and reviewed everyone elses scripts.

Theres at least half a dozen of them that i would love the honour of producing! Its been great and i wish good luck to all the entries!
 
Eek sorry Alex my mistake - i think your right it might be Sunday! Sorry - sorry false alarm!

So in my process of figuring out thread ratings i saw the magic stars and went ooh whats this and then... accidentally rated my thread a 3! Booo a crappy 3! Well that will teach me!
 
Ah don't sweat it Preston, just a comical way for my films feedback thread to end - in a discussion about my internet stupidity!

Anyway i've reviewed alllll the film scripts - i hope you have too preston if you have time to reply to what are probably the most stupid posts ive made in this thread hehe
 
I enjoyed this script very much and have enjoyed reading the thread too - it's been a good and informative discussion. I especially like the idea of Richard being divided between the old and the new and I appreciate the reasoning (and also the difficulty) in not making this a clear cut "good wins out" script. There are some slips in screen writing technique, but these have been covered. I would add two things:

1. The Dream sequence right at the beginning doesn't really hit home. This is a writing problem since it might be fine filmed, but you speak of Richard as though we already know who he is but only introduce him in the following scene. Richard comma right at the beginning and the use of "we" don't help either.

2. Maybe more important if you are going to produce this: Richard's long last paragraph of dialogue at the top of page 7 didn't convince me. It felt like you were trying to explain the ending rather than give us Richard's real dialog. In any case, I question how much a man of Richard's social standing (and in his position) would feel it appropriate or wise to say so much to this "figure" (who was presumably a low-life criminal he'd hired). I understand you want to keep Richard complex - he's done a terrible deed but he's also truly grief-stricken and not quite himself, but wouldn't his rigid upringing and class conciousness mean that he didn't feel he needed to justify himself to this man? The things in that paragraph (upstanding member of the community, freak, mongoloid, prospects, scandal ...) all need to be said or shown, and I understand why you don't want to put them in earlier, but I do think they are too much for that dialog.

Nonetheless, I did very much enjoy this and do think it has a lot of possibilities. I look forward to watching it in Lossfest if you do make it.
Jason
 
Hey Jason cheers for the insight there yep you raise good points of course (the real murderer we don't see, but he has a bullet shaped head and a beard! Nooo not that nice Captain of the Mersey Mabel hehe! One of my favs - are you making that!?)

The dream sequence definately needs work, atm its a total wasted opportunity and truth for that is - i kinda whacked it on crudely. In my revised version I will be working on that - keeping it short still but adding more depth.

Though just a bit more colourful than i would do hehe... one of my fab British directors was great at dream sequences, he's not often mentioned on these boards either!

Ken Russell, and heres a dream seqence for his movie the 'Music Lovers' about Tchaikovsky (abandoning/escaping key folk in his life and getting exploited-ish) Maybe just something a little like this to make our guy seem/feel like he's top of the world - before plunging him into reality.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vO31n8sy0r0

Yah the long paragraph of Richard's is pure theatre of course - (no in melodrama as we often confuse with theatrical performance!) But in technique. Its the true story onto itself. On the other hand I don't want it too jar too far from naturalism (i don't mind it veering off quite a bit though as the story does.)

When performed i imagine the monologue delivered with quite, high tempo fury... with disdain towards the killer (As if he is ignorant for asking - but also with a desperation for the hopelessness for the situation.) Its interesting what you say about class, because of coruse we do have Richard as the er ultimate middle class type figure (Murdoch as upperclass) and the killer as well (we can't say working class// but be that metaphorical or more so an underclass.)

However despite the 'power' Richard might have, he can't do whats needed, and in that sense his class as to the power it might give him is irrelevant. In a way he's the killers ***** at the end (which is why the killer also taunts him by showing him the dead baby despite his plea not to see.) That is truly the symbol of Richards powerlessness.

Oh just cos im blethering still, despite his class - his monologue is more to himself (its rhetorical almost) its more a pyschological justification to himself than say an expositional outline to the murderer (and audience) - at least its supposed to be (and er ok it just happens to conveniently answer some points of motive too hehe.)

So, ill experiment with the end speech maybe even pen a couple of versions - definately we don't want to 'see it' - imagine that a dream like montage noooo. We have to keep our poor audience in the dark alley... with some psycho kid murderer, a father sick enough to have an infant strangled and a dead baby. Hopefully if the power of that scene can be realised, then they'll be an energy there that makes the power of the monologues 'revelation' work.

Yeah well i wrote it with Lossfest in mind - we need more british entries!
 
I thought that you had one of the biggest character arcs in the fest. The positive optimistic dream and the winning personality that Richard exudes in the beginning counterpointed with his dark side reveal and the end was very dramatic.

Richard's motivation was selfish, but it made sense for the story. Great job in creating a very two-sided character.

I guess the main thing I would like to see is more suspense being ratched up during Act 2. I wanted to see the police investigate and some misdirection as to who the killer was so that when it is revealed that it is Richard, it is all the more shocking and powerful.

I would like to see some more of Richard's seemingly inevitable wonderful life of wealth and influence so that we can understand more why he would want his deformed child murdered. It seems an awful risk to do something like that if he already has such a successful job and position in his community. Does he really fear that having a deformed child will keep him from rising through the ranks in his profession? Wouldn't the cops think it was him immediately? Of course, as we all know from hearing about these kinds of killings on the news, the saying "truth is sometimes stranger than fiction" might apply in this case.

Maybe they nab someone else who had a prior record, or it ends up that Richard framed someone in the town. The police take this poor soul off to jail and then it could be revealed that Richard and his accomplice were responsible for the murder.

Also, it was a little vague as to whether Richard was an architect or a city planner.

This was well written though. Your writing flowed well and I was able to visualize things easily. Maybe my above demands are too much for a 10 page script, but I think you have the building blocks of something longer if you wanted to expand things.

All in all an interesting, compelling, and darkly enjoyable read with a shocker of an ending. Hats off to you lad.
 
Hey there Nektonic - thanks for the review mon amie and jeez you did well reviewing so much on the final day!!! Yep Richard is selfish, he's more the middle class bureacrat (very typical for us brits) than say a wealthy man. Often cases money alone doesnt penetrate the differences either in classicism that exists here too (and everywhere to different extents.)

I definately agree now on the need to build more suspense - so i'll be looking at that for the ol' script revisions!

Yep I can see your confused a wee bit about why he would murder his deformed child - its something a wee bit more 'presumable' in vague understanding - probably for british audiences. (Maybe not but necessarily.)

The idea is that this guy is ashamed of the baby being deformed and believes it will hamper his prospects - it is a prejudice he has rooted in an almost victorian sense of respectability and perfection.

It's the same kind of shame that would lead also to countless backstreet abortions - these exceptions to normal society - the deformed, the illegitimate would be exiled socially, politically in every which way!

The irony here is that society is on the cusp of change - we see it with the new town (and the UK was changing fast in the late 40s, early 50s) but people were pulled between the old and new worlds...

Sadly its not such a case that the truth is stranger than fiction, but that this kind of thing was faaaaaar more common than you probably would like to imagine!!! They drained a pond in the city of London and it was found littered with dozens of baby carcasses from dangerous back street abortions that occured during ww2 (from affairs with service men)

Now... why imperil your life to go through that... the horror of that - for the fear of social ostracising? The same reason some would murder their own borne.

In that sense its probably not to the films purpose that we should find out whether Richard gets caught or not (the presumption is - that he won't be.) On the contrary the cops would also probably think it was ANYONE but him. Not the respectable Richard Anson!
 
lawriejaffa said:
Yep I can see your confused a wee bit about why he would murder his deformed child - its something a wee bit more 'presumable' in vague understanding - probably for british audiences. (Maybe not but necessarily.)

The idea is that this guy is ashamed of the baby being deformed and believes it will hamper his prospects - it is a prejudice he has rooted in an almost victorian sense of respectability and perfection.

It's the same kind of shame that would lead also to countless backstreet abortions - these exceptions to normal society - the deformed, the illegitimate would be exiled socially, politically in every which way!

The irony here is that society is on the cusp of change - we see it with the new town (and the UK was changing fast in the late 40s, early 50s) but people were pulled between the old and new worlds...

Sadly its not such a case that the truth is stranger than fiction, but that this kind of thing was faaaaaar more common than you probably would like to imagine!!! They drained a pond in the city of London and it was found littered with dozens of baby carcasses from dangerous back street abortions that occured during ww2 (from affairs with service men)
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Wow. I didn't know about the historical basis you were inspired by. That is some dark and scary stuff. Isn't there a film about the whole secret abortion thing during World War II? Vera Drake is the title I think. I haven't seen it yet. I'll have to check it out. Gee, what a great idea for holiday viewing. Maybe I can take it to the family Christmas party? Ok. Not a good idea.

I think this concept is something you might be able to work into your script. Maybe have the guy who killed Richard's baby throw the infant's body into a pond in the center of town. Then FADE TO BLACK. A little silence and a few seconds pass. The audience thinks that the film is over. But where are the end credits? That's when you FADE IN to the same shot, same scene but in the present day and the pond is being drained. The bodies of these murdered and aborted babies are then found. I think that would be a potent ending that would contrast Richard's optimistic dream from the opening scene.

Just a suggestion. You might already have thought of this. Maybe it would be confusing to the audience. They might ask, who and where did all these other babies come from?
 
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