What am I doing?? I just gave you two extra weeks to get your Scriptshadow 250 entries in and now I throw an Amateur Offerings post up? I might as well title this post, “Please Procrastinate!” I guess I’ll leave it up to you guys to use this post responsibly. Talk soon!
Title: Unearthed
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: Two young brothers search for buried treasure with hopes of helping their struggling family, but when they uncover an otherworldly artifact with mysterious properties, they find it may have far greater value than they imagined.
Why You Should Read: This is my sixth screenplay and I’m still realizing, “Man this writing stuff is still hard!” Several months ago, I received two rounds of notes from Carson and after each round, I sucked it up and made the necessary cuts and addressed the dreaded “more character development” notes. Now I hope to get another round from the SS faithful. Carson described this as Stand By Me meets E.T. I thought that was a great comparison, and basically what I was aiming for. No big explosions. No black ops military assaults. No zombies driving fast cars. Just kids on an adventure. Period. Hope you enjoy it. And it chosen, I will definitely be around and interacting in the feedback if I’m lucky enough to have anyone read it.
Title: Reap What You Sow
Genre: Thriller
Logline: When her homecoming ends in tragedy, a desperate single mother spins
a web of lies to protect the family nursery from a ruthless property developer.
Why You Should Read: Dilemma. Textbook definition: A situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives. According to the book “Screenwriting is Storytelling: Creating an A-List Screenplay That Sells” by Kate Wright, “The moral dilemma of a main character is one of the least understood critical elements of story.” A genuine dilemma forces your main character to make choices that will have escalating consequences your script must explore. One dilemma leads to a downward spiral of decisions that exploit your protag’s weakness.
My goal was to explore the main character’s dilemma in the most entertaining and efficient way I could. All too often, I’ve found myself obscuring story elements, because I thought it would create an air of mystery. Since then, I’ve learned that all it does is alienate and confuse readers that are trying to help me. This is my attempt to combat that ambiguity. I also think a Thursday Screenwriting article about the “Art of the Dilemma in Screenwriting” would be an epic topic for your blog. Thanks to the SS250 deadline extension, I’m beyond thrilled to go for this chance to workshop my script with the generous Amateur Offerings readers before the contest starts.
Title: Patsies
Genre: Comedy
Logline: After actually pulling off a daring art heist, a gang of knucklehead thieves discover that they’re patsies in a forgery scam run by their porn tycoon boss. While hunted by the tycoon’s hit man, they evade a LAPD dragnet, death, and their own dysfunction to clear their names and turn the tables on the tycoon.
Why You Should Read: After taking time off to try our luck again in animation where we had a bit of success prior to writing the AF submission “Mad Dogs,” (BTW —Thank you everyone who sent us notes on that script. They really helped.), we’re back with character based comedy. It’ll be interesting to see if our sense of humor resonates with the Scriptshadow folks. The inspiration of this film comes from watching A-List studio heist flicks and how in most of them, like the remake of “The Italian Job,” the crooks spend a shit ton of money just to set up the robbery. If they have that kind of cash in the first place why don’t they just freakin’ buy and retire to a tropical island? PATSIES is a character driven lo-fi comedy version of a studio heist film. Also, it explores the types of dysfunctional characters who would turn to stealing to make a living, i.e. the down & out, the desperate-for-a-break, and the not-too-bright.
Title: Rogue
Genre: Spy/Action/High School/Fantasy
Logline: On his first day at his new high school, a student wakes up in the nurse’s office with amnesia, a bomb implanted in his chest, and a masked man who gives him a mission: assassinate every member of a clandestine terrorist cell operating within the high school by 3:30 PM or the bomb in his chest will be detonated.
Elevator Pitch: If John Hughes had said, “I’m going to loosely adapt The Borne Identity with my new best friend Terry Gilliam and I want to set the entire thing in a high school,” you’d have Rogue.
Why You Should Read: I laughed to myself during Weird Week when you said that every writer should try their hand at a go-for-broke-disregard-the-rules-sure-you’ve-only-got-a-slim-chance-at-pulling-it-off-but-what-the-fuck-let’s-go-for-it-anyway-script. That’s the sort of screenplay this is. This is my attempt at a Marvel Movie and it’s so idiosyncratic and funky that I can’t not be proud of it.
Title: Triggered
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: A hapless college student who’s in trouble with local drug dealers and a freewheeling ex-spy who’s on the run from his former employers cross paths one night and discover they are the answers to each other’s problems.
Why You Should Read: Triggered is a hard-R, gloriously un-PC action-comedy about how a computer science nerd with girlfriend problems and a profane, amoral ex-secret agent find common ground through a night of wild encounters with gang members, cops, drunken frat boys, and enemy agents. Triggered is part college comedy, part spy thriller, done in the style of classic buddy films.
