Search Results for: the wall
Genre: Drama-Horror
Premise: A married pair of Sudanese refugees are granted a temporary stay in the UK that can become permanent if they can only avoid trouble, a task that becomes problematic when they move into a haunted house.
About: This project was held up for awhile due to a snafu with The Weinstein Company. But since there is no Weinstein Company anymore, they can finally make their film! Remi Weekes is a first time writer-director who’s made some noise around the UK with a couple of short films. This script made the Blood List last year.
Writer: Remi Weekes
Details: 93 pages
This one came recommended from a couple of sources so I was eager to check it out. I like scripts – especially genre scripts – that are able to take me to places I’ve never been before. This story about Sudanese refugees stuck in a haunted house felt refreshingly original. So all the arrows were pointing up on this one. Let’s find out if those arrows didn’t die of a heart attack due to a Scriptshadow jump scare.
When we meet Sudanese married couple Bol and Zainab, both 28, they’re sleeping in a detention center with hundreds of other refugees, all from different countries. The couple has escaped unimaginable horror in their home-country, Sudan, where villagers were being hacked to pieces on a daily basis.
The two win the equivalent of the lottery when they’re chosen for a six-month program to live in the UK. It’s made clear to them that they are not citizens until they finish the program without causing any trouble. They’re ecstatic. Being good for 6 months? A piece of cake.
The two are moved into a house in a blue-collar neighborhood and while the neighbors don’t seem very friendly, they feel lucky to have a home. And everything goes well for awhile. That is until Zainab starts seeing something around the house. A… creature. A creature that lives in the walls.
At first, Bol tells Zainab to tough it out. She can’t be going crazy on him. They could lose the house and get sent back to the hostels. But the truth is, Bol has begun seeing the creature as well. He keeps telling himself it’s a part of his imagination but deep down he knows it’s not.
During this time, we learn that the couple lost a daughter on the journey out of Sudan. The loss haunts Zainab. But Bol is over it. And he wants his wife to get over it too. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to link the creature living in the house with their lost daughter. The two are obviously connected. But if you dare think you know what the creature wants, guess again.
His House is the kind of script you get when you have a writer-director who’s better at the directing side than the writing side. Clearly, Weekes has a vision for this film, some of which he charts specifically in the script, as he tells you exactly where the camera will be placed and how it moves.
We also get plenty of amazing visuals here, such as Bol walking across the ocean in a dream, and then when we pan up and look down to see that the ocean is filled with billions of dead bodies to signify his countryman lost in the war.
But when it comes to the writing, there are a lot of problems with His House, the biggest of which is that very little happens. That’s because the story is thinner than a Blumhouse budget breakdown. And a lot of basic screenwriting mistakes are made.
For example, the characters have nothing to do. They just hang around the house waiting for the writer to come up with the next scary scene for them to participate in. Occasionally, Bol will leave for the day, but we have no idea where he goes. In any script, you want your characters to be active. You want them doing things, affecting the outside world. Both of these characters are passive and it makes for a very bland experience.
The dialogue is frustrating. There are no conversations in this script. Only conversation fragments. If two people speak, it’s for less than 30 seconds. And when characters do speak, they often use as few words as possible. “What is this?” “It’s the best I can do.” “This is wonderful.” “Wonderful.” “But maybe next time we can use the table.”
The reason this is problematic is because we leave tons of conversations feeling like nothing was accomplished, nothing was said. It’s as if conversations are only there to fill up space. I understand being understated and avoiding on-the-nose conversation. But you can go too far in the opposite direction, to the extent that words are noise. They mean nothing. And there were too many times here where that happened.
It’s also important to remember that there are two kinds of “not a lot happens” stories. There’s the good kind. And there’s the boring kind. You have to know the difference. Just putting two characters in a quiet scene to pass the time isn’t going to keep readers invested. Contrast this with A Quiet Place, whose concept is so powerful that even a quiet family game of monopoly can be heart-pounding, since we know that, at any second, someone can make a mistake and they’ll all be dead.
To be honest, I had so given up on this script by the time it hit the third act that I had to prop my head up with a series of pillows. But then something crazy happens. His House becomes a movie.
And what do you know? It’s because we leave that boring house and jump back to the Sudan run, where Bol and Zainab escape the country. It’s a harrowing sequence and all I could think about while reading it was, “Why isn’t THIS the movie?”
It also leads us to the big twist in the film (spoilers moving forward), where we’re watching these two make a run for it and we’re wondering, where is this daughter they kept crying about? She’s nowhere to be found. Then, as they’re approaching the last UN bus, which won’t let them on, Bol sees an abandoned little girl nearby, grabs her, and uses her to convince the bus to take them.
Later on, during a difficult part of the journey, they don’t really need the girl anymore and so they kind of let her go, which they suspect will lead to her death. So that’s the reason there’s this devil creature in the house. It’s punishing them for what they’ve done.
It’s a nice twist and a strong ending. Unfortunately, no matter how much I liked it, it couldn’t make up for the 70 prior pages where I could barely stay awake. It’ll be interesting to see how this movie does and if the director’s vision can blind audiences to the script’s problems. Then again, maybe they’ve improved the script since then. I hope so because this idea is unique and has potential.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I know a script is in trouble when storylines are introduced then forgotten. That tells me the writer isn’t committed to his ideas. The script starts out with the neighbors bothering our couple, but then that gets kicked to the background before never being mentioned agin. Ultimately, it had nothing to do with the story anyway. So if you’re thinking about introducing a subplot into your script, either commit to it, or get rid of it completely. There’s nothing worse than a subplot stuck in no-man’s-land.
Genre: Horror
Premise: A PTSD-afflicted Marine must fight for his own survival when he finds himself held captive in the Alaskan wilds by a family with a horrifying secret.
Why You Should Read: This script has done well in some notable contests and I’d like to see how it fares in the AOW battlezone. Clocking in at a lean and mean ninety pages, Greenhorn is crammed with GSU, moves at a swift pace and has the kind of deeply flawed hero an audience wants to root for. Thanks in advance for the reads.
Writer: Ryan Lee
Details: 90 pages
It’s always fun talking about what you thought you were walking into before you read a script, especially in the context of Amateur Offerings. Because if I’m being honest, I thought 1500 Degrees Fahrenheit was going to win. It was a fresh take on a thriller as opposed to being yet another monster or contained thing. And it had that emotional element built right into its DNA with the family struggling for survival. Yet poor 1500 barely managed 2 votes, giving it a paltry 1502 degrees.
In the case of Greenhorn, I thought it would finish near the bottom. I actually threw it in the mix as an afterthought, figuring it’d be lucky to get one vote. Why? A couple of reasons. For starters, whenever I see “PTSD-afflicted” anything, I groan. But I groan twice if it’s a marine. Can’t we have one marine come out of a war who ISN’T afflicted with PTSD? Just one? As for the rest of the logline, it’s a mish-mash of generalities. “Fight for his own survival.” “Held captive.” “A family with a horrifying secret.” The ONLY specific element in the entire logline is the word “Alaskan.” That’s the only thing that differentiates it from other ideas.
And here’s the irony about that. The script is one of the more unique amateur thrillers I’ve read in years. It just goes to show that you can be a good script writer but a terrible logline writer. You have to work on both, guys. Your logline is your movie equivalent of a billboard. It’s your sales’ pitch. This logline could’ve been so much better. And if Ryan would’ve contacted me, I could’ve helped. Here’s a quick rewrite that would’ve been way more effective (and accurate): After a cash-strapped ex-Marine is forced to take a dangerous job on a mysterious crabbing vessel, he learns that the Nordic crew has ties to an ancient pagan religion that worships a Norse Sea God.
30 year old former marine Sam Brennan is trying to make some money for his growing family. That’s right. In addition to having the perfect wife, Sam’s going to be having a baby soon. One of the only things he knows how to do is crab, so he’s in Alaska for one of those month-long sea trips where you fish a bunch of crab and come away with enough money to get you through the year.
Unfortunately, the captain of Sam’s crab boat tells him at the last second that they’re fully staffed, and Sam is stuck searching for a job. As luck would have it, he meets a Nordic guy named Henrik in a bar, who says they’re short one spot on their boat. Sam jumps at the chance, even though the boat and the men on it are all a bit, shall we say, fucking weird.
Sam is joined by one other newbie, a tough-talking 19 year old named Cody. Cody is so brash, so cocky, that the crew expects him to be the ringer and Sam to be the bust. But right from the start, Sam proves himself to be an all-star crabber. Cody, meanwhile, starts to have second thoughts about the job, to the point where he asks the Captain if they can leave him off at the nearest island. The Captain laughs and tells him to suck it up. As time goes on, we find out Cody has no idea what he’s doing and thought he could con his way into some easy cash.
While the crabbing is going great, Sam’s starting to sense that something ain’t right between the bows. That’s confirmed when, after Cody goes apeshit, the Captain chops his hand up in one of those fish shredders. When the crew senses that Sam may be encouraging Cody to hold out til they can get to land and call the cops, they head to a tiny remote island where we learn that these guys are part of one big Nordic chainsaw massacre family… THAT SACRIFICES PEOPLE TO THE NORSE SEA GOD.
The wimpy Cody doesn’t last long on the island. And Sam doesn’t look like he’ll fare much better. But he’s able to escape, running around the island Rambo-style, killing the chasing crew members one by one. But the island’s small. The only way Sam’s going to survive is if he finds a way off. And that option is anything but guaranteed.
Greenhorn is a good script. I’m not surprised it’s done well in competitions. But everybody who does well in competitions wants to know, “Why doesn’t it do BETTER in competitions?” Or if it does better in small competitions, “Why doesn’t it do better in BIG competitions?”
I can tell you exactly why Greenhorn is capping out in its competition run. Its second half isn’t as good as its first.
The first half of Greenhorn is great. It was hovering around a double worth the read or impressive for me. I especially liked Cody’s story. The writer could’ve easily brought only Sam onto the ship. But I think if he did, the story wouldn’t have had legs (or “sea legs”). By adding Cody, you get this whole fun storyline where Cody starts off as a cocky asshole, falters when it comes to work, is revealed to be a fraud, and then is brutally maimed. It was the perfect way into this creepy crew. And it set up a situation where it was now: Okay, so how is Sam going to handle this?
One of my favorite scenes was when the coast guard boarded the boat and the crew hid Sam and Cody inside the walls of the engine room. The suspense of whether they were going to find our heroes or not made for… while not a “Quiet Place” level labor scene… something that was almost as fun.
Then we get to this island and something about the choice is… off. I don’t know what exactly. But I immediately felt safer. When you’re in a boat out in the middle of the ocean… there’s nowhere to run. Now we’re on land. You have options. I wasn’t as afraid.
But the bigger problem is that the boat added structure. The island turned the story into this all-or-nothing chicken-with-its-head-cut-off mess. You don’t get scenes like the coast guard scene because there’s no form. It’s just a guy running around trying to survive. It was messy and not nearly as compelling.
After thinking about it, I believe the problem is that we get to the island too soon. I think it’s at the midpoint? That’s too long of a time to be on the island. And it’s one of the reasons the script’s pacing gets all wonky. We’re used to the island within 20 pages yet we still have 25 to go. I would take a page out of sister movie’s “The Ritual’s” book. Save the island for the last act. That’s going to mean packing more story into the ship, but I think that’s the more interesting stuff anyway.
This one has a lot of potential for sure. I would keep working on it. In addition to shifting the structure, I would keep populating the characters, Sam included. He’s a little thin. Everybody here needs about 20-25% more depth (save for maybe the Captain). Spend as much time figuring these characters out as you do describing this boat.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I would only include PTSD-afflicted marines in your story if they’re absolutely ESSENTIAL and ORGANIC to the situation. Otherwise, these guys are at the top of the cliche food chain. Why not make Sam a former Navy officer? Wouldn’t that make more sense anyway?
Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or 5 for $75. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. I highly recommend not writing a script unless it gets a 7 or above. All logline consultations come with an 8 hour turnaround. If you’re interested in any sort of consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!
Genre: TV Pilot – Drama/Horror
Premise: After the brutal murder of their father, the Locke family move into his old family home, a mansion that is filled with numerous hidden keys.
About: This is a brutal business. Joe Hill, Stephen King’s son, writes a pilot that’s a go at Hulu, the same place that just did a giant deal for a “Stephen King Universe” TV show coming out this summer. But then they turn on him and tell him “No thanks.” If the hottest name in movie and TV properties right now can’t get his own son a guaranteed show, what hope do the rest of us have? — Oh, who are we kidding. If shows like Orville and Santa Clarita Diet are on television, Locke and Key will find a home just fine.
Writer: Joe Hill
Details: 54 pages
A lot of writers complain about the whole nepotism thing. Writers or actors or directors get free passes into the business because Daddy’s already in da club. But would you really want to make it into the business that way? Sure, you get to make a living in the wonderful world of entertainment without having to exert a fraction of the blood, sweat, and tears. But you spend your entire life trying to live up to an impossible bar.
Let’s look at the best case scenario for Joe Hill. You write a book that sells 20 million copies. That’s virtually impossible. But let’s say you miraculously beat the odds and pull it off. Oh, well, all dad did was sell 350 million copies of his books. And it’s not just that. Every time you read a Joe Hill book, you’re comparing him to his father. So nothing you ever write will be judged on its own merit. That’s gotta be tough.
With that said, King is sort of on auto-pilot these days. So when you’re reading one of his son’s stories, you’re at least getting a fresh excited “out to prove himself” voice. But is that enough? I’ve never read anything of Joe Hill’s before so I don’t know. But I’m about to find out.
Locke and Key starts off with a strange girl, potentially a ghost (?), who lives in something called a “wellhouse,” which is like a guest house with no windows? She tells some gawky teenager through the walls that she needs him to find a special key in the main house. He follows her orders for reasons that are unclear, and we watch him walk through the house, looking for this key, while various other keys are revealed to us, but not to him (for example, a key will be hidden on top of a doorway ledge).
He finally finds the key the girl wants but is immediately attacked by a giant door with teeth, and we cut to several months later, where a “school shooter” type kid named Sam walks up to the Locke family’s house, beats the mother, Nina, over the head with a hammer, shoots the father dead, and goes hunting for the other three children, 17 year old Tyler, 7 year old Bode, and 15 year old Kinsey. Luckily, the strong-as-an-ox Tyler is able to overpower Sam, beating him to within an inch of his life.
The Locke family, devastated by the loss of their father, decide to get as far away from this town as possible and forget what happened. So they move into… the Key Mansion we saw at the beginning of the pilot. It turns out that’s the house their father grew up in.
We cut between the family moving into the strange old house, as well as Sam, now permanently maimed from Tyler beating his face in, locked up in a high-security juvenile detention center. Oh! And that girl who lived in the wellhouse? Well, even though she’s still in that wellhouse 2000 miles away, she’s somehow able to talk to Sam through his sink. Uh-huh. The implication is, she wants him to finish the job on the family and finally get her key.
Locke and Key is a primary example of how important it is to understand the craft of screenwriting. I don’t know if Joe Hill has ever written a screenplay or teleplay before, but I’m guessing he hasn’t.
And it’s not even the fact that the prose is overcooked (there are numerous paragraphs that last 10 lines long). I can accept that if the story is good. It’s that there’s zero structure to this pilot.
Take the fact that the best part of the story happens in the first 10 pages. We get a fairly interesting “walk through a haunted house” scene. This is followed by a family getting brutally attacked by a psychopath. But after that, absolutely NOTHING happens. The family grieves. The family moves. The family gets used to their new house. And that’s it! A story is supposed to build. Every five pages it should feel like a big puff of air has been added to the balloon. Then, in the final scene, that balloon must pop. The pacing here is the opposite. With each scene, air is let out of the balloon, making the story less and less appealing.
I suspect that Hill coming from the world of novels is part of the problem. For example, he would occasionally put lines like this in the description: “When she scrapes a match along the friction strip, we see the Inferno Key quite clearly, and that’s good… because in the next episode, Sam Lesser will use this key to escape prison and kill about two dozen people in the process.” You can’t do that. Why? Because any important information must be conveyed to the audience watching the show. This information is only being shared with the reader. That doesn’t make any sense.
Also, any top-level screenwriter would have had this family moving into the house by page 15. Hill doesn’t move them into the house until page 38!!! Not only does this drag the story along at too slow of a pace, but it leaves an awkward amount of time (17 pages) to finish the story. Since we just moved in, it’s impossible to build up a whole new storyline in just 17 pages. This forces Hill to rattle off a bunch of vaguely connected scenes that contain more of a “just get me out of here” feel than a carefully crafted buildup with a satisfying resolution. Now had we gotten to the house by page 15, we would’ve had plenty of time to build a story into the rest of the pilot.
Another problem here is the concept. I’m not sure what it is exactly. A house with a bunch of keys hidden in it? First of all, why would a house have a bunch of hidden keys? There’s no clear logic as to why that would happen. And second, how is that a concept? Is the show going to be about finding these keys? Why do I care about that exactly? A good TV or movie concept is crystal clear the second you hear it. “A family is forced to live in silence as they hide from creatures that hunt by sound.” That idea was worth a 50 million dollar opening weekend because it was so clear. “A family moves into a house that has a bunch of keys hidden in it and there’s a girl who might be a ghost who lives in the adjacent wellhouse who wants one of those keys for reasons we don’t know yet” doesn’t exactly have the same ring to it, does it?
I wish I could get more behind this but I don’t see a concept here. And while sometimes, a well-written show can overcome that, the structure is so wonky in the Locke and Key pilot that I don’t see an execution either. This is the problem with these Hulu and Netflix people. They don’t have anyone in development to get messy pilots back on track. Television is so starved for content these days that I’m sure Locke and Key will find a home. But it needs someone who can guide Joe Hill to a more structured story.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Just because a pilot is one fraction of a bigger story, that doesn’t mean you should use it solely as set-up. A pilot is tricky in that it needs to be its own contained story IN ADDITION TO being the beginning of a bigger story. That means you should treat your pilot like any story. There should be a goal. The stakes should be high. Time should be running out. There should be a climax. And you should top things off with a giant question that intrigues the audience enough that they’ll want to come back next week. For example, the new AMC show, “The Terror.” The whole first episode is gearing up towards these ships trying to get to a safe part of the sea before it freezes over, trapping them there for the winter. That’s the goal. And it culminates in them choosing the wrong direction and therefore getting stuck. That’s the climax. We then get one final question mark – a strange nearby animal has attacked someone. And that’s it. We want to come back for episode 2 to see what happens next.
It’s been months. But a new script has joined the Scriptshadow Top 25!!!
Genre: Comedy
Premise: In 1944, a 10-year old Hitler fanatic whose only goal in life is to become the best Nazi he can possibly be, discovers a secret in his home that will challenge everything he was brought up to believe.
About: Taika Waititi is using the buzz from his Thor film to make his passion project, a comedy about Hitler.
Writer: Taika Waititi
Details: 114 pages
I was hoping Taika was going to join the Star Wars ranks and make a Yoda movie. But after reading this script, I’m glad he’s not. Well, I still want him to make a Yoda movie. But when you’ve got a script that has the potential to become an all-time classic, you put everything else aside.
And we should thank the success of Thor for allowing this to happen. I’m guessing securing funding for a comedic Hitler period piece was tough before having an 850 million dollar grossing film on your resume.
I’ve been hyping this script for the past 12 hours. Let’s find out what it’s about.
The year is 1944 and 10 year-old German, Jojo, has just joined the Hitler Youth. There’s no one who wants to kill Jews more than this guy, who lets that be known to everyone who’ll listen. It’s actually starting to freak people out. One day in Nazi class, Jojo is presented with his first chance to kill something – a rabbit – but he chickens out, which leads to him losing the respect of his classmates.
Luckily for Jojo, he’s got Hitler. Or, a 10 year old’s imaginary friend version of Hitler, a goofy jovial man who wants nothing more than for Jojo to succeed. He encourages Jojo to make an impression in his next class to show that he’s no wimp. Jojo does just that, grabbing a grenade during weapons training and throwing it at a pretend Jewish adversary. The grenade bounces off a tree, lands several feet from him, and blows up.
After Jojo’s loving and awesome mother nurses him back to health, Jojo’s bummed out to learn that he has a permanently scarred face and limp. That’s okay though, because Jojo hobbles back to Hitler Youth the second he can crawl out of bed, determined to become the best Jew-killing machine a 10 year old can be.
(spoilers) Then one day everything changes. Jojo comes home early and hears something upstairs. He runs into his sister’s old room (who died years ago from influenza) and discovers a hidden door in the wall. He opens it up to find Elsa, a 15 year old Jewish girl who, it turns out, his mother has been hiding here.
Jojo’s world is rocked. He considers telling his instructors, but learns that if anyone is found harboring Jews, they will be killed. Jojo consults Hitler about the matter and decides that this is a rare opportunity to learn about Jews. Maybe, if he can learn enough, he can pass that intel on to his instructors, win a medal, and maybe even meet the Fuhrer himself.
Elsa isn’t an easy case study though. As Jojo asks her details about the things he learned in school (Why do Jews suck blood? Where is their hive?) she sarcastically messes with him, confirming some ridiculous assumptions, exaggerating others. It’s only after awhile that he realizes she’s playing with him. And while he really really wants to to make her pay, the truth is that he’s falling in love with her.
Meanwhile, the war is coming to an end. Yet even with the threat of Germany losing, Jojo is determined to stand tall and be the best Nazi he can possibly be. That is until something unthinkable happens, something that will leave Elsa as the only person he can trust in the world. But can Jojo do that? Can he trust his life to the very person he’s dedicated his life to killing?
When we talk about scripts that REALLY stand out, they tend to meet two criteria.
1) The writer has an original voice.
2) The writer takes chances.
Which is exactly what you see in JoJo Rabbit.
“Voice,” remember, is how one sees the world. A writer with a unique voice sees things a little differently than everyone else. They’re showing us the same things we all see. They’re just doing it through a different lens. I mean, we’ve got 10 year old kids exchanging lines like, “Hey, Jews sound scary, huh?” “Yeah, I didn’t know they stole the white skins of Aryans so they could blend in. Savages!”
If Waititi would’ve depended solely on his voice, he’d still have a great script. But he takes a big chance as well. He makes Hitler a character. And not just any Hitler. An “imaginary friend” goofball version of Hitler. I’ve never seen anything like this. And it’s something that could’ve gone very wrong very fast. This is why most writers avoid taking these types of risks. They’re wild-cards that, if played a shade too light or a shade too dark, can end up being disastrous, laughable even.
Jojo Rabbit also includes a longstanding tip I harp on all the time – irony. This is a COMEDY about Nazis. No, it’s not the first time that’s been done. But that contrast – that battle going on between two things that aren’t supposed to go together – creates conflict on the page, leading to an energy you don’t get in most scripts.
It helps that the story is anchored by such a likable main character. And that wasn’t a given. Jojo says some pretty terrible things throughout this movie. But Waititi offsets that by going Screenwriter Old School and including a Save The Cat moment with the rabbit. We know when Jojo refuses to kill that cute little furry animal that he’s a good guy at heart. He’s just been brainwashed.
Then there’s Elsa. You could’ve gone so many ways with this character. Most writers would’ve made her a victim. Sad. Complaining about her miserable life. A downer. Not only is that on-the-nose, but just thinking about that version of the character makes me want to kill myself. That’s a tool more writers need to utilize. When you’re coming up with a character, ask, “How does this character make me feel?” If you’re annoyed, depressed by, or hate them, you probably shouldn’t write the character that way. Making Elsa sarcastic, having her mess with Jojo, stayed true to the spirit of the situation, but also made the character fun.
Halfway into this script, I knew that I was going to give it an “impressive.” But then came the scene that elevated it into the Top 25. **MAJOR SPOILER** If you’re going to write a Top 25 script, you need a scene that makes the reader cry. Or at the very least a moment that profoundly moves the reader. That moment came here when Jojo’s mom is not just killed. But hanged. And the reason we don’t expect it is because the entire movie has been funny. Waititi lured everyone into a sense of security. So when it happened, it hit us like a ton bricks. It was devastating. Seriously. They’re going to need to pass out kleenex boxes before the film and say, “For the 1 hour 20 minute mark.”
But here’s something important to remember for aspiring screenwriters. This shocking moment DIDN’T COME OUT OF NOWHERE. In fact, as soon as it happened, I remembered five separate SET-UPS for this payoff. That’s the thing about shocking twists. You can’t just throw them in out of nowhere or it feels like a cheat. You have to slyly set them up. And the bigger the twist is – killing off a mother late in a comedy is a humongous twist – the more you have to set it up.
Finally, I would encourage all of you to seek this script out for the dialogue alone. The dialogue is creative. The larger-than-life characters are all dialogue-friendly (particularly Hitler). There’s inherent conflict between the key characters (JoJo and Elsa) which always leads to good dialogue. The dialogue pushes the envelope at times, which is important for comedic dialogue. It’s really good stuff.
The ONLY thing that keeps this script from becoming legendary is the ending-ending. I felt like it could have had a bit more punch. Hopefully Waititi shoots a couple of endings here to see what plays best. But whatever happens, this is the kind of screenwriting we should all aspire to.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive ****TOP 25 SCRIPT****
[ ] genius
What I learned: Sarcasm is one of the easiest ways to add life to dialogue. Without it, you have a literal conversation. And being literal is almost always boring. For example, here’s a scene where Elsa “lets Jojo in” on Jewish secrets.
ELSA
Anyway, these days we live among normal humans but often we will take over a house and hang from the ceiling when we sleep, like bats. Oh, one interesting thing is that we can read each others’ minds.
JOJO
Everyone’s minds? What about German minds?
ELSA
No, they are too thick for us to penetrate. We can only read Jewish thoughts.
JOJO
So you’re weaker when you’re separated from your hive…
ELSA
Exactly.
That’s so much better than:
ELSA
You don’t believe this stuff do you?
JOJO
Of course. They taught it to us in school.
ELSA
Do you really think they’re going to tell you the truth about us?
JOJO
Why wouldn’t they?
ELSA
Because they want you to hate us.
It’s fine but literal dialogue is so much drier. You can’t argue that the sarcasm livens things up.
Genre: Action/Thriller
Premise: On a safari trip, a family are driven off-road by rhino poachers and forced to survive a harrowing night in the bush.
Why You Should Read: In 2017, a reported 1,028 rhinos were poached in South Africa. At this current rate, wildlife experts warn that rhinos may become extinct as early as 2020. About me, I’ve been a dedicated screenwriter for over six years and like the majority on this site are determined to move to the next level. “Night of Game” is a unique concept with high stakes, emotional conflict, and bloodthirsty action within an urgent timeline. It’s a movie that will spread awareness of the barbaric act of poaching horn to sell to China and Vietnam. I’m truly passionate about the cause and hope that Carson and the scriptshadow faithful can help this scripts journey to the silver screen.
Writer: It’s a Mystery
Details: 113 pages
Ava DuVernay gets a DC movie nobody’s ever heard of and the INTERNET EXPLODES. While everyone else debates whether film geeks are racist, here’s the question I want answered. Why did Disney let DuVernay go? If you like someone and what they’re doing, you wrap them up. You keep them in the company fold. For Disney to let her flee says loads.
You may think the answer is Wrinkle’s box office. But these deals take time. This DC thing was put together awhile ago. Which implies Disney knew they were dealing with a stinker and were more than happy to let Ava exit. DC, meanwhile, probably signed DuVernay during that 1 month “Ava DuVernay is the greatest filmmaker of our generation” tour. So will DC now have buyer’s remorse? Will box office hindsight lead to a text break-up? This is more dramatic that anything in a Wrinkle in Time so I can’t wait to see what happens next.
On to today’s AMATEUR OFFERINGS WINNER…. Night of Game! No, this is not a sequel to Game Night.
First impressions after reading the logline? This could be a movie. That’s the first question you need to ask with every concept: Is this an actual movie idea? And I believe it is. Sort of a real-life version of Jurassic Park.
But skimming through the comments section, I saw a lot of, “The writing’s not very good here.” The writing’s not very good yet it won Amateur Offerings in a landslide?? What’s going on? I must find out.
20-something Miles Abbot is on vacation in South Africa with his family. He’s with his mother, Lori, his cute 11 year old sister, Caitlyn, and I think his dad. Though that’s up for debate for reasons I’ll get into later.
The three (four?) of them decide to take a safari ride to see all the wild animals. They meet up with a group of tourists which include the hot Anna, her dick boyfriend, Logan, an older couple, and Barry, their driver.
The safari seems to be going well until they’re attacked by an elephant. Luckily, they get away. But moments later, they’re attacked by the most dangerous animal of all – PEOPLE. Poachers to be exact. Miles’s father is shot and killed, even though I was never clear he was with them in the first place, and soon after, Miles gets split up from Caitlyn and Lori.
It turns out the poachers are trying to slaughter a group of rare white rhinos. It just so happens that on the night of their big poach, these tourists got in the way.
While Miles tries to avoid getting eaten by lions, tigers, and bears, he eventually teams up with his crush, Anna, who was somewhere else for some reason. He recruits her to help him find his mother and sister and she’s game. But in the meantime, THEY’RE GAME – as in game for the poachers who can’t leave any witnesses behind.
This script should’ve worked. The core elements are sound. Characters have to survive a night in the bush with deadly animals all around them. AND we have a Taken-like goal of saving a mother and a sister.
So where does it go wrong?
Well, first of all, I had no idea who this family was. I didn’t know why they were in South Africa. I didn’t know what their normal lives were like. I didn’t know why there was this random 14 year gap between siblings. You don’t just throw that in there and not explain it. The most I could gather was that they were a rich entitled bored family with houses on multiple continents. Why am I rooting for people like that exactly?
That’s not to say audiences can’t root for rich people. But you need to then give us a reason to root for them if the first image you give us is that they don’t have a care in the world.
But there’s a bigger issue here. How you set up your core group of characters will determine EVERYTHING that happens after. Cause if we don’t know the characters, understand the characters, sympathize with them on some level, like them on some level, then we won’t care what happens to them on page 40, or 60, or 80.
Therefore it doesn’t matter how dire of a situation you place them in. We never gave a shit about them in the first place. So the first change that needs to be made is an entire backstory needs to be written for this family. We need way more information about them and why they’re here. Also, add some texture to the family dynamic. Right now, it’s so generic.
Off the top of my head, maybe the mom died recently. The dad took the kids here to get their minds off their mom. Miles suggests to Caitlyn, who’s taking mom’s death really hard, that they go on the safari. She’s reluctant but agrees. It’s a chance to heal. At least now you have some history with the family – something they have to overcome.
This leads us to the bizarrely over-complicated plot. You had these poachers who wanted the white rhinos. You had a break within the ranks of the rhino poachers. You had a random local female getting kidnapped. You had a rival tribe warring with the poachers. What the heck is going on here?? I thought this was supposed to be about a family. Instead, it’s about these poachers.
The lesson here is KEEP THINGS SIMPLE. You hear me talk about it all the time on the site yet writers continue to make the mistake. There are some seasoned PRO-FES-SIONAL screenwriters who can pull off complex plots. But if you’re not yet a professional, keep it simple. All we needed was good guys and bad guys here. We didn’t need Rhino Poaching meets The Godfather. Staying in line with that, I like ONE PERSON being kidnapped. Not two. The sister should be kidnapped. That’s all.
Finally, the writing here was EXTREMELY taxing to read. Every paragraph was 3 lines long. And while I’ve said before that you should limit your paragraphs to no more than 3 lines, that doesn’t mean that every page should be twenty 3-line paragraphs. That’s just a sneaky way of writing one 60-line paragraph.
Vary your paragraph lengths. 2 lines here. 1 line there. 3 lines occasionally. You don’t want to get too predictable or monotonous. But the bigger tip here is to ask if you really need three lines in the first place. In screenwriting, you’re trying to say as much as possible in as few words as possible. Constantly be asking yourself, “Do I really need to include that detail?” Don’t get sloppy and always write the long version.
Here’s an example (this paragraph is three and a half lines long in courier font)
Miles watches Logan act like a monkey, swinging on the tire, then swooping down to give Anna a kiss. Trying to act disapprovingly, she pushes him away. A half-smile appears on her face. He pulls her in close.
You could’ve said this…
Miles watches Logan act like a monkey, swinging on the tire, then swooping down to give Anna a kiss. She playfully pushes him away.
This is the tip of the iceberg. We’ve got Screenwriting 101 problems, such as the writer not even writing in the active voice (in the above example, you’d change the tense of the sentence so that “swinging” would be “swings,” “swooping” would be “swoops”). The script needs a lot of work. But if I could give the writer one piece of advice, it would be to stop making the story so complicated. 3-5 tourists stuck in the bush all night is enough. Stop jumping around to so many locations. Miles has to survive the local animals and get to his sister. That’s what we came to see. We’re not interested in poaching politics.
Script link: Night of Game
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The Wall of Text Loophole – Most of you know that readers hate “walls of texts,” pages full of 6-7 line paragraphs with little-to-no dialogue. They’re script killers. But the loophole to this isn’t to write a page full of 3-4 line paragraphs. It’s still going to look like a wall of text. You should be mixing in 1-2 line paragraphs. And unless you’re writing a silent movie, there should be a good amount of dialogue to even it out.