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SPIN - First Draft

Comments

I think it is exceptionally well written. Your story development is excellent as well as the characters. Comparable to many professional movie scripts. You are really close to having a very successful project. My only suggestion--and this will sound silly--is that your narratives are too long.

Break them up a bit by including some action statements. For example, Kane is going into a long exchange with the Driver. In the middle of one of Kane's messages, have the driver look back at him in his rearview mirror. Arguably it is only cosmetic. However, the main goal is to avoid a talking head. While having a couple long statements is fine, in a couple spots you have several. This works very well in fiction, but will hold back your script.

As much as I hate it as an author, script dialogues need to be relatively short. I abhor screen consultants who say no more than three sentences or thirty words. But generally re-working the statements to be shorter plays off better.

Yours is truly one of the better and more enjoyable scripts I've read. It should be a very enjoyable picture to watch.
 
On a technical note, "A GOLDEN PISTOL" is incorrect formatting. Caps are reserved for character introductions or sounds. Same goes for "BOTTLE OF SCOTCH."

There's really no reason to capitalize the props.

On a logical level, a golden pistol is silly. And Roger Moore already had fun with it. Gold is a very soft metal and inappropriate for firearms. It would deform and blow apart.

"I want you to suffer for everything
you've done. I want you to pay."

Hold the cheese. Whenever characters start talking like this I cringe, and I decide if this should be treated more like an Austin Powers parody. I guess it's the on-the-nose quality, and the rarity of having people say something like that. I don't know.

What he could have done instead is shot him in the kneecap. That would have been stronger than the words.

"CANE
(VOICEOVER
flashback
montage)"

Definite formatting issues. If it's a flashback, use a slugline. Then place the dialogue in after you tell us what the hell's going on now.

The formatting issues continue, and you really should study up and rewrite, just to keep it in the ballpark.

After several pages I still don't have a sense of who these people are or what's going on.

"It was my first time out of
California. Don't ask me why I
wanted to go to Sudan..."

Is this supposed to be a continuation of the conversation of the man holding the gun on the other man? It sounds like a novel, not the scene where an intruder has apparently just killed a lot of security men to get to the boss. Could be a very stylish take on it all -- I don't know. But it's also trying my patience. There's a lot of emphasis on hiding what's going on from the viewer and obfuscating.

"CANE
(watching the
POSSE disappear
through mirror)"

It seems like you're missing a slugline where they're back inside the car. First he's "on the ground" and now apparently in a moving vehicle?

You've got to keep the reader up to speed on where the action is happening.

I'll stop reading there, as it annoyed me that none of this has anything to do with the opening scene. We haven't been given enough info to buy into the story. If that opening scene holds enough promise to set up the entire movie, then we need more. More of a clue as to what's really going on -- and why we should give a damn.

That's my take.
 
There are some formatting issues which were rightly pointed out. And as I noted, part of that is because you are 'novelizing' your screenplay. But if this is your first draft, take heart and work through some of these comments to help you improve the next draft.

To every rule there are exceptions. And if you go to any script archive and read successful movie and television screenplays, you'll see them violate lots of rules. But to start out, it's best to find a good book on formatting and stick close to it.

If something is truly needing to be highlighted to catch the attention of the production staff, you can capitalize it. But normally it is reserved for names and effects. A bottle of scotch looks like a bottle of whiskey. And unless you have clearance from a company to show their brand, the label will be indistinct. If 'scotch' is a key component, have the dialogue reflect that.

For me, the script is visually inviting. Yes, the dialogue is rough. I would review Pol's suggestions. In telling your story, you want characters to be uniquely identifiable by their tone and vocabulary ("one author with many voices" as I was once told).

The flashback within a flashback can be really confusing. I was able to push that aside, but it is a valid point (Gray to Cane, Cane to Castle, Cane to Driver, ...). I think the imagery you conjure up at each juncture makes them visually distinct, but that transition could be worked to make it more apparent and easier to track.

I still stand by my assessment that this has potential to make an excellent mid-length film. But as it is a first draft, there are areas where it can be improved. Pol's points are more realistic of how a reader would look at the work. But the comments should also help guide you to a better crafted screenplay.
 
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Thanks for the analysis.
Obviously, I need to learn a little about formatting before I can start throwing capitalizations around like I do here. Thanks, it's always good to know when someone sees amateurism in your work... I was also actually completely unaware that you'd HAVE to use a brand new logline in order to get the car moving again. My thought was just that the setting hasn't changed whatsoever, and editorially, I'm envisioning a completely abrupt cut between the two scenes, skipping details of the hijacking altogether, so I thought a simple CUT TO: would suffice. But I guess not.

And actually, I'm not sure what to do about the initial jumpiness of the story, as it was 100% intentional. My point is to create a puzzle for the viewer to put together, in which they are never completely aware of what Cane is doing until after he has already done it. I don't WANT the viewer to understand where he's coming from at any point in the movie, until perhaps the last scene. I realize that this may be counterintuitive to the whole idea of character development, but that's what I opted to write it as a shorter project rather than a fully fleshed-out one (or a novel), because it's not very enjoyable for a viewer to be put in that clueless position for a long period of time.

Also, you are absolutely right about the Golden pistol. It was one of the things that, initially, I was going to explain/work into the script a bit more, but it sort of remained in the beginning after I'd already realized that it was a bit too complicated to massage in to the ending. One other thing that I abandoned that I'd still like to re-incorporate would be the God/purpose bits that you can still see as artifacts in the first half of the script from time to time.

Regardless, thanks for the criticisms. I'll work on the general clarity of the script, and the formatting issues where applicable, and also try to give the dialog a less cliche feeling in it's preachier areas.

Any other tidbits?
 
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