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critique White Night - a short Screenplay for Feedback

Hello... here is a short screenplay for feedback of any kind...

Logline: Steve, Jane, and Michael were close Friends during the 90s as teens, now 25 years later, Micheal vanished long ago, and Steve and Jane are left stuck with the Memories, the Loneliness, and the loveless life - the screenplay takes place in one night with a possible beginning of a happy ending

Genre: Short Drama

Pages: 6

Any feedback is welcomed!

Ronen.
 
Hey Ronen,

I read this, this morning, and, unlike most student-type efforts, I read it again with real pleasure. There is an earnestness here, a sweetness, that I find endearing. I would read more.

It does read as if English is your second language. No native English speaker would say something like: "It's nice to bump in with you, Jane." They would say, "It's nice to bump into you." *

Although some of the language does stand out (I find it charming, and apologize for the condescension) the emotion, the situation, feels real. And this, I think, is not a small accomplishment.

I do have some solid advice: you have to stop skipping so many periods. :)

* This alone, of course, is not an obstacle. English was Joseph Conrad's second language. It is also my second language, but unfortunately, unlike Joseph Conrad, I don't have a first. (joke credit: Kurt Vonnegut.)
 
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I like the basic story but a good bit of it is too on the nose, especially the beginning.

For example, you can just say "I sure miss the good old days" and not specify the 90's. The point works regardless of when those days were. Likewise, you don't need to specify that it's been 25 years or what year Bill killed himself. An I'd skip being so specific about friends who have vanished, and simply discuss them in the balance of the screenplay.

As @Spike mentioned, there are points that are a bit awkward in English but those can be easily corrected in a final edit by a native speaker.
 
No problem, Ronen.

And, thinking about this, I worried a little about my talking about "the language." I worried that I sounded superior, even, a little, mean--not what I wanted to do.

Anyway, I was thinking about the title, White Night, and the line: "Do you want to hang out a bit for a white night?" I have never heard this phrase before, and wondered if, in some part of the world, a "white night" has a special meaning. I imagined this unfolding, somehow, through a narrative: the meaning, the significance, and the implications, of having a "white night."

Also, I see in your other posts, that you write in Hebrew as well, that you are interested in Hebrew language projects. I know quite a bit about the history of English, but little about the history of Hebrew as a language, and reading around a little, found it to be fascinating--the only language ever to have, essentially, died, and then to have been successfully revived. And the differences in grammar and syntax are intriguing.

And I found myself imagining your freinds, in White Night, to be Hebrew speaking. They could speak to each other, sometimes, in Hebrew, with subtitles, and then go back and forth between Hebrew and English. Then some of the differences in idioms, like "bump in with you," would be natural, and it might add a cultural, maybe even religious, sub-text.

Anyway, don't mind me. I'm just spitballing a little . . . :)
 
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I have never heard this phrase before, and wondered if, in some part of the world, a "white night" has a special meaning.
Yeah, it does here ... but only in French! :lol: It's one of those phrases that I'd happily use when speaking to other anglophone immigrants, and they'd know exactly what I meant, but if I used the equivalent to any member of my family in Ireland or GB, they'd have no idea what I was talking about.

In this case, the title in English made no sense because, well, it's in English. It was only at the very end that the lightbulb came on ... at which point I filed it under the same "language needs some attention" observation that @mlesemann mentioned.
 
Any feedback is welcomed!

One comment to add to what the others have said: on first reading, it's not clear why Steve and Jane are having this trip down memory lane at this particular point in time. It feels like they're two people who know each other very well, so it feels like they should have covered this ground already - especially the person-by-person discussion.

The ending reinforces this impression, so I think it needs a more concrete event at the start to steer the conversation onto the topic of absent friends. Something along the lines of Steve preparing to move apartment and packing a box of CDs -> who listens to CDs any more? -> leads directly into the relationship between Steve and Michael. This would also help to fix the date of that relationship to an older time.
 
White night. I believe it means sleepless night, right?

Ronen, I read your script. I get where you were going with it. I could sense the emotions you wanted to convey, but as others have said, the dialog doesn't ring true. People don't talk like that. Maybe you could consider letting someone edit it for you, sort of shape it and bring out the things you want to say. I love the theme; lose, regret, frustration, hurt feelings... Steve's not gay but truly valued his friendship with Michael. Michael wanted to love him but it was not within Steve to provide him with the emotional or physical response he was looking for so it came to a tragic end. I'm sure that sort of thing happens in life a lot. Work on it. :)
 
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White night. I believe it means sleepless night, right?
More precisely, a night spent not sleeping by choice, after a full day awake. The term originated in the Middle Ages, when a man about to undergo his indoctrination into the local order of knights would spend the night praying, dressed in white. Although coincidental, the phrase in English is almost a clever play on words: white night/white knight. Except the guy in question would have been a chevalier, not a knight! 🤺

Back in 2018 I spent a most interesting "nuit blanche" 'round your way, @James Rogers , when Amtrak treated me to an unexpectedly late night arrival in Salt Lake City. But I digress ...
 
Hello everyone :)

You told me to keep working on this short script, so I have corrected the grammar and fixed the dialogues a bit - so here is the second draft of the "white night" screenplay. The logline is the same, and so is the genre, and by the way it's not a 6-page script. It's a 9-10 pages script...

any feedback is welcomed :)
 
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