Deserted In Limbo

[Deleted]

romaitas,

Welcome to the boards. I know everyone is really busy these days, so it may take a few days for someone to read your script and give some insight.

In the meantime, please feel free to read some of the scripts that others have posted and provide some notes. I am sure they will appreciate it as well!

Again, welcome!

[supermikhail]

I'm going to read it through to the end some other time, but just to pretend something is happening - some nitpicks, in case you're too lazy to proofread yourself.

Typo in the beginning - valve steam instead of valve stem.

A combat boot kicks a door open--

and cameras are stealthily placed...

The bodyguard conversation is kind of longish. By the end I felt like the whole movie was going to be about their reminiscences.

The shootout scene.

Panting. Mind racing.

Who is that about? While the first may be just sounds, it's hard to depict mind racing on screen. Also, it's kind of hard to place the finale. Where did Merlo go exactly, and where is he standing when he shoots Hitman #1? Considering there haven't been any spatial markers beyond the car and the gate, he might as well have teleported several blocks away and then back.

Also, it's interesing how you describe Merlo's apartment. Like there could be little less depressing, while I've had a dream for some time to have a small, scarsely furnished apartment, to decrease my eco-footprint. But that's beside the point.

He stares out of it...

There's no previous reference, so it should be out of the window

Missing period.

ERNESTO
Grab a couple beers. I put some in the fridge.

[jimmy7]

Hi Romaitas

I've purposefully not read any of the other comments in case they cloud what I've been thinking so apologies if I repeat what's already been said.

My feeling is that it's really well written but not as a script. At least not in this format. If this was a novel I think it would be a good one however the amount of description used is not appropriate and would turn off any studio executive whose table it landed upon. For example, the following from the top of page 5:

ERNESTO ESPINO sits on the tailgate of a shiny black pickup
truck, his feet planted on the ground. Long wrinkles as deep
as canyons cover his face telling the stories of the fiftyfive
years he’s been lucky to survive, battered but not
defeated. Through narrowed eyelids, two glowing balls of
hazel shrewdly survey the lot.
It’s deserted except for some children passing a ball around
a few paces away from the truck.
Ernesto’s eyes lock onto the approaching Police SUV driving
toward him. He places a pair of sunglasses on his hooked
nose.

It could be a page from an Elmore Leonard and that's why I say it's really well written.

For a script however that whole section should be something as brief as:-

ERNESTO ESPINO, wrinkled, worn, 55, sits on the tailgate of a shiny black pickup. His eyes lock onto an approaching Police SUV.

Or something more eloquent but equally succinct.

This then leads me to think that if all of the 111 pages were pared down to script level description is there actually enough here to form a feature? My guess is you'd lose at least a third of the volume.

I was told that executives habitually only read the dialogue in scripts and just go back to read any descriptive prose if they lose the thread of what's happening - that's how they can read a script in 20 minutes apparently. I did this exercise just now and whizzed through about 30 pages of script in around 5 minutes.

Is this something you've thought about?
Just to re-iterate, I think you're a good writer. I just think you need to look at what you actually want this to be.

Jim

[supermikhail]

Well, I'm on page 51 now, and won't be able to go further today. There are tense moments that I like, but there seems to be a lot of exposition that might be slightly redundant. I might agree with jimmy7 here, but I don't mind long description. To me it's rather the structure of the story. It doesn't feel... 3-Act, or something. Well, if it's a movie, it's not a Hollywood movie, anyway. The Merlito montage at his new estate in a movie, at least, it wouldn't feel in place. Merlo isn't established as the protagonist enough yet to be made fun of. In a book you could do it through his thoughts but in a movie you can't. Or maybe it's too much description, actually, because by the length of the script it seems like Merlo's got a lot of pages already to make whatever you want out of him, but in your script it doesn't feel like it.

[supermikhail]

Well, I'm through. Now the script feels just rough. The thing that makes it closer to a short story than a movie is that it doesn't have a regular tone*. It's quick, but in one place it's an action movie, in another - almost a comedy, in yet another it's almost a horror. Furthermore, I think it breaks a screenwriting mantra featured recently on the blog. Basically, the plot starts around the middle of the script - Merlo is brought by his uncle to an extremely remote mansion. Merlo finds a girl in the desert around the mansion. They fall in love, but it's not meant to last... The love story feels pretty rushed and I'm convinced the story would be better off without an explicit romance, besides it feeling not very realistic in the state Ynes is.

Because of the irregular tone, the tragic finale didn't feel an inevitable resolution, and I was expecting Merlo take everyone out. You could foreshadow your ending better. As abrupt as it is now it feels unwarranted.

Also, there are several places where montage is pretty gratingly deliberate. That part with Merlo wasting his time in the mansion, especially. I'd suggest you tried a non-linear storyline.

What I'd like to congratulate you on is that the script has some very tense moments. Such moments would keep a person reading it for all its flaws, to suggest some improvements.

*I mean, in a story, you can tie it together through the voice of the protagonist.