Laurence M (WA)

It's called 'Grey Ghosts - Curse of Atlantis' but we see or hear nothing of Ghosts or Atlantis for quite some time. We need to establish what it's about a little better.

I really struggled to read even 25 pages of it. It has a lot of unnecessary detail, but also misses highlighting things that would help the reader paint a picture of what's going on.

And that's a shame, because the writer has a good, epic-feeling story taking shape here. It could do with a bit more research (Occult is probably the wrong word, and there's a few other bumps like pulling the cord to stop the train etc. as Lisa pointed out), to make it feel more 'authentic' as a story.

I would say that it's worth doing further work to fix the obvious bugs, I've listed a few that I found below, and to recraft it to make it more reader-friendly.

Please remember that this is just my opinion. Things I give low marks to are easily fixed, but I'd rather not tell you that it's good enough, when it isn't. I hope that is ok.

I'd certainly encourage you to keep working on it. This premise in particular has potential and could be marketable.

Premise: 7
Wild West + Vampires + Ancient Menace. Nice. Secret society recruits a rogue, James-Bond like womanizer to work with them. Has a nice hook which could make for a franchise.

Plot: 3
Hard to follow due to inconsistencies. We open with folks talking about Thorne being a 'bastard', and then see something kill them brutally. We assume that it's Thorne. But the level of destruction indicates otherwise. Then we go to Jack being released from hanging (for what?) by a mysterious woman who recruits him to her 'Ithaca' group. Why Ithaca, by the way? Was that revealed? Then we're off to a bizarre train robbery, and it becomes a journey between various clichés, bars, cards, bar fights etc. Other than the open, there's no clear threat from the protag, and we still don't understand where the ghosts are, or where Atlantis is? I'm guessing our agents (French and John) are the Grey Ghosts of the title?

Characters: 3
Too cookie cutter. John is clichéd, Frenchy is clichéd and even says 'Merde' far quicker than I would have expected. A bit more rounding, early on would be good. Surprise us with some character traits to make them more interesting.

Dialog: 3
Too much exposition in dialog, characters sound a little too alike. Stuff that they say doesn't feel authentic at all.

Overall: 5
There's a good premise here, with a potentially interesting back story with characters on both sides that could be interesting. I suggest that you do a major clean up of description and dialog, and take a look at some screenwriting structure tutorials and what readers would expect from your screenplay as you do your next draft.


Rough Notes:

1.
Scene descriptions are a little long, try to condense them down. Also, right at the top, we're just told that it's EXT. CABIN-NIGHT, without describing the cabin.

Maybe something like:

A cabin in the dusty California wasteland.

LEGEND READS: California, 1866.

Horses wait, huddling together as the wind rises. Lights arc out from the widnows and the SOUND of voices inside...

2.
Great opening dialog 'Thorne is a bastard' - really sets the tone and builds the character

3.
Describe the character age and gender explicitly like:
JUD TREVELLYN (40s, Male)

Also avoid vague descriptions 'Cornishman' -- what does a Cornishman look like?
Ditto for Texan

4. Anna's speech is a bit odd. Everybody is fired up, and we don't know why, and then she goes into an almost-two page monolog about Fairies and Roses. Tighten this up, and maybe add mystery.

For example something like:
ANNA
Like you, I used to laugh at the old ways...I'm not laughing now.

..gets the same message across

5. (Page 5) - Trail
It's really jarring as we cut to the kids on the trailer. I assumed it was a flashback at first, but after reading, I see that it's later, and there's carnage. You should try to indicate this a little. Perhaps there are screams before this, and then you indicate -LATER in the scene heading?


6. Scenes of destruction. No blood in the horses, and no blood in the people. This had better be an army of vampires, and not just 1. Otherwise he has just injested a lot of blood...much more than the average stomach can hold!

And if this is Thorne from the first scene, why is he described as a 'bastard' instead of a 'monster' or a 'vampire' ?

7. Page 8
Male and feminine - Either be consistent (Male and Female) or just say 2 shadows. To my eyes describing a shadow by gender makes it feel like a nude silhouette, and that's not the effect you want here.

8. Page 8.
Also need to describe the scene. I missed that this was INT. CELL, and was confused when I learned that John was about to be hanged. I had to go back to see that we are in a cell. The description shows him (grimy and unshaven) and the fact that he's looking out a window...in a cell this would have bars or some other obstacle. Them not being described, with the emphasis on describing the character took me right out of the scene.

9. Vivian takes John out of the cell, and the Major obviously disrespects her -- so why did he let her in in the first place???

10. She has a sardonic smile on P9, and a sardonic look on P10. Avoid vague descriptions like this...tell us what we see. 'Sardonic' is very much

11. P10 -- Vivian takes john through the rain, holding umbrella for him...a moment before he was playing the gentleman -- shouldn't he be leading and holding?

12. P10 -- Who is Frenchy? Where did they come from? Again, I thought this was Vivian, and had to go back and see it's someone else.

13. P13 - Sardonic is back :)

14. P13 -- Vivian now throws herself at John, kissing wildly, getting naked. Huh? Just like that? And what's Frenchy doing in all this?

15. P14 Jack and TOMMY HIGGINS -- why is jack not capitalized? Is this someone we've seen before? Now I'm getting really confused...We've had a Jud and a John, and earlier was young Jack. Is that the same one? When it reads 'Jack and Tommy Higgins', it feels to me like these are brothers, and not Jack Trevellyn from earlier.

-- It's little bumps like this that turn a reader off. If we have to work hard to figure out what you are trying to say, then after a while we'll stop. I tried harder than the average reader, but this was the bump that turned me from reader to skimmer.

16. Now Thorne seems to be a rich guy, and they're robbing his gold. The story is losing me a bit..

[At this point I stopped reading and started skimming]

...robbery done, they end in a bar [Cliche]
...and they're playing cards [Cliche]
...then there's a fight [Cliche]
P29, Frenchy shows up again out of nowhere. And would a french woman allow herself to be called that?
...And there's the 'Merde' word out of a French person [Cliche]

...scene headings need work, make it hard to gauge interest of a skimmer (INT STUDY, HALLWAY, STUDY) etc.

As I stop, I like to check out dialog -- and I stopped on this:

FRENCHY
The Brotherhood likes to pursue
an oil stain strategy, build a
strong base and expand from there,
accumulating power as you go.

How is that an 'oil stain strategy'? To me an oil stain is a thing that's a bugger to get out of tee-shirt, giving a mixed metaphor.

...so I skipped forward to read the last 10 pages.

Starting at P100

Another 'J' -- Julie.

P101 -- way too much text for John lets the horses go.

P102 - 'You fill up to kicking' ?? feel maybe? If so, that's a weird question in the heat of the moment.

P104 - "She opens wide for a bite and strikes at Jack’s throat like a rattler. Just before her fangs tear into his flesh, Frenchy comes up from behind with a jaggedly broken branch and drives it deep into Sandy’s back."

There's so much wrong here. If she strikes his throat 'like a rattler' wouldn't she have already punctured the skin?

And Frenchy uses a 'jaggedly broken branch' -- what the heck is that?

Oh, and 'sardonic' is back :) [A quick search shows you use it 14 times in this script!]

P110 - Rats have a tribe?

I really liked it. It has great potential.

You need to tighten the plot, lose a few extraneous characters, and clean up the formatting to make for a stronger draft.

Premise: 7
It's the classic, something-went-wrong comedy, where a boy on his 18th Birthday gets the wrong tattoo. Instead of the hula girl he always wanted, he mistakenly gets a picture of his granny who has just died. When the tattoo comes to life, being a granny chaperone, chaos ensues. It's fun, with a nice feel-good vibe and message.

Plot: 4
It meanders a little too much. Better to give Jessie a defined goal and have him work towards it. At first it seems to be to date Hannah, but pretty soon it's clear that he doesn't like her. Granny has the goal of steering him to Marla, but it's poorly defined early on. Come up with clear goals for the characters, and have fun messing it up. It's also supposed to be a comedy, so more comedic moments other than granny-messing-up-Hannah would make it stronger.

Characters: 5
It suffers from too many interchangeable characters who don't add to the story. There are lots of boys that I lose track of in their long conversations, and who don't really do much. Best perhaps to give Jessie only 1 main character friend, have him hurt in the accident, and have his journey clearly defined. Ditto with the girls. In many ways there are just too many and it bogs the story down. Finally, make the names more realistic. Having Breathalyzer as a surname is just bizarre :)

Dialog: 8
I like it. It's snappy, it has character. Less characters will make it stronger.

Overall: 7
I enjoyed it. Very feel good. Has structural flaws, which, if tightened up would make it an excellent draft.

[Based on latest A.S. version, I know you have an update]

This is a great script. I can't wait to see the update. I don't like apocalyptic movies, but this is a very good one. Compare the intelligence of this to the crap that we see like 'World War Z', and I hope someone picks this up and produces it.

One down point is the logline. No offense, but it's pretty bad and totally misrepresentative of the story. Your story is much better.

Something like:
When Chuck Morning finds the cure to the common cold, he is hailed as a saint -- until the byproduct of his cure becomes an incurable plague.

PREMISE: 7
It's a typical scientist-messes-up story, in this case where the cure to the common cold releases a previously surpressed virus/plague. It loses a bit of believability by the fact that this was tested for about 10 years and the side effects weren't found. It feels to me (I am not in the CDC or a biochem) that this type of side effect would have been one of the things tested for before mass release of the 'cure'. What would be nice is if there was something random and unpredictable introduced that, when combined with ColdWay would have this effect. Tighten this up and it could easily be an 8 or 9

PLOT: 6
It's well plotted, but a little too predictable off-the-bat that ColdWay is the cause of the plague. We also 'find out' too late in the story that it's the cause. It would be better if it was identified earlier, leading to a lot of conflict, and then Chuck saves the day by isolating the real cause (like a random element causing a mutation or whatnot). As such there isn't a lot of conflict, which would make for a ripe second act. The second act plods a bit now.
The symptoms of the plague should also be spelled out a bit better. It was a bit of a shock when we see Eddie all bloodied up, and later Marsha has a bloody hand, but that thread didn't seem to go anywhere. Tighten this up and it could easily be a 9 or 10 on plot.

Characters: 7
Marsha and Chuck are awesome as are the supporting characters, in particular Eddie and Mike are real. The native american scenes with Mike are beautifully written in particular. But they don't make a whole lot of sense to the story, and could come across as a bit patronising. Score is lower than it should be because we don't have an antagonist, other than the plague.

Dialog: 8
Scientific without being technobabble. Craftily written to avoid the technobabble with jump cuts. Scene with the frog in the UN is weird though, and falls a little flat. Marsha and Chuck's scenes of love are wonderfully written -- playful and sexy without being cliche.

Overall: 7
Seeds of greatness here. Not much more than I can say other than that. It's a really interesting look at a potential apocalyptic scenario without all the usual cliched riots and civil unrest. Despite the subject nature, there's a feel-good vibe throughout the movie, accented by Eddie and the Marsha/Chuck scenes. It's a big budget story that could be done on a low budget.

Some thoughts as I read:
You introduce him as Charles Morning, but then abbreviate to 'Chuck'

Why would he be arrested for using the fan?

Having Nuel say 'le budget for le coming quarter' does not sound authentic. 'The' is likely one of the first words he would learn, and using 'le' makes it sound cliched

P15 -- Marsha is in her 40s, meaning she would have only been 25ish in the opening scenes. Did you intend that? Feels a bit young

P18 -- AFAIK there is no big New Year;s parade in NYC. It's on Thanksgiving, and it doesn't go through Times Square [But I could be wrong on that]

P19 -- Google Front page doesn't have headlines, but it might be a nice touch if there's some form of riff ont he Google logo around the common cold being cured

P28 'Indian Cave Paintings' is a little politically incorrect. How about Anasazi Petroglyphs or something liek that

P31 Common mistake -- "It couldn't HAVE been much better"

P40-41 -- I assume the kid is dead and this is some form of trance/ceremony. It's beautifully written. Is it based on any real Native beliefs or entirely made up by you?

P83 -- Assuming we were on the west coast (thought it feels more like DC or East Coast), I can't imagine a turbo prop plane having the range to go to hawaii...

PREMISE: 7

The logline and synopsis don't really match the script, and need to be rewritten. The premise is ultimately about a couple of unemployed down-and-out guys who hatch a plot to rob a bookies in order to escape from their dead-end Irish town. The story then takes us through an authentic look at the days-in-the-life of such dead-enders, with several hilarious episodes.

PLOT: 3
The plot really needs to be tightened up. Act 2 in particular spends a lot of time in a night club with no apparent purpose. Tom 'pulls' the girl of his dreams, but then the plot line is dropped when she doesn't show up at the movies the following night. It would have been better for him to pursue this a bit. Mick is introduced, and then savagely removed, and only seems to serve to show that Garda Murphy is a bad guy-- but we knew that already. And as for Murphy -- he never really seems to be a thread to Tom and Jim. He should have more menace. Things kick back into gear in the third act as we go back to the robbery that was flash-backed in the first. But ultimately the plot is weak and needs more direction.

Characters: 6
Our two main protagonists are lovable, but too similar. We need to distinguish them a bit. Garda Murphy, the main antagonist is much too two-dimensional, and inconsistent in his behavior. The supporting characters (Mick, Dave (?) and parents etc) seem a little too cookie cutter too. Too much time is spent developing the persona of psycho-girl, and while it's great comedy, it's pointless to the plot, and that time could be better spent developing characters or driving the plot forward.

Dialog: 7
Very authentic Irish urban dialog. Suffers from inconsistency (see notes below), but captures the voice of modern Ireland well.

Overall: 5
Main downfall is the meandering plot and lack of overall direction. We have a good beginning, a good ending, but a lot of pointless stuff in between. Script should also be tightened heavily so the readers understands what's happening a bit more.

One piece of advice is to make this movie uniquely Irish, other than just using the dialog and characters. Put it in a famous Irish situation (The Snapper is framed against Ireland's world cup run in 1990, The Matchmaker with the stuff that goes on in lisdenfarnum (sp?)) or put it in a unique Irish location -- for example I grew up in Drogheda, very like the town in this movie, and showing some of the unique touristy stuff that's there such as Newgrange, Oliver Plunkett's head etc would really add to the marketability.



I would STRONGLY recommend that writer continues drafting this script. It has potential.



Notes as I read:
Work on character descriptions

TOM POWER (20s, Male) and JIM RYAN (20s, Male) try to force open the safe. etc.

You say this is INT. BETTING OFFICE - DAY, but if they're hacking the safe, they are in the back room.

Avoid too many prose-like descriptions 'A large clank' -- how is the clank large, anyway -- wouldn't it be loud and not large?

Language -- be consistent. Tom is a 'f*ck' speaker, while Jim is a 'feck' speaker. Be consistent. I would prefer this to be 'Father Ted' like in language with lots of feck and Jayzus instead of profanity. It makes it more marketable. Also -- spell it Jayzus which is more phonetically correct, and looks less like a mis-spelling. [Ditto for egit and others]


Dont describe how people look ('Jim also looks shocked'), leave it up to the actors to figure that out.

Logic -- 'I wasn't working on Sat, so the money was deposited' -- why would the money have been deposited because he wasn't working on Sat? Tom also said 'I would have told you'...why didn't he? They had time as they were hacking the safe??

On page 2, their dialog style has flipped -- Jim is a f*ck speaker, while Tom is a 'feck' speaker. Consistency...

Tom says to untie 'that crowd' before customers come in. Who are 'that crowd'? The staff? Tom walks over to Phillips -- but we haven't been introduced to him yet. They untie him, but how about the others in 'the crowd' ? And surely if Tom worked in this place, wouldn't Phillips recognize him? Assuming he also works there?

You might want to explain what Garda are to the non-Irish audience

The plural of Garda is Gardai (armed Gardai and soldiers) -- why would there be soldiers anyway? And why armed Garda?

Page 5 -- Tom suddenly has a gun. Where did that come from???

Page 5 -- now we see it's a pellet gun (from Jim's dialog)

[[At this point I stopped taking detailed notes -- but you should take away from this that you really need to clean up the text, and think about logical consistency and how you communicate this]]

One thing though -- avoid Irish euphemisms in the descriptive text ('She lets out a whelp', 'clip round the head', 'rain lashes') or the non-Irish reader wont understand.

Page 16 -- Why the heck would the security guard leave a bag of money, unattended?? Feels way to much like plot device here. And then a Garda just happens to be there in their path. Way too contrived.

And then the Garda just gets the robbery of money from a security van covered up? Just like that?? And he paid off the security guard? Err...don't you think they would be easily caught in this scam? Defies belief, sorry.

-- You might want to explain what the Unemployment Exchange is, by showing folks lining up to get their Dole (Social Security for Unemployed) money

-- Cider (p33) is a non-alcoholic drink in the US. You'll confuse US readers with it...perhaps a short description. (Cider, an apple-based alcoholic drink, stronger than beer that gets you drunk quick and cheap) etc.

-- Meatloaf's song is "I would do anything for love (but I won't do that)" {I always wondered what he wouldn't do. Interesting theory! :)}

-- Is there a time period for this movie? I noticed they were 'looking at records', and on P51, Jim has a 'few quid' on him. Nowadays they'd be looking at CDs and would have Euro, not quid...[Later, on Page 90 you mention Euro, to add to the confusion]

-- Baryshnikov -- fall over laughing. Great scene.

-- P76/77, the word 'fag' is used in two contexts -- once for cigarette, once for gay. While technically (slang-wise) correct, you should use two different words, or the reader will get confused.

-- P83, you spent a lot of act 2 showing how hard it was for the guys to get girls, and then Tom finds out about the bookies from a girl he picked up so easily and casually. Also, he was stood up on the date with janet, but you never went back to why. She seemed nice, and she seemed to like him, and wasn't being nasty, so why not explore it?

[Based on a 15 Page Read]

I couldn't finish reading this script. Part of the formatting issues might be because it's in RTF, not PDF. You make a note that PDF doesn't handle Chinese. It does. You just need Chinese fonts. If you have a PC you can get them on Windows Update.

On the point of Chinese -- QQ is the biggest instant messaging service in China. Not sure if you were aware of that, so calling your aliens after it is a bit odd.

Bottom line is that this script needs to be rewritten. It is very confusing as to what is happening and why at many times. I finally gave up at page 15 when the alien attack is going on (I think), but it's not clear as to what is actually going on, just a lot of inconsistent people-reactions to an obscure event.

Read it out loud and you'll see what I mean. Nikki, Frankie and Jake take a car up to the park. Nikki is a CD, Frankie is gay, and Jake is hanging out with them hoping to find a job. Nikki wants 'favors' from Jake, who refuses. Nikki puts a gun in Jake's face, and starts to perv on him. The radio goes off. Nikki freaks out. Frankie comes running out of the forest and starts talking about 'one looked at me'. It's full of HUH? moments, almost like pages were missing.

Ditto with the setting. We open with a man with hyenas outside his house. Then we're at a kindergarten near Houston. Then the man dies, and a bus driver feeds him to the hyenas. Then we're back at Houston. I'm note sure why the scenes with the hyenas exist...are they outside Houston? I thought, at first, that this was some form of dark future where hyenas prowl the American landscape, but that doesn't seem to be the case...it needs to be clearer if you don't want to lose your readers.

And I'm sorry to say you lost me. :(

Ultimately I can't give a final review, because I couldn't finish reading it.

Some notes as I read along:

'a few hyenas snoop around a sole house' -- Sole feels like the wrong word here
'intensive eyes' -- you mean intense
'he feels weak...drops the rifle...' - Capitalization
'Tape Recorder in the Window' -- Tape Recorder? So is the message pre-recorded or live? The storm following feels like it's live, so why a tape recorder? Why not a radio?
'touch guys' -- You mean tough?

So Nathan riles up the crowd that he's going to attack Jake and knock his head off. He then threatens Jake to 'go back where you came from', and then explains himself 'I see you looking for work', and then walks away. Huh?

Yaffa is a Chauffeur, but he's driving a bus? Why did he go to Duncan's house? What killed Duncan anyway?

Yaffa gives Duncan's body to the Hyenas. We saw Hyenas earler. Where did they come from? Why are they wandering around the Heuston area? I assume this is still Heuston? Getting confused now.

If the hamburger place wants help, why do you show the manager 'walking Jake out'? I assume he doesn't want to hire Jake, but why? What happened to Jake's job at the kindergarten anyway?


Page 6 -- Jake had a company. What company? Earlier we saw him as a caretaker in the school... ?


"I was just turned down a job as a cleaning lady. " -- ? Grammar check. Not to mention he just got turned out of a burger bar.


Subtext from the 'good vibes' dialog (page 8) is that they're expecting Jake to have a sexual relaitonship with nikki. A guy they just took off the street. It's weird.

...then it turns out Nikki is a cross-dresser. It feels like Frankie and Dizz are 2 creeps now, picking up a homeless guy to throw at their cross-dresser friend. I don't think this is what you are going for with them.

"I thought I saw someone checking me out in your window" -- Sentence doesn't make sense.

So far we have gay-dom mentioned twice, and a cross dresser, and now on Page 10, the aliens are described as 'hairy balls' ? This is a great way to turn off the reader...it feels like you have an agenda.

'buts' -- should be 'butts'

'she gets used to walk on just two legs' -- walking, not walk

You lost me on Page 13. Nikki puts a gun in Jakes face, ties him up and pervs him a bit. But Jake was in the back and Frankie and Nikki were in the front a moment a go. What's Frankie doing?

Then the radio goes out an everyone freaks. Why? Radios go out all the time. The other park guests (guests?) rush into their car (only 1)? Nikki rushes into his...wasn't he there already?

Now Frankie comes running out of the forest...when did he leave? Why is he running? I'm really confused now...

"the cars stop on the road. Also the last one of them stops. Nothing moves on the road, nothing. " - The last one of what? The cars?

Page 14 - Frankie "One Looked at me" -- one what?

--and that's where I was done.