Making your first ten pages work for you

Rather than do one long post about what we learned from Project Wilson Phillips, I decided it would be best to dedicate this week's posts to some small lessons I think we can get from it.

I've talked a lot about the importance of the first ten pages when writing a script. A while back, I spoke about the specific challenges of writing the first ten pages of a story that I didn't know the ending to. How did I overcome the problem of not having a specific plan? Easy - I made sure each scene not only contained exposition and introduction, they also posed specific questions that an audience would notice and become invested in.

For example, the first scene I wrote reveals nothing. It's a women threatening a man for information, then killing him. Obvious questions the reader asks: "Who are these people and why are they here?" They also might ask "Who is Viper's boss?"

Then after a brief interlude to set up the car chase (which like has the audience asking, "What's the motivation for the car chase?") there's a scene at the newspaper. In introducing the reporters and the editor, we learn that one reporter has gone missing while on a story. Reader questions: "What's the story they're chasing?" and most importantly, "Is this related to the opening scene?"

Aside, I think that's the key to getting away with some of this cryptic bullshit - give the audience just enough information so they can start forming their own theories rather than passively waiting for you the writer to spoonfeed them answers.

From there we go to the brothel and meet some Russian badguys working with oddball tycoon A.J. Trenton. Key things here: there's a little sex appeal with the fantasy girls, there's some oddball humor from that and A.J.'s general demeanor, and there's a fun quirky character in A.J., who verges on being larger than life. He's working with bad guys, but is he a bad guy himself? Is he Viper's boss? Is she working for the Russians?

And then of course there's the action when the car chase bursts into the mansion and leads into the shootout.

Protagonist: Doug Taylor, Jackson Mack
Antagonist: Russians, possibly A.J., and Viper (who is possibly connected to both.)
Action: car chase, shootout, torture scene.
Humor: homeless man, A.J. Trenton
Sex appeal: Prostitutes in sci-fi outfits

Now, some of the cast expanded, and the plot got a lot larger in some versions of the script, but I bet you can see how many of these elments remained consistent in later script. The main characters I introduced mostly stayed the main characters. Also, action and humor were large parts of the later scripts, taking their cues from the early scens.

That's a lot of informaiton in ten pages. Now, obviously if I was working from a master plan perhaps some of this would have been streamlined. The biggest issue is that there might be a dual protagonist issue with Jackson Mack and reporter Doug Taylor, but even that can be tied together properly if the script handles their next meeting deftly.

The big question is: have I made these ten pages interesting enough that you'd at least be motivated to keep reading? I'd like to think so. The scenes directly pose several questions that the screenplay seems obligated to solve. Even if a reader doesn't know where the script is going, there's at least a sense of it moving toward a destination rather than driving aimlessly.

I didn't write ten pages of exposition to set up the story. If anything, I avoided exposition and got the audience interested in the quesitons first. That's the best way to set up your world. Give them just enough to get comfortable, but have them actively engaging with that world and your story. When we talk about hooking a reader, that's generally what we mean.

I've read too many scripts that open with long dialogue scenes: barroom talks or parent-teacher conferences of exposition, characters sleepwalking through a boring daily routine of monotony, an endless parade of characters who seem unrelated to each other and have no apparent connection to anything in the story. Those are all things to avoid. You don't need to show your hand, but you need at least the illusion of cohesion.

And an interesting ten pages is not guarantee that the rest of the script will be any good. At that point, the script is all potential. A brilliant writer might be able to make Chinatown out of that set-up. A lesser writer might produce Troll 2 with it. But you don't know that until you keep reading. As we've seen via the three scripts - there are many different directions a story can take from that set-up, some good, some bad.

But when you read the first ten pages, are you at least intrigued to see where it's gonna go?

An outside review of Project Wilson Phillips, Team Carnie

There was one aspect to Project Wilson Phillips that I regret not being able to execute better. Early on, it was suggested that we put at least one of the scripts onto a peer review site and see what outsiders who had no knowledge of the script's genesis would make of it? Could they detect the shifting writing styles? Would they notice character inconsistencies and plot holes? Or would they praise it to the high heavens?

Triggerstreet was suggested, but in order to upload a script, we would have had to have read and reviewed two scripts. Honestly, I read enough bad scripts for work, I didn't want to read two scripts that were likely much, much worse. (Triggerstreet defenders, you know where to send the hate-mail.)

Fortunately, one of the participants (I'm not sure if he'd want me to name him here) had an account over at Zoetrope and posted the script there. At present, we've only gotten two reviews and only secured permission from one of those reviewers to run his thoughts here. They're rather lengthy, but I think it's extremely interesting to get an unbiased view of the script and make note of what he picks up on.

Frankly, I feel better about having an outsider criticize the project than either me or any of the participants taking shots at what we see as mistakes or missteps. It just seems less personal that way.

I hope you all enjoy it!

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LOGLINE: A police detective is targeted for death when he and his reporter/sister stumble onto a nefarious deal between industrialists, Russians, and corrupt city officials.

PERSONAL IMPRESSION: Your logline caught my interest, and while the setup and story base is an interesting one, I feel there is still a good bit of work needed. I couldn’t tell if you were trying for an action/comedy or slapstick comedy with action. Either way, the script doesn’t hold tension that an action movie should, regardless if it’s a comedy. Some of the situations and dialogue were almost spoof-like, yet the script didn’t seem to be an action spoof overall. Lastly, the ending was a bit of a let down considering all the build up: the group of mercenaries, the private navy, the chaos all across America (or at least in Los Angeles). There are also some plausibility issues.

PLOT/STRUCTURE: You’ve got an interesting basis for the story. Mind control via supposedly harmless tracking chips. I was trying to place the timeframe, but couldn’t narrow it down. In the script they comment that it was in 2010 that he started the chip implants in children. Considering that most people with the chips appear to be adults, I’d have to say it’s a good 20 years into the future. But nothing else in the script appears to be futuristic at all, aside from A.J.’s techno lair.

Overall I think plot is lacking is a mounting tension, that push to the climactic ending. While the opening and middle sections have a fair amount of tension, the last third, that final act, really seems quiet and, for the most part, lacking in comparison to the rest of the story and the apparent chaos it’s supposed to be creating. Part of the reason I think it’s lacking that tension is because your characters simply don’t seem to feel it either. If the characters don’t feel the pressure, your audience won’t feel it either. More on that later.

*Quick editorial note: When translated to pdf, the title page is counted as page one. Any references to page numbers in the review are for the pdf page numbers.

You open up with nice, tense scene. The kid held hostage in the dark room, Viper and her intimidating henchman. It’s a very short scene, but sets up things well. But why don’t you identify the Young Man by name? What is the purpose of hiding it? Even though it’s revealed later in the script, I don’t see any purpose for keeping it secret. Hiding the name like this only adds a name to your character list, double crediting an actor.

The car chase is nice, though I would have like to have followed it a little more than just the news footage. But, that’s not really detrimental, just a personal note as I do enjoy car chases. Now as we move into the newspaper city room, you again decide to double credit characters, calling Jurgens - FAT REPORTER and Wesley – INTERN. I have to again ask why? What is the point of not naming them right away? You don’t necessarily have to call Wesley by his full name (Wesley Phillips), but at least keep him to one name. You’re going to give some poor AD or production office fits trying to keep track of all the multiple name characters in the script (and on the tape board too). I like the interplay between Keller and Doug. Nicely done and establishes an interesting character history (and possible tension between them). Quick question: is there a reason you call her EDITOR KELLER instead of ANDI KELLER? I mean, yes she’s an editor but that’s not her actual name. And since she is present in the script a good bit I find it odd to read Editor Keller in the midst of the big showdown in the third act. Also, is there a reason why you use full names for character dialogue (DOUG TAYLOR, EDITOR KELLER, ect)? Also, I realized you’re inconsistent with that as throughout the script there are times when it’s just the first name and times when it’s the full name. Pick which style you like (full or first name) and use it consistently throughout.

The meeting at the mansion is interesting. It’s a good way to establish the antagonists, but I thought it could use a little darker tone. I don’t mind A.J.’s playful attitude, but I thought Vitaly could be better, his dark serious demeanor a contrast to A.J.’s lighter persona. On page 9, I have two small issues with the “geek dream girls” section. First, I’d be careful in using trademarked characters (honestly, I’m not sure of copyrights when using recognizable characters or costumes in films, but it could cause issues with legal rights), not just because of the legal rights issues, but also because you’re assuming the reader is familiar with all of them. Personally I know most of them, with exception of the Orion slave girl (although I think I remember that one… just never watched much Star Trek). Small issue, I know, and perhaps not worth changing. Secondly, I am against “giving directions” in scripts. Telling the reader/director what is supposedly being seen on screen. It’s the “we see…” type directing. It tends to be frowned upon, especially from unknown writers, and seems as though you’re telling the director how to shoot/edit the scene. It’s not as blatant as I’ve seen others do, but I always warn people of it. And the fact that it reminds the reader that this is a blueprint for a movie, taking them for a brief moment away from just enjoying the story.

The car smashing through the house is a nice shock. Gives a great push to the tension. My only complaint is that it seems rather short. I would’ve liked to have seen the standoff just a slight bit longer, or maybe a little more description as to Nickolia’s zombie state, just to add that little twist to things. Let your audience sense that there wasn’t something right to Nickolia. Giving the audience little bits of the puzzle, just enough to pique the curiosity without giving much away, will draw them deeper into the story.

Jackson goes to speak with Not-Hooker - Nina’s third named persona in the script. While keeping her identity a secret in the descriptions, on page 12 when she finally speaks, instead of using NOT-HOOKER as her character dialogue (giving her a third named character for just one line of dialogue), why not have her give the wink just before she speaks, or at the same time, so that the audience joins Jackson in recognizing her. I like the interplay here. It’s a nice set-up, to have the two kinda square off before revealing their connection and care for each other.

I’m a bit undecided on the scene with A.J. and Stearns. I think it’s that you give too much away. I’d love to see it a bit more subdue, where the audience isn’t 100% sure on Stearns. Perhaps he tends to cower a bit to A.J., as if the man held him under his financial thumb. Maybe if they weren’t so clear cut on the plan to bring down Jackson. Something like that, where we aren’t fully aware of Stearns’ true intentions.

When Jackson gets to the station, he’s immediately summoned to the chief’s office. I’m a bit bothered by the sequence here. Stearns tells Jackson that he’s on leave (which is not under arrest), so why did they confiscate his gun/wallet/phone? Usually an officer is asked to turn in the badge and gun when placed on leave, not forcefully taken before any explanation is given. And what mandatory rehab? Alcoholics? Drugs? Anger management? It’s unclear and none of these issues (rehab, leave) mandate any sort of arrest (the handcuffs) and police escort. Also, on the plausibility side, the car chase being a Hollywood production. There is no way, no possible way, they could say the chase was a film set. The crash at the mansion, perhaps, but for the chase through city streets there are so many things against it being a film set it’s just implausible:
1. the news covered the chase. Broadcast live. So you have aerial footage of the incident right there proving Nickolia was running.
2. All of the innocent civilians in the streets. You’d have to get signed waivers by all of them to support it being a film set (and with the live news footage they could track down people via license plates to verify that they were, in fact, playing in a movie.
3. Any time a film production has to use city streets, there is always police on site to block streets, not to mention the notifications to the authorities of filming. Streets are blocked off by police and film staff. It’s illegal to film on open roads without authorization, police notification and presence, and more.
I know this is a movie and not real life, but it’s very hard for me to suspend belief that much to really take a film-set cover up. And even if the mansion itself was just the set, Jackson had authority to pursue Nickolia due to his reckless driving to get to the mansion. With nearly hitting a pedestrian, that’s grounds for use of dangerous force to stop him (or invoke the back-off clause, but no such call was made). Perhaps it’s just me.

I like the escape with the assistance from Murphy. I would even stretch the scene out just a little more, let them argue a little to flesh their relationship out some. It’s so short of a scene, and being their first interaction as partners on screen (aside from the escort to the chief’s office), I think you should take advantage to show their relationship and create some depth to their partnership.

We reach A.J.’s island. Now this is another plausibility bone I have to chew: the armada of battleships. I don’t know where this island is located in reference to the USA, but if it was anywhere even remotely close there is no way the US military would allow a fleet of heavily armed Russian ships to park. And if this isn’t Russian military but a private mercenary-esque group, they wouldn’t be allowed to have military grade weapondry. And if it wasn’t legally sanctioned weapons, just ones they stole or got on the black market, a fleet of them would certainly garner radar and satellite attention by the US, as well as possible intervention. Even if A.J. is the richest man in the world.

Doug’s strategy at the bar is nice (pretending to be drunk). Reminds me a bit of Brad Pitt in “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”, but not so much as to be a bad thing. I would like some sort of characterization as far as the other poker players go, since they are featured in the scene and not just background. Are they heavy, muscular bikers or douchy Eurotrash or burly Italian mafia types? Just some sort of minor description to get a feel for them.

As we move to the launch of A.J.s phone attack, you handle this nicely with the intercutting scenes. Still bothered some by the double names of characters (Tough Guy/Shadowed Man, Kenny/Sleazy Man, ect.), but that’s a small point here. I like the pacing and setups, the way they cut together in the scene sequence here all leading to the cell phone calls. Nice job. One point I’d like to touch on though, is that I think before you show Nina/Viper I’d show a few more phone reactions before A.J. focuses on her. Just a few random citizens to really show how spread this is going. It’ll increase the sudden tension of the oncoming chaos he’s (A.J.) is launching. At the moment, it’s just the homeless man and Nina in the peak of the moment. Nina’s action scene is great, but when Jackson catches up to her (pg 31) it leaves me to ask how did he know about the chip? How did he know it was there and that it was the reason for her actions? What clued him in or when did he discover the truth about the chips?

In the newsroom on pg 33 is where I get confused about timeframe. I think I mentioned this above that I didn’t know what the specific time was as it’s here the intern says it was 2010 births that were chipped. Nina is in her early 30s, so that would make it at least 2040, yet there are really no other futuristic aspects (except A.J.s computer).

On page 34, we’re riding along with Doug and Jackson. What bothers me is the banter here, the playful chatter. Considering all they’ve seen, the chaos and Nina’s insane stunt, plus their apparent dislike for each other, it seems out of place to be so lighthearted. They can be gruff with each other, and feed into the intensity of the situation, but the way it’s written right now it just doesn’t have that tense feeling. I’d give their attitudes and dialogue a bit more edge, and with their dislike for one another I’d also stretch the scene out a little more and give the audience some time to see them and how rough things really are between them.

Back at A.J.’s mansion (pg. 35), we are given a very brief scene of his “tribute” to his father. This is another scene that I feel needs to be a little longer. This is where A.J. gives his reason behind the project, the driving force (his father’s neglect, ect.). Again, bring your audience into the character’s emotion or backstory some, give A.J. some depth. You want the audience to connect to him, or understand why he’s doing what he’s doing. It gives power to the emotional tension as well as depth to your antagonist (which propels the story and creates a bigger payoff upon his defeat).

Another thing in this area that’s a little off, for me, is the breaking up of the newsroom scenes where the intern is researching the whole chip conspiracy. I know you’re trying to keep from having a single, long expositional scene (or that’s what it seems), but it gives it this choppy feel. If you’re worried about it being a long exposition, then try and create a more interesting way for the characters to discover all the details besides him sitting at the computer (plus, the next scene of the trio chatting for exposition as well). Maybe the kid goes through old papers in storage, or someone stumbles upon a key fact/clue outside the office.

The next scene, Vitaly going to Neptune’s, doesn’t seem to really have a purpose here in the script. I mean, this scene (pg. 36) is just them getting there. Short scene. Then we have another short scene in the newsroom, then a “chit-chat” scene with Jackson, Doug, and Nina. That scene seems to be mostly innocuous chatter, nothing really propelling the story: Nina’s blood loss/blood donations, walking in L.A., and the two guys acting like teenagers. Then we go back to the newsroom for a short, two line scene of exposition, before the trio arrive at the office. And once they are all together in the office, the overall attitude or atmosphere seems too light, as if there's no chaos at all going on outside. They don't even mention it, which is really odd considering they're mostly reporters and a cop.

Back to Vitaly and the biker bar, this still seems like a scene just thrown in there. Vitaly eats and rambles on some off-topic subject while the two lawyers continue to look to leave. Nothing really to propel the story aside from them wanting to leave, but it's still very dampened due to Vitaly's lack of concern, as well as the atmosphere of the bar not reflecting current events. Again we jump back to the office after this short scene, keeping the jumpy feel.

Page 42-46. Lots of exposition here. Talking heads giving all the facts and details of the story, which cramming so much information in one scene can overwhelm your audience. Also, I would let the audience see them discover the details, at least some of them, and interlace that with some of the talking/piecing it together. At the moment, it seems they pretty much have all the answers (except for Phi) right here through this scene. All exposition. Also, considering this chip that A.J. implanted into people was supposed to be a GPS tracker of sorts, wouldn't it then be an easy assumption that all there would be a file list of all implanted people, plus tracking each individual (the chip's original purpose, right?)? So why can't they hack in or log in to the tracking service, search the database for possible "Phi" matches and then have the GPS system locate each possibility? From there they could narrow their search.

You give a quick break for A.J.'s arriving "package", which he still doesn't have that antagonistic feel to him, that evilness or dark side that gives the audience a strong emotional stance to cheer against him and for your heros. After that, it's Vitaly at the bar for his helicopter pick-up and, for some reason I can't figure out, a quick fight with a biker who is pissed off at him for I have no idea what. Vitaly paid for his food, walked out without any noted interaction with anyone, yet this biker comes out screaming and trying to pick a fight. Very strange (not to mention the oddity of a biker screaming that he'll sue... sue for what?).

Back at the office, it's another expositional scene (the television report giving the details of Nina's "boyfriend" instead of them finding out this fact on their own). And again, Jackson and Doug are acting like teenagers. There's chaos all around (supposedly), they've killed several people between them, and yet they don't have any emotional stress or indication that they're troubled much by it all, instead squabbling like kids and cracking jokes. They discuss going to the island, which I'm wondering how they all know about it and what makes them strongly feel it's at the center of this conspiracy. For all they know the computers controlling the people/chips could be based in Frisco, or London, or India. Where is the evidence or clues aside from it being A.J.'s private island. If he's running some big company with all these chip implants, they'd have offices and buildings all across the US. Not to mention no one thinks of going to the CIA or FBI for assistance or to turn over their information for a stronger support/attack team.

I like that A.J. gives Murphy the command to go after the group. But where my problem lies with the scene is two parts: First, during all this time NO ONE helped Murphy? Not a good samaritan, not a fellow officer, not anyone? No one called to report the wrecked car, the man in the driver's seat bleeding and unconscious? And how long has he been sitting there on the sidewalk in Los Angeles? Second, how the hell does Murphy find them so fast? Is he synced in to some GPS tracking/locating program? It's just very hard to believe that in such a huge sprawl of a city that Los Angeles is, with all the chaos going on, Murphy would be able to find them in his zombie state so quickly, if at all.

Now the confrontation with Murphy and Jackson, I think, needs to be longer. This is his partner. Why doesn't he try to talk him down, talk some sense into him? Try to figure out what's wrong with his friend? And after Murphy gets shot, Jackson doesn't really react much to the fact that his friend was a zombie trying to kill them.

The group heads to the police headquarters, which turns up abandoned. This wouldn't be surprising if it weren't for the fact that you really haven't established the scale and true chaos to support this. I mean, this group (Jackson, Nina, ect.) have been traveling around apparently without much trouble except for Murphy's attack. You're missing the scenes to support this abandoned headquarters and for the tension it should instill. Secondly, I've never known of a police station that has a fully operational infirmary with a bed and such. Maybe I'm wrong, but being the police station I would assume any major injuries would be sent right to the hospital. Third, Cheif Stears surprises them (though not us since we knew he was crooked already, a point you gave away earlier in the script). This would be a much better twist if you hadn't cemented his crooked side earlier. You could really make this scene much more exciting and impactful if we the audience didn't expect or know about Stearns being crooked (and you could also expand the scene so that the group at first doesn't realize it either). Fourthly, this is a HUGE gamble on their part, guessing that the police chopper will be there, or come back to the station in such short order. I mean, it's cliche to the point of being implausible that the chopper would show up right as they get on the roof, no waiting required. In all the chaos and all that's going on, the helicopter just so happens right at this moment to be returning to the police station (and instead of anywhere else in the chaos) is just hard to swallow on the believability. I'd rather have had the helicopter already there and the idea comes to them after taking care of Murphy and Stearns (maybe someone sees the pilot or something). Maybe I'm just not suspending disbelief enough.

Now they fly out to the island. With all this high-tech gear, the personal navy, mercenaries, and so forth, this rag tag group is able to make it to the island? Do none of these ships have radar? I don't know. Kinda a stretch. And why does Normandie not notify A.J. of an intruder? I mean, his life could be on the line (both his and A.J.s) considering what they're doing, yet he shrugs it off. I know he goes rogue in the end, but this makes him more apathetic than angry enough to go rogue on his boss. If you want to have him turn, give something beforehand that makes the connection to support it. His frustrations, maybe rooting anger building behind that "Jeeves" demeanor.

The trio's time on the island is kinda iffy for me. They're still acting somewhat like kids, joking and fumbling about instead of acting like seasoned professionals (one is a cop and the other two are reporters who would be somewhat accustomed to being stealthy). One dog attack and they're ready to flee the island. Then, the heavy artillery. Again, I have to wonder where this island is and why it's not garnering US military attention with the weapons they have and are using (attacking US citizens at that). Our heroes are trying to flee, tails between their legs, instead of pressing on or trying to figure out how to win this battle. It defeats their character, in my opinion.

I don't quite understand the scene with Stearns and Keller. I mean, Stearns was ready to kill four people, yet here Keller is pressing a few questions and he runs off like a scared little boy. If he were at the end of his rope, which after failing to kill four people I would think he would be, he wouldn't take no for an answer from anyone standing in his way. He's facing jail and so on already, so desperation would be sinking in.

Now part of the problem with the tension is due to the time passing. You've been trying to build tension and panic with all the chaos back in America, but it's hard to sustain that tension if the situation is stretching over an extended period of time. On page 66, the trio wakes up in a cave the next day. So all the chaos of the day before - the crazy people running rampant in the city, the destruction of their chopper, the bombardment, the dog attack - is all pretty much lost to the nap and next day. It slows down your tempo. And, of course, the characters don't reflect much tension either, Jackson joking about ordering pizza and such. They just survived a shelling from battleships, had the police chief try to kill them, the chaos of the mind control stuff, the dog attack, they're stranded on a hostile island, and the first thought is to go search for food. Not a plan to escape, a way to stop the mind control stuff, but rather breakfast. See what I mean? If they aren't showing tension and worry about the situation, why should your audience?

We're into the final act, the big climax of the story. Phillips (who predictably was the Phi character) snuck onto the island and was captured. Keller calls A.J. and tells him she's figured out where the special chip is, which for some reason scares him. A.J. has the master control computer, linked to all the chips, there in his house. So why is he worried so badly? He could send a kill command to deactivate all the chips if he wanted. Shut them down and find the special chip himself. Knowing Keller knows, he could send one of his contract mercenaries to grab her and get the info from her. I mean, he's willing to send people to kill (Nina), so what's stopping him here? Additionally, somehow the commandos know about the trespassers, who they are, yet this misfit group of intruders has avoided capture by trained military men (and how does the Major know it's them for that matter?)? Instead, they're caught by a slave girl who sees them and screams. This wouldn't be so bad if you had established Jackson, Nina, and Doug as being stealthy, elusive, competent foes to the military instead of being a jokey clan bumbling about on the island.

With all of them gathered, you give the cliched bad-guy-spills-his-plans-in-a-long-speech, a 7 page expositional scene explaining all. That's a lot of talk for what's supposed to be your climactic moment, the big showdown that you've been leading up to. And why on Earth is he going to destroy the house? He's bringing down the US through his zombie chaos, no one believes the group (A.J. says so himself), and he's got massive wealth to bribe/buy his way out of any perceived trouble if needed. It just doesn't make much sense that he's destroying his private island and seemingly giving up on this zombie chaos plan for no real reason that i can see. And then how did Keller get on the island without trouble as well? I mean, it seems that entire private navy and commando unit is worthless.

So in another cliche moment, A.J. has left the group alive, and in doing so they escape their binding (with Keller's help) and stop his island destruction sequence. Then, they get Phillips into the computer for his override run with some sequence of complex Golden Ratio progression (or something like that. It kinda flew over my head, the golden ratio stuff. Not a good math person here). But the root of the problem here is it's all very anti-climactic. There's no real feeling of that last second this-is-it moment, that part where it seems all hope is lost. We're given another section of exposition explaining how it's all through the golden ratio mathematics (not really keeping your audience on the edge of their seats with that), and additionally we're not really told or shown how Keller came to understand that this was the key to it all. I mean, how did she come up with it as the absolute answer? and is it a specific sequence that needed to be keyed in (Parthenon, Dali, ect) or could it have been any golden ratio sequence? So everyone kinda chills while Phillips runs through his zombie override state, playing piano.

But in an even more anticlimactic approach, our heroes debate how to buy the mercenaries loyalty... Okay, a few notes here. One of the world's wealthiest men hired these guys, so he's going to have a lot deeper pockets than a cop and reporters. Two, do they really think they're going to just write these guys a check and that'll be the end of it? Mercenaries don't work like Walmart, taking a personal check and saying thanks for your business. It's a laughable concept and completely kills any tension you had built. They're running around in your final, climactic scenes trying to pool money and ask for raises?

And finally, the big showdown. A.J. returns to confront the group. Instead of an action scene here, it's a quick sibling bickering between A.J. and Keller before Normandie turns traitor. And then, for some reason A.J. has a massive turn around because Keller takes up for him... well, sort of. She says it wasn't all for him. Anyway, he is a changed man. Just like that, without any sort of emotional breaking-down-the-walls moment. I mean, he's harbored this anger for all these years, constructed this elaborate, expensive, evil scheme that's put thousands, if not millions, of innocent people into violent chaos, and he flips over in a nearly emotionless "Wow. I think my life has been misspent.". Where is the emotional tension? The big climax? The highlight or pinnacle of the story where your audience is hanging onto every word, every action? I hate to bear such bad news, but you really need to rework the entire ending. You need to build tension, build the chaos and fear, increase the stakes (both emotionally and physically) with your characters, lead them to the edge where all seems lost before conquering it all.

It ends on a lighthearted group on the beach, casually chatting, still no police or American military involved. A.J. just caused millions to billions of dollars in damages through his programmed rioting, had numerous people killed off through programming an innocent person to kill, and is guilty of mind controlling thousands of people through his implanted chips, and no one seems to think anything more than a story and instructions on how to remove the chips will solve all that? Again, I just cannot suspend belief enough to buy that. Lastly, we're treated to this odd scene with Murphy and Christine discussing the story (a story Murphy only had the smallest part in overall) which is for the most part keeping a joking tone through the end when he gets caught with Amy on the phone. I don't know how that's supposed to relate and wrap up the story as far as the rest goes. It just seems completely out of place with the story. Had you established Murphy's relationship with Christine, or that he was a womanizer, or anything to this characteristic and how it tied into the central story, this might work. But as it is, it's an awkward ending to your script.

I hate to be so negative there in the final 30 pages, but after you'd established an interesting base for a good thriller/action script, the final half began to stumble and fall apart as far as a building tension and plausibility.

CHARACTERS: You have a nice, diverse set of characters, though they do need some fleshing out. Jackson is good as a hard-nosed, action cop. But what's missing is that very background that everyone alludes to. Why is he so famous? What has he done to earn his Action Jackson moniker? You need this depth to really establish his character since he is one of the leading characters of the story. Also, I would loose the teenager-esque bickering he does with Doug. It seems so contrary to his persona. Maybe that's what you were trying for, but without establishing his stronger side (the action Jackson, bad-ass cop), the play of him bickering with Doug seems childish rather than him being frustrated by Doug.

Nina is more well rounded as a character and plays both sides (Nina and Viper) well. She's one of the more stronger characters you've got in the script at the moment. Doug is a little undefined to me. Is he a cunning, sleuth of a reporter or a bumbling tag-a-long. In the first half he's very well written, using his smarts and cunning to get through situations or get his information. But when he teams up with Nina and Jackson, he becomes the other persona, the unsure, bumbling along jokester who seems like he doesn't know what to do next.

For your antagonists, Vitaly is the stronger of the three. He's got a nice, dark persona to him, though it still needs to be established more. Give him that really mean, all-business side that you seem to be leaning towards with him. He seems to want to be very gangster, so give him more of that edge. A.J. is your weakest of the three. His motivations are very unclear, up until the end, and while he could be a good cold yet aloof antagonist, he's not at this point. He's got that light, playful, almost crazy side to him, but it's not clear. He's missing that darker aspect to his attitude, that driving force behind the smile as to why he's doing this elaborate plan and the anger that drove him to it. Finally, Stearns. He's pretty much your standard tough guy chief. I like that he's in league with A.J., but it's a fact that you could exploit so much more. As noted above, keep his allegiance with A.J. a secret until the right moment. Emphasize that for his tough guy image at the station, he's a timid cat when facing A.J. (which will also help establish A.J.'s character more in the process).

The remaining characters are written okay and fill out their respective roles. Phillips is one I would focus on a little as far as developing more since he does turn out to be the key to the override. Just touch a little more on his story, his backstory, and maybe drop a small clue or two as to how he might fit into the grand scheme instead of just revealing it in the end through expositional dialogue.

DIALOGUE: While you have some really good interchanges in the script, I think the dialogue overall, especially in the second half, could use some work. In the first sections, you handle the dialogue well, the interplay done nicely. But, as noted above, there are parts where your characters are taking things lightly, contrary to the action around them. They joke and bicker rather than express any emotion or real concern for what's going on. It's through your dialogue that you can really strengthen your characters, as well as give the script that much needed tension. You want the audience to connect with your characters, to care about them, and it's through their actions and their dialogue that you accomplish that. Give what they say meaning, or effect, based on what's going on. Let the audience see their reactions to the chaos, to feel the fear and the increasing desperation to stop A.J.s plot. Tighten up Vitaly to give him that dark edge, give A.J. that playful sinister aspect to punch up his antagonist persona.

LINE-BY-LINE:
pg. 2 - ... opens the door, as a real VIPER... - remove the comma.

pg. 5 - Keller should be (V.O.). (O.S.) is for a character who is present in the area or room, but off screen (such as in a nearby room out of sight). Telephone conversations are (V.O.) voice over as the character isn't present in the scene physically and the lines are recorded as a voice over.

pg. 10 - Who is Richard Grieco? I don't know if this is a pop culture reference or someone famous I should know, but I'd be wary making any sort of references such as this in case, like me, the reader doesn't know who it is.

pg. 10 - Jackson fires his gun in the air. I know this harkens of the old west, but nowadays police do not shoot their guns into the air, especially in a city area. Bullets go up, then come down, and there have been numerous cases of an innocent person getting struck and/or killed by bullets fired into the air like this. It's a small technicality, but thought I'd bring it up.

pg. 11 - continuity - The slug line here says Mansion, but the all the others say Beverly Hills Mansion.

pg. 17 - "I recommend their firm but would..." - was this mistake intentional as a nod to Vitaly's accent and/or broken English? Or is it supposed to be "I'd recommend their firm but it would be..."?

pg. 18 - "... fully cooperate with the our internal investigation..." - remove the or our.

pg. 29 - ... holding his cell plane to his ear. - should be phone.

pg. 36-37 - The scene at the restaurant with Vitaly ends oddly to me. His last line talking about squeezing something I'm thinking you were trying to make him sound tough and intimidating, but at the moment it feels odd. Maybe add something to the end here, where the lawyers look to each other, hesitant to say anything else.

pg. 39 - Need a slug line for when they go inside the Newspaper Office as that would now constitute an interior setting.

pg. 40 - I'd be very careful singling out specific real companies in a negative light. If they're partnered with your studio, or a possible sponsor, you don't want to be bad mouthing them.

pg. 41 - Keller's office scene - why do you list everyone with both first and last names? It's unnecessary.

pg. 42 - "... he just jumps it his car and bolts." - should be into.

pg. 51 - Street in front of the Newspaper Building. Again you unnecessarily write out first and last names.

pg. 51 - Two journalists and a cop... - I don't quite understand why you describe the trio in this fashion. I guess just being a little creative with the writing?

pg. 56 - INT POLICE HEADQURTERS - spelling.

pg. 56 - Some apart of the mayhem. - should be a part.

pg. 62 - "The house should is in that direction." - should be be.

pg. 62 - A small WAR BOATS head toward shore. - is that one single boat or a small group of boats?

pg. 77 - "... you recognise your informer...." - spelling. Should be recognize.

pg. 85 - Formatting error. Nina's dialogue "No. He called me Viper" is formatted as an action line.

pg. 91 - Continuity error. A.J. complains that the explosion is five seconds late, yet Keller and the group have had time to deactivate the countdown, which was down to less than thirty seconds, talk for a bit, enter the whole golden ratio programming, get Phillips into zombie mode, chat some more, and make their decision to go after A.J. That's 5 pages (at a minute a page, five minutes time). Much more than 35 seconds (30 second countdown and 5 seconds late).

pg. 92-93 - why doesn't A.J. send his mercenaries after them? I mean he's paying for a small army, so why does he have to go back personally?

OVERALL: You have an interesting base for a really good action thriller, but it needs some work. Give your characters some depth, draw the audience into the story through your character's emotions and actions. I'd strongly recommend reworking the ending act to increase the action and build some tension. You need a strong, climactic scene as this is the pinnacle of the film. Push the story forward through building the tension, make the audience really feel the chaos and hopelessness of the situation. With a little work, you can have a really good and tense story.

As always this is simply my humble opinion that I hope helps in some way. Should you have any questions, feel free to zmail me any time. Good luck and keep writing!

Project Wilson Phillips - Team Wendy: Day 2

Download the Team Wendy version of the script HERE.

Bob Holt (p. 49-58) - This is my part of an email exchange I had with the person immediately following me. He found me via Twitter, seemed terribly confused by the script, and asked me several questions, including what the hell was going on, and what I tried to accomplish with my pages. I had gone so far as to outline every scene and make a character list trying to nail down who they were at any given point in the pages, so I was happy to share that work with him and give him a little push.

###

Hey Anthony,

Doug and Leliah: It seems like each writer wrote them differently. Sometimes good, sometimes not. Sometimes working together, sometimes working against each other. (For example, it seems they're working together, but then one writer wrote that Doug was protecting Trenton, so...)

Motive of the Vegan machine: Unknown. There was a mention of it becoming self-aware. There was really nothing else in there to suggest what its end goal might be.

So what I did (or tried to do):

1) Vegan needed a goal. I briefly mentioned world domination, robot overlords or what have you. It's general enough to build on, or just to leave abstract if you don't want to deal with it.

2) I didn't like the whole Vegan concept, so I decided to shut Vegan down. Also, I figured it would be a good Act II climax to shut it down for good. Maybe. Whether or not shutting it down succeeded or only made it angry is up to you. Basically, I wanted to give my push to the story without ruining everybody's fun if they wanted to keep it in.

3) Doug and Leliah. This was actually the craziest part - they were completely unmotivated, or maybe more to the point, randomly motivated. So I built in that part of Vegan's master plan were all of these doppelgangers to go around and do its bidding. Also, it made mistakes in replicating them - really just a way of explaining away
the character inconsistencies that plague the whole script. Do with it what you will.

4) Jackson. He was in desperate need of motivation and making his own destiny. I even have him say at one point that he needs to take action because stuff keeps happening TO him. Of course, then I make Cohen the main actor at the climax, so... Oops.

[Bitter Note: I didn't discover Bob and Anthony's collaboration until last week when they sent me their testimonials. To be honest, I would have discouraged this communication had I known about it at the time. I had taken some pains to ensure that no one had anyone else's email address, but didn't think anyone would use the names on the title page to track down the previous writers. I'll make the rules more explicit next time if you guys think this skirts the spirit of the experiment.]

Anthony Filangri (p. 58-69): Well when I first read the script, I was at a total loss. I had so much stuff going on with school, I really wanted to drop out. But karma is a bitch and I didn't want that on my conscience. So what I did instead was contact the writer who did his pages before me to see what the hell he made of the story. He wasn't really sure himself, but he explained it to me the best he could and what he planned to do with 10 pages which was -- try to get things into gear and shut the Vegan down.

So the vegan was shut down... but the third act was just starting. In the 10 pages before mine, it is said that the vegan had developed a brain of his own basically. Why not take it literal, and have a real life vegan -- a robot spawned out from the vegan before it was shut down. There were still secrets afloat, so the robot started killing people to get to them. By the end of my 10 pages, I set up a huge action sequence that hopefully the writer after me took advantage of. It was also up to the writer/s after me to come up with a twist in which I had no idea what it could be. Good luck to them!

All in all, it was a cheesy mess but I still had fun with it.

Delta Kirby (p. 69-79) Being the second-to-last writer for Team Wendy I knew I had to do three things: resolve certain aspects of the plot; begin a sequence of climactic events for the last writer to finish, while also giving him/her enough space to tie up the script and give it an acceptable ending; and reveal the identity of the shadowy figure.

I decided to make Jackson the Shadowy Figure because pretty much all of the living characters (six, not counting Jackson) were accounted for, except for an ancient journalist, and I didn't think an old man fighting the foul mouthed hero would be that exciting to watch. Funny, yes, but not exciting. It would also reveal that Jackson himself was a clone, and I believed that threw up a lot of opportunities for the person after me to use. Maybe Jackson joins AJ, maybe he's already lost and the whole world is clones, maybe he has to sacrifice himself to reset the world, I don't know.

I then wrote ten pages in which all but a couple of characters die, several things explode for no reason, and a group of evil clone office workers are destroyed by the corpse of an intern. Why? Because it felt appropriate for what I read as a self-aware sci-fi action thriller. Why set the last scene on Neptune? Again, because it felt like a direction the script would take.

Ben Ritter (p. 80-90): When I inherited the script, I had to read it three times. The second time through, I took notes to help me keep the different characters straight (with the cloning and the robots, I was pretty confused). I eventually ended up with the characters’ names in one column, their descriptions in a second column, and the word “dead” in a third column for all but two characters. It was inevitable, therefore, that my pages would constitute a showdown between the two living characters, Jackson and AJ.

Since it had been established that any character could be cloned and resurrected at will, the stakes seemed too low for a physical fight, so I thought that a battle of the wits (and some sort of moral decision) would be potentially more interesting. I also decided to flesh out the character of AJ a little more. We already knew that he was the richest man in America, a sci-fi fan, and considered himself to be something of a comedian. To this I added (I hope) a degree of vanity and loneliness (the previous author had decided that AJ lived in a palace on Neptune, so I thought these were attributes he would likely have). Throwing a costume party pretty much for his own benefit seemed nicely in-character, and I thought of the idea of him dressing as Emperor Palpatine pretty early (based on the electricity-throwing scene the previous author had written).
I had never gotten a really good feel for Jackson’s character throughout the script, and I feel that my characterization of him fell flat as a result. I tried to get some leverage out of his relationship with Candy, which previous authors had alternately developed and dismissed, but to be honest, in my pages, he’s mostly a straight man for AJ’s antics. Subsequent rewrites would hopefully amp up the relationship between Jackson and Candy a little in earlier scenes and make Jackson’s choice seem more natural.

I also regret that I couldn’t think of a way to tie in the very first scene with the woman identified as “Viper” (who may or may not be the same person as Leliah) torturing a young man in a dark room. (The “Vegans” teleportation system is also, confusingly, sometimes called “Viper,” but I think this was a typo by one of the earlier authors.)

I thought this project was an interesting experiment, and I’m glad to have been a part of it, but I don’t think the resulting script is very good. The biggest problem, I think, is that all of the authors (including myself) wanted to add something substantive to the script, so about every 10 pages, a character was killed, a character was revealed to have not been killed, a character was revealed to be a clone or a robot, a character traveled to Neptune, a character traveled through time, etc. At best, I think there is a certain campy charm to a script spiraling so wildly out of control, but this came at the expense of things like character development and coherence.

I think one key difference between this script experiment and improv (especially long-form) is that very few improv games would have someone exit the scene completely and hand the creative reins over to the next player, so (even with the “yes, and” principle in place) crazier impulses could, to some extent, be kept in check by the other players onstage. It’s also unlikely that anyone but a beginner would do something as drastic as pulling out a gun and shooting another character for shock value unless this action arose naturally from the scene. If you were to repeat this experiment, it might be interesting to have each writer write one character throughout or do something else that would allow earlier writers to have continued input through the later pages (maybe submit notes every 10 pages that the next author could read but wouldn’t be required to follow).

Project Wilson Phillips - Team Wendy: Day 1

We're on the home stretch of the Collaborative Writing Project scripts as we hit Day One of the final team.

Download the Team Wendy version of the script HERE.

Joe Kavanagh (p. 11-20): As was said in the introduction email to us "this thing is laced with traps." I wanted to see if I could knock away as many of them as possible so team members following behind could take the story to more interesting places. The chance to take the story to a place where none of the other stories would go also made it more interesting for me (and, I hope, my team members following behind). It's also quite hard writing the second ten pages of a story with no outline and hoping for it to make sense later. I thought about where I would take the story to its end before writing but I only control my ten pages. It was a great writing exercise that I would happily take part in
again.

Dustin Rush (p. 21-30): The main thing that drew me to this challenge was the idea of limitations. I wanted to see what would happen to my writing when I was given a few pieces of the story. The toughest part for me was figuring out what to do with all the characters and information that had been created. Some I just flat out ignored, others I had to decide their significance.

I needed to know who the protagonist was and what he was going after. So I tried to establish that. I thought the story had a lot of fun foundational work already built in. It felt like my job was to shape the thrust of the story and round out some of the main characters.

In some ways I think it was more difficult than writing your own story, because I couldn't go back and erase anything. But I never would have come up with V.E.G.A.N.S. so it was definitely fun to work off of someone else's ideas.

Amy Baack (p. 31-41): I was in charge of writing fourth, which meant I got the script after 30 pages had been written. At this point in a script, the story should be fairly well established: the protagonist, his goals, and his obstacles should be fairly clear. My goal was thus to focus on moving the plot along. I found that the script wasn't exactly clear yet, so I did my best to try to clarify the protagonist and antagonist and their competing objectives. I then tried to pick up the pace and have some fun with the story.

Patrick O’Riley (p. 41-49) When I first received the 42 page pdf, I found myself quite overwhelmed. There were around 5 main characters that seemed to demand equal attention within an ever-expanding conspiracy. My first decision was that at least one of these people would complete an arc and die. According to the page count, it seemed my pages would include the stories midpoint, meaning it was my duty to stop adding dots and start connecting them.

Firstly, I wanted to draw up clear allegiances. With his introduction, Doug had mentioned making the reporter gaff of "telling the truth about people in power" so it was clear his character was meant for a high moral standing. It then became my job to explain why Doug would claim to be defending AJ Trenton and shoot Murphy near where my pages began. Since the shooting happened off-camera, I decided that it would be Murphy, not Doug who survived the shootout. Doug's story began with protecting his partner, and having essentially broken it off with Editor Keller, he was able to commit fully to Leliah. To protect her from the police he believed to be crooked, Doug was claiming to be on their side to keep them at bay. Dying on her behalf provided closure to Doug's arc.

My intention was to break the major cast into three teams: The Good Cops (Murphy, Mack, and Cohen), The Reporters Who Bend the Rules to Bring Evil To Light (Leliah, Joshua, Doug, And Keller), and The Bad Guys (Candy, Trenton, The Chief, and Leliah's Father). I tried to make these teams clear by putting each team all in a room together of the course of my pages. Whether or not these teams remained in tact beyond my pages remains to be seen but all-in-all I found this to be a fun worthwhile experiment and I look forward to similar exercises in the future!

Project Wilson Phillips - Team Chynna: Day 2

Download the Team Chynna version of the script here

Max Bowen (p. 62-71): My assignment was pages 61-70. As I read the first 60 I noticed a couple of things bumped me logically, and I had some story concerns given that we were heading into the homestretch.

1) There was a passage where a couple of journos were suddenly pulling "service revolvers." It seemed like the writer got confused about which characters he/she was working with, and nobody carries a revolver anymore.

2) There were a shitload of characters and it was difficult to keep them straight, especially when there were shifting loyalties and undercover types. There were also FBI and LAPD, which was muddying the water for me.

3) When the police station blew Trenton and the Russian were allegedly in there and Jackson was walking in to interrogate them when the building blew. This seemed like a bit of logic that the previous writer missed.

4) There were allusions to a bombing plan, but no one had spelled it out, and we were about to be 70 pages in.

5) The homeless guy had been dropped.

The first thing I did was copy the entire script and paste it into a text file. Then I trimmed out all the dialogue and synopsized each scene to give me an outline of the story to date. Because there were so many characters, I listed the major players to help me keep them straight.

[Note: he included these, but I’m not reprinting them due to space constraints – Bitter]

As I thought about the issues the main goal I set for myself in outlining my 10 pages was to set Trenton's plan in stone. So I decided that he was going really big with this and was going to blackmail the entire world. Big stakes. Big box office. right?

I also wanted to prune back the dramatis personae and make sure that the three different teams were now clearly defined (FBI/cops, Trenton/badguys, and journos). Since this was going to be a world wide plot I figured that the FBI would be a better counterpoint to an international terrorist, so I decided on a reveal that the intern and Agent Jude were actually working for the feds, sort of, since Jude was actually with Trenton and I decided to trim Viper. I also wanted to get out some pipe that explained how Trenton wasn't killed in the police station blast in case anyone else was wondering besides me. There was also the Russian to consider. His character had been dropped, so he had the pleasure of dying in the explosion. I also wanted to use the ringing cell phone as the reveal, because that seemed to be what the previous writer was aiming for, and it's always a fun device (possibly overused, but fun). I realized that my best shot at getting the homeless guy back in was after Jude whacked Jackson, and I wanted something dramatic for her so why not call in a chopper to pick her up after she'd gotten far enough away from Jackson.

I added the following four scene outline to the previous outline:

[Note: not reprinting this either – Bitter again]

Then I scripted it, did a quick polish and emailed it back to Bitter.

Nicole Hill (p. 72-87): When I first read the script, I saw a lot of intrigue, and action. I usually write more character-based relationship heavy scripts, so, I wanted to use my pages, not only to sort of tie up some loose ends, but to bring the motivations of the characters to light.

I wanted to bring reason behind the madness and slow it down a tad bit to enter some back story. Yes, there's a lot of killing and explosions, and double-crossing, but why? I also wanted to bring some closure to some of the early beats, like the dead guy in the trunk. I also wanted to show that Agent Jude had a method behind her madness. Yes, she screwed around, but, all the sex was really just to get to her end goal of paying homage to her father's legacy. I also wanted to create a situation where you had some sympathy for Agent Jude. She did lose her father, and her brother is crazy. I wanted Rogers to feel this sympathy also, and ultimately, that's why he allows himself to land in bed with her. Since we were heading towards the finish line, also wanted the reporter, Doug to start to be suspicious of Jude. She's always around when there's trouble, so, there must be a reason.

[Note: I gave the final writers some leeway in the length of their final pages. I let them know if they needed more than ten pages to wrap things up that was fine. I didn't expect that Philip would go above and beyond and produce 24 pages of writing!]

Philip Prince (p. 88-112): Being as I was the last 10 pages of the screenplay, one of my key issues to combat would be somehow putting my personal twist in, how others had done it before me. And believe me, I tried. I wrote the way I wanted the story to go, while still taking into account a beat sheet mentality.

Basically speaking, I had to wrap the story up, and couldn't go wasting pages forever. Unfortunately, while I did successfully add in the kind of story I wanted to tell, I actually did a disservice to the work that was done before me. It wasn't that I refuted the plot points that were brought up before me. But in some cases I out and out ignored them to do the ending I wanted to do. And not only was that a disservice to the writers, but it was a disservice to the characters. They had been grown into three dimensional people over the course of 87 pages, who was I to make decisions for them because I had wanted them to be somewhat different than what others interpreted them as.

So, I went back to page 1. Not page 1 of my part but page 1 of the entire script. I sat with a pad in hand and marked every character tick I saw in each character to reveal more about their inner thoughts, actions, desires and emotions. I also had to look for themes that resonate with every character and what happened to them over the course of the story. Whether it was from their action, their inaction, or the actions of other, and what did that mean when it came to the theme for the story.

The last thing that I wanted to make sure to include, as I believe it is in all proper endings, were callbacks. One of my favorite screenplays ever written is "Back to the Future". It is a callback bible for how to include them in your screenplay. It also also makes the movie more watchable as you notice the tiny things about the plot that later come back in funny or dramatic ways(see: Twin Pines Mall changed to One Pine Mall). So I sat back, read, and found what callbacks I could use to wrap up the story in a neat bow. Or as neat a bow as I could wrap it.

With all that together, I wrote down a scene-by-scene breakdown of where the groups are when I received my portion, who was with each group of characters, why where they there, and what were they ultimately hoping to accomplish in terms of plot and inner resolution. And what you will read is the culmination of that. There are some things that I might have missed to hit on, and some of you may not like the theme I ended the story on. But these are the things that stuck with me as the essence of the characters and story every subsequent read I had, and I did read over it alot.

So enjoy, and I think this was a great experiment and hopefully can get annually done. Although, next time someone else can deal with the stress of not making a sucky ending with such great writing before you. LOL. Enjoy!

Project Wilson Phillips - Team Chynna: Day 1

If you want to read my explanation of the first ten pages, go HERE.

Download the Team Chynna draft of the script HERE

Brad Bauner (p. 11-21): My main goal was to not screw up the script for my team. I think when everyone has 10 pages, it's easy to want to do something big and splashy to make yours stand out, but, at least in the first position, that could be really detrimental to the group. I concentrated on steering the tone of the script to a mystery with some humor and on fleshing out the characters and their relationships. I wanted to answer some questions that were left in the first 10 pages and leave some different unanswered questions so those writing after me would have plot points to play with. Overall, I was happy with the character, relationship and plot development in my 10. And hopefully, I didn't screw it up.

Evan Shaw (p. 22-31): I felt fairly fortunate to be third in line for the script. TBSR mentioned that he thought he had the easiest job since he was starting with blank slate, but I felt that by having the characters and situations established, my only real job was to push the story forward in an interesting way. I was getting “bad guy” vibes (yes, that’s the technical term) from Chief O’Banion based on the previous pages. So, I wanted to solidify his place as a possible antagonist by having his press conference relay purposefully inaccurate information.

I also liked the contrasting personalities of Doug Taylor and Jackson Mack, so I wanted to create as much conflict between the two. There was some underlying sexual tension between both Taylor and Editor Keller and Mack and Editor Keller. So, I figured emasculating Taylor in front of Keller would give him the motivation to go balls out in an attempt to out-perform Mack. I really wanted to do something with the tattoo that was setup in the previous pages, so I figured a good opportunity for future twists and back-stabbings would be to give Katie the same tattoo. Is she out for vengeance? Is it a coincidence? I have no clue, but I was hoping it would be something the next writers would be able to work with.

I also wanted to make Katie the female version of Jackson Mack. It’s still unclear if she’s a good gal or a bad gal, but one thing is for sure: She’s got more balls than most men. It didn’t really contribute to the main story (at least not yet), but I liked the mini-story idea of the homeless man’s struggle to get a drink. It also helped tell more about Mack’s personality; the fact that he tossed a few bottles of liquor to the homeless guy instead of money -- He knows something about pain. The very first idea that came to me was that I wanted that body to go missing at the end of my pages. I thought it would create something tangible for the characters to look for, with the idea being that if you can find the body, you can find the person who’s really behind the crime (whatever that may be).

Rosie Claverton (p. 31-39): When I first saw the script so far, I was a bit stumped. It was outside my usual comfort zone and very American in style. I also wanted to explore the women in the story, who seemed competent but hadn't done much beyond sexing things up.

I wasn't sure if we'd really finished Act One off and there were so many characters to get my head round. Therefore, I decided to explode the police station and really shake things up as an Act One ender, which conveniently disappeared/incapacitated a fair few characters and created some angst.

Then, my writing buddy Laurence suggested that forcing two very different characters to work together might be a good way forward. Doug and The Intern were already heading to the mansion, so I put Viper and Katie there too. This could serve as a B story, I thought, and maybe reveal a bit more of their agendas. I tried to make sense of Viper and Katie's actions before this point and put my reasoning in Doug's mouth.

As an aside, I was convinced that the Homeless Person was Matthew Kidwell undercover, but I couldn't find a way to work that into my section.

Carlos M. Hernandez (p. 39-50): After reading the first 40 pages, I really wanted to bring the story back to the first scenes. The previous writers helped put the characters in different places and plugged in back story where necessary. Now, as we headed into the midpoint of the story, I wanted to narrow the focus on character motivation and push it forward.

Doug Taylor felt like the true protagonist of the story. It was his partner that was missing and he had the greatest motivation to get involved deeper because of that. He also came off as the guy at the lowest point with potential to grow.

The villains, on the other hand, while evil and willing to kill for any reason, did not grasp me as people with motivation to do evil. So, I wanted to establish the true antagonist and it made sense to me that defeating him would net Kidwell. I simply chose Trenton because he had been left alone for the most part and seemed to me the mirror of Taylor: Men longing for respect. I left subtle hints that Trenton could be motivated by wanting to be more than a geek, but left it vague enough for the future writers to take it whichever direction they wanted.

The chase scene had two major purposes: demonstrate the seriousness of their situation and to further establish Doug's propensity to do whatever it takes to find Kidwell. He fires a single bullet, makes one pull of the trigger, but I hoped it would show that Doug wasn't going to be this pushed-around journalist any longer. He had now done something he wouldn't have done a day ago and (because I like breaking parallels) something that Trenton had never been able to do.

Eric John Anderson (p. 51-61): I wasn't sure what to send you in regards to my pages, so I'll just tell you my experience:

For the most part, I was confused by the writing that I had received to that point. There were so many different plotlines and character arcs going that I couldn't figure out what to do next. Since I was in the middle of the screenplay, I had the opportunity to raise the stakes of the story with a twist, but the characters should have been on their way to their end goals and most of them weren't.

To make everything clearer, I decided to write a short outline for every scene. I also created a quick bio of each character thus far. The characters that I liked the least and that I thought were less important I decided to kill off or shun them from the script. I also wanted to clearly define the relationships thus-far, since it had not quite been expressed. And finally, I wanted to have a clearly defined goal for the characters.

Mostly I just wanted to blow it all up and start fresh without completely throwing off the main storyline thus far. We'll see if it was successful or not.

Project Wilson Phillips - Team Carnie: Day 2

Wrapping up our look at the first group to finish the Collaborative Writing Project dubbed "Project Wilson Phillips," here are the thoughts of the remaining members of Team Carnie reflecting on what they attempted to do with their pages.

Download the Team Carnie draft of the script.

Elena Ostroumova (p. 39-51): I was kind off baffled by the load of information and plots, and twists, and cliffhangers that were left for me after the 30 or so pages, that were written before me. There were the characters, the protags and the villains, and the poor guy, who gets (or doesn't get)
shot in the first scene, and the journalists, and the Russians (the latter two I was most surprised to see, because I'm a Russian journalist).

The story was twisted and action packed as much as it could be possibly done in the first 38 pages. I was going "Whoa!" on every page of the first reading. That was a good thing. I've clearly had the beginning of Act Two to write, so basically my idea was to slow down a bit, to get to know the characters a bit more, to get the insight into the reasons behind their actions, to give them names or tell something new about them, to give the next writers some leverage, so they could continue right on with the action. My ten pages were mostly talking, before the "doing" part, which I hoped would follow. I really wanted to explore the story about Editor Keller and how she was involved with this whole micro-chipping issue, hence the story of her mother and the secret files she passed on to her daughter before her disappearance.

Then I had the unsolved mystery of the note Doug found in the bar and how it lead him to the place where Nina was. And I also really wanted to play around the idea of Nina actually pretending to be VIPER on the island, not actually being zombied into it. So that's how the whole
"antidote" idea came to mind. I also really wanted to keep Jurgens in the story, who turned out to be Keller's long-time ally and friend.

And the most important thing, I really wanted to give some thought to the title - "Project Wilson Phillips". Who the hell is Wilson Phillips? And I sort of liked that intern guy character, and he was the right age, so I thought I'd through in a bit of mystery with the "Phi" clue. So they have to find the antidote, but they are going to go the long way, because he's actually right under their noses.

I also wanted to tell a bit more about A.J., why he turned out the way he did, so that's how I came about his childhood trauma, and long-time vendetta against his father, for not saving his mother, and marrying for a second time. The thing I didn't quite have place to really think
about, is what exactly was Vitaly's business in all this. He was obviously connected to A.J.'s research projects in Russia, and he was delivering the suspected "antidotes" to A.J. But I really wanted to know more, so I hope to find that out from what was written after me.

In the end of my ten pages I've formed an unlikely team of Doug Taylor - Nina Kidwell/Mack - Jackson Mack, with backup from Andy Keller and Jurges Hickey, with a hind that Jacksons partner Murphy could also join into the fun later on in the story.

Mr A (p. 51-60). I was happy to be apart of this experiment, most importantly, as in an exercise. I had intended to, on one hand, keep my segment interesting, and on the other, keep the flow and story intact. It was a concern of mine to continue what was already laid out, move it forward, but contribute to the overall story in my own way. I hoped to keep each aspect of the story intact in the way the previous contributors might appreciate.

I wanted to continue forward as the story had been unfolding, but also add a bit of interesting and revealing information as I fell midway through the story. It took some time, but I hope that the end result is as I intended.

Frank Livorsi (p. 61-70): Things that I tried to do with pages 61-70.

The scenario I was left with:

I was left with our group of commandos landing on an Island in the Pacific Ocean after Hi-jacking a helicopter. One other thing to deal with was the appearance of the “Behemoth” on the Island.

I tried to make it difficult for Nina, Jackson, and Doug. The Dogs, the Patrol boats, the chase. I wanted them worse off then when they got there. That’s why the helicopter was destroyed, stranding them there, with no means of escape. (All is lost.)

At this point it’s really kind of hard to determine who the protagonist is. Nina/Viper might be, but she has been killing off people throughout the script. Do we really like her? Jackson Mack, no. Doug, maybe.

The antagonist is easy, that’s AJ. So going off the earlier information that the newspaper editor, Andi Keller, is the half sister of AJ, I tried to give my team mates the option of making her the protagonist. Andi challenges AJ at page 70. She tells him she knows about , “The Chip.”

I also tried to give a possible explanation for “PHI,” making the intern, Phillips, the possible connection. I tried to tie in the “Fantasy Girls,” from the beginning of the script, using Vitaly to bring them there on a boat. The boat was a way to get Phillips on the Island, and an attempt to give them ( our commandos) a means of escape, if the writing team chose that route.

The Behemoth capturing Phillips, the intern, was a way of keeping both of them active in the script. Phillips handing AJ the phone was a way to introduce Andi Keller as the protagonist and next challenge.

Katy Quigley (p. 71-80): With my pages I tried to sort out a couple of the loose ends that were hanging around and sort out some of the confusion with regards to the relationships between some of the characters. I spent a fair while making notes on what had come before and had a couple of diagrams detailing what had been said by what characters and their relationships, this definitely came in handy when the plot began to get quite confusing. Having written scripts at college before, I thought it might be a fun way to get back in to the process, it was short and other people were relying on you to get it done, which definitely spurred me on.

Hank Pena (p. 80-90): I'll admit that I wrote my pages after a marathon of "N.C.I.S." and "Warehouse 13" the characters in those shows influenced this.

I wanted my pages to show a separation in the character's personalities, be (hopefully) a bit witty, and offer a good explanation to tie what I'd read together.

I searched the internet for examples of PHI and followed all that I read to the conclusions I wrote out. I chose not to write an escape scene and more action because I wanted to leave the final writer with an opportunity to write some cool action ending. Which, as an action writer, pained me. If I didn't take my pages up writing explanation and summation, the movie would have had to end like a Scooby-Doo episode...with everyone explaining what just occurred.

Patrick (p.90-99): I spent a day or so thinking, and had some ideas, but those ideas would take more than 10 pages. I'm a fan of brevity in film, so I decided to use my inability to provide an all inclusive, hit all the bases ending as my ending.

Also, while reading the script, I noticed as it went on, the tone shifted to a more comedic thing, so I figured I'd just end it on comedy.

It was an interesting experience, cuz, I was working two 10 hour a day jobs at the time. I had thought that would effect my writing, but, it didn't. It just gave me more time to think about writing, and play out my ending in my head, a million different ways before I got a chance to sit down and do any actual writing.

Good times.

Project Wilson Phillips - Team Carnie: Day 1

We're continuing our look at the results of the Collaborative Writing Project, with the first comments from the writers who picked up where I left off.

The Team Carnie version of the screenplay is available here.


Meg (p. 11-20): I really enjoyed the challenge in Operation Wilson Phillips (Team Carnie). Being in first (or is it technically second?) position allowed for some major freedom in terms of the direction I could take. I wanted to amp up the cheese factor and go for almost a cartoonized version of action characters. I hoped to begin to weave the different characters and scenes to one interlocking story. I wanted to, hopefully, add layers to the relationships between the characters and provide some fun reveals. My process is different on everything that I write. For this one, I brainstormed a lot, made a ton of notes on the pages Bitter provided, and then just tried to have fun with action and dialogue. I’m kicking myself now for some glaring typos. But I can’t wait to see how the story ended. Or how the other teams took the story.

Stephen (21-29): When I got the e-mail from the Bitter Script Reader on Sunday night, I decided not to look at the pages until I printed them out to read at the coffee shop where I do all my writing. I'm not a fan of reading scripts in PDF form on my monitor. I think it lowers the amount of attention you dedicate to reading. Printing off the script, I did notice that I would be writing pages 20-30. My first thought, "Great! I get to end Act I." Not a bad place to be. You get to decide the direction the rest of the script goes and ask the main question of the film. Sounded like a ton of fun.

Reading the pages, though, made me realize there was a lot more I'd have to do. There seemed to be a major shift at page 9, where I assume the 2nd writer took over, and I realized there were two issued I'd have to address. 1) Right at page 9, an entirely new protagonist appeared: Jackson Mack. Doug Taylor, who seemed to be the main character up to this point, only showed up for one scene in the second ten pages. 2) Viper became Nina, Doug's missing partner from the newspaper and Jackson's sister, but I couldn't get over the fact that in the opening scene, she killed a guy for no apparent reason.

When I sat down to write, my goals were to bring Doug back into the story without completely dismissing Jackson, explain the contradiction in Viper/Nina's actions, and hit a dramatic enough point that works as an act break. I came up with several possibilities, but my main idea ended up way to complicated to get across in just ten pages. In the end, I decided that my primary goal should be to give the next writer room to take the script where he/she wanted. I did my best to eliminate or explain the issues I saw, so whoever took over from me would have an open field to run and play. I think I accomplished that, though I'd be interested to see if that next writer agreed.

CTScanHollywood (p. 30-38): With my pages, I wanted to slow the pace just a tad because there was so much action at the beginning. I wanted to show the relationship between the guys more, and also to catch the reader up a bit on what was going on- who's who, what the hell just happened etc..

Tomorrow we'll hear from the rest of the writers, and please feel free to leave your comments about the screenplay in any of these threads!

Project Wilson Phillips - The First Ten Pages

Today I want to go scene-by-scene with my ten pages from Project Wilson Phillips in an effort to explain how I attempted to give the different groups a wide latitude to go in different directions.

Writing these ten pages proved harder than I expected because they still had to feel like the coherent beginning to a story. As any reader will tell you, the first ten pages of the script are the most important pages. In theory, those pages will lay out the tone and set up the major characters in such a way that a reader will have a sense of the kind of story they’re in for, even if the inciting incident hasn’t yet happened. Everything in these ten pages should be setting up something that’s paid off later.

And conversely, major points later in the film need to be set-up early on. As an example, in Back to the Future, it’s not until the second half hour that we find out that the one thing capable of generating enough power to send the time machine back to 1985 is a bolt of lightning. That means that Marty and Doc need to know where and when a bolt of lightning will strike. Fortunately, Marty happened to get some convenient exposition in the first ten pages about an historic lighting storm that will strike Hill Valley one week from now.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what’s coming on p. 40 of any of the Project Wilson Phillips scripts, so I have to create a set-up that I have no way of knowing how it will payoff.

p. 1-2: This scene is specifically designed to hint at some kind of larger revelation without telling anything at all. By the end of it, all we really know for certain is that Young Man has some very important information that Viper wants. In fact, it’s important enough to beat him and torture him over it. Despite Viper’s threatening nature, I tried to write the dialogue in a way that wouldn’t preclude a later writer from deciding that Young Man was a minion of the bad guys, and that Viper was a good guy of sorts going to extreme lengths to uncover and expose the truth.

I was very careful not to give either character a “real” name because I wanted the door to be open for later writers to reveal that, along with their agenda. Also, I deliberately didn’t show if Viper actually killed the Young Man.

p. 2-3: I liked the idea of using a homeless man to set the scene. It wasn’t until the car chase was barreling down on him that I remembered that I hate writing car chase scenes. Besides, I figured that to do that chase justice would be to burn most of my ten pages on mindless action. With that, it hit me that it might be more fun to see the chase from the Homeless Man’s POV.

The line “Wasn’t like this before the Vegans got here,” was another deliberate ambiguity. You could take it as the ramblings of a crazy man, sure. I also figured on at least two interpretations of that line. He could mean “Vee-Gans,” as in “people whose diets cause a lot of complications at cookouts,” or “Vay-Gans,” as in “aliens from another star system called “Vega.”

p. 3-4: Newspaper city room. This is pretty much just me doing some transitional stuff while I introduce Doug. I figured a reporter was a natural main character in a story about conspiracies. There’s also a little Daily Planet flavor here, and the name “Jurgens” is a reference to “Dan Jurgens,” one of my favorite Superman artists.

p. 4-6 : I went out of my way to make Andi a contrast to the screaming editors-in-chief we’ve seen in Superman and Spider-Man. Giving her a quiet energy seemed more interesting. The “sunspot activity” was another throwaway I hoped people would pick up on, and I did my best not to make the exposition about Taylor’s position in the doghouse too on-the-nose.

When they discuss Taylor’s partner Kidwell, I did my best to make it natural that they didn’t use that character’s first name or refer to his or her gender. I really wanted to leave that door open, and my thought was that either Viper or Young Man from the early scene could be revealed as Kidwell by later writers.

p. 6- 9: The week I wrote these pages, I’d read at least three human trafficking scripts in the previous two weeks and all of them had the Russians as bad guys. I figured if I set a particular plot up to “zig,” the next writers would be compelled to “zag,” so I wanted to see what they’d do with a semi-cliched set-up. I can’t count how many times I’ve read a scene where Russian brothel owners show off their wares to some man in power.

I couldn’t resist giving a twist to the “big client.” A.J. Trenton proved to be a fun character to write. Tell me that the image of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs in a brothel doesn’t make you giggle a little. Obviously I amped up the nerd qualities he had and I tried my damndest to get in some exposition about his character without resorting to someone directly comparing him to Gates or Jobs just so the audience would get the shorthand. (Granted, the Simpsons joke and his reference to having a smartphone a year ahead of the rest of the market ain’t exactly subtle either, but I hope they seemed organic.)

Naturally, once I had an uber-geek as the customer, it only made sense to dress the prostitutes as sci-fi sex-symbols. Vitaly’s line about not having a Princess Leia, followed by A.J. pointing out one is a pretty clear indication that girl isn’t supposed to be there. I figured I could set her up to be revealed as Kidwell too, working undercover.

Also, though this really is something that you shouldn’t do, I made sure not to specify if this “Leia” was wearing the slave girl outfit and braided hair from Return of the Jedi, or the white dress and bun hairdo of A New Hope. I wanted to leave that open to the interpretation of the latter writers. Obviously, in a “real” script, the character’s appearance should be clear to the reader as soon as they show up on-screen.

p. 9-10: I’ve always wanted to write a car chase that ended up smashing into another illegal deal, and use that to kick start the plot. I also like the image of the Russian bad guys taking out a guy we presume the police consider a big enough deal to chase all over the city.

This seemed like an appropriately over-the-top entrance for Jackson Mack. I was trying to ride the line when it came to tone. I wanted it to be just big enough so some groups could go broad with their story, yet grounded enough so if the next writer wanted to make it gritty, the tonal shift wouldn’t be completely inexplicable.

Download the Team Carnie draft of the script.

Tomorrow: Let’s hear how the first half of Team Carnie approached their pages.

Results of the Collaborative Writing Project aka "Project Wilson Phillips"

It started a few months ago. I had three teams of writers ready to participate in our round-robin style writing exercise. The rules were fairly simple. I’d kick things off with ten script pages, then throw those pages to the next person in the rotation of each team. When that person was done, they were to send me their pages and I would add them to the screenplay and pass that work forward to the next person.

As there were three teams, I tried to think of an appropriate code name for this little project, and immediately started thinking of various trios: Larry, Moe and Curly? Too obvious? Huey, Dewy and Louie? Better, but still not esoteric enough.

Wilson Phillips? Perfect. In the trio of second generation singers sired by members of The Beach Boys and the Mamas and the Papas, I’d found my team names: Carnie, Wendy and Chynna. Though many immediately identify them with their hit: “Hold On,” I tend to favor “Impulsive,” which I would say is one of the greatest forgotten songs of the early 90s. In fact, I like it so much that ages ago I tried to shoehorn it into my second script before I was smart enough to realize I shouldn’t do that.



Ah, the Nineties...

But back to the project. The rules were pretty basic. Each writer was supposed to add 10 pages. This ended up being a bit of a loose guideline. Some fell just short, while others ended up going slightly over. One or two even ran into trouble when the spacing in their program resulted in their submission being short when reformatted to match the others. Overall, everything more or less went to plan.

Each writer had a deadline of one week. Again, this mostly worked though one team in particular seemed cursed by delays brought on by illness and fickle spam folders. Everyone got a list of instructions, some of which are reprinted below:

“Yes, and?” style of improv rules is encouraged. A writer may not deny or unfairly undo details established by other writers in previous pages. However, shocking twists are encouraged so long as they don’t violate the spirit of this rule. In other words, it’s totally fair to reveal that a seemingly-paralyzed character has actually been faking all along (so long as the character’s paralysis isn’t reinforced in a scene where he’s alone and would have no reason to lie), but one cannot decide on p. 30 that the action really is taking place in Denver when early scenes have been written with it set in New York.

While I’m not going to tell you what you can’t do, try not to close any doors without opening some new ones. (In other words, don’t kill off all the characters and destroy the city in a nuclear bomb blast unless you’ve laid the groundwork for the story to continue somehow.)

I also warned them:

These first ten pages are not the greatest thing I’ve ever written. It’s hard to write the opening to a story without any idea where it’s going, and it’s just as hard to write a good opening that doesn’t box the story in too tightly in one direction. After all, since we have three teams, I wanted enough material established in the beginning so that we could end up with very disparate scripts.

So here’s a fair warning: these first few pages are laced with traps. You’re going to see things in there that you may have heard me rail against in the blog – or at least the suggestions of those things. It’s not my intention to have all of these turn out as compilations of the worst screenwriting clichés ala BALLS OUT, though. If that’s where the process takes us, so be it. But don’t forget that it’s totally fair to subvert those clichés and spin things into a completely original direction. My “cliché” set-up could play like brilliant misdirection if it’s followed by brilliant plot twists that go in a new direction.

In theory, I had the easiest job of this whole competition. I had a blank slate as I started my ten-pages and could set up anything without having to worry about the consequences.

In theory.

Over the next week plus, we’ll be taking a look at each of the three scripts that resulted. Tomorrow I’ll explain what I was trying to accomplish in my initial ten pages, and later in the week we’ll hear from many members of the teams as they talk about their goals for their pages.

Team Carnie is up first and you can find their script here.

Special thanks to Nate Winslow for helping me set up the file hosting for the scripts this week.