Comments Made During the Contest

Adam Grage (Level 4)

You have a good feel for most of the characters and I am intrigued by the story but I am still unsure the direction of the story. Without having the log line to go from I am unsure why Jeremiah is hunting down the woman and her child.

You also add details in the description that are shown on the screen. Such as when you refer to Malea being a too young mother. Later in that scene, Desea mentions the baby is Malea's and since Malea is in her teens most people would connect the dots. If they are something that is spoken and shown, any editorial comments related to it are unnecessary.

Another small detail, you refer to Jeremiah by his full name once when he is in the freezer, but not again. Just stick to how they are called consistently through the whole piece.

This are minor things compared to the piece as a whole. I think you have a good beginning here and I think if you can jump into the meat of the story more it will be even better. Good luck.

Austin Jones (Level 4)

This is really wonderful. I love the characters! I am already invested and want to know more about them and where they are going. Great set up and transition from past to future…nice use of technology to give it a sci fi feel. Nice dialogue and good action. Not much more I can say except I hope to read more! Best of luck!

Brian Wind (Level 5)

First and foremost, I fully approve of the name change. The Boy was way to bland. Boy Six is much, much better and gives a better sense of the script's tone. Good decision there. This was written and flows very well. The characters are well defined. The dialogue is believable. The concept seems cool and this is a great set up. I enjoyed this one quite a bit and look forward to reading the rest of it in a few months. Nice work.

Caroline Coxon (Mod Emeritus)

New title. I don't recognise this one. Why no capitals?

Logline STILL reminds me of Children of Men, and I STILL don't know what Area 51 is meant to be!

round man....Guillermo, round and sweaty - you tell us twice.

I very much like the beginning, the way you set the scene - electric.

gingerly, deftly, carefully - you use quite a lot of adverbs! Your descriptions are plenty good enough without!

"a puff of frigid air fills the room" - how will we SEE this? Maybe a napkin flutters to the floor?

"with no small amount of relief" - how do we KNOW this?

"Not from the cold, or from fear, but as a marionette, cruelly jerked about by an unseen force." Uh? How do we know THIS?

"He's not a man who puts a lot of stock in luck." - How do we know this?

"It's a decent point." - this is your opinion, nothing that could be seen on screen.

INT. TINY SHOP -- DAY - this isn't a very helpful slugline!

I find slightly confusing the use of MAN/JEREMIAH MAMA/WOMAN and now THE MAN/THE INTRUDER

a sawed off shotgun - sawn off shotgun

I think this has great potential, I enjoyed it - great tension, well-drawn characters, but I think the logline is misleading - I was thinking I was reading the wrong screenplay - I think it's the fact that MAMA doesn't appear to be tortured, there's no reference to this mysterious Area 51, and in the logline we don't know he's going against the CIA doing this. I guess when I read the logline I had certain expectations about the plot which didn't transpire in the ten pages.

It now reminds me of 'Mercury Rising'!

"Bruce Willis is an outcast FBI agent who is assigned to protect a 9 year old autistic boy who is the target for assassins after cracking a top secret government code."

Chris Keaton (Level 5)

This story has an interesting hook, but suffers from poor writing. Little questions like, where are the bodies and such don't distract as long as the pace keeps up. Good luck with it. And if you continue on, I expect these problems to be fixed! :)

Notes:
- Little things like missing spaces and double dashes in your scene headings can be distracting.
- Lose the word 'IS' and words ending with 'ING' and you will greatly improve your writing.
- A lot of typos.
- Double space before scene headings.
- CUT TO isn't needed.
- I don't like your scene changes. This style is fine occasionally.

Chris Messineo (Founder)

I think this title is even better than the original. I love the subtext of it. As if the boy is a science experiment.

Great opening scene. Awesome visuals and inter-cutting. Your craft is great and I love the way you describe the action.

My only concern is that by the end of the ten pages I had so many questions, maybe a few more than I wanted. I think I know what is going on, but I'm not positive.

Still, this was very good and I definitely want to read on.

Dan Lennox (Level 5)

This was really good! Among many things, I especially liked your opening scene in the restaurant, and your characters. You had a good hook right from the beginning, and I thought your pacing moved the story along well.

Not much to say on this one! I think you're on to something here and if the rest of the script reads like the first ten pages, I'll be dissapointed if I don't see this in the finals. Scripts like these make for easy reviews.

Excellent Job!

David Birch (Level 5)

your beginning was the most compelling part of the script, although much of it was frittered away with overly descriptive run-on sentences that s-l-o-w-e-d the read to a crawl...you took five lines to describe something that you then told us "took less than a second"...keep it brief and use those action verbs...stay away from flowery language that uses adverbs (ly words)...

Dom Kullander (Level 3)

Thoroughly enjoyable story! Strong opening. Jeremiah instantly stands out from your descriptions. Your ability to mix the serious with the comical (for example the revolver in the bowl of flour) is a great strength of your writing. Braden has a lot of potential as the institutionalised CIA vet, I would give him a lot of dialogue throughout the rest of the movie.

Dusty Fincher (Level 3)

Okay, first things first. I will watch this movie. I want to read the rest. I had high hopes from reading the log line (It's my type of genre) and so far, you've done a bang up job keeping those hopes high. I can't find much about this to really comment on, save to say that I really enjoyed it, found the characters exciting, loved the opening scene, thought it was tightly written, ect. ect.

Just finish writing it so I can read the rest in August. This is really good stuff.

Faith Friese Nelson (Level 5)

Page 1: "The door to the back swings open and a round man enters, wiping his hands with a rag. GUILLERMO, 50s, round and sweaty." Is the Guillermo the round man or someone else? Can't tell from the way it's written.

Work on writing in a more active voice. Try to rewrite as many of the words IS or ARE that you can. Also ING words. Example on page 1: "The dining room is completely empty, though sounds of activity filter through a swinging door in the corner." Consider instead: The empty dining room, quiet except for sounds that filter behind a corner door."

Felice Bassuk (Level 4)

The writing is good though I can't really tell where the story is headed. From the logline I gather that Jeremiah will have a significant relationship with Mama and her son, but in the first ten pages she seems to be just one of many characters introduced. Perhaps if you were to describe her in some unique way, both physically and by giving her some extraordinary or unusual trait when you introduce her, she would be more memorable and would stand out as a character to watch.

There are a number of questions raised, but for now I'm mostly in the dark.

I like how your slugs blend into the description and vice versa but I think you overdid it a bit. In general, though, the writing is clean and stylistically appealing.

Jeannie Sconzo (Level 5)

Some parts I liked and some I didn't. I liked the descriptions where the mom was holding her son when the stranger appeared. Before that part, it seemed a bit too technical.

Jess Flower (Level 3)

This was an excellent 10 pages. I'm actually upset with you that I can't finish it. Strong characters. Good use of foreign language mixed in just enough to give us a believable character, but not too much so we can't follow it. You definitely "saved the cat" with Jeremiah and you hooked me with him immediately. Really excellent. The ONLY thing I might try (and again just one guy's opinion) is to play with certain characters NOT answering when faced with a big statement or question. It makes the audience finish the line in our heads and can heighten the drama. In Jeremiah's case... when Braden says "Those should have been your kills," what would happen if Jeremiah just looked at him and then left? Also when Desta tells Madea to "tell the boys to hang out somewhere else" (or something like that) if Madea said nothing but looked guilty. The audience KNOWS Desta is good and Madea doesn't have to say it.
...Just looked at it again -- I LOVE the moment when we transition from freezer to the conference room. Well done!

John Brooke (Level 5)

Right off I must confess that I’m generally not a lover of international futuristic political thrillers and I will try to judge what I perceive from your logline just such a speciaman.

Here we go again another tough story popped fresh out of the mold. The great American stone faced hero shows those fatsos how it’s done. What crap the usual ton of technology, the usual scenarios, them and us, mavericks vs. heroes vs. the rotten system - I have to return here and show some respect.

First impressions are so damn powerful, indeliable in the mind. So here I go again with a fresh and open mind.

Your opening scene contains a muchos superfluous detail like the yarn tying the bell to the door. This is a barrier I’m forced to read through to get to your story.

Once I get past the sterotypicl cantina and fat Méxicano and into the action your story moves along smoothly. The intergration of technology and Jeremiah’s human reactions work smoothly together.

We reach a moral impasse at the freezer as we learn the motive behind this high-tech hunt. The shock of learning the target is a small boy works well, despite being tipped off by the logline. You compel me to read more.

Sudden like, I’m stopped cold as an surreal conversation is voiced over between an unintroduced MAN: MALCOLM and Jeremiah. This whole episode left me completely stunned, what was this all about? What was happening?

Then it’s a quantum leap into a Conference Room located somewhere or another. Another abstract conversation is in progress that I don’t understand. But I did enjoy that humorous touch when Braden tells Malcolm that he is going to assign Jeremiah a rehab assignment babysitting.

You lured me on with a series of seemingly disconnected conversations and hooked my to with what I took for a cynical comment from Lt. Col. Phillips at the end of page ten when he says “I was hoping to find someone who could tell me the future.”

You’ve done good.

John LaBonney (Level 4)

I think you're off to a pretty good start on these first ten pages. I liked the restaurant scene and am anxious to learn more about the intruder, especially since the CIA guys don't know who he is. We need to see another ten pages before we can really get into this story.

Kevin Carty (Level 4)

I like it, the action/description lines are engaging. You have got a talent for it. I kind of have a feeling that I know who wrote this. Nice stuff it flows well. Wish you didn't use alpha and sparrow like you did. It kind of makes the script unoriginal in its approach.
For the first ten pages you seem to have the right idea. Nice lil twist on the spanish but more translation and less of the full spanish. I know its the most spoken language in the world but try and consider the native speakers there are ways to say that he is speaking in spanish. However if you don't want us to understand that is feasible. I get it but I fear others may not.
Nice story you get a very good from me.

Khamanna Iskandarova (Level 5)

I thought this was excellent. I gobbled up your entry in 5 minutes. You grabbed my attention on page 2 holding me in suspense to the end of it.

Funny - it's not the kind of movie I would normally watch.

Few notes:
I would give the dimension of the freezer on page 5.
I would eliminate small insignificant "moved here, looked there" in between the dialog lines. Like on page 10, for example, you have "Malea stops. Desta eyes her back from across the room." It's only two of them in the room, I would imagine one "eye" another. I thought these were distracting.
Bottom of page 8 - "the too young mother". I'm no expert at this but thinking "too young to be a mother" or "too young for a mother" sounds better.

I thought all the Voice Overs were a smart move. And I could appreciate the smart descriptions such as "a stark contrast to the stressful man he was in the operations room."

I'm thinking if Malea and Desta have an accent I would like to hear it (meaning you should show it, maybe).

That was excellent! I'm really thankful for this one.

Kirk White (Level 5)

this is great! superb opening! it actually kind of suprises me because I wasn't blown away by the logline, but this opening is excellent: great action, strong visuals, a solid lead character and enough intrique to make me want more. I definately hope this one gets to go the distance because I'm very interested in finding out more!

KP Mackie (Level 5)

WOW. Beginning to end, not a wasted word. Easy to read, easy to follow. Visually stimulating. Characters well-defined. The compelling details: a bell tied with yarn to the door, the revolver dropped in the bowl of flour, Desta stroking the baby and "trying to wish the man away." Terrific.
Not to be construed as criticism, but a translation of Guillermo's (and Mama's) Spanish might be helpful. Assume it would show up as subtitles; meanwhile, not everyone knows Spanish. The dialogue about a beer and a burrito is clever, in English as well as Spanish. Also, Guillermo saying "he doesn't know" when Jeremiah asks about the child is pertinent to the story.
A real pleasure to read these "first ten." Cannot wait to read the finished story.

Kyle Patrick Johnson (Level 5)

I don't care for the cutesy non-caps title.

As I always say, the first slugline or paragraph is not the right place to make a mistake. "INT.RESTAURANT". Needs a space after the period. Should be "INT. RESTAURANT".

You don't need to introduce Jeremiah as MAN for the first half of a page. What purpose does that serve? Just give us his name, and then tell us his face is hidden. Remember, we haven't met him yet, so we have no preconceived notions of who this MAN could be. He could have any name under the sun, we still wouldn't know. Calling him MAN first is a charade of suspense given to the reader that doesn't affect the viewer at all. Just give us the name.

Fascinating stuff. I definitely want to keep reading this script. You keep throwing fun curveballs, and you've got me engaged. Good luck to you.

Rating: Excellent.

Margaret Ricke (Level 5)

Riveting! A few suggestions - You don't need the "CUT TO:"s in this draft... Okay, one suggestion.

Your characters are beautifully written. The dialogue is natural and believable. Your ability to build tension and then surprise the reader is wonderful. Formatting is good. The story itself has my total attention and I want to read this through to the end, and then see it on an IMAX screen with a bucket of popcorn and a gallon of pop.

Excellent work.

Marnie Mitchell Lister (Level 5)

Best sign...I want to read more! This is a very good start. Nice tension set up right from the beginning. I was a little confused and had to read a couple parts twice, like when they were in the cooler. That scene could be a little clearer. Once I understood it I was really into it.

Very good job and I hope I get to read the rest. :)

Martin Jensen (Level 5)

Unnecessary words: "visibly shaken" (we're watching it, so we wouldn't know if he was shaken otherwise), "responds with broken English of his own", and generally appropriate verbs are better than adverbs for giving an image of an action (e.g.: "begins walking gingerly" could become "saunters").

The way you have written some action beats make them less exciting and tense than they could be. For example:

"Jeremiah's chair clatters backward as he launches to his feet and deftly grabs Guillermo by the wrist."
To keep the action clear and the audience focused on the important parts (i.e., where the characters are physically) I'd advise editing it to something like this:
"Jeremiah leaps to his feet, knocking his chair backwards. He grabs Guillermo by the wrist."

Things like these examples cropped up through the whole script, but it only needs another read-through to spot these moments and strengthen them.

Despite these, the scene in the kitchen was still quite tense, but overall it feels so far like a very clichéd thriller, especially the scenes in the CIA room. Play up the original aspects of your script - the alien elements - and give Jeremiah more of a personality, even when killing people.

Maurice Charlot (Level 3)

"Boy Six" is on point. I liked this script a lot. The details are dead on. Its a lot of action and you let the visuals take up most of your script. I like scripts with a lot of action-not bang bang but let me put it this way not much dialouge.

This is the best script I've read so far and this writer has a great sense or the thriller/sci-fi genre's.

The guy with the scar isn't scary enough but he's a great character. Thats on the actor to make his presence evolve.

I'm impressed at this talented writer. Kudos keep up the swell work.

Melissa Mitchell (Level 4)

Nicely written; you have some interesting bits, namely the kid in his underwear in the freezer. I'm not sure enough of what is going on, though. Who is the main character and what does that person want? You might want to give some thought to clarifying that part of the story if it isn't clear in the next page or two. Otherwise, good job, thanks for sharing, and I'm looking forward to reading the next installment.

Micah Ricke (Level 4)

This will be my shortest review.

VERY GOOD. My favorite so far. I can hardly wait to read the rest of it!

Michael Hoffman (Level 4)

(Title/Logline comments are just observations. No effect on the scoring.)

TITLE: I understand the possible significance but it just doesn't quite grab me.
LOGLINE: Sounds like it could be exciting but doesn't sound all that original. Also sounds slightly disjointed. Maybe, "After helping a woman to escape Area 51, a CIA agent fights to protect both her and the child she carries."

STORY:
I think you touch on the concept of the logline but the specific story seems yet to really take shape. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, if I hadn't read the logline I might be somewhat confused about exactly what is going on.
The use of the word bogey's threw me off a bit. I immediately think of aircraft. Maybe just 'targets' might get the job done.
I also believe you should offer more description of the "TINY SHOP". I would have liked to know what the shop was and why the DESTA/MALEA conversation was taking place there. MALEA's introduction also sounded awkward.

I don't mean to sound overly negative about your script. I actually believe it is pretty good. It was easy to follow the action and some of the visuals were really cool, like the boy in the freezer. Overall, I think the biggest weakness is that it just develops too slowly. I like some of your descriptions but I think your narrative could be written more economically. This would produce better pacing to match the brisk action that takes place in that exciting opening scene.

Good start though.

Miriam Goldman (Level 3)

Those first ten pages were a jerky trip through who-knows-where. I would really have to recommend that you tell us where we are, at least generally. I assumed that the first part was in Mexico and the second part was in some big city like Los Angeles or New York, but I would have liked something to back up my humble conjecture. After having read that, even having had the first mentions and descriptions of these characters, I feel that I don't know the slightest thing about them. I highly recommend adding some more description to the characters' first appearances and making the dialogue more natural and less stereotypical. Also, I would recommend using a wryly to tell us when the character is speaking in Spanish instead of leaving all of the No-Habla-Espanol crowd typing frantically into Babelfish!
1/5

MJ Hermanny (Level 5)

This script takes a couple of pages to get going, I found the first page in particular quite clunky and hard to read but then the pace really changes and I was hooked right in. I wasn't expecting the CIA angle in the opening scene you set and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Characters: very good, you introduce them all extremely well (except Guillermo)and I found it easy to picture them, especially Jeremiah who I warmed to because of his hesitation to kill, this shows a weakness, a flaw in an otherwise strong man.

Dialogue: Excellent. A natural ear for dialogue. I felt it flowed well except maybe for Malea, she has a strange cadence with her speech and an odd phrasing.

Story: Great, I'm hooked and am dying to know what happens next to Jeremiah and Desta, they're the 2 characters that stand out for me. I liked how the story grabbed me the minute the CIA entered the action. I'm very intrigued.

Format: excellent. no typos. A bit over wordy in places, some descriptions near the beginning could do with a trim.

Overall a very good read.

Below are the comments I made as I read the script for the first time:

I feel your introduction to Guillermo is awkward as you describe him twice. This could be a smoother intro:

'and GUILLERMO, a round, sweaty man in his 50s enters. He wipes his hands with a rag'

'The MAN at the table nods as he slides a cigarette into his
mouth and lights it with a tarnished lighter before speaking
from the shadows of his hood.'

The above is beautifully written but I think it needs to be simplified.

'Guillermo freezes for a brief moment' = I think just Guillermo freezes. the qualifier takes away from the impact of the beat.

...'drops a napkin on the table with some plastic utensils,'

The above is confusing - is it the table that has plastic utensils or the napkin? It's not clear what the character is doing and you need to be crystal clear in a script.

Fantastic intro to Jeremiah, ruined by the (MAN) - give your reader some credit!!

'Guillermo is fidgeting, his hands shaking as they brush the front of his apron.' - keep it simple:

Guillermo fidgets with his apron.

'begins walking gingerly' - 3 words where you could have 1: tiptoes/creeps/sidles
(use doing words - he runs/ he dodges - not passive words - he begins walking)

Ah! Fantastic line into the CIA world - was not expecting that, great reversal!

Not sure how well the VO works to idicate the huge man killed them, it pulled me out of the story totally and took me a few reads to get what was going on. Shame because the script has taken a fantastic turn and I was absolutely riveted.

Tiny shop - tiny baby !! use a different word, perhaps Desta's Shop which is what you use later.

Pete Barry (Level 5)

First off, a MUCH better title than "The Child" - I think that was the original - even with the pretentious lower-case. Some great visual moments in these first ten pages - a child's room in an industrial freezer, and the gun falling into the flour. The characters are well-defined and the dialogue is captivating.

The "heat is heat" conversation isn't entirely necessary - there's a small payoff with the freezer, but it's not quite the right payoff - it's good in its own right, but the conversation about the intricacies of thermal imaging still seems like wasted time. I don't know about the descriptive phrase "stare a hole THROUGH" somebody, but that's a nitpick.

The biggest problem I have is structural. I have to assume that Desta is the woman to be tortured, who bears the child the logline specifies, and Jeremiah is the CIA agent. But the way you've set it up: an all-action prologue with Jeremiah, then some casual soul-searching with Desta, sets up her as the protogonist of the story, and him as the secondary character. That's fine, but the logline doesn't specify any action for her - it's definitely following Jeremiah's action. I could be wrong, but that's the feel I get from the first ten.

Still, overall, a great job, and good luck in the contest.

Philip Whitcroft (Level 5)

I'm going to comment as I go along as I do when reviewing features:

Pg 1 - "GUILLERMO, 50s, round and sweaty." - Could mention he is a waiter because it took me a little while (especially when he talks Spanish) to figure this out.

Pg 2 - "from the zippo." - I think Zippo needs capitalizing.

"The whole exchange over in less than a second." - This would be better described indirectly. As a separate sentence it seems redundant.

Pg 4 - It has got into a tense exciting scene. Like 24 and James Bond in style.

Pg 7 - "He's not a man who puts a lot of stock in luck." - This is difficult to see on screen.

Pg 8 - The tension so far has been good and you have given the thing a gritty atmosphere. At the moment I'm not feeling invested with the characters. That might be because I don't know much about them yet.

Pg 9-10 - This could be the beginning of a different story. The style is consistent but nothing in these pages connects it to what has happened before, aside from the baby comment.

Overall you have gone for a set piece set up that is a solid set piece. I'm not sure if it is a strong set up because the characters are still thin and it remains unclear what the thrust of the story will be. When dramatic situations are presented without context it can be hard for the audience to fully connect to what is happening. This is what happened to me here. I could see it was dramatic, but I didn't see why I should care, what the motivations are, and what I'm hoping will happen, so I'm not sure how I should have reacted.

On the other hand I like the fact that you are drip feeding the story into motion because that does convince me that the story will play out to feature length.

Rick Hansberry (Moderator)

There's a lot of good things here. More good than bad but still, there were times where I wanted less and times when I wanted more. Often there was one too many words of description. On the first page alone - is a tinkle ever anything but gentle? Does it matter that the lighter is tarnished? Do Jeremiah's eyes have to be 'deep blue?' These type of descrpitions take page space away from character actions that reveal more about what we really need to know. I thought you did a great job of writing the intercut with the camera operators at the CIA and the opening was very engaging. But there were some inconsistencies with actions. First, Guillermo has the gun in his hand but you have Jeremiah removing it from his waistband. In the freezer, you have Jereniah knocked senseless but then he watches in horror. The set up with the baby showed promise and, like I said, there were some really well-written elements in these pages but I didn't get that spark that many of the other scripts generated. This is my next to last script read in this contest and I'll be hoping that you finish this script. If you do, I'd like to read it and see how it plays out. I am ranking each script personally to arrive at my own Top 10. Your ranking is: Not in my Top Ten.

Rob Gross (Level 4)

I'm not sure about the title and its relevance to the logline or story. From what you've set up in the first ten pages, I'm not sure it coincides with the log line either, other than there's a CIA agent.

I enjoyed the thrilling opening scene. Here's some comments/suggestions:

After you introduce characters using their first and last name, you may want to use their last name only in the future.

When Jeremiah closes the walkin on the MAMA, he blinks twice. Seems like there's too much there to leave to my imagination. I couldn't tell how he looked or what his mood was.

No need to describe Malcom's "whiskered" chin, unless it's relevant to the story.

Seems like Braden is much too calm about Jeremiah's failure on the mission. He should have been pissed off that he disobeyed him.

Bottom of page 8: you introduce "a young woman stands nearby"...When we see the character for the first time it should be in caps. Because the next line you introduce MALEA. I don't know if the young woman is Malea, or another young woman.

You've given us a lot to wonder about in the first ten pages. I'd be interested to see what's next. Good luck.

Rustom Irani (Moderator)

Great characters. Excellent set-up. Fantastic pacing.

Gimme more. What else can I say?

Sarah Daly (Level 2)

This is an engaging thriller from the get-go. The supernatural twist adds much needed flavor to what could otherwsie be quite a run of the mill story - the scene with the makeshift child's bedroom changes the tone and takes us in a new and interesting direction. From here, we're hooked. A great, action-packed introduction to the narrative that also sets the tone of the piece well - there are layers and levels to this and you have intertwined the various stories quite well. There are quite a few characters introduced in these pages but you have done this skilfully so it works and we're not left confused. You have hooked us sufficiently at this point, introduced your main characters and laid the foundations for future conflict. Really good job. This is sort of a cross between The Bourne Identity and Children of Men - and it works.

Sasha Clancy (Level 4)

The two areas that I rate in this contest that carry the most weight are whether or not the first 10 pages are a compelling beginning and does it deliver on the promise/premise of the logline.

Does it have a compelling beginning? Yes and no. You start with a very evocative scene and end with a bit of a mystery. But, at this point, the two don't seem to be tied together and since the first part is closed (assuming that the mother and child really are dead), there isn't a natural lead in to the next part of your story.

Is there an inciting incident? Yes. From what I can tell, it is Jeremiah's failure to complete his mission. My assumption is that it will spur him to want to make sure he doesn't fail again but you don't allude to that at all.

Is there a theme stated? Not that I could tell.

Does it deliver on the promise/premise of the logline? Not so far. So far everything has been set up to the story, at least as far as I can tell.

Other comments: You do a good job of describing things, I can see them clearly in my head. You also do a good job with your action sequences and moving from scene to scene to keep it interesting and not focused on one place for too long. Is "Pots. Pans" supposed to mean the sound of pots and pans or do we see them? You need to make that clearer.

Scott Merrow (Level 5)

This seems like it's going to be a good screenplay. The first ten pages are well written, and the story is exciting and (at least so far) very mysterious. A couple minor comments: I think you could tighten up the scene in the cantina. Forget the Predator and the high tech stuff. Just let Jeremiah do his thing, and then, if there's any exposition you need to take care of, do it in the debrief. That opening scene should be all action -- fast and furious. Repeatedly cutting back to the CIA ops room does two things -- one good and one bad. The good thing is it shows us that this op has high-level interest. But the bad thing -- it slows the movie down. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the bad thing outweighs the good. We've all seen enough (too many, really) scenes where high-level dudes watch a bunch of blips on a screen back in the command center. It's no longer fun to watch that stuff. If it's necessary, fine. If not, get rid of it. In this case, it doesn't seem necessary to me. One other comment: the last scene with Desta and Malea seems like it's setting up a REALLY cool storyline. BUT...their coversation was really confusing. Maybe THEY understood what they were talking about, but the important thing is for US to understand. For example, what ghost? What boys? What's the point of the discussion about motherhood prerequisites? "Wow. You're good." What does THAT mean? It's really cool that you're introducing the whole psychic, seeing-into-the-future concept, and the characters (Desta and Malea) are interesting. But their conversation is confusing. One small thing: Are Desta and Malea African-American? If so, you should let us know in their character descriptions. It would help us visualize.

Shane Shearer (Level 4)

Good start. I enjoyed the action packed beginning and the twists and turns that ensued. Your craft is in good form and the continuous shots of the agent, the cia room, and the back and forths between them are well done.

The starting storyline with the woman and the child flows well too. A bit of humor thrown in the mix for relief from all the tension in the script.

Not a bad start at all. I'm curious to see how the rest will unfold although we can identify the good and the bad fairly quickly, and its doesn't throw much new into the mix. A basica, yet solid, beginning to a movie with action, adventure, chase scenes, romance and the like. But, it's all still done well. This is clearly something that will sell, in my opinion, so keep to it and I'm sure we'll be seeing this on the silver screen one day.

Shaun Bragg (Level 4)

A really good script packed to the rim with actions and good dialouge. I'm anticipating the rest of the script. A great story and actions. I had a blast. Very detailed and easy to follow. What needs changing is maybe sorting some of the descriptions. Overall good job. Good story well told.

Tim Westland (Moderator)

I like the title a lot.

This is very good. The story keeps moving, there are interesting moments, the characters are well drawn.

I want to read more, which means you are doing things right.

There are things you can do to improve, though. You micromanage things a bit... too much description. In fact, you have description after virtually every line of dialogue.

I think you could easily tighten things up and save an entire page.

But that's easy stuff to do... this is very good and I look forward to reading more.

Well done.

Tom Shipley (Level 4)

I think that you write very well. The action moves along at a crisp pace and holds my attention. That being said, I was a little underwhelmed by the story. I know it's just the first 10 pages, but just going on those, I'm not sure it would stick out among X-file type thrillers. Again, what's there is good and well written, but I think I'd like to see a cold open that hooks in the reader a little more. If the kid can tell the future, maybe show that in the opening. Show an ordinary situation and make it extraordinary. It seems there's something special about the kid, but we don't see what that is.

Absent that, it seems kind of like a rote CIA thriller. I guess I'd just like to see more of what makes this story unique or interesting up front.

Tommy Merry (Level 4)

Title: Interesting

Logline: This is an improvement from the first version of your logline as I remember.
It's nice and tight and succinct.

Overall: I thought the story started off a bit slow but it was having
some great feel to it by page 6 and 7. I'm not sure about the Malea and Desty
part lost me a bit, not sure if this is connected to the boy in the freezer.
Also not sure if kid was shot by the shotgun after the agent was knocked out.
The sign above Desta's head, was that referring to a business sign over their
house/business?

We started out growing strong but lost me a bit towards the end.

I really liked the part about the wunderkind and the cryptic notes flying in the air in the freezer, in the full screen play addition you might want to elaborate on that a bit more cuase it was a magical moment.

Best of luck!

Comments Made After the Contest