Comments Made During the Contest

Adam Grage (Level 4)

I really liked this piece. I would have liked to see the remote not work for him because it seemed it was a easy way out of some parts of the story and it would have recheted up the conflict. Still a good piece.

Ali Barr (Level 4)

I liked the surreal feeling of it and the building intensity. I was entertained but I can't say I understood WHY. Lot of questions. But I liked it anyway. Structure needs some tweaking to clarify his motives.

I like your style of writing also. Easy to read.

Audrey Webb (Level 5)

Interesting concept. I don't know where he would get such a device, but what a great invention!

I stopped reading all the times he used the device, because I got the idea, then I jumped to the end. I guess that could be considered a sign that you could lose a few of the examples of how often he used the device, although I know that you were going for a build there.

Brad Huffman Parent (Level 4)

I like the idea, just not sure how I feel about the logic and consequences of Tom's actions. Is that device killing them or just sending them somewhere else? If it's killing, then that's a lot of murder in a very short time and it comes a little too easy to him to be believeble. I'm really not sure what he's feeling at the end. Does he feel bad about what he's done or is he just relieved that everything is quiet?

Brian Wind (Level 5)

This was very well done. Well written, good pace, humorously dark story. I didn't get what was being implied by the final line of the script though. His eye glowing blue just made me confused and forced me to wonder if I had completely missed something earlier on. Nice job.

Caroline Coxon (Mod Emeritus)

EXT. URBAN STREET - MORNING
PRESENT
Traffic noise echoes through a busy downtown street.

You don't need to say the same thing twice.

I liked the idea of this screenplay, but I felt it was overlong. Once he'd zapped a few things the joke began to wear a bit thin.

If you'd done this in two pages it would have been far more effective!

I'd like to see a re-write.

Chris Messineo (Founder)

This is a great high-concept idea.

It felt a little too long and a bit repetitive. But I think with a rewrite to tighten it, this could be really wonderful.

I wonder, did you ever consider having the remote just silence the item/person in question, but not actually have them disappear? Sort of a world mute button.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this.

Colin Garland (Level 2)

I thought this was very well written. I was worried it would slip into obviousness, but it definitely didn't as the extremity of the ending caught me off guard (in a good way). I was rather pleased with the ending, and I am glad we actually were forced to like this man at first: kind to his pet, average guy, etc. Well done!

Dan Lennox (Level 5)

Not a bad idea here. The only problem in my opinion was that it seemed very repetitive. After a few times of Tom using his remote, it became boring and predictable. Perhaps a series of shots to show Tom's use of the the remote would better serve the story and also save valuable line space.

Nice job on the formatting as I didn't notice any issues that would be of concern. Interested to read the rewrite on this one.

Dawn Calvin (Level 5)

Very Good.
This was very good use of the No Dialogue theme.

I have to say, it was busy, busy, busy. I felt there was a lot going on and it could have been trimmed and still been effective.

Really creative piece.

Don Riemer (Level 4)

I loved the first 2 pages of this script! Wonderful setup, great sense of detail, and you really made me eager to see where this story was headed. But the appearance of the magical noise-eliminator was disappointing, especially when Tom just kept using it over and over again. The last 3 pages became very repetitious. It also just didn't feel right.... this guy becoming a mass murderer. How about this for an ending.... the magical remote doesn't actually destroy things... instead, it transports them to some other dimension. So that when Tom finally uses it on himself, he actually transports himself to a place filled with all the noisy people and things he sent there. Now, there's irony for ya. But I really loved reading it. Nice job!

Elias Farnum (Level 5)

I think the use of the conjunction "as" should be eliminated, and clarify the sequence of actions. When one thing happens as another one is, that tells me they both are happening simultaneously.

Water drips through a coffee maker as an electric opener whirs across the lip of a cat food can.

Perhaps you could use "and" instead of as, or just break it up.

Water drips through a coffee maker.

An electric opener whirs across the lip of a cat food can.

This is more deliberate, and in control of what I see - no confusion. I won't list every instance in your script, you know where they are. Could perhaps just be my pov, if nobody else says anything about it.

The story itself was a little too crazy, and ultimately predictable. I was interested in knowing how his ears got injured, and where and how to order one of those remotes.

Tough challenge this month.

Jim Montgomery (Level 3)

Had to laugh to myself at the end. Nice visuals maybe a little over the top but not much. Reminds me of my father, pay attention to the directions!

Kirk White (Level 5)

a clever story. a little like Click but I enjoyed the oddball-ness of it. With all the crazy stuff going on, it still felt a little flat as a story. I guess I just wanted to know more about Tom and the whys.

Not sure, but I enjoyed the read.

Lewayne White (Level 4)

Interesting. Very Twilight Zone. I can think of a few things I'd use the "Use Only As Needed" device on.

Margaret Ricke (Level 5)

I think I saw this on an old "Twilight Zone" or "Night Gallery," and, no, I don't think you saw that show or any other like it and borrowed the idea. We all look out at the same world and our observations of it are often coincidental. As I read this I felt like you gave it a once over. You're aspiring to be an artist, though. The story's a good one, but you need to think it through more. Why would a person so adverse to noise have a cuckoo clock or an alarm clock or anything that makes any sort of irritating noise? Who sent him the remote? Did he order it? Was it a gift or a mis-ship? Why was he so close to the edge psychologically that he started erasing everyone and everything that made noise. Why was he so desperately running? How do you think he felt about being all alone in the quiet at last? If you don't fill in the blanks someone else will do it for you.

Marnie Mitchell Lister (Level 5)

This was entertaining and very original. I'm not sure I understood whaat happened to Tom's ears in the first place but not sure that mattered. I think you could have cut out a lot of the zapping cus it got to be a bit much after a while and I don't think it was needed cus I definately got the picture. Your descriptions are VERY good. Nice job. :)

Michael Thede (Level 4)

This was well-written and your word choice was quite vivid, making this easy to picture. I would suggest doing away with the somewhat cliched establishing sequence at the beginning (with the cat in the window sill, then waking up TOM)--it eats up a lot of page space and doesn't contribute a whole lot to the story. My interest doesn't start to get peaked until the arrival of the package (which is well down page 2). By this time, I'm already asking myself, "What's this story about?" The arrival of the remote establishes a new equilibrium insofar as Tom has power he didn't have before. Now, I'm curious as to how he's going to use it. You demonstrate it well with him zapping the bird in the clock, but it feels like you're just tredding water after this--i.e. it's just more of the same with everything else he zaps. As well, once we've seen it a couple times, we understand how it works. Every film plays by its own set of rules and quite often the audience has to be taught what those rules are. However, once we understand them, we don't need to be taught them again and again. Watch NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. We've seen Javier Bardem kill a number of people and we know how he does it. Then, he meets the farmer with the truck full of chickens. Bardem asks him if he can remove the chickens from the truck and the farmer gives him a confused look. The next time we see Bardem, he's hosing out the back of the empty truck. We don't need to see what happened in between because we already know what Bardem does. It's the same thing with the remote control. We know how it works, we don't need to keep seeing it over and over again. You've got a good idea here to build on, but it needs more. Nevertheless, good work.

Neal Barringer (Level 0)

mission (to tell a story without dialouge) accomplished. Alot of telling rather than showing. Reading line-after-line of "action" was hard. Compelling premise. A little bit of work will make it very good.

Philip Whitcroft (Level 5)

I really like this. It builds up very well from the minor to bigger and bigger things. One thing that seemed odd to me was that the first time he uses the remote on some people it is a group of people who have not done anything much to deserve it. To go over that line would seem to require something more extreme.

Ronnie Mackintosh (Level 1)

On the positive side, I thought that this was quite a clever short and I saw it as a terrific animation.

Really just minor structural comments. In the first scene heading we have 'present' - I think there is an assumption that it's the present. What would have been more helpful would have been the stanard DAY/NIGHT. These standard scene heading elements, along with LATER/MOMENTS LATER etc never appear.

The man is said to be on the bed 'hidden beneath a thick pile of blankets'. Is he 'hidden', if so how do we know it's a man? Similarly, the cat 'treads along blankets up to the sleeping man' - when I read this, I suspect that his head is visible? Then we're told that instead of being 'hidden beneath blankets' he is 'deep within oversized pillows'. Then we have him with 'a sleep mask over his eyes', so if he was 'hidden' how do we know this? These comments may seem trivial, but anything that causes a break in the reader's flow is damaging.

There are several sounds which are CAPITALSED. Yet there are also sounds which are not. Keep it uniform, if you use CAPITALS for some sounds, use them for all.

Rustom Irani (Moderator)

The action is very well written but dare I say there's a bit too much of it. Okay, there's a bit too much of it.

I think you show the escalation of things quite well once the remote is introduced, but once we reach a peak and a possible face-off with the cops you are left with half a page to resolve his crisis of a world without noise.

I would expect for a man who has suffered so much discomfort due to noise, to at least enjoy the initial moments of peace that he has achieved. Therefore, to show him now missing the "noisy" world and contemplating suicide without the initial euphoria doesnot quite work for me.

The plot is reminiscent of a Twillight Zone episode and remotes that can stop time, make people disappear etc. have been tried before.

Your technique actually made this an enjoyable read to a predictable plot and loved the transitions you establish early on between images of scenes. Great stuff.

Nice title.Keep on writing.

Sally Meyer (Moderator)

I've read 22 scripts so far and this is my favorite. I like the concept, I'm not sure what the back story is, but evidently he doesn't like loud noises LOL.. I just think this would play well on screen, and be a fun short film.

I love that there was no dialogue needed, it all just played out very very well.

I think this will place!!

Good work. Thanks for the fun read.

Stephen Brown (Level 5)

This was pretty good. A very clever idea given the rules for this one.

I found it got a little repetitive in the middle - you could have made this a little shorter in my view. The pacing was very good though and imagery.

Very good from me.

Sylvia Dahlby (Level 5)

Like the premise, very twilight-zoney. I also enjoyed the cat character. The would've been much better if it grabbed me from the beginning, nothing much was happening until page four. Lose all the set-up and superfluous details and speed up the pace.

Tony Oldham (Level 4)

Some nice writing. I really liked the intro to Tom at the bottom of the first page as you get a great sense of his character.

William Bienes (Mod Emeritus)

I needed to know more about Tom and less about the blue haze and noise-producing happenings. In a short script (and maybe this plays better on screen) the constant noise related actions wear on the reader.

Why didn't he just point it at his ears?

William Coleman (Level 5)

Where can you get a remote like that? That's a great premise and generally you follow it along with wit and keen observations of what annoys us daily - particularly those cell phone users in public places. If I have a problem with your script, it is that it needs a little more focus and a cleaner progression to the appropriate climax. At the end we enter a sort of existential nihilism. That to me is fascinating.

Comments Made After the Contest

Rustom Irani (Moderator) ~ 6/1/2008 2:16 AM

Your style probably came close to mine when writing transitions between scenes.

Like I mentioned in my review a scene in a world without sound would be nice to see, before things go downhill.

I liked this one a lot.

PS: I actually filmed a short title "Wishful Thinking" that had the protagonist wish people away. Enjoyed shooting on empty streets and an amusement park at the pier boardwalk in the wee hours of the morning.