monkeyfish
Posts: 1234
Joined: 18/9/2006
From: Under the sea
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Cool. Good to see there are still a few around so long sfter the original challenge date. I've read them all now so here are my comments. As ever, I will criticise the things I didn't like about the scripts, but I'll try and make it constructive. Hopefully none of it sounds particularly harsh, they're all good pieces of writing. In the interests of preserving anonymity, I will, as ever, be criticising my own script as well, hopefully in a vaguely objective way.
Snooze - A nice, neat, focused concept, using the short nature of these scripts to good effect with its simple story. Often, the stories in these scripts seem over ambitious, but this was the right sort of length. I didn't especially want to read more (and I mean that as kind of a compliment!). It was a good use of the domestic spaces in the pictures to contrast the mundane aspects of the everyday with a time travel plot. However, it is a kind of one punchline sort of script. The mundane, everyday time travel thing is a nice idea (and I liked throwing in a Back To The Future reference to suggest where the script might be going), but it takes a lot of setting up when not much is happening. Even though the descriptions are largely quite concise and well observed, it still feels like reading a lot of descriptive text as there is just one character and virtually no dialogue (decent use of sound effects though).
Oh! What A Lovely Wall - Before commenting on this script, I would like to just say that I don't particularly like Banksy. I'm certainly not opposed to street art and graffiti as art in general, and I do like his work that's just funny plays on the spaces they exist in, however I feel his political messages and viewpoints are trite and simplistic (I really didn't like the stuff he did in Gaza). Therefore, that did slightly colour my opinion of a script that presented him as this cool, angelic figure who turns up to aid troubled teens. Despite this, I did like some of the writing in the script. Like many successful biopics or films utilising real people, the writer has chosen to reproduce his subject's previously quoted words in his dialogue. I thought this worked well here, using Banksy's actual words does give a good sense of him as a real character (although I felt the scene with Adam reading the quotes in the Banksy book felt a little redundant, it doesn't really tell the audience anything they don't already know). I liked the writing and characterisation of the family (I could have done with more of this and less Banksy). Adam is convincing as the sort of teenager who rebels against the mainstream by adopting the same counter culture causes and tastes as any other similar teen. His relationships with his family seem pretty plausible, the right mix of conflict and affection, I liked this exchange with his sister - "You are such a loser. No wonder no one likes you." "You are such a tart. No wonder everyone likes you." So, I liked the script, but probably would have liked it more if I could admire Banksy as much as Adam does.
Vessel - This guy and his pigeon were popular characters this month, weren't they? From the picture, I got that he was a far more avuncular, cheerful figure than this script got from him. This script definitely had the best imagery and symbolism of any this month. I liked its usage of recurring different ideas of feathers, flight, birds and angels, life and death. The old man looking after his pigeons and waiting for death was an appealingly timeless, universal concept. I did, however, have a bit of trouble getting into this one at first, the early parts being primarily voiceover that is perhaps a little unnecessarily florid. There are points, as well, where the ideas behind the script seem a bit hazy. I'm sure the writer has a clear view on what he is trying to convey, but sometimes the actual content of what is happening seems a little confused to the reader. However, the dialogue portion between Arthur and Alison, where they were talking about the feathers, was a nicely written exchange and in the end I found it quite rewarding and satisfying. I would add, however, that this script does stray somewhat from this month's theme. The rules did say "you must only use the rooms provided", something that most writers interpreted fairly loosely, but it felt most obvious in this script that the content was not especially tied to or linked with the rooms and only one scene took place in one.
The Greenhouse Effect - There's the pigeon man again. Like Snooze, this one suffered inevitably from being almost entirely description focused on an individual character. Unlike that script, however, this one struggled for focus and clarity a little bit. Oddly, breaking it up into really short paragraphs actually made it harder to get into than it would have been with longer ones. Because the script was quite strange, it sometimes felt quite difficult to follow exactly what was going on. Even though there is a flashback explaining things a bit, I still felt a little trouble getting a grip on the script. However, sometimes it is a good thing to throw your audience into a confusing world and only gradually reveal things that make sense, so I guess it worked on that level, it just could have done with more clarity in the actual mechanics of the individual scenes. As for the concept of the script, it was a good sci-fi idea. There's something inherently creepy about plant life that interacts with animal life, even more so with plant/animal hybrids, that I feel the script exploits well, sort of a mix of Triffids and pod people in Bodysnatchers. The very final moments had a good emotional weight to them and suggested something interesting in the character that it would have been nice to explore further if there was a longer script. Tightening up and clarifying the earlier parts on a second draft would improve this script a lot, but it definitely has some good ideas.
Sunflowers - This one, I feel, probably worked better than any of the others in terms of the parameters of the original challenge. It was well focused on the many contrasting domestic spaces shown in the photos. The writer has obviously thought about the idea of these domestic spaces as playing a symbolic role in representing characters' moods and attitudes. It is a little simplistic, the lovely, bright colours of the cheerful woman and the dingy, dark basement of the depressed girl, but scripts this short do need to paint in fairly broad brushstrokes and need good shorthands like the idea of personality through decor. I liked the character of Anna, she seemed a plausible, well realised and very likeable person and the scenes between her and Amy were nicely done, they seemed realistic exchanges between characters the writer obviously likes but is able to view from a distance, the line "It looks like a rainbow threw up in here" was one that made me smile. However, I did feel that outside of this central relationship, there were a few redundant moments. The script would have worked better for me in having more scenes of Anna and Amy, developing a growing relationship between them, and less of Feldman and Anna just complimenting each other. I didn't really care for the ending with the sunflowers either. It didn't seem a plausible thing to work for Amy and seemed a rather quick and convenient conclusion that the script didn't necessarily need. In all, though, this was one of my favourites.
Etre, Ou Ne Pas Etre - I know enough Shakespeare and just about enough French to recognise the speech. I quite liked having a multi-lingual script in the challenge and would have quite enjoyed a script that explored this a bit more. As a whole, the script feels like a couple of individual scenes in a bigger story that don't quite work on their own. Without a context or background to these people, it seems hard for the script to work on an emotional level. I assume some sort of growing feelings for Sofia have developed in Matt in between the first and second scene, but as it is the whole thing feels very abrupt, almost like all the best bits have been missed out and we're just left with a very sudden ending (although, assuming Sofia's last line is a Last Action Hero reference, it made me smile). It's worth remembering not to be too ambitious with these scripts, it's very hard to tell much of a story in less than ten pages. The setting, however, was a good one, a partially ruined theatre in Baghdad with a Frenchwoman playing Hamlet is appealingly offbeat, but it doesn't have the time to develop. Once again, pigeon man, a little eccentric this time, was the most well realised character. It was nice to see, given his huge popularity this month, him and his pigeon get a good final send off in the last parts of this challenge!
So, my three favourites were Oh! What A Lovely Wall for its well observed family relationships, Vessel for its strong imagery, and Sunflowers for its good use of the settings provided. I'll think about it and be back with my vote from those three.
< Message edited by monkeyfish -- 20/3/2010 10:14:29 AM >
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