In the process of writing and finishing our screen play (the screen play can be read here), our teacher have sent out our first draft of the play to our fellow creative writers in the other section. This is mainly due to the lack of students in our section. In return, we also get to read theirs's screenplays and it was a blast of plots. When the reading period ended, we are required to write a letter depicting the pros and cons of the screen play we read. I wrote one for the other section and my group received two, both of which were very helpful. We are then tasked to improve our screen play based on the comments we received.
You will be reading the letter I mainly used to change some of the dialogs in my screen play. The key take away of this letter for me was the sentence "I want to know why Bam is so angry about being asked by Copper to raise his pay and then firing him after Copper asked her nicely." I took away the sense that the dialog between Copper and Bam was incomplete and could be more sensible. As per specific of the changes I made, you'll have to go read the final screen play published on my website to see. Special thanks to Grace (Her website is here) for the letter and I hope you enjoy it.
Dear Tan, Fern, and Leo:
This is a story about solving the mystery of who killed Bam. I particularly enjoyed the use of words that helps me visualize the scenes and the actual plot itself, I also like how the scenes of the place was very specific, like the “Galeon 640 Fly Boat”. I also like how you put the emotions or actions of the characters into brackets because it will give the actors an idea of what the characters are feeling so that they can convey it out, though it doesn’t last until the end. I did not really like how some of the characters weren’t consistently bolded or capitalized, so it wasn’t that easy to tell when they are talking, also sometimes, the dialog’s position is not the same/consistent. A red herring in this script is how the details of each person’s stories don’t line up/doesn’t make any sense. Or how the characters keep on blaming each other. The character seems very well thought out because of all the details about their physical appearance and how it correlates with their character. I’m interested in the story/plot development and how everything unfolds as the story goes on. I am also interested in the camera movements since it is very specific and happens a lot. One detail that strikes me as significant is the camera work/movements because I think that it would be very cool and entertaining to the audience when they get to see all the angles and movements of the characters to understand what is going on. One detail that strikes me as random, and could probably be cut is none, I think that all the details given were significant to the story development. I want to know why Bam is so angry about being asked by Copper to raise his pay and then firing him after Copper asked her nicely.
I don’t want to know nothing because the things in the story are all important to the plot development. I would like to see what happens next and if they finally found out who murdered Bam. My advice for you going forward in the rewrite is to make the format consistent because it's different at the beginning and at the end, also maybe add a little bit more detail, like red herrings to the other characters so that people would be more surprised when the real killer is revealed. Also add more emotions in brackets for the actors like you did in the beginning, but coming towards the end, there were none anymore. It appears that this story, with the plot and directions included, was great, the red herrings mislead the reader/audience into thinking who the false murderer was and the camera movements put them on the edge of their seats, especially at the end. The ending was very good, the camera directions and dialog were great and fit well, it was very creative when you split the screen.
Some other suggestions that I have:
None (: this story was very fun to read and imagine in my head like a movie. :D
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