Tony: I read the first five pages. Not bad my old son. Always good to open up with action and you have plenty of that.

Henry based on any particular Bushwhacker?

Tony, notes as follows. I only read this up to page 13 as I was lost with the time frames and the characters. So far, I found it to be a confusing story and I’m not quite sure who your market is or who you’re even aiming this at. The phrasing seems very British to me and some of the terminology will be lost on a non-Brit so I fear you will be drastically limiting your potential audience. What is the Inset Course? Perhaps this needs to be described? I have to stress that it is extremely important to proof read your script before posting on the internet. I know this is early days but as I advise writers on other sites, your goal here is to get a good review that concentrates on story but if your script is littered with typos and errors then the reviewer will be side tracked by those and their review will miss out on detailing what’s really important for you. I’m very confused by one of your characters, On page 1 you introduce a character as “Tony, AKA Henry the Eighth” as he swings in a hammock. A little further down, Tony rolls out of the hammock. In the next scene, Henry saunters around killing people. Is this the same person? If so, don’t refer to him using two names. If not, Henry wasn’t introduced as a character plus he has the same name as the nickname of one of your other characters. My issue is, I don’t know which character this is meant to be. Notes I made as I read through. These are merely my observations, take what you want and ignore the rest: Formatting - “(OS)” should be “(O.S.)”. “(VO)” should be “(V.O.)” Formatting – If a character speaks in a language other than English in an English based script and the other language is indicated via parentheticals then all that dialogue will be in the foreign language and the English speakers in the audience will be scratching their heads because they won’t understand what is being said. If you want English subs on the screen then you may want to consider a format like, “(in Spanish – English subbed) General – Remove “(CONTINUED)” and “CONTINUED:” from the end and start of every page as this format is no longer used and only serves to add clutter to the page. General – Way too many typos, misspellings, grammar issues to mention. Proof read is required. General – It’s probably not your fault, maybe it’s an issue with Celtx but the dialogue for 1ST PRISONER is split from page 2 to page 3 in such a way that the character’s name appears at the bottom of page 2 without dialogue and is then repeated at the top of page 3 with the dialogue. You need to find out how to fix that because that’s really fucking with your script. General – Remove all camera directions such as DISSOLVE TO:, they shouldn’t appear in a script. General – ALL numbers MUST be written in long form in dialogue P1 – A super should not be the very first thing we see in a scene. Establish the visual of the scene first then display a super then get into the action. This goes for any supers you plan to use. P1 – “A CROWD begin to gather” should be “..begins..”. P1 – “He rubs the two burn marks..”. Using the word, “the” implies we’ve already seen the burn marks. Because we haven’t, the sentence should be, “He rubs two burn marks..” otherwise it just doesn’t read right. Same a little further down, “Henry saunters out the shack..” We haven’t seen any shack before so my question would be, “what shack?”. P1 – Don’t use “we see” in a screenplay. P1 – “Crumpled bills”. Should these be bank notes or water and utility bills? Clarity is important. If this is going our to the world then the world should know what you’re talking about. P2 – No such language as Columbian. Their national language is Spanish. P2 – “He warm up..” should be “He warms up..” P3 – You need to be consistent with character names. Ignoring the Tony / Henry debate, you have a character on this page referred to as “1st Prisoner” and “first prisoner” and “Prisoner #1”. Settle on the format you want to use and keep it consistent all the way through your script. P3 – “so he can watch..” don’t tell us this. It’s Unfilmable and shouldn’t be there. P3 – “(laughing)”. You can tell us that a character laughs but don’t put it in a parenthetical inside an action line. P3 – “That your fucking brother” Is that a question or a statement? I think it’s a question so it needs a question mark. P3 – Henry’s dialogue includes a parenthetical in the middle. You can put a parenthetical in the middle of dialogue but it MUST be on it’s own line. P4 – “Prisoner #2 screams pierce the jungle” Bad grammar. P4 – “Now you’ll die, known as an arse bandit” Why? ‘cause he shot his nuts off? That doesn’t make sense to me. Is that a regional British thing? P4 – Flashback. I’m a little lost with the timeframe in this story. Are we back in the 1990’s? It’s jumping all over the place and there’s nothing to indicate to the viewer where we are. A viewer can’t see the word Flashback so how will they know this scene is back in the past? How will they know the timeline of this scene? P4 – “six candidates of various races and religions”. How do we know their religion? You should just leave it as, various races. P5 – Miss Steel’s age was given on page 1 so shouldn’t be repeated here. P5 – “MUSIC – FYFE – SOLACE” Huh? Are you stipulating background music for this scene? You’re a writer, that’s not your job. P5 – With the scene change, I think we shifted time frames again but I don’t know where we are. P6 – “INT. HENRY – PRISON OFFICE” Very bad formatting. This tells us the scene is inside a prison office which is INSIDE Henry. P6 – “Henry notices the unstable fan..’ Never tell us that a character notices something. If you want to film that a character notices something then show us how they notice it such as “Henry looks up and sees an unstable fan” P7 – “Alledged” should be “Alleged”. P7 – “one hundred and sixteen and three hundred tonnes a week” This makes no sense. P7 – Mr Millward is surprised that this prisoner speaks English? Why else would a member of the British Consulate be speaking to a prisoner in a Columbian jail if he wasn’t a British citizen? I’d be surprised if he couldn’t speak English. P10 – Why is BRITISH capped? P10 – (I think it’s safe to say that this falls under the category of “SOMETHING”). First, don’t use quotes in dialogue, second, this is corny dialogue. P10 – “INT. LISA – OFFICE” Need to fix this. P10 – Lisa is described as being asleep at her desk and hung over. How do we know she’s hung over if she’s asleep? P10 – Why is MARSHALL capped? P11 – “the others take the piss out of Tomo” What others? The office description did not include others so I viewed it as an empty office, probably late at night or very early in the morning since Lisa was asleep. P11 – “INT. TONY – JOHN – MENTAL HEALTH WARD” Who taught you this format? It is completely wrong. P11 – I’m still confused if this is the same character as Henry, that we have been dealing with all this time. If so, what time frame are we in now? P11 – “monged out on medication”. Is this a British phrase? If you’re writing for the British market then that’s okay but if you’re writing for any other market then you need to use terminology that is universal. You’re on the right track but a bit of work is required.