Vincent's Night: A Screenplay (Major C&C Needed)

[Renal Shutdown]

Okay, I'm going to start by giving you the same advice I did the first time round.

SCENE STRUCTURE

Obviously, since you piffed it on draft one, I'll try to explain it better.
It seems like you've got a pen and paper ready, thought of a genre and started writing.  Where you kinda make up the plot and characters as you go.  Well, on the first draft, probly..  this is just a reworking of it.  You NEED to have a scene structure, before you write any dialog.

The scene structure should be done so that any other writer can come in, read it.. and then start writing the actual screenplay.  Sure it'll be different dialog, but the plot will be the same.  The scene structure (sometimes called a Treatment) is often what people can sell to a studio.  They read the scene structure, and think "Yea, this seems interesting..  will buy it, now fill in the dialog".

The SS on this? Well, I'll give it a go..

1.
Vincent alone his house, discovers parents gone away again.
Insight into his relationship with mother based on gifts.
Father doesn't care.
Vincent feels lonely.

2.
Lamont critcising younger vampires.
Daniel explains Vincent's current situation, nervously.
Lamont orders him to fetch Vincent.

3. Daniel arrives at Vincent's.
Vincent invites him in.

4.
Daniel turns and attacks Vincent.
Daniel makes Vincent feel more morely.
Vincent defends himself.
Vincent kills Daniel.

5.
Mark arrives.
Learn Daniel is missing.
Mark excited by Daniel being a vampire.

..Okay, you get the idea.  As it is, it's not that exciting.  The SS HAS to be done first.  Even if you rewrite this a thousand times, it's still going to be the same plot but with better dialog.  You can't polish a turd.  To make it work, you're going to have to write it from scratch.  Forget the last five drafts, and do a new scene structure.  Don't write a single word of dialog until the plot is solid.

Every half decent film (bar one, apparently) has a solid scene structure.  Sure it may have bad dialog, but that's probly the easiest thing to fix.  Getting the SS in place is the hardest thing, and it will drive you half crazy..  but, to make it good, it's a necessary evil.

With work, I can imagine it being a good short film.  Good luck with it.

Hugs
Iqu

Also, the one film that had an ass of a scene structure was Sweet Smell of Success, or so I've been told.

[LGM]

Hmm.. I have never heard of that technique before.. Guess I wasn't just well educated on screenwriting, yet..

I'll give it a whirl.. Now I understand what you mean... And this could actually be an easier way to write a screenplay.. Gah. You're brilliant! Thanks

[Layabout]

That technique is one of the basics of writing lgm. it is used in films, books, and games. I'm suprised you havent heard of it before.

[MrColossal]

All that stuff at the beginning, the reading of the notes and such, it's so heavy handed. Can't you give us this information without a voice over? Through montage? Using a series of cuts showing a collection of notes on the fridge all reading that the parents have left again?

"Abandoning, lying, alcoholic mother..." To me this is just blah blah blah generic. The same with the father. Blah blah blah, same ol' same ol'. Is it really important that we know all this about his parents? I don't think so. We barely see them, they have no lines, Vincent doesn't interact with them and we just have his word on it. I don't buy it.

vampires:

It seems like you're trying to write Lamont as cool but he just comes off as completely clueless. One minute he's smart the next he's stupid the next he's trying to be compassionate. Why does he have kids doing his dirty work? Why does he only hunt kids? He's a vampire, why doesn't he just go out there and take who ever he wants? Why why why... Too many questions for me to submit myself to this character.

back to vince:

"Yea, I guess you're right..." Why does he need someone else to remind him that he doesn't care about his parents? Vincent just got done talking about it for pages before. Why not the other way around, have Daniel mention his missing parents and would they like him being here and then have Vince say "Whatever..."

Why does Daniel attack like this? It makes no sense at all.

"Hot damn I could have told you that one sonny." Ã, Too "hyuck hyuck!" what's the point of him all of the sudden becoming this jokester?

"a blip on the radar screen." that makes him seem important, a blip is usually important not insiginficant.

"stares away imagining popularity" No, I'm sorry. This is dumb. He was just defending himself with a knife from his only friend who is trying to bite him and he's daydreaming? No thank you.

When Daniel dies, Vincent takes it pretty well. He's making jokes and talking like there isn't the body of his only friend laying on the ground leaking blood with a knife sticking out of his chest that he just put there when his only friend tried to attack him ranting something crazy about wanting to eat him. I think that would, to put it bluntly, fuck Vincent up royally. I doubt he'd answer the door or even move for a very long time. If I stabbed my only friend in the chest after he attacked me I wouldn't even be able to talk and if I tried I would probably burst into hysterical tears and lose all strength in my body... I wouldn't show the dead body off to this strange Mark person

If Daniel is Vincent's only friend who's Mark? Why does he go running over to Vincent's house to tell him Daniel is missing? Are they all friends together? Doesn't seem so from the text but they'd have to be otherwise what's the point of Mark caring/coming over?

Why did Mark automatically make the huge mental leap of "dead person on floor == vampire"? That is the LAST thing I imagine anyone ever ever ever would think seeing a dead body on the floor.

Is he wearing a button that says "Ask Me About Me Being A Vampire!" or a shirt that says "I Got Turned Into One Of The Vampiric Undead Cursed To Walk The Night Preying On Human Victims And All I Got Was This T-Shirt"?

Even if someone attacked me saying they wanted to bite my neck I wouldn't think they were a vampire, insane? Yes. I mean they're attacking me, I'm not going to listen to everything they have to say and process it.

Mark wasn't there for any of it, are Daniel's teeth showing? That still isn't enough evidence for me to buy that he can, without a second thought, say that the dead body of Daniel [who apparently is his friend also] is a vampire and not just his dead friend laying on his other friend's floor.

"Yes, we've already established that..." that whole line is to pithy for someone who JUST STABBED HIS BEST FRIEND IN THE CHEST! [sorry to keep ramming this home like a knife into your chest, but it's important to remember]

"Oh my god! They're going to be pissed!" This is like a completely different movie just started up, everyone believes in vampires now? No one remembers the dead body on the floor?

"I'll go get my vampire slaying kit..." Har har... YOU JUST KILLED SOMEONE!

[MrColossal]

vampires:

"I'm a vampire Larry, give me some credit." This doesn't sound like something a head vampire would say. "I'm a vampire." Obviously! And then all the sudden Lamont is stupid again and Larry has to tell him how to do his job that he's been doing for how many years?

"We've got to find a way into this kid's house." He's just explaining things we already know and everyone in the group knows already. Just do it. Have them outside the house, Lamont destroys one of their legs picks him up and says "Remember, we were playing football and you hurt your leg." or something, and then the blood fainting thing, sorry, too jokey, doesn't really belong here. Unless you're trying to make the vampires out to be bumbling burglars like in Home Alone.

"Sarcasm..." Hyuck hyuck hyuck... No.

"Remember, don't let anyone in!" I don't think this is needed, the audience remembers and reminding Vincent this close to him LETTING PEOPLE IN just makes it even more unbelievable.

I don't think Kara is an important or necessary character at all and I wouldn't feel anything if she were taken out completely.

Vincent...... Opens...... The...... Door........ HE JUST KILLED HIS ONLY FRIEND and has spent the last couple hours MAKING WOODEN STAKES TO KILL VAMPIRES WITH!! Why oh why oh why oh why would he even move anywhere close to the door? He obviously doesn't sense any danger [Which he should having just KILLED HIS FRIEND AND IS NOW EXPECTING MORE VAMPIRES TO VISIT] so he isn't trying to save Kara from any danger... So why?

He.... Lets.... People.... Into.... His.... House.... take the majortiy of what I wrote in the last paragraph and apply it here...

"Mother always said..." He didn't even lie very well or anything very elaborate. He just said he knew Vincent so I think this line is a touch over dramatic.

All of the sudden the other vampires can't think without Lamont but before that they were pretty headstrong, disobeying him, interrupting him, telling him what to do. Doesn't make sense.

The banter between the vampires while they trying and knock the door down... Nix it, there's too much talking in this.

What can these vampires do that makes them special? They don't have any more strength than a normal person, they can't fly, they can't turn to mist, they can't hypnotize people, they can't turn into animatls... What I mean is why are they trying to knock down a door? Isn't there some other way to get into that room? Meanwhile 2 more vampires are downstairs and they could help knock the door down, I agree with Iqu [?] who said limit the number of vampires so they are all doing something.

"It isn't that simple!" It appears to be since even stabbing Daniel with a metal knife did the trick.

"Stay here, I'll go check it out..." I don't buy this bravery at all. It makes no sense.

I have to draw question to the ease at which he stabs people through the breast bone with a wooden stake. Especially when Mark is laying dying on the floor and he just jabs it into his own heart through his rib cage... He must be the strongest man alive.

The little chat between Vincent and Klara about being okay. It's like they've been married for years but they haven't even gone out once. Where are these emotions coming from?

Lamont's speech: I don't understand where any of this is coming from. Maybe if we saw him struggling with his emotions before, trying to keep his vampiric side in check I'd believe this speech better but it just comes out of the blue.

Vincent walks in and sits down interested in what a man with a HOLE IN HIS FACE is saying about being a vampire after Vincent has just KILLED 3 PEOPLE!

"Sunlight trinkles" Trinkles, eh? hehe

The note to his parents is another out of the blue thing. Sure it makes a little bit of sense communicating with his parents through notes like they communicate with him but what he says doesn't bring closure to anything. It mentions all this stuff that to me, as a viewer, I wouldn't care about anymore, I'm not thinking about his relationship with his parents, I'm thinking about vampires and fighting and what his decision will be. We learn his decision is to leave [how? it's day time outside] so do we assume he left 4 dead bodies and a gallon of blood in his parent's house?

In my opinion Mark and Kara should not be in this story. They're excess baggage and just bring up question after question after question. Vincent alone fighting these forces without ever going all "WOWIE ZOWIE! Vampires! I better make some wooden stakes!" but just taking it as it comes. Lamont needs to be more of a character, he's pretty generic also, the composed vampire who makes pithy comments and then a long monologue on how horrible it is to be a vampire.

I don't really have any suggestions on what to do for these characters but I think the story is a little too full at the moment, It's bursting with things that need to be edited, characters and dialogue mostly. For instance:

Open on extreme close up of fridge door, on the icon ya know the little swoosh some fridges have. Cut to perspective shot of fridge door, still mostly filling screen, papers all over fridge, cut to close up on fridge pictures of family, pictures of vincent pictures of mom and dad with no vincent or him pushed off to the side of the photo, cut to close up of notes, we can read Dear Vincent and parts of notes so we get the gist that ever note is the same thing, lots of love mom and love dad. Cut to sandwhich half made on counter we can barely see a knife handle in the foreground, cut to vincent standing with his hand slightly outstretched and a scared look of disbelief on his face. Cut to eyes [maybe] cut to wide shot of Vincent standing staring at Daniel with knife in chest still standing, everyone is still as if frozen... Daniel slowly falls over and dies...

I dunno, it's almost 5 am and i really should be in bed. I guess what I want you to get out of this that I wrote above all else is experiement more. Play with the medium of storytelling through moving images. Getting an honest opinion from someone always sucks no matter how cool you appear there's a part of you that's like "Hey! Ouch... But I liked that part! Oh now you're just being a jerk!" But I didn't write any of this to be a jerk. I don't think anyone would put this much work into being a jerk...

Well, I can think of a few people....

[Igor]

Just read it... Hm, i hope you don't mind me being completely honest, but i think Stuh and Eric have a very good point.

True, the story is not my cup of tea to start with (i was never fan of Buffy style tv shows or movies... for me they are pretty much a perfect demonstration of uninspired and cliche writing), but even as such it could have been done better.
The script is very straightforward, with no surprises, lots of cliches and no real tension and atmosphere. The beginning of story is kind of promising (notes, etc.), but later just falls flat on the ground. To make everything worse, are the main attraction of story, vampires, as plain as they can get (my first asociation were Scooby Doo cartoons ). There's just too much happening for such a short script.

Also, why not make everything more original? We saw such scenary 1000 times before. There's so many movies, books and spoofs about vampires, that you'd need to be really innovative to make it fresh and interesting.

Btw, why is there so much killing and blood in the first place? It doesn't really have any effect or purpose, because audience have no idea who the victims and attackers are anyway (what are their motives?). They just pop in story and then they die. The best horror movies are the ones with good established characters and where nothing really big happens but you can just feel there's something wrong (psychological torture ). Atmosphere and drama are your friends, nonsensical deaths are not.

If that's what you had in mind, then it's ok... But as Stuh said, leave it as it is and move on next thing.

[LGM]

Wow.. Thanks so much, Eric..

That really brought me out of the fog. And of course you're not trying to be a jerk. You helped immensely. Now I know exactly what I need to avoid, make better. I may rewrite it... But maybe I'll just move on to writing something else. I need to write something I can actually film this time.

Igor: What you say about cliche is very true.. I always end up becoming to freaking cliche, and I don't know how to avoid it.

Thanks for all of your help guys. With this information, I will (hopefully) write something better.

Yours Truly,
LGM