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Mitch by Paul Shelton - Short - With the imminent arrival of the prince of darkness and death to all humanity, three good witches summon up an unlikely hero from the spirit world. - pdf, format
comedy is a difficult. Very subjective. But there were a couple of times that I chuckled. Some ideas to consider:
SPOILERS!
How about the devil being a witch? It will go along with the witch theme.
How about the prisoner not escaping? Adds more to the story.
And shouldn't this meeting be a secret? Dig the whole president disguise but whats the practicality of this getting made. If not, then ignore what I'm suggesting with the disguise and stick with it.
Hope this helps Gabe
Just Murdered by Sean Elwood (Zombie Sean) and Gabriel Moronta (Mr. Ripley) - (Dark Comedy, Horror) All is fair in love and war. A hopeless romantic gay man resorts to bloodshed to win the coveted position of Bridesmaid. 99 pages. https://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-comedy/m-1624410571/
I thought the U.N scene was a good start to the script but the comedy factor could have gone through the roof here. You have a great venue to set up some fantastic comedy.
Most of the jokes, I’m sorry to say fell a little flat for me.
As Gabe said, comedy is very subjective so what is funny for me, may not be to someone else. It is also very tough water to tread because will undoubtedly get some negative feedback. Based on the comedy's I have written, this has always been the case. can’t please everybody.
That’s not to say, this doesn’t work. It does, and I think if you take this to a feature length, it will appeal to a lot of people.
One other thing... Whats up with your fonts? Unless my reader is screwing up, I was seeing bold, then regular, then bold again throughout the script.
The first half at the UN is kind of a wacky introduction and reminded me of The Naked Gun. The last half introduction of the three witches and concludes with the reveal of MITCH.
What needs to be improved?
Clarity of visuals in the UN scene. For example, how can we see flood?
The UN scene seems moshed together and not easy to follow.
from script: In the corner, stands a 6`6 naked BLACK MAN fully toned, crouched over to fit in the shed.
Some funny moments here. I agree, Canada's not really a country!
If someone were to film this, I suppose they would just take the funny stuff and build around it. I guess this could be filmed with animation. With some work, a funny film could evolve.
The Elevator Most Belonging To Alice - Semi Final Bluecat, Runner Up Nashville Inner Journey - Page Awards Finalist - Bluecat semi final Grieving Spell - winner - London Film Awards. Third - Honolulu Ultimate Weapon - Fresh Voices - second place IMDb link... http://www.imdb.com/name/nm7062725/?ref_=tt_ov_wr
It felt like you wrote this at the last minute and didn't go back to look at it once. Tons of typos, but that wasn't my main issue here. I just didn't find it very humorous. I chuckled a bit in the beginning with Obama and Ajdfaklfjdsaf. Had some clever lines there.
But I feel every other attempt at humor was butchered by bad timing or shoddy dialogue that could have easily been fixed if a little more time had been put into it. The Witch-centered Twitter and Facebook was a huge missed opportunity. That could have been absolutely hilarious but it fell flat IMO.
While some of the jokes fell a little flat, I genuinely laughed out loud twice.
When the chair randomly breaks mid-conversation I almost died. I just loved how wacky this was.
The "comes with his own broom was also a genuinely funny line.
This could use another read-through to fix spelling and punch up some of the jokes, but I enjoyed it. I don't know if it could realistically be sustained to make a feature, but I don't doubt it.
'Artist' is not a term you should use to refer to yourself. Let others, and your work, do it for you.
I'm afraid this one just didn't work for me. While the writing is straight forward and decent, the comedy was much too broad for my tastes.
And utilizing actual world leaders just...didn't feel right, either. Kind of like that anti-sex PSA that made the rounds many months ago, featuring Michele Obama. It's not that I'm objecting on any political grounds, it's just that bringing in a real person makes it feel - off balance, even in a satire.
Not to say that there were some fun beats in this one. Madonna as being a cursed plague, no-one trusting Canada, "Witchbook" and "It's about being comfortable" - all nice touches. So cheers, on that!!
This one wasn't doing it for me. It seems all disjointed and it seemed like you weren't really sure where you wanted to go with it. I did like the Stevie Nicks joke, but honestly, that was about the only one that worked for me.
As they say, comedy is subjective and I'm not big on comedy as is, so don't take my opinion with anything more than a grain of salt.
Notes:
Technically you don't need to specify New York in the slugline. Just say "United Nations Building". In the dialogue, you don't need to say their whole name when they speak. Your margins are way off, I noticed. It makes me wonder if you set them that way or if it just happened. Same goes for the random bolding in your script. Page 2, "You're a good man, Mahmoud." Needs the comma. A lesson I learned. You only need to say "shrugs". You don't need to mention the shoulders. "SIMON Oh please don`t cry. . . Ok you`re scary leave it on. . . Can you please bring the screen back down?" - New sentences and commas would look better than how this segment is written. When you introduce Sasha and Greta, even if you don't know their ages, give us the age they look like who someone who's interested in casting it doesn't have to guess. "FRANCIS Are you hearing me? We gotta do something. . . We are the last three good witches left. . . Is it de- caf?" - Clever way to try and hide the exposition, but it's still too on-the-nose for my taste. Half-way through page 8, you say "sister's pick her up." Drop the apostrophe.
The writing was decent, a few problems for me and the odd misspelling but nothing major. Easily fixable on a rewrite.
What’s the line...comedy is subjective. So you are always going to get people that like or dislike this kind of piece and I’m down the middle with this one. I did like some of the wackiness going on but other parts feel flat for me, certainly never got the feel this was a feature opening, more like a short IMO.
What I will add is if you give this a go as a feature and pull it off, it’s a shame Leslie Neilson passed away because he would be perfect for this type of feature. Good effort.
It was a quick read and I did laugh out loud a couple of times - so that's good.
Lot's of grammatical errors and structure issues - seems like it was punched out fairly quickly. I also read this via Firefox and I noticed some odd Bold text that shouldn't be - it could be an issue with reading via the Firefox PDF plugin though.
I liked the UN Assembly opening, but it could be a lot tighter. I think we jumped into the witches vs warlock battle quickly. I think it could be toned down a little without losing the comedy (the whole Canada bit is very good). I pictured the comedy being built up and around the leaders in a secret meeting - leaving the audience to realize they are not who they seem.
Noticed some dialogue on the nose, but can be fixed.
Overall - a decent start. Comedy can be hard to write, so it definitely needs worked on, but the potential is there.