Mimi & Vitus - Adventures Beyond the Wall by Ilham v. Schöning - Series, Family, Kids & Family, Fantasy, Adventure, Animation Hybrid, Magic/ Magical Realism, Sibling Story, Emotional Driven - When twin siblings Mimi and Vitus move into an old countryside house, they discover a mysterious wall between their bedrooms. It's more than stone - it's a magical portal into a hidden world where time pauses, feelings take shape, and childhood questions turn into real adventures. 10 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

What do you think about the Script?

I think it's a lovely idea but I think it needs a lot of work and is not reaching its potential quite yet.

Firstly, download proper screenwriting software. Your screenplay needs to be written according to Industry Standard.
https://www.onassemble.com/blog/the-best-free-screenwriting-software

There are some free examples in that link. If you want your work to look Pro you'll reformat this script.There are spaces all over the place where they don't belong, scene headers are incorrectly written, dialogue and character names are not in the right places, parentheticals are incorrectly formatted, your margins aren't correct etc. Screenwriting software will format everything as it should be according to Industry Standard.

Scene numbers do not belong in Spec screenplays.

SCENE 1 – EXT. CITY SKYLINE / DAY (MONTAGE)
This incongruously appears on your title page.
It should be written as:
EXT. CITY SKYLINE - DAY

Before this however how about a FADE IN? Yes I realise it's going by the wayside for some but I feel it's a nice convention to include to establish mood for a reader.

The only info on your title page should be: Title, Author, Contact email, copyright symbol, date, and preferably this: This screenplay may not be used or reproduced for any purpose (including educational purposes) without the expressed written permission of the author.

Screenplays are all about visuals. I cannot stress enough that you need more.

You open with the City Skyline (what city is this?) and a Narrator's voice overlaid. This is like an establishing shot. I imagine in your Montage you want to show a panorama of the skyline, then you show people, cars, the hustle and bustle on the ground, and then you localise the action to one apartment where we focus on and meet the family who are loading up their car and saying goodbye to city life to a new life. But really, the Montage should begin when they take off in the car and all of that above should just be an opening scene.

"Bye-bye apartment" should ideally be verbalised by MIMI and VITUS (cap their names as soon as you Intro them btw,) actually standing outside the apartment and waving goodbye to it, perhaps with tears in their eyes, or maybe one of them is stubbornly refusing to get in the car. Or, perhaps they're reluctantly helping Mom and Dad load up the car. Then all of them pile into the car and drive away.

A giant plush toy peeks from the trunk.
This (what is it, a giant bunny, or puppy?) would be a terrific, bittersweet and humorous visual to focus on as the back of the vehicle is seen disappearing down the street or rounding a corner. We'd also see the car perhaps pulling a trailer with all their worldly goods, perhaps a roof rack as well.

Do you plan on this being animated?

Screenplays are all about the visuals and at the moment they are lacking.

I'd suggest as well there might be some conflict established first (as I mentioned above)  between the children and the parents at the start. Perhaps they're saying goodbye to their friends, at the very least they're saying goodbye to all that they've known so far - perhaps they're sad to say goodbye or even putting up a fight? That would be much more interesting imho and contrast nicely with the adventure they're about to embark on.

Moving along you'd then describe the landscape changing as the car rolls out of the city and into the countryside, perhaps some visual delights along the way, this is ideally where you'd bring in the Montage of perhaps cows in fields, and farmhouses and giant windmills, and condense the action - you'd show the passage of time, Mimi's mood gradually becoming exuberant and Vitus bored and then asleep.

SCENE 2 – INT. FAMILY CAR / DAY – ON THE ROAD
This should be:
INT. CAR - DAY - MOVING

SCENE 3 – EXT. NEW HOUSE / DAY
should be: EXT. COUNTRY HOUSE - DAY

Parentheticals are written like this:

MIMI (excited)

    MIMI
(excited)
But use them sparingly. Her actual line does the trick without you needing to spell out that she's excited.

It looks like a fairytale house!

That said, I'm not getting that visual purely from your description of a red-brick house with some trailing ivy. Add to it. We need more, call it a farm cottage, perhaps it's an acreage, maybe it has a stream and is surrounded by a flower garden, describe the sound of crickets, spiders hanging from enormous webs. Your job is to immerse your readers in this world you've created via what we see and at the moment it's a little underwhelming.

Alternatively, perhaps the children find it underwhelming to begin with as well and it's only when they cross over through the wall into their dreams on the first night into the magical place that they and we discover it.

If you get bored, just talk through the wall.
They probably could do this through an ordinary wall.

Dad then says this:
It’s thick – very old – but I swear, sometimes it feels…
alive. And I don’t know why the paint keeps fading. Always
back to that same strange, stone gray…

What is different about this wall visually that separates the two bedrooms?  What I suggest instead is that Mom and Dad view the wall as just a plain everyday wall. I think the magic of it should only be revealed to the children. This is usually the way fairy tales work.

When the children finally cross over and the wall pulls them into this wonderland you need way more visually. What are we seeing onscreen?

The landscape is glowing, but peaceful. Mimi and Vitus look
around, amazed and curious.

That above ^ is nowhere near enough. What do you want the set-designers to create?

If this is being filmed what do you want your audience to see?

Okay, I'll leave it at that.
It's a good idea but it has been done before in various iterations so you need to create this world and translate whatever is in your head to the page.

Hope this helps.

P.S. From a practical POV, so you don't get inundated with a lot of spam, I think it's a good idea to change your username.

Any questions feel free to ask and welcome to SS!

Quoted from ilhamvd@cloude.com What do you think about the Script?

Personally, I don't think it is ready to be reviewed yet. There are so many formatting errors it is very difficult to get into the read.

Tell ya what, get this in some semblance of standard format and I'll review and let you know what I think of the story.

Libby already gave you loads of good advice and you can open almost any script on this board to get a sense of what a properly formatted script looks like along with a million resources on the internet. There are tons of good templates out there. Best of luck

Adventures Beyond the Wall (6 pages + title, formatted)

Here's a properly formatted version.

I changed nothing other than the more obvious formatting errors, such as scene headings and the like. (I likely missed a few.) Otherwise the content remains as written.

Very kind of you, DB.
What do you think of the feedback, Ilham?

Quoted from Drongo_Bum Adventures Beyond the Wall (6 pages + title, formatted) Here's a properly formatted version. I changed nothing other than the more obvious formatting errors, such as scene headings and the like. (I likely missed a few.) Otherwise the content remains as written.

This is amazing!  Question, how did you do this?  and how long did it take you to reformat?

- Don

Quoted from LC Very kind of you, DB. What do you think of the feedback, Ilham?

You beat me to it I was going to ask that exact question.

Hopefully, the writer appreciated the formatting help.

Maybe I'm the only one to have mixed feelings about messing with other writers' work, even if it is to make them better. I remember when I was new here, a looooong time ago, a member here took not just my scripts but others' as well and rewrote them to show us newbies how it should be done, and to be honest, I didn't like it. I felt sort of violated. Just something to think about.

Quoted from Grandma Bear Hopefully, the writer appreciated the formatting help. Maybe I'm the only one to have mixed feelings about messing with other writers' work, even if it is to make them better. I remember when I was new here, a looooong time ago, a member here took not just my scripts but others' as well and rewrote them to show us newbies how it should be done, and to be honest, I didn't like it. I felt sort of violated. Just something to think about.

I'm kind of the opposite (different strokes and all). Although I would never re-write someone's entire script. I would re-write bits of dialogue/description as a sample.

Here - none of the writer's words were changed. They were just placed in the proper format. To me that's cool (again, different strokes)

It is a mystery to me why there are any format errors at all anymore given that you can load almost anything into AI and get it to convert it to script format in nano secs).

Quoted from Don Question, how did you do this?  and how long did it take you to reformat? - Don

Not long. Maybe 15 minutes, I guess. I was on the 'phone at the time and not paying enough attention. It's just a matter of copy-pasting into a new project and then manually correcting each line. A better typist than me — i.e. everyone — could do it much faster.

Quoted from Grandma Bear Maybe I'm the only one to have mixed feelings about messing with other writers' work, even if it is to make them better. I remember when I was new here, a looooong time ago, a member here took not just my scripts but others' as well and rewrote them to show us newbies how it should be done, and to be honest, I didn't like it. I felt sort of violated. Just something to think about.

I'm not entirely comfortable with doing it either. I used to ask the writer's permission first, but none of them ever responded, so I thought, "F it, they uploaded to a 'public' site...."

I change almost nothing other than the format. Even typos don't get corrected (unless unconsciously). The original text remains unchanged, just the layout.

Quoted from Drongo_Bum Not long. Maybe 15 minutes, I guess. I was on the 'phone at the time and not paying enough attention. It's just a matter of copy-pasting into a new project and then manually correcting each line. A better typist than me — i.e. everyone — could do it much faster.

What software program did you use?

Quoted from Don What software program did you use?

Don - you literally can take any script with the worst formatting on the planet, load it into chatgpt, or GrokAI and I asked it to format it correctly and it'll spit it back out correctly formatted in minutes if not seconds

Quoted from eldave1 Don - you literally can take any script with the worst formatting on the planet, load it into chatgpt, or GrokAI and I asked it to format it correctly and it'll spit it back out correctly formatted in minutes if not seconds

Now you tell us....

Quoted from Drongo_Bum Now you tell us....

LOL

It'll also fix all your typos

Quoted from Don What software program did you use?

Fade In.

Quoted from eldave1 LOL It'll also fix all your typos

Not something I want to do when reformatting the work of others without their permission.

But sounds really useful in many or most other cases.