**CROSSOVER FAN FILM SCRIPT REVIEW REQUEST**

'100 pages' is just an exagerration. But you really, really need to chop your script down. A LOT. I know it hurts, but you need to be merciless when editing.

 

Hey, guys! I have updated a script that completely follows my story idea (special thanks to bgii_2000 for this) which is in my head nearly a year ago... You can find it here at YourFileHost.com (Acrobat Reader required to view this file).

CORE STORY:
Commander Starkiller and his friends must to keep the Separatists from winning the battle, or else no one will be left to keep the Separatists from taking over the world and instituting a reign of terror.

BACKSTORY:
At some point during World War II, the citizens of New Earth, a small moon of Uranus that has been popularized by humans, discover a magical object with powers similar to the sphere from Michael Crichton's Sphere. The people of this world ponder this great power that they have received. After the war is over, their greatest leaders decide that the object should be used to create technical advances that would be otherwise impossible to engineer. For scientific inspiration (and to please the 18-25 age range the makes up their populace) they turn to video games and sci-fi movies and television series. They create weapons, devices, and entire new ways of life. The people rejoice...

PRESENT DAY (circa December 2003 - December 2005):
More than sixty years passed, the technological advances brought on by The Artifact have caused humanity do what it always does: destroy itself out of jealousy and hatred. Many factions have formed out of the original citizenry, as well as the entire Half-Life Community (a large group of fans of the Half-Life video game franchise), based on the type of technology they prefer to use. Several factions have banded together, forming a Separatist movement, hell-bent on seizing control of the government. Consumed by their infighting, the remaining groups fail to act. Under the leadership of their new Dark Lord, the Separatists are gaining ground quickly.

A small band of fans, along with a group of friends, fans and delusions of grandeur, a number good men in the military, and a few government agents, recognize the true threat presented by the Separatists. They attempt to unify the remaining factions against the Separatists, but to no avail. In frustration, they set out together to fight evil and destroy the separatists for good. Before long however, they are pinned down in a apartment building, with no way to call for back-up as their communications are being jammed. The team splits up, one group to find the source of the comms jamming; the other group staying to defend their position and innocent civilians in the apartment building. Duels are fought, and shots are fired. The first group manages to destroy the communication disruptor. Heroes continue to duel, but it becomes apparent the situation is more dire that anyone had guessed.

The Separatists are in possession of a space-borne nuclear weapon capable of massive amounts of destruction. The separatist leader orders that the weapon be targeted on the ground battle below. As fight rages on, the team attempts to contact the authorities but to no avail. The good guys make plans of retreat, acknowledging that they must abandon the attempt to protect the apartment building if they are to survive. Just as seems that all hope is lost; that the battle will be lost; and the countdown to doom approaches zero... The fleet arrives! It seems that someone was listening after all. The separatists are routed. Good guys celebrate and cheer and love interests are completed, but it is just the beginning of the bloody conflict known as the Half-Life Wars (which is thought to be named after the original Half-Life).

The End.

I think this story (and its script itself) quite interesting to me, as well as the characters (especially Commander Starkiller, Commander Lee, Commander Stanley Oh, Captain Turbinator, Commodore F.U. Ragtops, Commodore Stickman, Commodore Bluemon, Jacqueline Gabrielle Hetherington, Slow Babble, Carlo Solo, Stick Hans

 

So...you're planning on making a 3 hour fanfilm? ...Good luck...

Anywho...I'm reading the script so I'll comment in a little bit...

 

Oh man it really is 180+ pages...

Did you expect it to be this long before you wrote it?

 

I did expect it to be this long before I wrote it because of the battle that is heavily based on Small Soldiers (a battle to the death between the two sides, in which the Commando Elite declare war on the Gorgonites and all of the humans currently in the house, taking the latter for allies of the Gorgonites and thus as enemies, and the Commandos attack with more makeshift machines, shooting nails, flaming tennis balls, and small fireworks at the house), Attack of The Clones (Battle of Geonosis, in which the Clone Army makes a debut and a similar duel against Count Dooku take place), and to a lesser extent, Star Trek: Nemesis (Battle of the Bassen Rift, in which the Reman boarding party is repelled, and Shinzon orders the activation of the thalaron radiation weapon).

The end result: It appears to be parodying the Star Wars and non-Star Wars movies, and to the more extent, the Half-Life series. In my view, the script's story appears to be more interesting and exciting, as did the characters that are all three-dimensional and unique. As for your own view, you though that I'm planning on making a 3-hour feature film which is not made by fans before.

 

So, how's my script? Is it interesting in overall?

 

We've been giving you tips, and you haven't been taking any of them. I think everyone has given up.

 

he is right. the number one rule to fan films/audio dramas:

ALSWAYS LISTEN TO OTHER PEOPLE. They know what they are doing.

 

I'm still listening to other people. I should follow your tips as you say, especially that I should cut out anything that isn't vitally important to the story, since I've got the exact story (combined from bgii_2000's story idea with mine which remains in my mind for ten months since August or September of last year):

The technological advances brought on by The Artifact, which is first discovered by humanity, have caused humanity do what it always does: destroy itself out of jealousy and hatred. Many factions have formed out of the original citizenry as well as the fan communities like the Half-Life Community, based on the type of technology they prefer to use. Several factions have banded together, forming a Separatist movement, called the Confederact of Independent Communities, hell-bent on seizing control of the government. Consumed by their infighting, the remaining groups fail to act. Under the leadership of their new Dark Lord, the Separatists are gaining ground quickly. A number of good men in the military, along with a few government agents, recognize the true threat presented by the Separatists. They attempt to unify the remaining factions (the Half-Life Community and the Grand Army of The Republic) against the Separatists, but to no avail. In frustration, they set out together to fight evil and destroy the Separatists for good. Before long however, they are pinned down in a apartment building, with no way to call for back-up as their communications are being jammed. The team splits up, one group to find the source of the comms jamming; the other group staying to defend their position and innocent civilians in the apartment building. Duels are fought, and shots are fired. The first group manages to destroy the communication disruptor. Heroes continue to duel, but it becomes apparent the situation is more dire that anyone had guessed. The Separatists are in possession of a space-borne nuclear weapon capable of massive amounts of destruction. The separatist leader orders that the weapon be targeted on the ground battle below. As fight rages on, the team attempts to contact the authorities but to no avail. The good guys make plans of retreat, acknowledging that they must abandon the attempt to protect the apartment building if they are to survive. Just as seems that all hope is lost; that the battle will be lost; and the countdown to doom approaches zero... The fleet arrives! It seems that someone was listening after all. The separatists are routed. Good guys celebrate and cheer and love interests are completed, but this is only the beginning of the Half-Life Wars. (CORE STORY: Commander Starkiller and his friends must to keep the Separatists from winning the battle, or else no one will be left to keep the Separatists from taking over the world and instituting a reign of terror.)

The setting in my script as follows:

On an alternate present, in an
alternate solar system...
Note: The "alternate present" means it is set in an alternate version of the timeline; the "alternate solar system" means that it consists of nine planets: Mercury, Venus, Old Earth (named Coruscant), Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune (which is orbited by New Earth, one of its moons), and Pluto.

Compare to the normal "Galaxy Far, Far Away" setting:

A long time ago in a galaxy far,
far away....

The script's opening sequence is somewhat identical to every opening sequence in the Star Wars films, but it is different: the main title is "Fan Wars" itself, and the opening scroll text is:

THE HALF-LIFE WARS

It is more than sixty years since human-
ity first received a mysterious gift that
gives them the ability to make their
imaginations reality before the
start of major franchises. Now, in De-
cember 2005, there is growing unrest,
and several factions have declared
their intentions to secede the Community
and

 

Okay... I'm gonna be brutally honest...

First: it's too long and too... "epic" (if that's what you want to call it). "Epic" movies cost money... a LOT of money. Most of the fan films I've seen that have a lot of scale mostly confine that scale to CG sets and big space battles; I think you'd be hard pressed to find something fan-made that even closely matches the scale of ground-war that you seem to be talking about. It's all well and good to write a script for an epic and keep it in your back pocket for some day when you've "made it big" and have the backing of a production company--and maybe, since it IS a parody... it's... conceivable that this could be a back-pocket script (or at least a back-pocket story). I don't know, I'm not a lawyer.

BUT. If you actually want to make this as a fan film... it needs to be scaled down a LOT. There are too many superfluous characters and in a movie there can be no such characters. Not the least reason for this is that every role needs to be filled by an actor. And since we indie filmmakers work with virtually no budget, these actors need to be willing to work for free (or almost for free).

As someone who has spent the last... what's it been, now? Seven months? Seven months coordinating a film with two full sequences that each had about seven principal characters, I can tell you, coordinating so many people is a major headache. You need to think about these things when you're writing a shooting script--do I know people who can fill these roles (or at least, do I know where to find these people); are they good enough; will they work on the cheap; do they have jobs that will interfere with filming--or do they go to school, or are they unreliable about being where they claim they'll be, or do they have a girl or boyfriend to whom they are so devoted that they'll dump your project on the instant if it starts to bite into their time with this significant other.

Now, I haven't read the whole script, I'll admit... just what you've posted... and so far, it seems like you're being fairly practical about locations... at least if you happen to live in, say, an apartment building and you know the manager or land-lord or whoever won't mind you filming in hallways and in rooms. But again, there are way too many actors called for in the scene.

Now, another thing about actors... sure, some will act just for the experience and the exposure, but others will want to read the script... if they're going to commit to something for months to years (which, trust me, a three-hour-long fan film? It's gonna be at least a year of filming and probably considerably more), you want to know that the end product is going to be good and their main indication of that is the script you hand them, the script, I presume, that you've been posting from and showing around in this thread. There you run into... a rather large problem.

First of all... you need... NEED... need to get rid of all of these "have you heard about, do you know about, have you been informed of" lines! The audience KNOWS what's going on after the first time someone answers that question... they're going to snicker the first couple of times, and then get more and more fed up after each subsequent time. Yes, maybe the character doesn't know what the situation is, but this is a movie, not reality... your main goal is to ENTERTAIN THE AUDIENCE and we are not entertained by so much repetition. And on the same note, every time a new character pops up, don't have everyone else introduce themselves... WE KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Some of this can be cleaned up by dropping characters (my suggestion would be to drop a lot of characters). Another thing... just because you have unique names for characters, doesn't mean you have unique characters. I saw very little in the way of personality come through in any of the excerpts you posted. But, again, there are too many characters vying for the spot-light (and the CENTER spot-light, at that!); everybody's short-changed in such a situation.

And another thing... this

 

To be frank, I'm just not interested in the film. I've read it in various forms several times now and the story has really failed to catch my attention. I think you have some interesting ideas, but to be honest, I think I'd just fast forward through most of it. Also, even though you are making an extremely valiant effort to write readable English, you are failing miserably. I'm not sure what advice I can give you on the subject. If you'd really like to improve your skill with the language, I would suggest taking college level English classes at a university in the US or the UK. Or hire/find a writer.

Anyway, I admire your dedication to your project, but I think we're kinda done with this thread. You keep asking the same question and people keep giving you the same answer. So there isn't anything new being said here. If there are people still willing to help you out I'm sure you can continue your discussion in PM.

Party On!
Bgii_2000

EDITED FOR CLARITY

 

I did have interesting ideas that I intend to parody the Clone Wars multimedia project, I haven't yet rewrite my screenplay to meet the high-quality English standards, I intend to keep those following characters:

Commander Starkiller

Commander Kevin Lee (who interacts most with Commander Starkiller)

Commander Stanley Oh (who interacts most with Commander Starkiller)

Captain Turbinator (who interacts most with Commander Starkiller)

Commodore F.U. Ragtops (who interacts most with Commander Starkiller)

Commodore Bluemon (who interacts most with Commander Starkiller)

Commodore Stickman

Lieutenant Jacqueline Gabrielle Hetherington (who interacts most with Commander Starkiller)

Admirals William and Caroline Lee (parents of Kevin)

Admiral Carlo Solo

General Stick Hanson

Snack Bar Binks

Slow Babble

Bill Oakwood

I believe those characters in my script, Barney Calhoun, the clone troopers (including the clone commanders with a CC prefix), the combine soldiers (including Razor 168), the battle droids, the Half-Life fans, the ordinary people, the Separatist troops, pilots, and the other background performers, are fully CG-generated (like AOTC and ROTS), thus cutting the live-action cast from thirty+ to ten at the very tops considerably. There are no space battles, instead, there is a very large scale ground battle with a lots of CG and visual effects, like those in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

The question asked by Jedi_Monk was: Why did the woman in that last excerpt just walk up and pull a lightsaber on that guy? Is there history there? Motivation? Or were you just trying to create a moment?
The answer to this question: She mistakenly thought that the guy was a Separatist.

 

That's still 14 characters, plus a bunch of incidental characters. Do me a favor:

Think of a movie. An 'epic' movie, like, I dunno, Lord of the Rings or something along those lines. How many central characters are there? NOT THAT MANY. The more characters you have in a film, the further they are spread, and the less believeable they tend to be. I would vote for reducing the number of characters by half, down to seven, or preferably even less. You need to FOCUS your script, Bryan.

 

Bryan, you are aware that the movies you're talking about parodying have hundred-million-dollar budgets, right? Chronicles cost approximately $180 million; AotC cost about $120 million... from the fan films I've seen, it looks like the really good CG artists and animators in this community have brought their space battles up to a level where they compete with the stuff you see in a lot of sci-fi movies... but you'll find far fewer fan films that use all CG CHARACTERS and that have big ground-battles (the only thing I can really think of off the top of my head is in Reign of the Fallen, and that's an army of identical black-robed figures and you don't even see the battle). But then, maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places. All I know is that even in big-budget motion pictures, one of the very hardest things to do is to make photo-realistic characters that can look believable next to real actors (all of the FX guys you see on the making-of featurettes attest to this).

 

I have been following this amusing thread little by little.

On one hand, I admire this guy's ambition. But on the other hand, I have no respect for the fact that he's been told bookoo times that he's biting off far more than he can chew - and still doesn't believe it.

On one hand I admire his dedication to his script. But on the other hand, I have no respect for the fact that he won't listen to the simple advice that THAT many characters WILL NOT work. He's even thinking that making some of the characters CG will cut the cast. He doesn't even realize that that won't cut the cast. It will just require less humans. Meanwhile, he doesn't realize that animating a CG character is roughly a billion times more difficult.

The bottom line is that this dude is wasting everyone's time. This film will NEVER be produced. All this endless back-and-forth about it is going no where. I pitty anyone who actually wasted their time reading this script.

 

The central characters are probably three or four, I'm not sure.

Good news! I'm happy to offer this script update to you, you can find it here at YouSendIt.com (Acrobat Reader required, this file will be available for 7 days).

In this update, I've reduced the script considerably from 180+ to 175 pages (about 88 pages if the script is to be printed like a book). So, I need somebody to help this out, I want to keep it about 88 pages if my 175-page script is to be printed in a book fashion, and the most important thing - I want to ENTERTAIN THE AUDIENCE with complete humor and I want to make the story (which is still inside my head, thanks to Brad Granath for this) is more interesting. I say I want to shoot this fan film in one day and/or one night.

One of the most memorable characters in my script is Starkiller's sidekick, Lieutenant Jacqueline Gabrielle Hetherington, who speaks in the proper, upper-class Edwardian cadences, and is possibly wearing the same style of coat, as well as the same steel helmet, worn by Wendy's daughter, Jane, in the early scenes of the movie Return To Never Land.

Here is one of the excerpts (that is more exciting like the AOTC duel between Anakin/Obi-Wan vs. Dooku) to keep this thread alive:

FAN NOBRAINS is with FAN KONG, operating the weapon from the
ground near his command post.


FAN KONG:
How much time before it is fully
deployed?
FAN NOBRAINS:
About five minutes.
FAN KONG:
We need to pull our forces out from
the area.

Starkiller and Jacqueline emerge before them. FAN NOBRAINS
spins to see them.

FAN NOBRAINS (to Starkiller and Jacqueline):
Commander Starkiller, and
Lieutenant Jacqueline Hetherington.
I?m glad that you are finally here.
COMMANDER STARKILLER:
You?re going to pay for all the
people you?ve killed today.
JACQUELINE GABRIELLE HETHERINGTON (to Starkiller):
We?ll kill him together - you go in
slowly on the...
COMMANDER STARKILLER:
Lieutenant, no! I?m killing him
now!
JACQUELINE GABRIELLE HETHERINGTON:
Starkiller, for God?s sake, no!

Starkiller charges across the open space at FAN NOBRAINS, who
smiles madly, watching him come. Starkiller raises his
lightsaber. At the last moment, FAN NOBRAINS thrusts out an
arm and unleashes a wave of Force Push. Starkiller is quickly
hurled across and slammed onto the trees. He slams to the
ground, semi-conscious. Stanley and Lee, along with their
troops move quickly toward Starkiller.

STANLEY OH:
Commander, are you alright?
Commander! Are you okay?

COMMANDER STARKILLER:
I?m okay, but I can?t duel him...
my strength is weak... Jacqueline?s
going ahead to engage him...
STANLEY OH
I told you not to disobey her, and
yet, you see...
COMMANDER STARKILLER:
Why?
COMMANDER LEE:
Fan Nobrains is more powerful than
you can handle alone.
COMMANDER STARKILLER:
I know that! When I try to take
him, he somewhat...
STANLEY OH:
It?s okay. Rest with us.

Starkiller rests with Stanley and Lee as the troops shoot at
the nearby enemies.

ANGLE ON - FAN NOBRAINS AND JACQUELINE

FAN NOBRAINS moves toward Jacqueline.
FAN NOBRAINS
As you can see, my powers are far
beyond yours, Lieutenant.
JACQUELINE GABRIELLE HETHERINGTON:
I don?t think so, Fan Nobrains.
Your goddamn powers are not far
beyond my powers.
Jacqueline lifts her lightsaber. FAN NOBRAINS smiles, and
pulls off his cloak, revealing TWO RED-BLADED LIGHTSABERS. He
ignites them as his cloak drops down on the ground.
FAN NOBRAINS
Do you think our powers are less
powerful than yours? You ****ing
****!

Jacqueline comes in fast, swinging at FAN NOBRAINS?s hand.
FAN NOBRAINS parries the cut easily.

As they fight, Jacqueline deflects incoming fire and cuts
down COMBINE SOLDIERS, DISSIDENT SOLDIERS, and BATTLE DROIDS
that come across them, and it later becomes clear that FAN
NOBRAINS is the complete swordsman, elegant, graceful,
classical - a master of the old style.

FAN NOBRAINS (CONT?D):
Lieutenant Hetherington, you
disappoint me. Your parents hold
yo

 

Huh? Wow... Five full pages.


Is anyone reasonably sure that this dude isn't a bot?

 

**sigh**

Bryan, have you ever seen Chris Hanel's The Formula? In the film Chris makes a great point: Why spend time and energy make a movie if you aren't having fun. In Kevin Smith's An Evening with Kevin Smith, he recalls a moment during the making of Chasing Amy in which the studio execs told him, "Kevin you aren't just here to have fun making a movie with your friends." To which he replied, "I'm not?" Bryan, have you ever made a movie just for fun? A Pro-wrestling match in your backyard or a random lightsaber battle in the woods across the street? Attempting a project of this magnitude with no experience is not a good idea. I have a couple of finished "epics" sitting on the shelf right now because I just don't have the resources or experience to pull them off right now. This week my crew and I start filming on a project about a dude who has a bad dream and gets attacked by ninjas. We're just having fun. But in the course of having fun, we pick up practical skills in acting, directing, and production. We'll try to have a higher production value than our last film.

Your last post is a classic. Last May these boards were veritably flooded with production threads for huge epic fanfilms. The authors of those threads posted claims almost word for word the same as your last post. Not one of those films has yet to seen the light of day.

So why am I writing this now?

I?m trying to save your film career. You have expressed a desire to create a blockbuster film but this is not the way to go about doing it.

EDIT:

PS: Bryan, no need to keep on thanking me for your own work.

 

Oh let's just throw another crushing blow this dude's way...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

No one will watch this film now that they already know what it's about.

(not to mention that it will never be made.)

The worst thing you can ever do is release your script for everyone to look at. All the mystery is gone. The entire POINT of watching the film is totally defeated once you already tell the whole story.

Plus... I've said this before too... And, I'll say it again... You may very well have screwed someone ELSE out of any possible ideas you have in your script. Someone who might have ACTUALLY produced a film. And, that's just wrong.

I would bet just about anything that you will never get this project any further off the ground than the endless amount of time you've spent struggling with the English language trying to write it.

Feel free to prove me wrong. But, really, the way I see it is that you've simply wasted an aweful lot of other people's time. And for what? To boost your ego that you have some mediocre ideas - combined with an overinflated sense of what you're capable of?

 

I'm need in mixed reviews and critiques so that I could improve my script even further in order to make it more interesting. I have expressed a desire to create a blockbuster fan film (which is longer than Star Wars Revelations and Reign of the Fallen).

 

We know.

But you've yet to show any single shred of evidence that you are the slightest bit capable of producing said "epic film".

 

We're sorry to be so harsh Bryan (well, I guess I can only speak for myself...) The thing is we've seen this over and over again, and it ALWAYS turns out the same way. I've been in your shoes before; I know what it's like. But as much as you really really want to make this movie, I would strongly urge you to put it on the shelf until you have a bit more experience under your belt.

 

...
....
.....
Okay. Are you aware that even something like "Ryan vs. Dorkman", a five-minute lightsaber battle, took days to rehearse and then days more to shoot (with "Ryan vs. Dorkman" 2, they're budgetting ten days just to shoot the thing)? Are you aware that major motion pictures take months and months to shoot? Sometimes more than a year? That big action sequences alone can take months to shoot? That it's not at all uncommon to take an entire day of shooting to get one or two pages of scripted dialogue done and in the can? And you want to shoot everything for a three-hour-long movie in... "one day and/or one night"?

Yeah. I don't think it'll work. You're biting off way... WAY too much. Put this one in your back pocket, write a five-page script with two or three characters and try shooting that. It'll give you a nice reality-check and will get you some much-needed experience.

 

Plus... I've said this before too... And, I'll say it again... You may very well have screwed someone ELSE out of any possible ideas you have in your script. Someone who might have ACTUALLY produced a film. And, that's just wrong.

How exactly is that "just wrong"?

 

Simple.

Here is the scenerio:
You have a great idea for a scene... And you've chosen to keep it quite, because you really want to wow everyone once it's finished. It's totally unique, never been done before, and is almost guaranteed to have a good impact.

Then, some dude strolls in and lays out some script that will never be produced. And right there, in his script, is an idea SO CLOSE to what you were producing, that if you were to release it now, it would appear you ripped him off.


This sort of thing happens quite frequently. And it's something I've been VERY bothered with as of late on these boards. People are constantly coming in here and blasting out whatever the hell is on their mind, and never EVER intending to produce it. And they are screwing people who could possibly have actually used those ideas.


It seems to me that whether you actually intend to follow your idea through or not, you should keep it to yourself. If you need help or ideas with collaboration, don't use an open forum for it. Putting out to the open public kills the idea forever.