The State of Massachussetts

Three men are in the middle of an abandoned where house on the outskirts of Boston. One of the men is being beaten by the other two tied to a chair.

Man: *Grunts*. Jackie, I swear [bloody cough] I swear, it wasn’t me… I’m not the rat…

A tall man steps out of the shadows and throws a cigarette on the floor.

Jackie O’Hare: You should’a thought about lyin’ in the interrogation room Johnny.

Start song the state of Massachusetts. Johnny gives mortified look at Jackie, Jackie glares. Switch between shots of their faces 12 times. At 12 seconds wide shot to show Jackie pulling out a pistol tucked in the back pocket of his pants. At fifteen he pistol whips him, and continued to beat him rhythmically until 30 seconds into the song when the music gets turned down

Jackie: If there’s one thing you gotta learn… It’s that you NEVA FUCK WITH JACKIE O’HARE!


He pulls his head up by the hair and shoots him at forty seconds. Screen goes black. Continue song and role opening credits. At the end of the credits the words The State Of Massachusetts comes across the screen.

Whoa! Ok, dude, this seriously needs some help. *stretches fingers out and cracks knuckles*

MADD wrote:Three men are in the middle of an abandoned where house on the outskirts of Boston. One of the men is being beaten by the other two tied to a chair. Ok, first things first--formatting. Here, I'd put your 'stage notes' in italics.

Man: Grunts. Another formatting thing here. Either use ** around this or do what you do with the bloody cough later in this sentence and use []'s Jackie, I swear [bloody cough] I swear, it wasn’t me… I’m not the rat…

Again, italics here: A tall man steps out of the shadows and throws a cigarette on the floor.

Jackie O’Hare: You should’a thought about lyin’ in the interrogation room Johnny.

Start song the state of Massachusetts. Johnny gives mortified look at Jackie, Jackie glares. Switch between shots of their faces 12 times. At 12 seconds wide shot to show Jackie pulling out a pistol tucked in the back pocket of his pants. At fifteen he pistol whips him, and continued to beat him rhythmically until 30 seconds into the song when the music gets turned down One, italicize all those 'state notes' you've written above; two, cut this next part--that's what the nametags are for [s]and Jackie says[/s]

Jackie: If there’s one thing you gotta learn… It’s that you NEVA FUCK WITH JACKIE O’HARE!


Italicize; also, your first sentence here has some pronoun confusions. Use their actual names as many times as you can. He pulls his head up by the hair and shoots him at forty seconds. Screen goes black. Continue song and role opening credits. At the end of the credits the words The State Of Massachusetts comes across the screen.

Just one question: what in the world is the third man for? I don't recall seeing a mention of him in there anywhere... >.> *scratches head*

Now, a few notes on writing screenplays: 1, use a consistent format for names, camera/staging notes, etc. 2, give us some descriptions of your characters at the very beginning. You'll be writing it like your sketching the character with words--set the tone and the action for us. You've already done a little of that, but we need more. After you've set the scene, tell us how the action starts and/or continues with a consistent way of tagging your characters' lines.

Here's some examples:

Rain splashes against a dark camera; it is obviously raining heavily. A dimly lit street slowly comes into focus as a lone car drives hurriedly by. The water thrown up from its tires splashes a single solitary figure crouching at the curbside by a lamp post, who does not react but to shake off the water like an exceedingly large, hairless dog. He wears a sadly lopsided fedora and a long brown trenchcoat; his face is shadowed by the drooping brim, but under the end of the trenchcoat we can see that he wears faded old cowboy boots.

Then move on into your dialogue/action like this:

Man: [i](mumbling) They're coming. The voices--they're everywhere. I can hear them in the darkness, they move so confidently. They're coming for me; they can smell my blood even when I don't bleed! (pause) Yet--they don't like the light. Yes, they hate the light. They won't touch me, as long as I stay in the light.

The man yells as the sound of an overturning trashcan and a yowling cat slices through the steady drum of the rain. He cowers closer to the lamp post; camera focuses on his shadowed face, in which we can see his eyes are darting nervously around.

Man: Hello?

The man yells again as three indistinct but humanoid shapes emerge from the hazy rain all around him.

And so on and so on, adding whatever music and lighting details you want to add. ?Comprende? What I'm really trying to show here is that the nametags should be bolded; author's stage notes should be italicized; and you need to add more description.

Hope that helped.
~Glad

The dialogue is clichéd, the plot is nonextistant, I have no clue what "The State of Massachusetts" sounds like, your camera choices will give the viewer vertigo (written like a Michael Bay script) and worst of all... you call this a scene?

Nothing happens in this first part, it doesn't justify being called a "scene". A scene is a part of the plot that takes place in the same space and time. But there isn't any plot, just two lines of nonsencical dialogue, and a some vague direction. So what's there to critique? A full movie script is pages upon pages. This isn't a fourth of a page in a word document. Write some more, and then repost it.

Hello!

So I have to be honest. I lost interest. I'm not trying to be harsh but it sounds like you have a somewhat good idea started and I think you could take it places with some work.

One of the men is being beaten by the other two tied to a chair.

In the above sentence you need to rearange some words. You make it sound like the men doing the beating are tied to a chair.

Alrighty next, since you are writing a script that classifies you as the writer. You are not the director or the actor or the editor. In the end you really aren't going to pick the music, when the screen goes black, so forth and so on. (It's okay. The first time I wrote a script I was putting camera angles in!) Your job as the writer is to give the director, actors, and editors a story and good characters to work with. So don't worry about telling them when the credits are rolling or what song is playing.

Next, is your formatting. I'm giving you a really simple format that I have used and really like. I got it from a book which I can't remeber the title of at the moment but will check. So here is the basic format that I use:

Scene One: Title
INT. (or) EXT. Location, Day (or) Night (if necessary add the year) then in this part you describe the scene, set it up. It can be long if you like, but it is not necessary to descibe every little detail. If you are all about the details then write a book, not a script. Just descibe the basics.

Character name
Dialogue

Repeat as necessary


I usually center the scene number and title and the character name and dialogue. It is pretty simple but it works for me. Of course you don't have to use my formatting, you can always find your own. But I would suggest finding some sort of formatting.

Also, keep your character names consistent. When Jackie O'Hare talks the first time you label him as Jackie O'Hare, then the second time you label him as simply Jackie. This can get confusing and looks bad. There could be five Jackies in this story for all we know! See what I'm saying?

Finally I know that you can make this longer, I know it. And not just with the desciption. The heart of a movie is the dialogue, there is a lot more dialogue you can put in! I just know it.

So a recap: Describe the basics, you are the writer not the director/actor/editor, find a format, be consistent, and use more dialogue in this first scene.

I hope that was helpful and not harsh, it wasn't meant to be harsh.

I thought this was not bad for a first time. It seemed like a word for word duplicate of The Departed, but we could fix that. The structure was off-key, but we could fix that.

When you write the setting, as you started in your first paragraph, you should show us what's happening, not tell us. "Three men are...", "one of the men is being..." You should be much more concise when you write. Instead, it's better to say "Two men, their hands tied to stools, watch as two bulky bodyguards beat and thrash a third man in the center of a dark, abandoned 19th century warehouse." Isn't that better? I could picture it much better than your original setting.

This should also be employed in dialogue. Rarely should the writer include a "bloody cough" or "grunt" in a line of dialogue. Here's a better way to do what you did:

MAN: Jackie, I swear... I s-swear... it wasn't me... I'm... I don't know who it is... I d-didn't do it...

I didn't include the "I'm not the rat" because it's so cliche and overused in gangsta films and amateur scripts. It's also a "show, don't tell" kind of thing: the character here shouldn't say that he's being accused as a rat, the audience should guess.

In the next line of dialogue, the dialect is all messed up. Here's how it should look like:

Jackie O’Hare: You shoulda thought about lyin’ in the interrogation room, Johnny.

What does that mean? Also, don't include songs in scripts unless they are crucial to the plot. In this case, it's not.

Johnny gives mortified look at Jackie, Jackie glares. Switch between shots of their faces 12 times. At 12 seconds wide shot to show Jackie pulling out a pistol tucked in the back pocket of his pants. At fifteen he pistol whips him, and continued to beat him rhythmically until 30 seconds into the song when the music gets turned down

The above paragraph should be changed. First off, who gives looks to people nowadays? And 12 times is way too much, it's boring and useless. And don't include "wide shot"--just continue telling the story. That's your job. Here's the revision:

Jackie's face, still hiding in the shadows, stares down at Johnny's petrified expression. Then Jackie whips out a pistol from his back pocket and lashes Johnny's face with it until his nose starts bleeding.

The next line of dialogue is CLICHEEEEEEEE. And the ending was also cliche.

Basically, I suggest you discard this as simply an excercise. It wasn't too great. I hope I helped you fix the "show not tell" part of the script, which will help you a lot. But after I finished reading, I thought that the ending was completely overtold and could be shown in an original matter, like Quentin Tarantino does in movies like Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs. But this is just The Departed. No change. And that's why it's so bad.

You have a lot of talent, but in this script it just didn't show.