Frozen Script Review

Hello and welcome back.

The script review today is for Frozen.  Billed as Open Water on a chair lift.

What happens is three friends, two guys Jason and Lynch and one of their girlfriends Parker beg to be let up on the chair lift for one last run at the end of the ski day.  The lift is closing early due to bad weather approaching.  The lift operator relents and allows them up the ski lift.

The problem comes when that lift operator is relieved to go see "the boss" in the office.  He tells the one who relieved him that there are three more coming down.  When the operator at the top of the hill announces over the radio that the last chair as arrived.  The guy at the bottom of the hill sees three skiers come down and assuming that they're the three who were the last ones up shuts the lift down.  The ski hill does not open again until the following Friday.

Now are the three friends are trapped with a storm front coming.

At first they believe they are going to be rescued.  When it becomes apparent they have been forgotten the inevitable panic sets in.

They try things to escape their situation only to meet a grim fate.

The lesson to be learned from this script is that it is possible to have a movie take place in only one location and make it riveting.  For further proof of this see Buried, Phone Booth and Rear Window.

What you need to show is the passage of time.  You also need to have obvious obstacles to an escape, too far to jump off the chair lift.  Too far to the next lift tower to climb down the ladder.

And also the obstacle of one of our greatest fears.  Predators close by to eat us alive.

I enjoyed the script and will eventually buy the DVD or Blu Ray disc to watch the movie.

The challenge now is to come up with my - and your - own confined spaces script.  Probably easier to sell than most as a one location script is very inexpensive to make.

The Green Arrow Script Review

The Green Arrow script by Justin Marks is based on DC Comics characters.

The Green Arrow aka Oliver Queen starts off the story as a rich kid billionaire, an unfortunate event leads him to become a super hero dressed in a costume that goes around fighting crime.  In other words he's another Batman.

He gets framed for murder committed by someone else and sent to Super Max Prison.  Where he is befriended by another inmate.

The script, well written was basically Prison Break with comic book characters.

What I learned was you can have a premise or plot similar to stuff done before, just put a new twist or hook to the story.

For example Lethal Weapon and Rush Hour were the same plot - two detectives go after a crime syndicate.  The story for Lethal Weapon is a retiring detective is forced to take on a suicidal partner.

For Rush Hour is was more or less an action comedy and the different approach to policing between the American detective and the Chinese detective.

So in creating a story start with What If?  For example:  What if a super hero gets sent to prison?

Do your what ifs and then see if something else has been done before and then try and put a different hook to the story.

Update to October's Goals

For those of you not on the Writer's Store mailing list they're putting on a screenwriting contest called "The Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest" located at the following link:
 http://www.writersstore.com/industry-insider-screenwriting-contest

The update to my October Goals is that I am going to be working on an application for this contest to see how I do.

All of you aspiring writers should do so as well.  Simply because if you don't put your writing out there you'll never know what your strong points and weak points as a writer are.

So go for it.  Enter.  There will surely be a lot of competition, but you never know, you might get picked.