I can't even get through the first scene.
"His terror is as painful for us at this point as it is to him. Can't they do something for God's sake?!"
How is all that supposed to help anyone put anything on film? "He is terrified." That's all. But we've already been told that anyway.
It helps the music guy to put in the right music, having been told the "mood" of the entire scene. See below.
There are many different tele/screenplay styles, but nowadays it's generally considered a no-no to include much camera direction, tell the actors how to say a line (wrylies), describe something which can't be filmed (e.g. she thinks of her mother), or to act as a narrator and inject an emotional POV (as per the example you cited).
You're right. It was an arduous, downright torturous curve learning to write for fanfilms. I am far more used to writing for theater and "in correct form for television and film". I learned very quickly that the "correct way" doesn't work for fanfilms - where the actors, directors, editors, music editors, even set builders are not experienced and need, in fact, ask for, far more exposition.
"He's terrified" notes usually found me sitting with an actor for an hour discussing how terrified, and why he's terrified, and what he's thinking behind the terror. Music was often completely off the mark when exposition to describe the "feel" of the moment wasn't in there. Broad descriptions of sets e.g. "a massive control room with an iphone feel" usually resulted in long conversations with set people asking for specific, almost blueprint, descriptions complete with color and fabric choices - whereas such detailed description would be insulting to the same people "in the industry".
While an experienced screenwriter avoids all camera notes, but indicates what they see by good writing... "we see his hands operate the transporter" that is assuming that it's an experienced director - at least experienced enough to SEE what the writer is seeing when, in fact, the director of a fanfilm can be a voice actor or vfx god who doesn't pick up on those hints, so the "hey, I see a close up here" is actually needed. (which even experienced directors can choose to ignore, of course)
The same goes with editing. Where I might think "this act/scene should end HERE for dramatic effect" it is wise to go a few beats longer with a fanfilm - to give the senior editor the choice of where to end. If he ended it later than I thought it should, I could point that out when given the scene edit and give my arguments...but leaving the choice finally in his hands. And this also served to prove that, as a writer, I wasn't protecting my babies despite the sake of the piece - so, if the senior editor thought other stuff should be lost he felt free to do so (and not thought "cripes, every cut is going to be a fight with the writer") and I could be pleasantly delighted at the awesome effect of losing something I couldn't see was extraneous. (which, again, is not usual "in the industry"...a writer actually having a say in the edit)
As a story/script editor these points were always primary in working with other writers. "Don't sweat the details". Sounds counter productive, but dialogue on the page is very rarely the dialogue as it's filmed in a fan film, so laboring over the exact right word in a conversation is just silly. (as one director put it "I don't mind you changing the dialogue to fit your character, but I'd like at least two takes to have the same dialogue!") Leaving out exposition to tell the director/editor why something is important is, unfortunately, just as silly. Where an experienced person would recognize "okay, this one shot establishes that the character has moved from this location to that location" I, far too often, found out that was "recognized" was "well this is an extra shot that is a waste of time". A quick case-in-point is the final released edit of "Kitumba" - where many, many shots of people sneaking around and overcoming guards and difficult situations to get into the "dungeon" were all cut out as "a waste of time" - thus leaving the viewer to think that the action all happened in the course of a few hours and that is was pretty simple to beam in and out of the prison. (We should have filmed more of it, but even the stuff that was filmed was simply cut out.)
In short, yup, these "screenplays" leave a lot to be desired if they were written for "the industry". They weren't though - and because the rules were not just relaxed, they were changed. A well written "industry script" led to a mess on set. Period. The more I added the less time I spent on set verbally explaining everything and describing camera angles and sets etc. I CAN write a very good industry-standard script, but by the time I was writing "The Wild Wild West" scripts I was, frankly, having fun that writer's can't usually enjoy having with teleplay readers. I wasn't concerned that Spielberg would be dissecting them. Fanfilms are supposed to be fun. Given the needs of the inexperienced people working on them, I didn't see any reason not to have the scripts fun too.
You are all completely entitled to disagree, of course. Though, if you haven't something a fanfilm has filmed, you are really speaking in theory at this point when it comes to the differences I claim are "required".
played by Jeff Bond. I really like John Kelley as Dr. McCoy.
