Crazy! Witty! Frantic! Comedy screenplay semi-finalist

"a fast paced, witty comedy"
"an infectious sense of energy and fun"
"an energetic pace"
"an enjoyable, frantic ride, with a good deal of wit and charm"

Loonatoona is a semi-finalist in the 2016 Comedy Film & Screenplay Festival

Here are their feedback notes:

"Thank you for your submission to the Comedy Writing Festival. Here is the feedback on your submission.

SPECIAL NOTE: This script is very close. It just needs a bit of a cleanup and one more solid draft. If the writer would like to resubmit the entire script for more feedback, we will give you 30% off the regular submission,

Currently, we like to perform a best scene of your script for a performance reading at our festival. Please reply and attach a file of the best scene of your script to be performed (up to 7 pages). Then we'll set up a reading in early Fall and email you as soon as it's posted online.

LOONATOONA by Shockadelic

In the small Australian town of Loonatoona, a family readies themselves for a crazy, but not entirely atypical, day. Father Bazza experiences the daily office grind, whilst his wife Susan has a charged encounter with a Cowboy, free spirit Miranda heads out on a day with her liberal friends and young sexually curious Bobby gets into trouble at school. While Bazza avoids the temptations of office squeeze, Shazza, his suspicions rise regarding Susan's behaviour. Susan brings the kids home, along with Bobby's friend, Oscar, and then out to the local pool, whilst Miranda's friends all end up hopelessly lost. Bazza finally confronts Susan about her assumed transgressions, and the pair manage to reconcile. The day comes to a close, with the whole family reflecting and eagerly awaiting tomorrow's adventures, even if the whole situation has been utterly confusing to alien observers.

Loonatoona is a fast paced, witty comedy, juggling numerous character strands to create an infectious sense of energy and fun throughout the script. Whilst it's enjoyable seeing what each family member gets up to on their own, it's equally gratifying watching the moments where the strands intertwine and the familial relationships come to the forefront. The script is populated with a largely memorable supporting cast too, with characters like the unquestionably frustrated Principal Walker leaving a strong impression in their brief roles within the overall screenplay. There's a good deal of wit to the dialogue exchanges, although the most enjoyable humor predominantly comes from gags subverting narrative structures and conventions, such as the numerous brief cutaways and the recurring joke of the alarm masking characters swearing.

There are, however, some areas for improvement within the overall script, unfortunately. The biggest issue is that the sporadic nature of the story is lacking a clear end goal or drive to make the narrative compelling if we're just watching another day in these character's lives, then why this one? Ultimately, you need to take more time to establish early on what this day is building towards, otherwise the scenes feel too much like disconnected skits without any real bearing upon one another. The clearest narrative point in your current version is the marriage drama between Susan and Bazza, when this would arguably be better suited to an emotional subplot working alongside a clearer external conflict or event transpiring throughout the day. Some scenes are simply too short to make an impact of their own, let alone act as a dynamic cutaway gag, and don't further the story enough to warrant inclusion. Each time these short moments stunt the pace of your script, we're often left without a clear indication of their relevance, so really take time to consider which story strands are working well (Susan and Bobby's are the strongest), and which aren't pulling their weight (Miranda's feels a little too directionless). Dialogue is generally strong throughout the script but would stand to benefit from further attention in some areas. It currently feels like the supporting characters, e.g. Principal Walker and Cowboy, have clearer dialogue "voices" than that of our family leads. Their behaviours and storylines may set them apart from one another, but it's through their dialogue voice that we're going to get the best sense of who these people are, and what makes each one of them truly unique. Really consider each character's choice of words, tone of delivery, how long their thought processes are, etc. Aside from this, there are occasions where you can afford to cut down on filler lines or pieces of dialogue that essentially repeat variations of points we've already seen or heard before. There's an energetic pace to the execution of the story, so it really can stick out whenever dialogue conversations either outstay their welcome or fail to bring much to the overall story. The repeating "blah blah blah" / "yabba yabba yabba", etc. dialogue gag feels a little tired after each iteration too, as it feels like a missed opportunity for having these specific characters saying something inherently unique and witty.

In between the longer stretches of dialogue, it's important not to neglect visuals in scene directions too. Having your characters doing more, either a tangential action or body language reactions, not only gives us more to watch, but opens up the potential for subtextual gags. In several instances, the quick cutaway scenes suffer from not received the appropriate amount of visual scene set up, making the dialogue too intangible to visualize on screen. Avoid including camera direction as this only serves to pull us out of your story (and ultimately would be down to a director or cinematographer anyway), although feel free to imply how it's shot based on how you frame the action (the same goes for "we see..." and it's variations it's ultimately redundant). Some scenes seem too preoccupied with establishing locations through vague characters and stock footage, rather than actually show us where our characters are within the scene, let alone their actions and reactions. Your regular omissions of definite and indefinite articles (i.e. "the" and "a") often stunts the flow of the description too (lines like "They turn corner" are just a little too jarring). Keep your directions unfolding in real time (how do they get from walking down the stairs to immediately frolicking in the pool?) and ensure they correlate to explicit visuals that are apparent on screen (e.g. "Bobby has been sent to COUNSELLOR (woman 40) for advice" is not only past tense description, but simply tells the reader the information without making it clear how an audience watching will know this in this moment).

Loonatoona is an enjoyable, frantic ride, with a good deal of wit and charm to the characters. The overall script, however, is lacking the necessary narrative drive to make it feel like any more than a series of vignettes, tied together loosely as a plot. With a little more polish though, this script could certainly do very well."

Update: There is now a script reading video of my "best scene".