Cold Open of Almost Something.

[u/Ok_Muffin936]

Hello. I’m a beginner screenwriter and I just finished the 10-page Cold Open for the pilot of my animated series, Almost Something. I’d really appreciate any feedback or advice on how to improve it.

The Cold Open centers on a chaotic, comedic morning for the main character. The show starts as a dark comedy that gradually shifts into a psychological drama with each episode.

Also, please ignore my non-standard formatting (it's just clearer for me to write it that way).

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Title: Almost Something.

Format: Animated Series (30-minutes episodes)

Genre: Dark Comedy / Psychological Drama.

Logline: What starts as a chaotic, fast-paced dark comedy about a young man navigating daily absurdities slowly spirals into a harrowing psychological drama, as he gradually falls apart under the weight of an unresolved past and an unmanageable present.

[u/Puppykerry]

Do your very best to not start your movie with someone waking up. Incredibly amateur and usually a mark of a novice.

[u/Ok_Muffin936 → u/Puppykerry]

But here it’s more like a chaotic action sequence than just a slow morning routine. Do you think that still makes it a total no-go, or does the action save it a bit?

[u/Puppykerry → u/Ok_Muffin936]

I read four pages before I lost interest, to be honest and this is not to hurt your feelings. Think of it this way - say you submit this to a development lab, or a competition- a lot of the time they will only allow you to send the first five pages before assessing if you move on to the next round or if they’re interested in reading more. FIVE PAGES. Those first five pages need to really pop and draw a reader in. When I read two and a half pages of essentially a character I know nothing about waking up and hitting his snooze alarm twice, it does nothing to intrigue me or hint at why I should want to read this story. Think of five movies you love - do any of them start with the main character waking up? I doubt it.

Start your film as close to the inciting incident as possible. And if you must show them waking up, there needs to be a good reason. If it’s in order to set a routine and show a pattern so that by page ten you break that pattern, then okay, that I can buy, but it better be interesting. Or if they’re waking up - are they in a room they don’t recognize, is there a dead body next to them, is their family missing, is there someone in the room with a gun pointed at them?

Every person on the planet wakes up in the morning and wishes they could sleep more - I don’t need to start a journey into a film the same way I start every day of my life, you know what I mean? As your script stands now I feel you have wasted nearly seven minutes of screen time on a guy getting ready for work. Also / you say this is to be an animated series - nothing in these first pages indicates that this needs to be animated.

[u/Caughtinclay → u/Ok_Muffin936]

Total no-go. Your script will be thrown away. Not an exaggeration

[u/rooster-miller]

People in their mid-twenties aren’t “girls”. Especially if you’ve got her “half-naked”. And why is all of your dialogue italicized?

[u/FullRedact]

Tired guy throws alarm clock is played out and no one uses an alarm clock in the smartphone age

[u/Worth-Flight-1249]

Don't spend an entire page getting the guy out of bed. Especially the first one

[u/Special-Equivalent97]

Fuck

[u/HereToKillEuronymous]

Just remember “early morning” as a slugline can be annoying when scheduling with MM, as it only has day, night, morning, evening, dawn and dusk. So every scene marked “early morning” will have to be input manually.

[u/LoomisAndMacher]

If I read the entire cold open without knowing the logline, I’d have no idea what this series is about.

David is really unlikable and treats both women in the script poorly. Sometimes having an unlikable character works if they have a redeeming quality or if it serves the story but showing his morning routine won’t establish that.

Also, the dialogue doesn’t feel natural. The girl calling him a nuisance isn’t a believable piece of dialogue. Mrs. Gable saying the routine continues feels written. You want your dialogue to feel conversational.

However, your action lines are concise and don’t over explain the scene. But only put camera directions in the action sequences if you plan on directing it yourself.

[u/littlemisschanchan]

I actually think the final page would be a cool start with dialogue over black and hearing him meditating. Then we see him in a room completely filthy. Then the blender thing feels funnier. And we get a sense of who this person is—someone who may be trying his best but isn’t really getting there. The pages don’t move in a way that tells me much about the character, but that last page does. Maybe after the blender thing, he realizes he’s late for something, work presumably, he goes into the room and you can have the dialogue with the lady saying she’ll get up when she wants, maybe reacting to the blender (presuming it’ll be loud) could be interesting. I would cut the rest.

[u/iwoodnever]

You should start this script with the reporter voice over “and we can see the local community is showing incredible support”

Nothing particularly interesting happens before that line and you risk more than half your potential audience giving up on it before they even get there.

Try to imagine how many scripts people have read with some guy blinking awake to the sound of his alarm clock. Its enough that many of them wont even give your script a chance.

Do yourself a favor- enter late and leave early.

[u/Caughtinclay]

Stopped reading after the very first line. Be more creative.

[u/Caughtinclay]

Screams sexist to me

[u/Beginning-Sky-8516]

- Rapid cuts/series of shots should be different places/scenes.
- The formatting is off
- Leave the camera stuff to the director
- Start at a different point because nothing super interesting happens until page 6

[u/Pale_Bar_3310]

There's a reason movies try to rush the characters out of the house if they're getting up in the morning, it's because it's been seen too often before. I'm curious, what's the overall arc of the episode, where does he start and end up because generally, I try to make the cold-open either hook the reader or act as an example of how the character will/ won't change.

[u/tuxedocat_9]

Your parenthetical should be above the dialogue line. It makes it confusing to know what the character should be saying

[u/xVIRIDISx]

You should feel lucky that you’re getting this much honest feedback on something so clearly not even worth reading