I'm digging this new idea to feature different approaches to scene description. Looking forward to reading more.

In this segment, I felt like the writers did a good job of using strong verbs, short lines and caps to heighten the intensity and push the pace. But to me, the underlining seemed excessive and, at times, snatched me out of the reading. I could get with the caps, the bold slugs and the exclamation points. But underlining too? On top of all that? Overkill in my opinion. But the writing popped regardless.

The question of whether it is good or not, is whether it can keep the reader's attention. For action writing, it's going to be dense, so use whatever you can to keep THE FLOW GOING. Bolded sluglines, underlining specific actions, CAPS on all SOUNDS, and the bracing of

the

Sentence structure. It should read vertically and smoothly, and it does.

Also, the narrative voice; it's casual, informal, the script and the reader are friendly.

I hate to harken back to a cliche, but LETHAL WEAPON. It's a great script not only because of the story and the character, but notice how the action is braced...

As for STAR TREK, yes, it works.

I LOVE it.

I'm with James Hutchinson, I love this scene description feature too! Good call, Scott. I think many of your readers are going to benefit from this series.

Evaluating individual scenes is MUCH EASIER to digest than entire scripts.

LOVED the movie "Star Trek (2009)." NOT so impressed with the writing of this scene, but the scene itself is great on the screen, where it matters most.

Don't know about the rest of the GITS readers, but reading this gives me the confidence that says; YES, I can do this!

- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA

I've recently been seeing more CAP'd expo or BOLD slugs (Funny enough BlueCat dinged me for it - only sounds or eye-directed images). Haven't decided it's for me. I use so many Secondary Slugs, I don't see INT. very much in a cross cut scene.

Admittedly, I was really grabbed by the words, scene transition and cross-cutting. Very Un-Guru of you.

I rarely see even audio transitions, much less visual ones.

I like to go even farther and craft expo as per scene content to help with pacing.

I rarely have a sequence change (new camera location) that doesn't follow an image or sound, sometimes the "in one door\out the other" method.

I think you should concentrate on the scene transition with these as we are - as many say - scene writers.

What I'm curious about is the writer's involvement in the project when this scene was written: did they already have the job, or was this what they wrote in order to 'audition'? I think it makes a big difference who your audience is when it comes to scene description. A spec script has to stand entirely on its own, everything about the world of the story has to be conveyed as fully and clearly as possible, whereas if you know you're writing just for the director, actors and other personnel, maybe things can be a bit more informal. Not that I think this scene wouldn't stand just fine on its own in a spec; it's really good.

I don't understand why there's so much love For Trek 2009. It's a good film but I never understood why Kirk was selected to join the Academy, what special skills did he possess?

Great new feature.

I’ve had many a heated argument about this very thing…which is kind of sad when you think about it, I mean, there’s more important things in the world than capitalization and underlining, but I’m a nerd so…there ya go…anyhoo…

I think if they use or don’t use capitalization or underlining or hyphens or whatever, it all boils down to a few simple things: Were you excited about what you read? Could you visualize it clearly in your head? Did it make you turn the page?

Then the writer(s) did their job.
Done.

I'm reading this whole script right now and one thing that continues to trip me up in the scene descriptions is the constant cursing of Orci and Kurtzman.

I don't know about anyone else, but all the cursing gives the script a juvenile feel. Like if there was an audience of high school kids watching the film, they would describe it this way. A lot of it becomes unnecessary. I think the reason they get away with it is they were asked to write the screenplay. They weren't trying to sell the damn thing, so they had a lot of freedom.