Brighton Falls

[Matthew James]

BRIGHTON FALLS

SYNOPSIS

Life for Matt Hale is about to change forever. When his mother Janet dies in an accidental gas explosion, Matt discovers long kept family secrets... monsters, demons, and others creatures lurk in the darkness and his mother hunted them. Protecting the innocents of Brighton Falls, Washington.

Not only that but she had a second family, taking in two orphans, the mysterious Luke Quinn, and beautiful and innocent Marnie, who she raised to fight so Matt wouldn’t have to.

But that was Matt’s old life. Now thrown into the fight of his life, when a fallen Angel believes Matt has something known as the Warden. Matt find himself learning all about the secrets his mother kept from him, and with the help of his closest friends, the perky and sweet Emily Ashford and ever loyal Justin Davis, Matt prepares for the darkness that is coming to swallow him whole.

CHARACTERS



Matt Hale (Dylan Sprayberry) has lived in Brighton Falls, Washington his whole life, living a normal teenage life, until his mother is killed in a terrible accident. His life is forever changed by the event. Despite the heartbreak of losing a mother so young, Matt continues to remain hopeful, even as darkness looms over his town, and evil begins knocking at his door.




Justin Davis (John Karna) is a fiercely loyal friend to those he cares about most, and a pain in the ass to just about everyone else. Justin is the quickest of his friends to accept his new world of monsters, having always felt like something was missing from his life. Though this doesn’t mean he isn’t terrified most of the time.



Marnie Quinn (Skyler Samuels) is the adopted sister Matt never knew he had, until his mother died and Marnie and her brother Luke are forced to come out of the shadows Janet tried to keep them in. In order to protect her son. Despite this Marnie doesn’t seem to hold a grudge against Matt, and quickly finds a place in as one of his closest friends, she even finally gets to go to school in hopes to keep an eye on him.



Emily Ashford (Amber Stevens) is Matt’s oldest friend, her father and Matt’s mother grew up as best friends, and now the torch has been passed on. She is smart, capable, and protective of those she loves, particularly Matt. She is first among his friends to meet Luke and Marnie, having met them soon after Matt departed for his grandfathers, and has grown to truth Luke deeply.



Luke Quinn (Jake Abel) is Marnie’s older brother, he’s stern, mysterious and closed off to all but Marnie. He like Matt know the pains of losing a mother at a young age, Luke never had it easy, and often feels like he’s only alive to protect his sister and now Matt. Taking the young boy under his wing as a hunter isn’t an easy challenge for the patience lacking Luke, who often loses his temper with Matt and his small band of friends, but even with the frustrations he feels, Luke can’t help but finally feel like he’s part of a family.


Recurring Cast








Abby Chambers (Chyler Leigh) is Matt’s loving but recklessly impulsive, and immature aunt, who struggles to come to terms with her sister’s death and new found role as a mother figure.

Hank Ashford (David Ramsey) is Emily’s cop father, who she inherits her protectiveness from. He begins to become concerned of how many cases his daughter and her friends become involved in.

Jonathan Baker (Monroe Chambers) is a student at Brighton Falls High, with a knack for investigating the bizarre happenings in the town. He is close friends with Justin and Lisa.
Lisa Ford (Chelsey Reist) is a friend of Justin’s, who he became close to well Matt was gone, she is also best friends with Jonathan Baker.


Episode Guide

1.01 "In The Beginning"
 

Matt Hale returns to his hometown after a few months away well he recovered from the loss of his mother. Though he desperately wants things to return to normal everything is about to change. When an Angel known as Samrael shows up at Matt’s house demanding an ancient object known as the Warden. New friends, and old unite to protect Matt. But do Matt and his friends really stand a chance against an angel of god?  

1.02 "Life Bites and so do Vampire's" 

NEW THREATS ARE COMING - When blood is stolen from the schools blood drive, and a beloved teacher is murdered. Jonathan (Monroe Chambers) launches an investigation and becomes convinced Vampires are responsible. Meanwhile Luke (Jake Abel) while still recovering from his injuries tries to train Matt (Dylan Sprayberry) in the ways of a hunter, with frustrating results, and new student Marnie (Skyler Samuels) comes under fire from a school bully. John Karna and Amber Stevens Also star. 

1.03 "The Cost of Love" 

AN OLD FLAME RETURNS - Still weak Samreal, hires Luke's (Jake Abel) ex girlfriend Kate (Guest Star Candice King) a demon hunter herself to figure out how Matt is connected to the Warden. Also Emily (Amber Stevens) gets a visit from her black sheep of the family Aunt, who tries to convince Emily that they are from a family of witches. Justin (John Karna) and Matt (Dylan Sprayberry) help Marnie (Skyler Samuels) prepare for her first high school dance. 

1.04 "Lycan" 

A LIFE WILL BE FOREVER CHANGED - A werewolf descends on Brighton Falls, and turns one of it's residents. As they struggle to come to terms with what's going on they endanger the lives of many. While Matt (Dylan Sprayberry) and Luke (Jake Abel) have opposing views on how to deal with this situation, Marnie (Skyler Samuels) begins to develop shocking powers. 

Opening Credits

NOTES

"Brighton Falls" is another pass at Destiny Falls/Fallen. It's also the version I plan to stick with. It will be a monster of the week type series, that will slowly build towards it's finales. The first season will be 10 episodes. The pilot is already done, just waiting on edits, hopefully by the end of the weekend it should be up. I've written out a few characters and added in some new ones, namely the Quinn family. Sorta of the experts on demons, Luke will act as mentor type character, training and preparing the kids for the monsters and battles to come, and while Matt, Justin, and Emily are struggling to understand the world monsters and demons, Marnie will be struggling to fit into an ordinary life, having been "home schooled" all her life, Marnie will try an adapt at Brighton Falls High School. I will check back in, and patch up the pitch in the morning as it is now four am! Goodnight. 

[Matthew James]

The pilot is now up! I Wasn't able to fix the tiny little boxes that appear next to the cast list, but will find away to remove them in the future. Please enjoy the pilot, and as always, let me know what you think of it! The link can be found in the episode guide, and even, if you click below.

link

[A. Blackwood]

I saw that you’d posted your pilot episode so I thought I should take some time to read and give you a review. Quick note though- the link for the pilot in your pitch isn’t working, only the one on your update post!

Anyway, on to the pilot episode of Brighton Falls.

So overall I quite liked reading this pilot. There were some really big issues I had (more about those later) but the characters and the storyline for this pilot episode I found really enjoyable. I also thought the opening was fantastic- with us getting to see some of what Matt's mother could do and what she was involved with before her death.

There weren't any noticeable problems with your characters, I felt they all had fairly distinctive voices and personalities which was nice. I didn't really have a stand out favourite at the end of the episode but Marnie was a highlight, even though we didn't get a lot of her in this first episode.

I think I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of fantasy and magic so the mythology you have happening with this series has certainly gained my attention. We were given plenty of interesting tidbits in the pilot to help explain what was gong on while also retaining that air of mystery, especially concerning the Warden. It may fall a little bit into your typical 'fighting against evil' supernatural type series, but I definitely think this series has enough original ideas to hold it's own.

So in summary, story and characters I was very happy with, but the downfall for me was structure and writing.

Unfortunately, I don't think there was a single page in this script where there wasn't a spelling, typo, or grammatical error that jumped out at me. Admittedly I'm probably more attuned to things like this than most, but I feel even your average reader would pick up on a lot of this, and I know for many people reoccurring errors can really take them out of a story. I'll try to breakdown some of the more common errors I noticed now to help you out with future edits or writing.

-Use of commas and full stops.
One of the biggest writing errors I noticed was sentence structure. A lot of your sentences were run on sentences or fragments which do not make for nice easy reading unless used sparingly or for emphasis. There were a lot of places where a full stop could have have been used instead of a comma to make for better structure (Eg. "Samael reaches his palm out, as Janet screams in pain, as her whole body tightens." is much neater as "Samael reaches his palm out. Janet screams in pain as her whole body tightens.") and many places where full stops resulted in fragments that made little sense (Eg. "He turns the key. Bringing the engine to life." -Brining the engine to life- does not make sense on it's own as a sentence, and should have been attached to the previous sentence to make "He turns the key, bringing the engine to life."). This would be something I would really watch out for because it caused me to stop and start a lot with my reading, meaning I never fell into a really nice flow where I was completely focused on the story and not the writing.

-Spelling errors and incorrect words
Again, unfortunately, many of these littered throughout the episode. For example 'dinning room' instead of 'dining room', 'there' instead of 'their' and 'composer' instead of 'composure'. They're easy to miss as the writer, because you know what's supposed to be there, but readers will pick up on the mistakes. This might fall a bit onto grammar but I'll include it here as part of spelling- but there were a lot of incorrectly used apostrophes too. Apostrophes on the end of a word are usually to signal possession or contraction. There are lot of times when you have used 'let's' which means 'let us' instead of 'lets' (Eg. "Matt let's out a chuckle") as just one example. I also noticed a few of the reverse situation, where you had not used an apostrophe where there should have been one.

-Grammatical and other errors
A few other common errors I noticed: there were a lot of ellipses used (...) but a lot of the time they only had two dots instead of the customary three. Not sure if some of these were supposed to be full stops and an extra one ended up next to it but keep an eye on those. There were a lot of randomly capitalised words in the middle of sentences that shouldn't have been capitalised (Eg. "The room is dark as we push through it, Coming up to the front door"). I also noticed some redundant phrasing (Eg. "One more car drives down the street, coming to a halt outside of the house. It comes to a stop,"- it's been mentioned twice that the car stops) or sentences where repeated words made them sound clunky (Eg. "Fire erupts from the window shattering all of the windows in the house.").

That probably covers the most obvious things I noticed and hopefully it will help you, like I said, with any future writing you do. Please don't think I didn't like the script either, because I did and my motive for giving you these notes is because I would very much like to see you improve and continue with your idea Also, some of these things I've pointed out are a bit more personal preference than set rules when it comes to writing so don't feel like you need to change a whole heap of things just because I said so!

Anyway, despite the writing side of things I really enjoyed this story, and I wish you the best of luck with your pitch!

[Matthew James]

Well thanks for the review Addison! I've taken a lot of what you said into consideration. I've decided to get an editor.

On the story side of things, I'm pleased you liked it. I'm glad you liked Marnie, I'm surprised considering how little appeared. Which was because I had originally had a different "plan" for her. It was going to be very, Percy/Grovver (Percy Jackson), but I ended up really liking the way we brought in Jake, so her story felt unnecessary, and was rewritten.