Regarding controversial content, SPAIGHTS authorship and legitamacy of 'Harvest'

[Federick Gonsa]

I think that it is safe to say that it was stolen... if real. And that is a big if.

[Corporal Hicks]

Regardless of it being stolen, he would of used Final Draft to write it. I use Final Draft to write my scripts. I only ever used Open Office when I didn't have FD and used some old Word template thing that was setup like a script.

Grasping straws now, guys. Solid evidence mate!

[180924609]

OK - this is more general content based observations.

(repeated for posterity)
SHOCK/TENSION EXPRESSION STYLE INCONSISTENCY EVIDENCE AGAINST:
The 'Alien Harvest' script uses the phrase 'a beat' several times to convey scene tension or sudden shock moments. (I count over 50 of them!)

The 'Shadow 19' and 'Passengers' scripts never use this expression once!

>> Why would Spaihts suddenly use this expression style for Alien Harvest?


SEXUAL EXPLETIVES USE IN NON-DIALOG EVIDENCE AGAINST:
The 'Alien Harvest' script contains a few 'f**ks' in non-dialog text.

The 'Shadow 19' and 'Passengers' contains no swearing at all in non-dialog text, even with a few fairly descriptive sexual scenes.

>> Why would Spaihts suddenly include swearing in his script for Alien Harvest.


SYMBOL STYLE INCONSISTENCY EVIDENCE AGAINST:
The 'Shadow 19' and 'Passengers' scripts both use an ellipsis (...) to express pauses in dialog and general sentence stretching.

The 'Alien Harvest' script uses a double hyphen (--).

The 'Shadow 19' and 'Passengers' scripts both occasionally use underlined text for emphasis.   

The 'Alien Harvest' script never uses underlined text (except on the title page!)

>> Why would Spaihts suddenly change his symbolic style for Alien Harvest?


OPENING REFERENCE QUOTES INCONSISTENCY EVIDENCE AGAINST:
The 'Alien Harvest' script opens with two short reference quotes for theme building purposes.

The 'Shadow 19' and 'Passengers' scripts both have none.

>> Why would Spaihts start including quotes in his movie scripts?


Some very crude statistical analysis - make of this what you will!:

Passengers:
word count = 24,793
page count = 126
average number of words per page = 197

Shadow 19:
word count = 25,429
page count = 127
average number of words per page = 200

Alien Harvest:
word count = 20,731
page count = 122
average number of words per page = 170

Passengers and Shadow 19 scripts show a similar average page word density, both with approx. 20% more information content than Alien Harvest.

[ShadowStalker]

Haha. Just read the post Im responding to. Most of that is just me rewriting his post so you'll know what parts ! was responding to! Sorry. Haha.

Oh....ahh ok i gotchya now  lol and its ok

[Politikon]

I'm gonna tackle some of this.....

FIRST-

___________________________________________________________________________________________
METADATA EVIDENCE AGAINST:
From the PDF document metadata (obtained by opening the PDF, then File->Properties...)

'Shadow 19' and 'Passengers' metadata contains:
- A reference to an .fdr file which is a file extension relating to Final Draft - the industry standard script authoring tool costing $250.
- PDF file was created using a Amyuni Document Converter - a professional PDF creator package costing over $600.
________________________________________________________________________________________
1- You are comparing a released draft of another script to the alleged STOLEN draft of a script that was copied somehow illegally! Therefore, who ever did this, possibly not a sucessful writer, would need software to copy it.
2. FINAL DRAFT creates .pdf files for you. So the fact that you are comparing HARVEST which does not include any Metadata relative to FINAL DRAFT, to a script that ALSO did not create it's .pdf WITHIN Final Draft, is only evidence to suggest that it is wrong to assume that HARVEST wasn't written in FINAL DRAFT, in the first place. Unless, you can find some reason why the RELEASED Spaihts scripts were converted outside of FINAL DRAFT, this just doesn't add up.

NEXT-
__________________________________________________________________________________
'Alien Harvest' metadata contains:
- no references to .fdr files
- PDF file created using OpenOffice - a free shareware web download.
- The PDF creation tool has surreptitiously embedded the name of the user who installed OpenOffice: 'David Bryan'.
__________________________________________________________________________________
1. Again, it was stolen. Which means some measures were taken for it not to be copied. Its easy to imagine a scenario involving the thief of HARVEST having to download software that would allow him to do this. Say, something like OpenOffice, which is a free download.
2. David Bryan may be Spaihts assistant or a friend of his assistant, or someone who works at the desk next to his assistant....
****3. The writers assistant would be the person who creates the .pdf for Jon Spaihts...NOT Jon Spaihts!!!
I know this because I myself was an Assistant to the Creator a few times and know many writers and their assistants.
A better way to think of this is that David Bryan would have to be some kind of third party, the Assistants best friend maybe, who loves ALIENS say, and so Sp8's assistant let him read it, and the smart alec copied and leaked it... you can come upwith a thousand scenario for why this is what it is.

________________________________________________________________________________________
>> Why would an aspiring hollywood writer downgrade his professional tools and start using freeware? And who is David Bryan?
________________________________________________________________________________________

1. Easy, he didn't. Whoever stole the script did. Besides, Jon Spaihts would absolutely not be doing this stuff. His assistant would. Thats what he pays them to do.

________________________________________________________________________________________
EMAIL ADDRESS EVIDENCE AGAINST:
The 'Shadow 19' script has an email contact to (presumambly) his own bought and paid for domain: jon@spaihts.com.

The 'Alien Harvest' script has a cryptic address at a google webmail address (that anybody could make up): darksp8s@gmail.com

>> Why would an aspiring hollywood writer ditch his own domain account and start using a webmail account?

_________________________________________________________________________________________

1. Have you tried the domain Spaihts.com? Go ahead.
2. How many email addresses do you have? I have at least 4 personally. Not too mention work email addresses that change form project to project. Anyone could dream up any number of my email addresses.
3. The easiest reason he would change all this info is BECAUSE it leaked on the internet! You think he kept using that for anything not related to those projects? I dont use emails from past projects when I was a lowly PA! or even when I was an assistant.
4. Again, the released scripts have his contact info because he wants them to. The HARVEST script would def NOT use the same address as that he posted on released scripts.

______________________________________________________________________________________
CONTENT LAYOUT STYLE EVIDENCE AGAINST:
The 'Shadow 19' and 'Passengers' scripts both have a DOUBLE line space before every new scene.

The 'Alien Harvest' script only has a SINGLE line space before new scenes.

>> Why would Spaihts suddenly change his layout style for Alien Harvest?

_________________________________________________________________________________________

1. This is just silly. Formatting is done for you. You don't do your formatting. A programs template does, and as YOU already pointed it, these scripts, all 3 of them have been, exported, imported and converted more than once so...what does that mean?
2. Furthermore, after inspecting the other scripts I have to agree with the person that posted them. The writing style is identical. The timbre is identical, the pacing, if you read one line after another from the two scripts, they absolutely seem to be the same writer.

A) ---HARVEST FANBOYS TO THE RESCUE!!!

B) Closer to 50/50 of being legit.

c)With 180924609 anylisis I think that is less than 50% chance of it being true. Politikon only offers alternate explanations to inconsistencies pointed out by 180924609. The only good point that politikon makes is that of the software used. Not to mention,  180924609 makes a good point about the 'beat'

D)Why would someone write such a long hoax?

Its genius really. The author has got exactly what he wanted - global attention to his hard work creating a script for an Alien prequel.

I am not denying that the script isnt well written and it must have taken a good few months to complete. But it is NOT an official work of Mr Jon Spaihts.

We can all laugh (or cry) when official evidence of the real prequel story starts to appear...

would it surprise you, politikon, to hear of someone to go to the extremes of writting a LONG, LONG script if it would not be for hire? Well, your post defending Harvest is quite damn LONG. So if someone is willing to take the time to write as LONG as you do (you are not the only one), it would not surprise anyone to see some jobless dude with good writting skills to write a script based on his own personal fan fic.

a) It is true that I like the script but that was not the point. I'm just giving you the professional run down on why that METADATA is not at all evidence that this script isn't real. Im not saying it IS real I'm just saying that that METADATA is not even remotely proof that this script is not real. Most people who work in the industry would not do this for you guys. I'm not saying I want a medal or a monument I just wish you fans would understand why things are the way they are.

B) Again, this doesn't prove that it is legit, but the more Im made to investigate it's legitimacy the more Im thinking it would be silly for it to be a hoax. 50/50 chance? I leaning toward it being real... I say 55-60/45-40 % chance this thing is legit. So again, Im not saying it's real but if you read my post Im not taking shots in the dark. Those points are not legit to prove it is a fake. They are just not. From the use of FINAL DRAFT not being ruled out down to the legal team. That is just NOT evidence of anything.

C) It's really not alternate explanations I'm offering. Just hard facts. I myself don't always use FINAL DRAFT, and if you read, I did not say he didnt. I said, that scripts change format and etc all the time and since, IM GONNA ASSUME we're not debating whether or not this script was stolen or leaked without permission, (we're all on the same page there I hope!) it just doesn't matter. I have scripts from a show THE UNUSUALS I did for ABC last year that are written in FD but I transferred them to CELTIX because I wanted to edit it on a different laptop...see my point? CELTIX is free software. Understand? I wasnt gonna NOT do my work because I didnt have my MAC, I just converted and used different software. Anything is possible. That might seem like a shot in the dark but it's not at all. These things happen ALL THE TIME. Im serious. It does not mean he did not USE FINAL DRAFT, and Jon Spaihts would not actually do much of the doing that 180....? claimed he would anyway. These are not SMALL things to note, or petty counterarguments. They are reasons the original arguments arent legit arguments at all.

D) Global attention? seriously. I dunno that I would call this Forum 'Global attention'. No offense. Im fond of it and all, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.
I can;t sit here and try and compare the scripts to SPAIHTS other work, but whoever posted them did a really good job of convincing me that he did in fact write HARVEST. The work is almost identical. FORMATTING doesnt mean anything, the writing itself is just the same all around. If you dont see that, i dunno. Its not for me to force. I read ALOT of scripts. These scream the same person to me. Maybe I should say 70/30. I forgot about all that when I said 60/40.

Everyone seems to ALSO be forgetting is that the script doesnt have to be THE SHOOTING SCRIPT to be legit. Personally, Ive gonna on the record stating numerous times that I would be surprised if this material got filmed. Though, I really like it. My debate is only over it LEGITIMACY. Whether it will see the light of day is a different thing.
All scripts HAVE TO GET RE-WRITES several times even if it IS THE CHOSEN SCRIPT.
But I'd like to offer another possibility. I remember RIDLEY SCOTT stating something like ' AT FIRST IT WAS GONNA BE ABOUT THEM (SPACE JOCKEYS) USING THE ALIENS AS A WAY TO WIPE OUT OTHER PLANETS SO THEY CAN TAKE THEM OVER, BUT THEN WE DITCHED THAT IDEA TO GO WITH A MORE HUMAN STORY.'
That description sounds both LIKE the HARVEST script, and HARVEST script could be THE MORE HUMAN STORY, since it does involve a lot of human drama.
Basically what Im sayin is HARVEST is likely a legit script, but it may not be what they choose to go with.

As for the length of my post, what I actually wrote was not even a page. I QUOTED the original (180287647?) 2x so there wouldnt be confusion about what I was responding to. Those quotes made up 85% of my post. As they do on this one.

There is a HUGE difference between thinking through and writing an entire script like HARVEST and responding to message boards,.  Anyone who writes scripts can tell you that. They take crazy hours of work most of the time.

[Politikon]

Politikon's counter-argument largely relies on the draft being "stolen".

If we're debating it's legitimacy it would have too....
Do you think someone risked their job, ever working again in hollywood and expensive lawsuits to leak the script intentionally?

[Politikon]

Regardless of it being stolen, he would of used Final Draft to write it. I use Final Draft to write my scripts. I only ever used Open Office when I didn't have FD and used some old Word template thing that was setup like a script.

Grasping straws now, guys. Solid evidence mate!

If you slowed down and read what I wrote, you'd see that I didn't say he DIDNT use FINAL DRAFT, I said he likely did and the script had been converted at some point.

As for you NEVER using anything else, that's great. I actually worked on writing staffs in Hollywood for major productions and I HAVE USED THINGS OTHER THAN FINAL DRAFT. Case in point, Im on set, they need me to edit format for a rewrite, I don't have my MAC laptop on set, so I download CELTIX and convert the pdf and edit it i CELTIX. This woould be a great time to steal a script.

Im not grasping at straws. I am the only working professional trying to help you people because Im legitimately one of you. I love the ALIEN films. And I have insight to offer.

Where's the respect? Think whatever you want. Its obvious you're all hung up on this NOT being real. Okay. You win. I resign from helping YOU tackle the issue.

You do realize that this movie could have the best script in the world in your eyes and STILL be a piece of shit.

ALIEN did not have a great script. It was the creative decisions that made it work. And I for one, trust RIDLEY SCOTT.

The script could be horrible and RIDLEY SCOTT would likely make it better than half the ideas any of us hate or dream up. Show some effin respect.

If you had some you'd just think, wow, this is a good script, lets trust our fim makers. After all, there the ones ACTUALLY making ALIEN films, not you. Eh?

[180924609]

For the record I read the Passengers script last night and enjoyed it. I look forward to seeing that movie now, if thats the real script of course . It didnt read anything like Alien Harvest to me. It was far more descriptive and imaginative. If Passengers is a true example of Spaihts work then I feel more positive now and the REAL Alien Prequel story will be worth the wait.

A lot of the Alien Harvest script pages just seemed empty and too implicit. AH reads like a novel at times with some lengthy and vague dialog sections. A movie script is not a story book - the non-dialog sections should work hard to convey vague story elements.

----

Going back to the contact email address debate - I think you are being a little naive.

The domain 'spaihts.com' is still registered. It was created in 2002 and is reserved until August 2011.
Check out the following link to InterNIC for the details yourself:

http://www.internic.net/whois.html

The domain name is simply an IP address lookup (using DNS) for resolving a destination host on the internet. Whatever services are available at the host (eg a web server, email server, ftp server etc) are optional.
There is not always a website at a domain name! So if you type that in as an address into your browser, you'll just be presented with a standard facade webpage provided by the network provider.
Mr Spaihts is using this domain name for his email traffic, and it gives him his own unique internet email identity. 

Now, why would he start using a webmail address for business purposes when he has his own unique address?

If you are arguing that this script has been stolen, then embedded within the script would be Spaiht's own private email address since the script would be circulating amongst professional circles who may wish to contact him. He would not be using some half baked gibberish webmail account!

[Federick Gonsa]

 You siad: "Anyone who writes scripts can tell you that. They take crazy hours of work most of the time."
Once again I ask, does that mean that no one who has nothing better to do can't write a long script?
I once wrote a 34 page script (way shorter than 90 pages, but still). It was in a time when I was learning english, so it ended up not being too bright. Now that I know more english, I started to adapt the script into a "short novel"(cant't think of how to describe it). So now what was page 8 in the script I wrote is now page 29 in the short novel I wrote. I have not finished it but I see it being over 100 pages long. Am I getting paid for it? no. Is it hard work that takes hours, weeks, months? YOU BET IT IS.

That said, I would not say that the script is 100% fake either. There is very little we can do but to wait for the movie to come out, if it comes out. But with all I have heard around here from the Corporal's reafirmation that there is no script, to the points noted by 180924609, I tend to think that the chances are lower thajn 50% I am not saying that your points are bad, it is that you assume the script is real to prove that is real. While 180924609 takes the script and anylizes it and points out that there are some discrepancies that don't match up with the script being real. Now if you would go to the scripts and quote examples, of writting styles that are identical, you can post them for al of us to see. Sort of like 180924609 has being doing by pointing out 'beat' and swearing in non dialog.

And I do think this site is global, I have seen here people from Asutralia, Europe, and America. Not to mention that a prevalent tale of a fake script (if it turns out to be fake)  that people are taking in for the real thing would catch Fox attention, for it has the potential to mislead people into not seeing the movie.

[ShadowStalker]

Man this is one heated posts here! some very very long ones, too damn lazy to read!

[Federick Gonsa]

Man this is one heated posts here! some very very long ones, too damn lazy to read!

LOL Just read the first sentence of each paragraph. If yo like the first sentence, go through the entire thing, else, you skip it.

[SM]

SHOCK/TENSION EXPRESSION STYLE INCONSISTENCY EVIDENCE AGAINST:
The 'Alien Harvest' script uses the phrase 'a beat' several times to convey scene tension or sudden shock moments. (I count over 50 of them!)

The 'Shadow 19' and 'Passengers' scripts never use this expression once!

That's pretty telling IMO.  It's like William Goldman suddenly not consistently using 'Cut to' in his scripts.

[ShadowStalker]

Yea i know, lol but im trying to understand the giest of whats going on here....sooo as im seeing it its about stealing script? Or the idea of using Alien Harvest as the bases for the prequel  movie

[Federick Gonsa]

Yea i know, lol but im trying to understand the giest of whats going on here....sooo as im seeing it its about stealing script? Or the idea of using Alien Harvest as the bases for the prequel  movie

Its a discussion about the legitimacy of the Harvest script. Some are pointing why it could be real, while others point why it could be fake.

[ShadowStalker]

Ahh ok, thanks.  Lol personally i have no clue on this its hard to say exactly what it is