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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    One Week Challenge    January 2018 Two Week Challenge  ›  Cherry Blossom (was Olympic) - 2WC Moderators: Mr. Blonde
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  Author    Cherry Blossom (was Olympic) - 2WC  (currently 3377 views)
Don
Posted: January 27th, 2018, 10:08am Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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Cherry Blossom (was Olympic) by Cameron Dueker (CameronD) writing as The Sullivan Brothers - Short, War - With the Trinity Test failed, two US Marines and two Japanese schoolgirls fight to survive Operation Olympic, the American invasion of Japan. 14 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work



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Revision History (2 edits; 1 reasons shown)
Don  -  February 19th, 2018, 5:58pm
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DarrenJamesSeeley
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It was my understanding that the OWC stories are set in the present, with some sort of history changed. So here we have a story set in WW2, some follks might have a concern about this. But given the hard challenge and that there's only a small handful who gave it a roll(myself included)...not an easy OWC that's for sure.

Because the story takes place close to the incident (instead of dropping the bomb, it is an invasion) but the result is...okay Marines with guns fighting Japanese school girls with bamboo stickss. This isn't going to end well. And it seems that the Marines, won the day.  Despite the cliched Marine tough guy talk and order giving, the script overall was alright as far as the writing goes.


P2 - SHGt HILLS has an "S" under his slug near bottom of the page.


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Pale Yellow
Posted: January 27th, 2018, 11:24pm Report to Moderator
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Another Japan invasion script and this is only my second read. *sighs*

Bottom of page two the formatting is off in a couple places....

I do like the braveness of the girl at the end...

I felt like there were two stories kind of going on here and I was not sure who to root for really.

Writing overall was good and easy to read. Good job.
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JEStaats
Posted: January 28th, 2018, 2:35pm Report to Moderator
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No sh*t, there I was....

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Curious what the title Olympic has to do with this story? I must have missed something.

A few formatting issues and misspelling errors (Calvary v. cavalry). Not sure, but I think the rule for abbreviating should be checked too (SGT v. sergeant). I think they should be spelled out.

Could be my fault but I think some characters may not have been introduced properly as some were getting killed off that I hadn't noted earlier.

Interesting take on what would it have been like if the bombs failed and the US executed a land invasion of the mainland. It would have been at least as brutal as you depict it.

Good job getting this in; not an easy task.
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MarkRenshaw
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Writing these notes as I read the script.

A very interesting concept and I love how you get the timeline change across with the telegram at the beginning.

A very Saving Private Ryan opening, the packed liked sardines in an opened tin can description seems a little off to me. A shrill shriek that scares the ghost out of someone? Maybe the writer's first language is not English, I'm not sure as some of the words are spot on while others seem odd, just to be safe I'll refrain from any more comments about the descriptions.

Kamikazee boats. Not sure of these from a practical sense but they sound cool.

Stacks's fuel tank being hit is telegraphed unnecessarily. I'd cut the dialogue which points out what's going to happen in a few minutes.

I do like how the school children are being trained to kill the soldiers. I don't mean that in a weird way, it just seems very authentic to me.  My grandfather was a Royal Marine in WWII and he fought against the Japanese. He told me about how terrified they were of the US and UK soldiers and how they are believed the West was coming to rape, torture an kill everyone. Soldiers would literally throw themselves off a cliff instead of surrendering. The Japanese propaganda was insane.  

Wow - That was very tense and exciting. It was believable and felt authentic. It did seem like at the end this could carry on and you simply ran out of pages but this was an excellent effort. My favorite so far.


I have to say and I'm going to say this for every script in this challenge (so I'm basically cut and pasting this last bit into all of them lol) that well done on entering! This was creatively an extremely challenging outline, one in which quite a few didn't even attempt or dropped out of. To have a completed script in the running deserves a pat on the back and a collective high-five!

-Mark


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Revision History (1 edits)
MarkRenshaw  -  January 29th, 2018, 5:57pm
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Dreamscale
Posted: January 29th, 2018, 5:04pm Report to Moderator
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Opening passage not broken up correctly at all and very awkwardly written.

5 line passage also not broken up correctly and extremely awkward, almost as if English is a 2nd language.

Lots of missing punctuation.  Poor sentence structure/  Not a fun read at all.

So many poor and cheesy descriptors being used, are not helping the read at all.  I'm really struggling to continue.

I'm sorry, but the writing is too poor for me to continue and I feel it's just going to be a waste of my time.
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DanC
Posted: January 30th, 2018, 1:30am Report to Moderator
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War is Hell.

I felt for all sides.  I felt that you achieved the task at hand.  I know what event was changed and you (IMO did okay because it takes place later in that day (the story starts with the

SPOILERS

failure of the Atomic Bomb.  So, IMO, it picks up what we'd have to do in WW2 had it continued.

I liked the juxtaposition between the 2 sides of the conflict.  I felt that.  I felt their desires and the goals.  It made sense.

It's a tough read.  It's a sad read.  

Like the Fallout games say:  War is hell.  

Great job.

Dan


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khamanna
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That was tense.
A slice of war and some battle here. High school girls fight Marines with bamboo sticks and the girls are doing quite alright.
I liked their talks the most. It's hell and their loved ones are the thing that keeps them going.

I do wish there were less characters. Do you really need Hills and Douglas for example?
I think you could cut on some characters and even action and add more drama. Even add some conflict between Marines.
Then extend the very last fight. That moment was truly poignant.
Nice job
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FrankM
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@Darren, the OWC rule was just that a historical event didn't happen and the story is set afterward in that altered timeline. Otherwise we couldn't have multiple scripts about WW2.

I agree this captured the intense war-is-hell emotion extremely well, even over the typo/format speedbumps. I'll chalk that up to being an early draft. The scene heading for a location should be the same every time the same location comes up, so for example it's "CLASSROOM 13B" not just "13B".

I agree that there seemed to be too many characters. I get it that the Marines know and care who who these casualties are, but it's hard to get an audience to know and care who they are in such a short period. Marine combat uniforms didn't even have names on them, so I'm not sure it's worth giving a name to someone without any lines. It is, in essence, an unfilmable.

SPOILER

I don't buy a bamboo spear going through a man's chest, but it could have been lethal through the gut so the scene is still feasible.


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Stumpzian
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I liked this and found myself engrossed enough to ignore the many ragged edges. The writer did well at setting up the tension between the two sides -- the frightened Marines and frightened school girls. Very little age difference between them, really, and both thrust headlong into a bloody, pitiful, meaningless clash.
Henry



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CameronD
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Hate to say it but this is painful to read in places.


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Warren
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Hi,

I haven’t read any previous comments so I apologise if I repeat anything.


Quoted Text
Crouched to tighten his boots, Private STACKS (22) stands
among 29 other MARINES, packed like sardines in an opened
tin can. Some steel themselves for the battle ahead. Others
fake it. The roar of the boat’s engine and explosions like
thunder in the distance deafens.


Couple of things I don’t particularly like in this piece of action. I think it can be broken up more, there are least three separate shots here.

I think you can get rid of "in an opened tin can", we already know what you mean without adding this unnecessary writing.


Quoted Text
A shrill shriek flies overhead that scares the ghost out of
Private GREEN eighteen shoulder to shoulder with Stacks.


This reads awkwardly, "scares the ghost out" is unfilmable unless we actually see a ghost leaving his body. How does he react? What do we see him do that alludes to the fact that he is scared? Could also do with a comma between eighteen and shoulder.


Quoted Text
A narrow miss dives overhead and bathes Stacks and Green in
the Pacific.


Everyone will understand what you mean, but in an attempt to make this more flowery, I think it’s just awkward again.

You seem to love a simile; I'm not sure it has that much of a place in a script. I'm not saying never use them, but I'm at the start of page 3 and there have been a few already.


Quoted Text
Green stand up to his feet.


A bit over written, stand up to his feet opposed to what?


Quoted Text
SCHOOL AGED GIRLS


SCHOOLGIRLS?


Quoted Text
that on the floor.


Get rid of "that"


Quoted Text
STACKS
They know what’s coming! If they
hit your tanks we’re all dead!


So OTN, you set a perfect scene with subtext, as in you tell us bullets are flying and you mention the tanks, I automatically thought well that could end badly. Then you go and spoil that subtext by having a character literally say it.

You keep running over into 5 lines of action, this isn’t going to end the world, but the main reason it's happening is because of the over writing, and not because you have 5 lines of action that has to go together. It reads more like a novel than a script.


Quoted Text
Suddenly a stray bullet hits the back of Shoes fuel tank and
he disappears, engulfed in a ball of fire.


This would have been a lot more satisfying without the previously mentioned dialogue.

I'm finding that none of the characters have an individual voice; they all sound exactly the same.


Quoted Text
EXT. ABANDONED STREET - NAGASAKI - DAY


Generally start a slug with the larger location eg:
EXT. NAGASAKI - ABANDONED STREET - DAY
You have a few of these the wrong way around.


Quoted Text
Ready for battle with their bamboo spears at the ready,


Too much "ready".


Quoted Text
By her side, Hanako seems
more worried for her friend than for her own safety.


How would we know this as an audience? What is she doing to convey this idea to us?


Quoted Text
There’s no one here sir


Always use a comma when addressing someone directly in dialogue, so: here, sir.


Quoted Text
Two lunch tables lay ahead in the middle of the
walkway.


Lie, something lies ahead or lies down but you lay something down.


Quoted Text
started


startled?

These girls are badass.

So, the writing definitely needs work, lots of over writing.

The first 4 or 5 pages are a beach landing like we've seen in numerous other films, nothing really sets it apart other than the suicide boats.

Once we get past that though I really didn’t mind this, it kept my interest till the end. Was good to see the two sides of the story playing out next to each other.

Really good effort with this one.

Congrats on getting a script together.



Revision History (2 edits; 1 reasons shown)
Warren  -  February 1st, 2018, 11:43pm
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DustinBowcot
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I skim read to about page 10. The writing is off in quite a few places and the story drags on and on. I wanted to see how the soldiers and schoolgirls ended up together but it seems that will only happen at the end... and they are not together but against each other. I found your logline misleading.
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ChrisBodily
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Title needs to be ALL CAPS.

The copyright should be before the year. Very poor start so far.


Quoted Text
"Dear Mr. President: For better or worse I regret to inform you, the Trinity test has failed." Henry L. Stimson Secretary of War. Letter delivered to Harry Truman Postdam Conference April 24, 1945


This needs a SUPER: in front of it. Also the punctuation is a bit spotty.


Quoted Text
Fighter planes tear through the sky in dark blue streaks. Below them, a massive flotilla of Marine landing craft relentlessly stream towards Kyushu, the southern island of Japan, [and]looms off in the distance.


Flotilla = a fleet of ships or boats. That second sentence has very poor grammar.

I've heard of D-Day, but what is X-Day?


Quoted Text
like sardines in an open ed   tin can.


"opened" can only ever be a (past tense) verb. It can never be an adjective. Replace it with "open."

I didn't know "steel" could be used as a verb. Learned something new.

That whole paragraph is too busy and needs to be broken up.


Quoted Text
A shrill shriek flies overhead that scares the ghost out of Private GREEN (1 shoulder to shoulder with Stacks.


A run-on sentence that needs commas. Also, are we literally going to see his ghost on screen?


Quoted Text
Relax[,] Green! It’s just shells from the battle wagons behind us!


You need a comma, unless "Relax Green" is a shade of green I've never heard of.

A lot of missing commas that make everything read awkward. Is English even your first language?


Quoted Text
The Japs are dug in and fortified!


Not sure about the grammar here.

Lots of busy paragraphs. Too much information to process at one time.


Quoted Text
A narrow miss dives overhead and bathes Stacks and Green in the Pacific.

SGT. HILLS
S
Hang on Marines! We’re going through this!


Huh? WTF? Sorry, no, I'm not going through this.

Sir! I hereby request an honorable discharge, sir!

Granted.


FADE IN:
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Spqr
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Excellent!
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Well that was a strong juxtaposition of characters and situations.

I wasn’t sure whose side I was on, and I liked that a lot. (I was inclined to be on the side of the Japanese girls, but I think that’s partly because I once had a cat called Hanako.) Both sides were well drawn, and neither was a plot-point-baddie.

There’s a lot to like here. I know it’s been done before, but cutting between grand battle scenes and little moments of dialogue between innocents caught up in a war works well. Also, dumb machismo was largely avoided by the soldiers’ reaction to Tokyo Rose and the newborn baby photo. (As noted in my comments on Operation Downfall, I’m really not keen on stereotypical men doing stereotypical things. The patriarchy can be terribly boring as well as socially oppressive.)

I might be being stoopid, but why was it called Olympic? Perhaps something to do with the Trinity Test, a reference also lost on me?

//

One other comment - perhaps a question for all the scripts. The budget for this one would be astronomical. Is that a problem? Does that count against it, in a very practical sense? Is the ambition here to create short films that are actually filmable?

When I see comments from reviewers about some nuance of character motivation being “unfilmable” I often disagree. Those so-called “unfilmables” are often useful clues as to character motivations or direction points. Those sort of “unfilmables” are way less dangerous than practical “unfilmables” like “hundreds of Japanese planes of all types descend...” Just saying.
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PrussianMosby
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Hi,

when the landing craft is open, having no ceiling, then as far as I know, it's a clear EXTERIOR setting.

P3 you should go with short slugs or whatever else concept there but don't interrupt the action as you did with those full slugs.

P5 the "Well shit" comment felt wrong. It may look funny to a viewer but in character I imagine it's far from having a humoristic view to find yourself in burning trousers (no matter how hilarious it looks like) while your comrade Shoe just disappeared in a fireball a second ago. So, not the correct/understandable way to earn sympathy from an audience for showing him as the strong man making a snarky comment in that very moment, imo.

P6/7 end page with full sentence

Okay, huge sets, complex effects and an ultra-high character count, hmm, also story-wise I question the entertainment value which at least should reason such massive effort.

I recognize this as a writing sample, a technical piece dealing with big sets and especially action line writing. And it's done well to a certain degree I feel. Then… the dialogue wasn't good I must say.

Some typos and many formatting issues definitely weakened the performance here. You know, if you go sample and I see no other purpose here, then be precise and tidy in form.

Descriptions were okay, strong in war genre for my taste. Well, but story, what can I say- it was just a concatenation of war happenings. There was no clear goal, meaning or expression, an arcing character or anything to reflect on… also the ending didn't serve anything in this direction.

But as said, I very early saw it as a writing practice thing here regarding genre-bound proceedings and execution within big-set pictures… so never mind



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Grandma Bear
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Another war script...

Lots and lots of typos and such made this a slow read for me. Several times I had to re-read sentences to get what you meant.

I think you did a good job setting up the two opposite sides. Scared marines and scared school girls. That was good, but we didn't really get to know anyone. The only thing was the baby at home, but other than that, everyone was just another name. Something to work on in a re-write, IMO.

Although you set up the two sides of the conflict, I still didn't root for anyone, so by the time the story ended, all I felt was depressed. Sort of a, everyone died, kind of feel. Perhaps add something in the end that shows some sign of positiveness. Maybe the allied forces lost and the school girls are celebrated as heroes or if you want the west to win, show something good from that outcome. Just a thought.



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FrankM
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Quoted from Grandma Bear
Another war script...

Lots and lots of typos and such made this a slow read for me. Several times I had to re-read sentences to get what you meant.

I think you did a good job setting up the two opposite sides. Scared marines and scared school girls. That was good, but we didn't really get to know anyone. The only thing was the baby at home, but other than that, everyone was just another name. Something to work on in a re-write, IMO.

Although you set up the two sides of the conflict, I still didn't root for anyone, so by the time the story ended, all I felt was depressed. Sort of a, everyone died, kind of feel. Perhaps add something in the end that shows some sign of positiveness. Maybe the allied forces lost and the school girls are celebrated as heroes or if you want the west to win, show something good from that outcome. Just a thought.



SPOILER

Soldiers in Vietnam were affected terribly by the human-shield and child-soldier casualties, but there were important qualitative differences with WW2. Allied propaganda before the (planned) invasion carefully and clearly laid the blame for these particular child-soldiers at the feet of the Imperial Japanese Army. My expectation is that the new warrior wouldn't survive thirty seconds in the hallway, but that's not really the point of the story.

Had this been done in retrospect, with some hand-wavy path to survival and capture, I could see her bravery pierce the endemic racism of the time. "I want to see her at Paris Island. How long until she turns 18?"


Feature-length scripts:
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SAC
Posted: February 7th, 2018, 2:50pm Report to Moderator
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Writer,

I couldn’t really tell what this story was all about. There seemed to be no real twist or satisfying conclusion to the story, there were logic issues (school girls armed with bamboo stakes attacking Marines with rifles), and it was heavy on exposition. Not to say I was lost, but I didn’t feel a real sense of place. It was overly long. A lot of the writing itself can be trimmed. Wasn’t a big fan of the dialogue, either. I guess the biggest issue was that the two girls should’ve had me caring more for what happened to them - they seem to be the protagonists here, but I felt indifferent. I must say this was rather ambitious, but it needs a lot of work.

Steve


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FrankM
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Quoted from SAC
there were logic issues (school girls armed with bamboo stakes attacking Marines with rifles)


Illogical, but also a historical fact that Japan's homeland defense plan literally involved issuing wooden weapons to civilian volunteers. The only inaccuracy is that as far as I know, the minimum age to volunteer was 15 for boys and 17 for girls.


Feature-length scripts:
Who Wants to Be a Princess? (Family)
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PrussianMosby
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Yep, Last Samurai convinced in that field as well. It's not uncommon that people use simple methods when protecting their ground. Although I think Steven's comment is legit since it wasn't established that well here.



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Warren
Posted: February 10th, 2018, 2:33am Report to Moderator
Of The Ancients


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Congrats.


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CameronD
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Thanks again everybody for the votes. Now that the veil of secrecy has been lifted I'd like to chime in with my thoughts on writing this and to the responses on the great feedback. I always like to do that with these challenges.  

That said, this script is quite flawed I feel. I submitted 8 minutes before deadline so never got to really go back and edit the first draft like I wanted. The commas are always an issue in my scripts, a consequence of sleeping through English class in HS and I always get a kick of the feedback suggesting English is my 2nd language. lol The budget for this is way over the top but I knew it would be from the start so threw caution to the wind and went all out. The dialogue could be tweaked as well along with some of the action sections. Also there's a point where I changed a character's name midway through (SHOES) but missed changing his old name in one sentence. Ugh. Embarrassing.

I can only guess then the story itself did the majority of the heavy lifting.

That said, I am a high school history teacher and the idea came from a lesson I give on the atomic bomb. Was it justified or not? Had the US invaded the death toll would have been massive on both sides as Japan was ready to commit suicide on a national scale to resist. I ask my kids to imagine US soldiers having to gun down waves of Japanese school girls armed with bamboo spears and the effect it would have not only on the Japanese but on the American soldiers as well.  That utter and senseless waste of human life on both sides for a war that was for all intents and purposes done and over with was the core idea behind Olympic and what I was trying to convey.

A couple things.

Olympic was the code name for the invasion of the southern island of Kyushu and what the script was named after. However as was pointed out, I never connected those dots in the script. Oops.

X-Day was Olympic's version of D-Day and would have dwarfed those landings with 15 invasion beaches all named for US auto manufacturers. Studebaker beach just happened to be the closest to Nagasaki.

Nagasaki was intentionally not bombed during the war to keep it intact so in case the A-bomb was dropped it would be a test bed to measure the weapon's destructiveness on a real city. This is why the soldiers are a little confused why it's still near pristine when they enter it in the script.

Yes, the Japanese were training schoolgirls to fight back with bamboo spears.

They also had suicide speed boats hidden in off shore caves ready to hit American landing craft if the invasion began. What's scary is that these boats were unknown to US planners until after the war ended.

Some estimates of US causalities from invasion were between 500,000 to 1 million.  The US made so many purple hearts in anticipation of the battle that they are still given out today.  

I was afraid the ending sequence would be too close to Full Metal Jacket but nobody mentioned that so that's good. I liked the ambiguous ending and how it fit with the theme of senseless death. At least in my mind that's how it read.

With all the great feedback received I already have plans to rework this to make it tighter and stronger along with a title change so thanks. I really do appreciate it. I learned how to write screenplays from all the feedback and advice on this board a few years back so thank you for that SimplyScripts. I know this is a totally meaningless win, but I've entered a few of these over the years and it does mean a lot to me. This wasn't perfect so I think I just got lucky more than anything else but still, graicas all the same.


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CameronD  -  February 10th, 2018, 1:28pm
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MarkRenshaw
Posted: February 11th, 2018, 6:11am Report to Moderator
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This was one of my two favourites so I'm glad it won. Congratulations!

I think it resonated with me because my grandfather was a Royal Marine in WWII and he experienced battle with Japanese forces. He told me lots of compelling and harrowing war stories (although I didn't know about the suicide speed boats!) and they've stuck with me.

The typos didn't bother me at all. I think there's a massive difference between a badly written script and one that's obviously been rushed. As this is a timed challenged event and we all have lives to live, the latter doesn't influence me that much.

As I mentioned in another thread about this, English and screenplay formatting issues can be fixed quickly and learned, telling a compelling, believable and entertaining story is another matter. When I'm reviewing these scripts, the story and characters are always first and foremost in my mind. In that regard, (plus how it would transition to screen, regardless of budget) this script stood out and deserves the win.

Well done.

-Mark



For more of my scripts, stories, produced movies and the ocassional blog, check out my new website. CLICK

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MarkRenshaw  -  February 13th, 2018, 3:20am
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DanC
Posted: February 13th, 2018, 1:56am Report to Moderator
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Cam, great job.  I really enjoyed this one too.  It was a lot of fun and I felt bad for the girls.  To them, we were the bad ones.  It was thought-provoking.

Dan


Please read my scripts:
http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-series/m-1427564706/

I'm interested in reading animation, horror, sci fy, suspense, fantasy, and anything that is good.  I enjoy writing the same.  Looking to team with anyone!

Thanks
Dan
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CameronD
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Oh hey cool. I didn't realize this was posted. yet. I rewrote and resubmitted my entry after the contest (and with Don's approval) for a special circumstance that may or may not be revealed at the time of this post. Anyways, an updated version of Olympic, now titled Cherry Blossom, is linked on the front page.

I usually like to rewrite these OWC's with the feedback I received to make them stronger stand alone scripts and that is what I did here. If you've read it before not too much is changed. I cleaned up some typos and grammatical errors which were badly needed .The biggest addition is an extra scene where the two Japanese girls sneak out into the middle of the night to watch a convoy of Ohka rocket powered suicide planes being delivered to a launching facility. How they view the weapon gives an extra opportunity to highlight how they view their place in the war as kamikazes in their own right. it also ties the narrative together in a much stronger way as that weapon appears in all 3 acts of the script and eliminating the launching facility of this deadly weapon becomes the incentive for the doomed marine mission at the end. It's not perfect, but I'm MUCH MUCH happier with the final product in this version.

Also, in case any wanted to see the old version (I dunno for compare and contrast reasons) I will link to it here. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tq3ADK3OHN0cdnXt8srUlpEpmNvw0i_p/view?usp=sharing


http://www.TheFilmBox.org Movie reviews, news, and fun!
http://www.screenplaywritenow.com Write a screenplay. Write. Now.
http://www.SchismSEO.com Separate from your competition. Affordable SEO services
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