Intellectual Property by James McCormick - Short, Sci Fi - Wallis Tyrone is incredibly old, kept alive through the hi-tech efforts of a corporation who consider their president too invaluable to let die. Frustrated, he decides to take his own life … but then his problems really begin. 10 pages - pdf, format 8)

James, I haven't seen you on the boards before, so I keep this fairly short and if you show up I'll provide a little more input.

I'm on the fence about this one.  Sci-fi or futuristic stories are typically hard to do in shorts because you typically need more time to provide exposition and explanation.  Here I think the story worked; unfortunately, I wasn't exactly enamored with the writing itself.  There were a couple of things working against you here.  First, your formatting font looks really strange.  The words seem to be all squished together, so I don't know what's causing that.  You might consider utilizing a different font.  Courier or Times New Roman typically work best in screenplays.  Just made for a difficult read.

Second, while your writing style isn't bad, it's my personal preference that you shouldn't be using "we" in the action sequences ("we see the city", "we look out of the building").  Others may disagree, but I would bet about 90% of the reviewers on this board would say the same thing.

A few grammatical errors throughout, and you had one big error, where Tyrone kept calling the man visiting him as "Edward," yet the character's name was Bryce.  Don't know what happened there.

I really did like the idea--it's a very interesting concept and I think it would actually work much better in a longer form.  You should give that some consideration.  Work on editing it up and make the necessary corrections, fix that font, and I think you'll get some favorable reaction to this.  Best of luck.

Gary

Thanks for the feedback Gary - I'll take on board your comments.

regarding the font - I basically converted final draft into pdf - but I see what you mean about it looking a little crunched up.

haven't posted yet but plan to get around to that in next couple of days

James

Hi James

Very captivating story. You seem to know your way about writing a sci-fi flick. This definitely has the makings of an even bigger feature...I would start thinking about expanding on the story. Great work.

-Silva Sly-  

I enjoyed that, an interesting premise well executed. There seemed to be a slight formatting issue, or maybe it was my pdf reader was acting up as a lot of spaces seemed to be missing. But yeah, apart from what may be my own technical issue that was a very enjoyable read, congratulations and more please!

Mark and Silva
Thanks so much for your comments - glad you liked it. I will certainly think about how to turn this into a longer script.
Jimbo

Wow, you really have got some Science Fiction ideas.

This one is amazing. I could easily see this as a thoughtful art-house Sci-Fi film. It could study the themes of what it means to be alive. Why life is so important. Why death is so important. How death is necessary and actually maybe not such a bad thing. It can play with the fears, anxiety. You could introduce religion, politics and science into it. I can see it being very emotional.

Please continue with it. One little criticism would be the obvious exposition in the dialogue, but once you stretch it out it won't be needed.

Another thing you can focus on is the whether he is even human, once his mind or consciousness has been duplicated. Is he already dead?

Then there's all that stuff with the corporation and obsession with money, power.. you could even look at celebrity culture. Maybe this man is revered by everyone. Maybe him as a symbol is too important to let go of.

Just throwing out random ideas.

Go for it man.

Cool

Matthew

I've worked on this one a little to reduce it to a single location, two characters and thereby easier to film.

I've updated the logline too. Any feedback on the logline would be very much appreciated. Thanks

A corporation take on their own CEO when he tries to retire, claiming countless life extending procedures have rendered him their own personal property.

Quoted from James A McCormick ... I've updated the logline too. Any feedback on the logline would be very much appreciated. Thanks A corporation take on their own CEO when he tries to retire, claiming countless life extending procedures have rendered him their own personal property.

I actually like your original Logline better.  It's more character driven from your main guy's POV.
Your revised Logline reads from the Corporate character's POV.
Which one is it?

I can't open the file for some reason. Will try on my PC later.

thanks for the input-
Maybe it was better before, I was just trying to come up with a punchier logline.

You're right about getting it the wrong way around. I just couldn't make anything work and also get in the bit about him being considered corporation property.

Cheers