Cell S27 by Stephen Moore - Short, Drama - The night before his release from jail an innocent man gets a visit from some of the other animals in the zoo. Can he remain innocent or must he become an animal to survive. - pdf, format 8)

Yeah, good! Excellent job on the dialogue between Sophia and Donaldson-The characters felt and sounded real to me...The incident in the cell, since it was past, could have been a flashback...I liked the twist of the ladies getting the snot beaten out them by Jeremy... Some good action, good drama, fits the challenge fine...Suggest breaking up some of the big blocks of description, simplify a bit...Overall I thought the visuals very good. Liked it.

The idea is good and the action works well. This has twists and uncertainty to the end.

This is let down by the dialog. Most of the characters sound the same and they sound well educated. Much of the dialog is wordy and some of it reads almost indistinguishable from the action. There are places where it is like one person (you) is telling the whole story.

Did I detect a Psycho homage?

Finally, what is Faux deflation?

Philip

Quoted from pwhitcroft Finally, what is Faux deflation?

I'm pretty sure that means when someone acts deflated (let down, disappointed, humiliated) but is being insincere. I thought it was a bit odd too. ;)

I think the idea of someone having military training wrongfully accused and surviving an attack is played out. The short is muttered with descriptions of feelings and other things that you cannot convey without telling us they are going on... like the end.

The writing is solid but the story and characters are a mess.

I enjoyed the dialogue for the most part but hated everything with Jeremy. The Lawyer does a good job and Donaldson is top notch but why is she talking to a "Guard" and not the warden or FBI?

Why is the FBI sealing off a crime scene and not holding the guy in custody?

Just seems that in a federal wing the prison "guard" would have more pull than the FBI or Warden. I think he would be held by the FBI and would be checked on right away by the doctor.

It's not that I didn't like this. I just think it could have used more work.

I liked this one a lot, especially the ending. A bit cheesy, perhaps, but it won me over easily. Your descriptions are good (although you should never include camera movements in a spec) and the dialogue is spot on. It also fits the genre/theme very well, so top marks for that too. I especially liked telling the story through flashbacks, with Donaldson narrating the events. I thought that worked very nicely.

I don’t really have much to say, other than well done. It was a very enjoyable read, an interesting take on the material and a solid story. Good work.


Matt.

A few mistakes with camera angles being involved, dialogue being too long and capitalised names in dialogue.

I felt this was a bit of a tarantino style rip-off. Shawshank and Psycho being the ones for this. The original part was that he was a military trained killing machine.

I did like this but it's very much tried and tested so you were onto a safe bet story-wise. Just feel that too many technical errors were made.

This one was pretty good. I have a question though. I may have missed it, but how did the prison guard know the entire story of what happened that night? I wondered throughout the script.

On page 2 Jeremy is described as an Olympic swimmer (not sure how you would show this). Then on page 5 Rob "steps toward Jeremy not caring what Jeremy is doing with his hands behind his back" First, how would you show him not caring? Second, if he saw that Jeremy was doing something behind his back, wouldn't he be at least a little cautious? Wouldn't anyone?

Besides that just some minor typos. Make sure questions end with question marks. I understood the faux deflation, but faux doesn't really need to be used.

Good work.

James

This one I did not like too much. I feel like the odd-man out since everyone enjoyed this. The descriptions were all clumped up and hard to read, and it made the script messy.

Your format was off, with the headings saying "INT. CELL DAY" rather than "INT. CELL - DAY," plus the fact that you didn't add flashbacks so I didn't know what was flashback and what was real. And the fact that your characters talked (O.S.) rather than (V.O.). Also, you don't need to capitalize character names in dialogue. Only in description.

The dialogue all sounded the same from everyone, and there were a lot of characters to remember. You've even capitalized names of characters who aren't even shown in the script, which creates even more confusion because you think they're going to be shown later and I was like, "Great, more names to remember."

I was actually thinking that this script was going to be about animals in a zoo and seeing them talk, and see how to escape. I think that'd be a pretty cool idea if you did it right, and it'd be a cool way to depict a prison cell thing.

Sean

Formatting errors aside, this script was rushed. Ideas disjointed and points unnecessarily repeated. No explanation of the difference between innocent and not guilty.
Structure very movie of the week.
Perhaps it's the short format.

I didn't like this one. Besides the numerous technical errors I thought the dialogue was too repetitive and on the nose in spots. I didn't at all have the feeling that real people were speaking.  The harping lawyer was especially unrealistic.

The story itself was ok, but I would rather have seen it happening at the moment rather than in flashback mode.

Good try but I think this should have a REWRITE.

This one needs a bit of a polish, but I thought it was okay. You stuck to the theme, genre and page limit, so kudos for that.  

I actually liked the dialogue between the guard and the lawyer; I thought it was appropriately tense without being over the top. The fight scene was pretty cool, but the thing I really enjoyed was how things got progressively worse for Jeremy and how totally plausible it was. Sometimes what's right and what's legal isn't the same thing. I’m looking forward to seeing how this turns out after you've taken some of the feedback on board and given it a rewrite or two. I'm sure you can take it to the next level.  

  Thanks for all the constructive criticism.
  I'll be rewriting this soon and take a little more time. This was written in three hours and it shows. With any luck there'll be another OWC soon and I can spend a whole week to prove how crappy a writer I am.

  Thanks again.

Quoted Text With any luck there'll be another OWC soon and I can spend a whole week to prove how crappy a writer I am.

Don't sell yourself short, brother. This was good work. I hope to see you on the next one.

James R