Gen by Sean Kane - Short, Action - A team of clones has achieved success with a secret project, but it may cost them their lives to keep it safe. 7 pages - pdf, format 8)


*Note: the writer of this script had already submitted a previous entry to the OWC.  Some folks think multiple OWC entries are cool.  Some folks don't.  Just wanted to let you know so you could make an informed decision.

GEN

Action: Yup
Low budget: Helicopters and other military craft, clones


Five clones is too many. My mind maxes out on Thing One and Thing Two. These clone stories are always hard for me to visualize.

Okay, not much else to say.

Sorry, but I didn't get this at all.  Too many characters, none of which have any names.  It seemed like a military operation with a deeper meaning that I didn't quite get.

Not much else to say.

Damn...WTF?  Seriously...

First script I've given up on this time around.  It's a mess.  No named characters...no real characters, either.

The writing with the missing "a" and "the" type stuff comes across just horrible.

The long scene that's intercut for some reason is impossible to follow because of it.

The dialogue reads like it was either written by a little kid or little kids are speaking it.

Absolutely nothing positive to say here.  Sorry.

Consider me confused.

No idea who anyone was or where they were in relation to the story. Once you got characters with no names and just clonde 1, clone 2, you'll confuse the reader.

It didn't help that the story seemed to go nowhere. It plays out like a pure writing exercise in action, with no attempt at a story. Whatever floats your boat man.

No offense, but probably my least favourite so far.

I think you seem to write action well. There were a few things you should consider changing though. The intercut action scenes doesn't work the way you have them written at the moment. It reads very confusing and need to be identified. If you don't feel like writing full slugs for each location, you need to at least write

AT ASSULT TEAM:

AT LAB:

and so on.

Cycler? Is that what they are called? Not cyclists? I don't know, I'm asking.

The story itself was confusing and hard to follow, but I still thought it was decent. It kept me intrigued.

You failed big time on the low budget part!  ;D

Good luck with this. I think you did okay with it.

SPOILERS
I'm so bummed that Clone Three dies.  Good bit of dialogue by COMMAND (V.O.), "What is the status of Big Brother's cell?"  

#14 Gen* -
A team of clones has achieved success with a secret project, but it may cost them their lives to keep it safe. 7 pages.

Format: Perfect - Good -  Close Enough
Notes: None
Action: H3ll, Yeah! - Pretty Good - Eventually - Needs More
Breakdown:  Pretty much non-stop action with almost zero set-up or build. Nice.

Budget Considerations:
Locations - East/west oriented Highway, clinical laboratory, forest w/ paved road + dirt road + trailer (or run down house), forest underbrush, cornfield, bridge over river
Props -  Assay trays, indigo fluid/ink/dye, computers (laptops) x 3, video cameras + monitor, roll of 6mil translucent plastic, 3yds/meters clear flex tube, 15 gal/25l of milky white water (a quart of latex paint ought to work + another quart of ocher or brown latex paint), syringe, plastic cartige, "metal" box, duct tape, steel cabinet, Clone Five pistol, smoker, 4ft/1.5m thing inside incubation bag, rock, viscous goop (a gallon of off-color latex paint, Assault member four pistol + holster (probably should ditch this and just use the FN-P90), dummy of young adult to drop in river - or - greenscreen, MP7 PDW, radio mic, fake blood
Costumes - Full face black motorcycle helmet + black leather bike outfit incl. leather jacket, Clones shirts + pants x5, Assault team uniforms + helmets + masks + gloves + FN P90 PDW x3 (film it right and you don't need five actors, either), flesh toned tights and tube top (no naked minors on set)
Vehicles - Black motorcycle, black assault van, gate open van
Actors - Clone + body doubles x2, Big/Little Sister Clone + body doubles x2, Mother
SFX - Computer screen actions, shots fired and impacts effects, windshield shatter + blood spatter effect, Assault member drive-over effect, injured shoulder/arm effect
Other - Public domain stock footage of UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, airport and ships in harbor, stunt crash pads if using greenscreen for fall.

Budget Guesstimate:  Between $1k and $3k.
What I like: Cheap settings. Building that dummy is going to probably be the most expensive part of the project. (I strongly advise against dangling and dropping a real actor into a river from a bridge).
What I'd change: Just use the PDW in the cornfield, lose the pistol.
How I envision this looking: Like a foresty version of THE RAVEN. This is quite doable on a indie non-SAG scale.
What I'd like to know from the writer: Someone's going to have either a lot of fun blocking the scenes for in camera effects or cloning faces and compositing in After Effects. How many hours will it take to hunt down public domain stock footage of the UH-60s, harbor and airport?

Quoted from RayW (I strongly advise against dangling and dropping a real actor into a river from a bridge).

Unless it's Ahmed Best.

As I go:

Page 2:  "Five minutes and the process will be..."  Could just be, "Five minutes!"

Page 3:  "My god, this thing is..."  The way the clones speak is very strange to me.  They don't seem like professionals but they act like professionals.

Thoughts:

What's that drug called that all the students are taking, the one that totally focusses your mind?  Anyway, that's what you'd need to read this script at anything faster than a snail's pace.  So much going on with so many people, none of which have any names and all of which are clones.  I actually read through twice but still couldn't force myself to focus on this.  And I don't understand the story.

Is this a commentary on war?  Soldiers are all clones, that kind of thing?  Is it something to do with birth?  The language suggests that.  Is it something to do with men versus women?

Here's what I get.  The male clones somehow create a female human, either a clone or an original, that is of importance to the female clones, most likely because she is actually an original, I guess.  For some reason the male clones need to steal her -- maybe she could be used to help male clones, too -- but failing that, they'd rather kill her than let the females have her.  The motorcyclist fools the male clones into thinking she's one of them when she is actually one of the females, and thereby gets away with this young woman.

Is that right?  And if so, why is it important?

Be interested to hear about this one.

This one was pretty confusing to me, and it seems it would be pretty expensive with the fires and blackhawk helicopters, so i wouldn't call this low budget. it did have a lot of action so you did good on that part of the challenge. in the end i just didn't get it, but good job on completing the owc.

Look---

I know it's a short script.
I know it's a OWC
I know there's the chance that you may have wrote this in under a week.

But I got a little bone to pick here, Too many CLONES. Not to mention that if Clone 1, 2, and 3 (and others) all look alike, I suppose that's fine. Only problem is I don't know who the "original" donor is. Was that person a guy or girl? Age? Any ethnic background? Did one character have an accident and have a scar or bruise?

Nothing tells them apart. With a CLONE ONE CLONE TWO and, in one slug, CLONES THREE AND FOUR. Five Clones in all. I'm done by page four. I want to be encouraging. I want to be a nice guy.
So all I can really say is, it isn't always easy coming up with stuff on the fly. But I can't tell which CLONE is which. It's like that old joke "Who's on first?"

Y'know?

Ok read this one.

Well I didnt see any grammer or spelling problems. :]

Ok lots of action!  IMO this would have made a great action sequence period. Not sure that I got the story down though. So much was going on I had trouble keeping up lol.

Not a bad job at all but could be expensive to film maybe?

A bit of a muddle...needs re-working and less 'clonage'...good for a 'movie of the week' if worked on!

Sean,

I read this one back to back with You Betcha, quite a pair.

This short reminded me of 16-bit sports video games.
As I would play them, I would try and employ logic and strategy.
The game would continually butt rape me with wacky physics.
That's kinda how I felt when I read this script.

Ok, clones. Got it. Wholesale clones. But what do they look like?
I have zero clue whom they are all modeled after.
Slugs start in a static location and leap to a moving van with zero notation.
You've got buckets of high tech helicopter action, no budget constraints here.

Sorry, this didn't work for me, thanks for playing though.

Regards,
E.D.

As Martin Scorcese said: "Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out." This story as a standalone is bereft of context which sucks any deeper philosophy right out of it.

This was at least ambitious, but it was sorely lacking any emotion or characters to hook me. We never understand what this story is telling us and why we should become involved. It was surely written in a rush, and without care or attention?

Rewrite it, give us something to cling onto with characters and sharpen the focus. Why are the team chasing them? What is the goal for taking the sample? What are the consequences for society? How can we relate to all this? Etc, etc.

The story was your typical action-type plot.  Helicopters, agents on bikes, etc.  Some things that could improve the story would be to rename the characters and improve the sentence structure.  There are too many characters named Clone (insert number).  Give them actual names.  You had a lot of fragments too.  I would re-write them as complete sentences. Keep up the good work!