The Shark Doctor - OWC

I don't know if vets work on sharks like mechanics do cars but having the shark suspended in mid air seems odd. The fact the shark, though restrained, is able to eat shoulder is odd. I guess I'd be pissed to if I was hung from the ceiling. (Having read the whole script now I think at the very least bite marks on the shark at this point would be appropriate.)

The first six or seven pages is nothing but exposition. Gary's family dies, sharks keep dying, Linda's family died. Very large shark tank, guy escaped from NK who may or may not be 69 years old? (If he was from NK and was really 40, I'd say he should look more like 69. They don't like well over there you know. The fact he's got a football physique AND is from NK makes no sense if you think about it. What does this have to do with sharks?) Or Gary?)

Gary is a sex addict supposedly but is on his laptop and NOT looking at porn? Say what?

Oh, the NK is a kind of shark vampire? That is......odd.

Gary finds Tori's bracelet and the first thing he wants to do is slit his wrist? Very odd.

This whole script is strange. Not sure what the very beginning has to do with the film. Not sure how the North Korean is able to swim with and bite the "man eating" shark before it gets him. Wouldn't the world's biggest state of the art artificial salt lake have security cameras around it? Why are the sharks rotting away from the inside? If there was less exposition more time could be spent developing story and maybe address those issues. Sorry, I just didn't get where this script was going.

There were a lot of good elements, although the execution of this could've been much better.

The logline gave me a chuckle, and when I got to this line: A milky-white and stringy substance dangles from his mouth. Well, you can guess what my reaction was. ;D

This seems like best attempt at a Jaws sequel yet, but the characters weren't grounded in the characteristics promised. Instead, Gary comes across more of a wuss rather than someone who struggles with sex addiction, Tori is shark food, Linda only exists to explain Gary, and Sung-Ki only gets a half-hearted thrust at best.

Did I miss the Sung-Ki/Tori connection?

Anyway, my number one issue with this with the protagonist, Gary. This is a great mystery to be solved, it's clever and original. But there must be an overt subtext of what Gary is going through in regards to sex addiction, furthermore, he needs to overcome it -- or it shouldn't be a crux to begin with. Have some fun with it instead of buckling Gary each time it slaps him in the face. Linda seems like a great place to start. And his backstory? What's the significance and how does it factor in here?

The plot is engaging, and the writing was good. A few typos, but the story moved regardless. Dialogue was okay, fix Linda wanting Gary to guess Sung-Ki's age. Jaws call-backs were done well. The ending presented no climax, which is kind of a downer, considering the mystery was top-notch. Maybe change the title too.

Great mystery and promising story, doesn't deliver.

Best regards,

Johnny

Hmm...not sure about this one. As odd as it was, I did breeze through it. The writing itself was very good. The only thing that stopped my in my tracks was Gary's dialog on page 11 where he begs Sung-Ki to stop killing sharks. It had a completely different tone. Came across as forced and unrealistic.

I didn't really understand it. The milky white substance thing...my mind went somewhere...I'm going to stop thinking about that.

"We're going to need a bigger tank" -- :) :)

You missed the mark on the challenge parameters with more than 4 characters.

Congrats on completing something for this challenging OWC!

I didn't count the characters that had dialog, but I'm pretty sure it went over the limit. The overall story flowed nicely though, moving between scenes and introducing characters. I don't really get how Gary was a sex addict though; one hooker doesn't seem to paint that picture for me.

Some dude from North Korea? There is some freaky ass sh*t going on over there, but the average height of one of these little dudes is about 4 feet I think, not a linebacker. Unless he was some type of government experiment or something, that's probably the only way he would get out of the country in my opinion.

I thought the Dolphin bracelet would interrupt as a signifier for Tori's salvation; Dolphins have been known to attach sharks in schools when they detect a danger, especially when a human is involved. Not that the bracelet could offer anything more for protection than say... a talisman, but could intervene with an event to prevent her death, whatever.

Great attempt to put a story together with the concept put forth, and definitely different than most I've read so far. Good work!

Shark doctor

A few missing words as we go along - usual rushed OWC I assume

Oh, this is low budget - the largest salt lake which you can see from space, plus a great white in a harness - oh, well might as well aim big!

Well, you didn't hold back, I'll give you that.

Sorry, this wasn't for me. A depressed security, shark expert, who bangs hookers and looks after the great white section at a theme park, discovers a sinster North Korean who bites sharks that feed on humans. As a short, that's too much. As a feature I think this would take a lot of buying into but it would have more space to set the scene.

So, it's creative, but lacks cohesion, IMO

All the best

Wild opening, but lots of early mistakes, typos, missing words, awkward writing, poor description, and ridiculousness left and right.

It seems like you can write, but you’re not writing well here at all.  Lots of orphans, extra words tacked on the end of sentences, poor choice of wording.  Just not working at all for me.

Page 2 and we’re already at the character max.  Too much has already happened as well, and I have a feeling an awful lot more is going to happen – it’s too big a concept for a short, IMO.

Page 5 – Again, I have to say this – I can tell you know how to write, but what you’ve written here just isn’t working.  Maybe it’s rushed, maybe you were high on crack when you write, it, but even the dialogue is the same way – shows potential but it’s not being realized.

All this Sun-kI stuff is odd.  Actually, everything is odd here.
“NEXT MORNING” is not a time element you’ll find in a Slug.

Now the writing is falling apart quickly.  Lots of passive writing going on.

Page 8 – Getting odder by the second.  Problem is that it’s so obvious what’s going on here and you’re playing it like it’s a mystery.  Return of Tori, the hardest working Pro in whatever area this takes place in.

“…like a facet…” – Really?  As I said, things are going downhill fast.

OK, so kudos on the very complex story you came up with, but you also need to understand that it’s WAY TOO big for a 12 page short.  It’s also way, way too big an costly to film this, as it would cost literally millions to film this.  As written, it does not work, but it’s also 1 of a few that will not be forgotten and will stand out.

Congrats on entering and kudos for the thought you put into this.

There's some errors I noticed throughout but that's not what we're focusing on.  We're focusing on story elements and I think that's where we should focus our primary reviews, so I'll skip the spelling errors and such.

As far as the story goes... well it's confusing, sorry to say.  I tried to decode it, but I think you need MORE pages to tell it.  12 (as Dreamscale said) seems to be too short to tell a tale as complex as this one.

It's a bit too complex for a 12-pager, but WOULD work more effectively as a full-fledged feature tale.

Nice entry here, but could certainly use more exposition as it's somewhat confusing.

Short: 6/10 (could be expanded to deliver more of a coherent story as a feature)
Shark: 4/10 (also could be expanded, though the shark was present, we only really saw its brute force once)

There are some issues I had with this, telling me something "is seen" for example. The piece seems rushed and it...well let me get to a BIG positive The short by itself may be left to be desired and I had a "huh" moment or two. That said, there is something going on here, andthe whole idea that Ki kills for longer life by feeding ppeople's dead bodies to (mistreated) sharks in a hi-tech lake aquarium is nice.

In a previous thread, there was a big discussion regarding budget. As a short film, the budget won't be justified here. Expanding this out to 86-90 pages and making Ki and his shark like a slasher/creature feature flick? Gold! I'm sold!.

Very enjoyable on a B-film camp exploitation level. I think this was rushed but the concept wasn't. Almost close to magic, and if you had the time, I think it could have been something special. Still might be.

Keep it at all costs and work on it.
I kind of dig it.
But clean up the spelling and grammar.

-DjS

Simon McCorkindale was an actor in Jaws 3 so good tribute there.

An interesting take on the challenge. Had some good parts.

Give it a 6

Quite an ambitious opening.

I'm quite enjoying this. Need a bigger tank... At last. Somebody gets it.

Well. It's a interesting plot. A bit of a stretch but interesting.

Some of the dialogue needs work, as does some of the writing but overall this has a lot of promise.

R

A large tub? Like a bath tub? I'm having A LOT of trouble visualizing this first scene, chains? On a shark? In a tub? Ceiling? What the hell's happening?

You've already broken the four character rule... If I see any more, I'm probably just going to quit and read another entry that hopefully followed the actual criteria.

Dialogue between Linda and Gary, please, don't ever do this. Firstly, it just reads really poorly. And secondly, it feels like you're trying to shoehorn down my face the fact that his family died and I should care about him. Drunk driver? What's that got to do with anything? This is just poor storytelling and if it really did matter, the story should lead to this fact naturally. Again, don't do this.

Having a lot of trouble visualizing the scenes with your descriptions. I have no clue where we are and what we're looking at. Be clear.

Mmm, another character... Seriously thinking about quitting right now, especially since we're four pages in and I haven't the slightest clue where we're headed and what the story is about.

And the guy just disappears? It's so obvious you wanted to show him now because he plays a part later, but it doesn't work since it feels so damn fake. Avoid this too. Don't show characters just for the sake of introducing them, he didn't belong in the scene, especially since he just says sorry and strolls on his merry way. Like, really?

They've lost 3 of their 4 great whites and nobody bats an eye? WTF! Where's green peace with shining banners flipping them off? God knows if three of my dogs suddenly died I'd have the whole neighbourhood think I'm a psychopath, let alone the official banging on my door, telling me how shit the living conditions are in my house that they kill actual animals...

The North Korean guy is evil?! That's a surprise... Also, what the hell were they doing there anyway? Stripping their clothes to have a casual swim?

Church of God? Not sure what that has to do with anything.

He just sliced his wrist? What the hell is wrong with him? What if he hit a vein or an artery?

Not buying that human tissue BS.

And another two characters...

Well, I feel like I've been a douche for all my other reviews so I shouldn't stop here. It would be an understatement to say I wasn't a fan. Look, it seems like the idea you had is cool but the story didn't make much sense and then coupled with the fact that half your characters are useless and add nothing, this was a recipe for disaster IMO. Needs a rework.

*Spoilers*

This got off to a rollicking start, with a shark death on page 1!  The writing itself is solid and I give the writer credit for being extremely creative with the challenge, and trying to pack so much into such a small page count.

Which actually is one of the problems. The issues you tackle in this (OMG sex addiction, suicide, and Asian mysticism all wrapped into a shark story?) are too big to be properly explored in this short of a script.  Honestly, you need at least 25 pages minimum for something like this, if not more

Yes, there are other issues that I don't feel really work in the story; the Asian/magical aspect is pretty one dimensional, and boy, Tori comes across as a huge - shall we say - tramp?  And I just didn't feel that the story elements really gelled together as a cohesive whole (partially because of the short length.) But you get a 9 for imagination on this one!!

Cheers,

--J

Oh - and needless to say... the budget on this one would be over the moon....

An interesting logline and a powerful opening despite me not believing it for a second - it had me hooked.

But it just got stranger and stranger and I quickly lost interest. I think there's a good story here and it certainly is a very interesting take on the challenge but it feels way too big to work as a 12 page short.

There's a lot going on, a lot of characters and not enough room to get it all across in a believable coherent way.

Well done on completing the owc though and for coming up with a very creative idea.

Mark

The writing's decent, especially the dialogue (for the most part). The premise is certainly original, interesting twist on the usual predator/prey paradigm. Visually, some great moments here, especially the opening scene. This suffers more from bad decisions than anything else.

There's too much being crammed into a short, but that's been pointed out already. There's too much character development, the sexual addiction doesn't go anywhere and frankly distracts from the story and the pages lost to all the exposition robbed the opportunity to expand on what was working well. I would have loved to see the opening scene expanded, the shark thrashing, the sound of the chains shaking their moorings a couple of times, the doctor having trouble examining the shark and needing to get closer, all to build the tension so when the chains release it has a better impact and sets the tone for the rest of the short better.

Golf carts can't screech to a halt.

Likewise, it is physically impossible for a human to bite through shark skin. A minute of research would have discovered that and forced something a bit more plausible, like a syringe.

I like the play on the Pacific Southwest mythology, but again the plausibility is stretched when there's no way he can't be caught in what he's doing. There's more to his story, too. Why not make him the shark doctor? Then he has plenty of opportunity to feed on these sharks, even feed them human flesh while rehabilitating them and "doctor" the results of his examinations to turn any suspicion away from him? Hell, give him sexual addiction if you want to keep that, with the vigor of a superman hopped up on shark juice and never satisfied by the encounters because who can keep up with Superman?

Lastly, more than 4 characters and, yeah, the budget can be seen from space, too.

Lots of potential, mediocre result. Good attempt, congrats on completing the OWC.

Jaws goes all X-Files.

Nice hook. Shark attacks immediately.  Intro theme nicely too. Harnessing nature. Exploiting animals for human benefit.

3 weeks later. Gary and an escort. I didn't read the logline 1st so I wasn't thinking sex addict. So i interpreted this differently.

When he sobs I thought his wife died or something.  He's been having trouble dealing with it. Depressed. He calls escort. Now he cries, feeling guilty and low. He's not that kinda guy. So later when she calls, he doesn't lister. And later with bracelet he is reminded of how low he's sunk. And contemplates suicide.  I thought you laid out all these subtle hints. I would consider removing sex addict from logline. Who knows what others will think? Subtlety works sometimes.

The sobs were intriguing,  regardless. Consider removing dialogue about his past. Let the mystery and sadness breathe. He can interrupt instead... I'd rather focus on work..l linda explains research.

Too many characters. But that SungKi is one twisted uber-buff shark vampire. His jump into water was intriguing.  The mystery surrounding the sharks was very interesting.  The resolve, however,  was a little too strange.  Mystery was good, but got borderline goofy. It was all a bit too much to, erm, swallow. Heheh.

The actual shark attack could be better. I'd rather SungKi didn't explain so much. Keep it creepy... I will not share our secrets with the white man... Abrupt ending too. I'd consider ending on Gary's death. Or it'd be nice to see SungKi get it too.

Before gary slits his wrist maybe you could lead into it. Or avoid it all together. If wife died, like i imagined, he could talk to her, working through emotions. Then decide against suicide. That's when SungKi steps out of the shadows, watching the whole time, and says... Let me help you with that.

Lots of gore. Cool mysticism. Trippy storyline. Compelling mystery. Good emotional scenes. A dash of what the fuck. And a weak resolution.

I found the writing to be poor in this one. Very rushed, no flow, poor dialogue that goes on for pages and pages. I skipped through most of it. A bit of blood at the end but not enough to warrant the slog through the story. For me, anyway. Some seemed to have enjoyed it, which is all you need.

what I liked:

Decent writing, at times strong even.

Dialogue mostly good. Maybe the part when Linda tells him to keep the hotel for the week but take a hike...that could be tweaked.

The writer, unlike most OWCs, made a real effort at characterization. I appreciate that.

An attempt at a fully fleshed out story...appreciated.

what needs work:

7 characters. There are supposed to be only 4.

Would be very expensive I believe. Museum, giant artificial sea.

Take it from me, be careful with suicidal characters. I've used a couple in the past, and audiences are not interested in them. No matter how justified their suicidal feelings are.

Since Gary wants to kill himself, it's hard to root for him in the end. The antagonist only wants the same thing for him, after all: to feed the sharks with his corpse.

I'm a fan of dark endings. But since the dark ending is difficult to make emotionally satisfying, for it to work it has to leave us with a lingering and powerful impression of some sort. I recently watched the Decaprio Great Gatsby, and has a memorable dark ending, one which makes a statement about the futility of pursuing idealized dreams that are rooted in fanciful visions of youth.

This short is trying to make a statement about the abuse of nature, but I'm not sure it succeeded in being memorable...which means a happy ending might work better. I do appreciate the writer's efforts, though. All in all, good work and a very good approach to story.

There’s a lot of good going on here that ends up just not working in the long run. There’s a mystery, a detective type character and at the end, a unique explanation. The dialogue can slip into obvious exposition, but otherwise is done well. A number of the conversations here felt very natural and unforced. A lot of the scenes work well on their own but…

There isn’t a great flow across the scenes . It almost feels as though some scenes were extracted before submission, or too much is left up to the reader to figure out. A major example of this is how Tori comes back into the story. She’s introduced as a hooker or escort, but what is she doing with Sung-Ki. I know he hired a hooker for shark food, but is she the only one in the city? Is she an AquaWorld exclusive escort? I’m missing a connection and I wouldn’t buy coincidence.

I agree that there’s too much going on here for a short. And since the budget would be sky high, continued development would make it a likely feature. Even in that case I’d suggest reevaluating your main character’s flaw. Not only is a suicidal sex-addict going to be hard for an audience to empathize with, the flaw doesn’t really connect to the mystery. Character flaws work best when they allow the main story to resonate inside the character in some sort of emotional way, and I don’t know how what Sung-Ki does resonates inside a suicidal sex-addict.

Lots of interesting elements, though. Not bad for a week’s work, even if it didn’t quiet connect.

Congrats on completing the OWC

Hi.

Hey, you needed only some lines to make a first sacrifice to the jaw. Thumb up. Or arm off.

Yo. Some more than 4 characters, I guess.

I love introduction when it comes to SciFi. You could give me an hour of that. (watch out for "Snowpiercer"; could be interesting for you)

After p 6 there was a lot of confusion because of all the character's relationships.

I don't know why Tori came to the shark tank where she finally was killed by Sung-Ki or the shark; however you want to see it. I guess she wanted to visit Gary.

I'm not sure about all characters and their back stories and motives. They are too many. You build up too much pressure on your story by giving them so much personal conflicts between each other. It's hard to overview the whole scenario.

Side note: i think I missed where Dr. Arm Off ended up. I guess he didn't survive the injury.

It's a high budget concept. Otherwise, Sung-Ki and his myth isn't exactly the blockbuster style.

It reads as if you wrote down some pieces of a feature here.

I like your taste of stories. You seem to go for clever and deep SciFi. I miss those films. The whole genre was kind of ***** by average stupid popcorn cinema. And I fear that Transcendence will be the tip of that iceberg.

As said, your script suffers a bit of too much of those relationship parts. You also need moments of relaxing and distraction than pushing such relationship context further and further. Nevertheless I'm very interested in what you write...

25. The Shark Doctor - A marine biologist suffering from sex addiction is called by a theme park to diagnose what is killing the great white sharks they plan to feature in a new exhibit.
Brief - Vet called to investigate deaths of a public aquarium’s sharks, finds super-human sucking cartilage from the sharks.

Characters to Animate/Voice - 6
Dr M, Assistant, Tori, Gary, Linda, Sung Ki
Scenes to Build  - >6
Vet lab, hotel room, Aquaworld entrance, drive, GWS exhibit EXT + INT,
Accessory Visual - above average
Swinging shark + chains, arm, blood, twenties + removed, pants zipped, bracelet, golf cart
Accessory Audio - average
Crack, crash, bite, walkie-talkie static,

Genre & Marketability - Fantasy drama
Script format - Fair
Comments  -  I read that brief opening scene and I groan at all the elements I gotta create and animate for a scene that lasts maybe thirty seconds.
Turn off your program’s “Mores and Continueds” feature.
You know, filming this in live action would be impossible for any sensible budget, right? And it’s kinda “heady” for animation by the end of page four.
Alright, producer’s hat is off at page five’s one-more-scene-to-build slugline.
Reader’s hat on: Kinduva… a… super hero’s origin story, or something. A little muddy around the middle part. It’s a sound basic premise.
Final word - Pass. Cost prohibitive in both complexity and marketability. Sorry.

10/15    Lo/Hi Estimated Build Hours per Screen Minute
x 11.5    Screenplay Pages
= 115/173 Total Build Hours Time Cost

Never would have guessed someone would have written a story about a man who preys on sharks. Very interesting and creative on your part. The writing was good but it felt a bit rushed towards the end. Sun-ki diving into the tank leaving the guards to stand and wait for him seemed like maybe you were pressed for time and this was the best way to finish. Saying that, I did enjoy the story and the writing flowed nicely making it an easy read. Solid job for one week.

Congrats on completing the OWC.

Dangerworld ...now Aquaworld. I like the title of this...like the logline.

My first impression of the dialogue is that it needs work which is to be expected on a week venture. Typos will disappear with a few rereads also. That stuff doesn't bother me too much though.

Once we learned Sung-ki had put 69 on his application, I have to admit I could see the ending coming. The only thing that didn't fit was Gary slicing his wrist. I think this story could've started a bit differently as the part after the beginning for a few pages dragged for me..then picked back up.

I don't think the ending really paid off enough for my taste. Sung-ki just dives into the lake. I was intrigued in the story when we found out the sharks had human bite marks :) And we all know how much hype shark cartilage has been given over the years.

Good job...with a little reworking, this could be a great story.

Ed! Nice work buddy, everything you have in Shark Doctor is malleable gold. I'm sure you'll agree that this should be a feature so you can properly develop the characters, and I applaud the premise. Great to have you back!

JOHNNYo- First of all, Samebito is amazing. I was blown away by that.

I need to talk about this script. I feel like I have some explaining to do.

I was taken aback by the number of people that seemed to think this is good feature material. I swung for the fences with the story and it never occurred to me that something this over-the-top would work for 90 minutes. If it has that potential, I'm not sure I could actually get it there.

To everybody - thanks to all for the reviews!

This was my second OWC and I'm seeing the value of participating in them...even though both scripts have REALLY sucked. I get my writing picked apart and get to experiment on a page. You can take some chances here and see if it works.

Regarding going over the character limit:

I first wrote the script as it appears now...then changed it to get to 4 characters. I cut the opening scene and instead of two guards at the end, I brought the park director back to chase Sung-ki into the water. The result was that I thought the start was too boring and didn't SHOW the need to bring someone in from the outside. And having tasers bounce off Sung-ki as he's being chased down the dock was cooler than having the GM of the park confront him like: "...this is clearly a violation of park policy!"

So I changed it back. My thought was: I'm going to put my best script forward (or more accurately, my least worst script forward).

The story was the best I could do in a short time for this genre. I'm not at a level where I can easily adjust or create within the parameters yet (and may never actually get there).

The budget thing - people were freaked by the size of the body of water. The scenes are at night. You can't see how big it is. She just SAYS you can see it from space. It just has to be big enough to not see across it and I didn't think it would be that hard with a night-time shoot. I know places around where I live where that shot would work.

However, a few did point out the budget hit would really come from the lab and wheeling around a place that would resemble a theme park. I have no defense on that one. Again, I'm a stage where all I can write is what I see and hear in my head. I'm second-guessing myself so much already that if I started to think how much anything would cost to produce, I wouldn't get past FADE IN.

I think a lot of things showed my inexperience at work, both in OWC's and writing scripts in general...

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