Get Up, Get Out by Tolofari - Short - A armchair revolutionary harnesses the power of numbers in a bid to save the city he loves. 5 pages. - pdf, format 8)

Hey Tolofari,
I have to say, this is a very original idea. Having the buildings communicate via tweets (I presume that is what is going on and not the people in the buildings?), highlighting pollution while making the point about how raising awareness on social media is ok, but it is much more important to take action.

I don’t think anything like this has been done so I’m not sure what the format should be but I think you’ll need to use INSERTS for the tweets. The action is difficult to describe as it is just building, tweets and pollution so visually this is going to be dull.
And this is the problem, this reads more like an infomercial than a story. You are so intent on telling the audience a message it doesn’t feel like anything more than a lecture. And I’ve no clue who TALIB KEWLI is.

This may work better as an animated short where the buildings can come to life, do stuff like in a Pixar movie. If they communicate with each other in a more, natural realistic and entertaining way, the message will get across just fine.

Best of luck with this and well done on coming up with such a novel, original approach.

-Mark  

Very original concept indeed, Tolofari.

It's short enough to not outstay its welcome but even now it dragged a little for me toward the end because nothing much happens.

Also, as a non-Tweeter (Twitterer?) I got a little confused here and there, but I know I'm in the minority, so that shouldn't be a problem in general.

I too have to say that this definitely is more a public service announcement than a short film. If you could tone down the preachiness and substitute it with a bit more plot (points), it would go a long way. The message is the heart of the story but the flesh should be: what is it like to be a building? In that is a lot of potential for humour. Perhaps some hijinks with birds crapping on them, planes flying a little too close, things like that.

Good luck.


Sandro

I was thinking i'd have smileys and emojis flying through the air to illustrate the constant chatting between everyone, but decided against it. Mr. Renshaw its actually the people in the buildings tweeting. They need to get out of their houses and do something, thats the point. Sandro, i think tweeter sounds correcter (more correct)

Too bad. Tweeting buildings: amusing. Tweeting people: not so much.

Ah right. If it is the people I think you need to make that more obvious as we never seen them at all.  

As it is, I fee the tweeting buildings has much more promise but this is your story.

U neva seeing them is the whole point though. Their armchair acitivists. Always talking about action, but never coming out to actually take action. But I see that people love the idea of tweeting buildings. That's something to consider

I really love the concept of tweeting buildings. It sort of has a Killgore Trout feel to it. I read the short before reading the previous posts, but I generally agree about maybe flushing out the story a bit more. It's your story, but I think you should explore the whole sentient building Twitter account thing, could be a lot of fun.

Ex: if you want to accurately reflect Twitter one of the buildings has to compare another to Hitler's bunker.

Seriously, I think there are a lot of cool ways you could develop out your story a bit more. An old fashioned Twitter flame war might be interesting. Good luck-