Mind Jacked - WT - Print Topic

Not bad cyberpunk lite in a 49 hr challenge. I think the writer could have turned off the footers and headers of the title however., and some of this gets a bit wordy early on. SoErica uses a formof mind control or high tech hynosis to get others to kill for her. I wonder what else she can make people do. It's all very interesting, and it's a shame that there is a five page limit. I could see this being rewritten to throw in a few more pages not only to flesh out the world, but also to get more into the concept itself.

Nice job overall.

Code

EXT. MARKET STREET - DAY ERICA, 37, dressed in colorful suit, walks down the lively noisy street. It’s dirty, grim, shadows from large buildings blanket the street.

You tell us it is a street 3 times. It's also just badly written. I honestly want to bail right now.

Code

Various fluorescent signs line the street in Japanese, Korean, Arabic and English. Lighting up the miserable surroundings.

You pulled me back in with the first sentence then spoiled it completely with the second.

I so want to stop reading at page 2, but I have to give a mark on story.

I skimmed through to the end.

Writing: 1
Story: 0

Total: 0.5

Seeing Mind Jacked on every page was a little disorienting for the flow of the story.

Maybe it's just me but the action description seems a little too curt. Reads as robotic as the...well, robot.

"What have you done, made me do, you killed that man." Reads a little clunky and awkward to me.

ERICA
"You killed that man. Bye." I got a chuckle out of this, but I think it was unintentional.

It just kind of ends, was hoping for a better wrap up.

My apologies to the author but it went over my head. I just don't understand how she do it and most importantly I don't see why.

If it's a slasher - she's a maniac or a monster. She seems neither.
Or maybe I missed something?

You introduce a few unnecessary characters in my opinion and you allocated scenes to those characters. That may be a mistake as you lose reader's attention when you turn away from your main character for a long time.

This does tick all the boxes - sci-fi, courtroom, Valentine's Day, though again the day is not an essential part of the story. Pretty well imagined, nice job on setting up a future world in just 5 pages. However, Erica's motives are not clear - sacrificed I imagine in order to get the Valentine's Day criteria satisfied on page 1 - and then the script just ends.

My gut is - Inconsistent writing.

Parts were perfect - other parts confusing/wordy.

Parameters met for sure.

Ending falls flat for me.

The competitor in this one has issues so you may get by. My sense is that this is a strong writer handicapped with a bit of a tough parameter.

I couldn't really follow this but I sort of understand it from the ending. She's mind jacking people and making them kill other people. I don't really know anything about her or Bill so there's not much to latch onto.

Feels like you had a really hard time fitting these parameters into one coherent story. It was a difficult one.

Despite a few typos and a handful of misuses of punctuation, the writing here is good enough. I like the brief, staccato quality of it.

Narrative-wise, I thought this was pretty disjointed. Characters pop up and don't come up again; their arcs and appearances feel jumbled and incoherent, like they just don't tie themselves to the story quite the way the writer intended.

The entire plot is basically Ghost in the Shell, but in cliff notes. IMO, it's better than the script it's paired with, but I don't particularly like it.

It's rather well-written on a technical level, but the story didn't do much for me at all.

I like the world you created. Though, it's a bit inconsistent - "five bucks" in a world with floating robots and flying cars?

The first page felt added on to satisfy the Valentine's Day requirement. The last page felt added on to satisfy the courtroom requirement.

The premise is solid, though, and I'd love to see it in a larger, more fleshed-out story.

I can't open this script for some reason.

Looks like it actually has sci-fi elements though so on that basis alone has it over the previous script.

Wow, this was ambitious.  I didn't follow all of it, but, it meets the parameters.

I can't add much more.  It needs a big rewrite without any limitations on it.

As it's written now, it's too confusing.  But, work on it and you could have a bit of a gem.

Dan

Ooh, I liked this just for its sheer inventiveness of story. And I liked the characters. A true femme fatale in a future world. Sure there's clunkiness in the writing but I was immersed in the story. The ending is slight anticlimactic - I would have liked her to escape. I gather KELS is a female officer? That needs to be made clear. With a rewrite this could be terrific. Budget wise it'd be enormous just with FX alone, so unless it's made as animation it's unlikely to be produced. That said, I like what you did with the brief.

P.S. You need to remove your name from the file.
This has no bearing on my selection or vote btw.

Hmmm, the lack of a stated motivation for killing a 100 people didn't work for me and the writing and scene to scene transition is very erratic.

Meets the criteria though.

Mind Jacked

Short notes: Well, the Azzakari Coffee Shop situation, phew writer, I reread it several times to eventually get it…
The ending didn't deliver which is a flaw. There's a wicked concept behind your execution that can be improved in many directions. I'm not so happy about how you dealt with the parameter courtroom and Valentine's day, so I'll make an adjustment of -2 points. All in all it felt a bit rushed which also the missing "effective" ending mirrored. Otherwise a fun concept to keep in mind.

story (0-5): 3

character (0-5): 2

presentation (0-5): 2

-2 criteria not significant enough

total: 5

Huh? Wow this looked good on paper, the formatting was nice, it started well and fulfilled all the tough crieria!

But it came to nothing in the end. Very valiant attempt at prolly the toughest criteria off the whole thing