Wednesday 23 January 2019

From Script to Screen: Greenlight Review



*Remaining 3 pages of my like for like will be uploaded to my blog by the end of Friday

1 comment:

  1. OGR 23/01/2019

    Hey Terry - so I think you're onto something here and I like the completeness of your idea, suggestive that you can see this quite clearly in your mind's eye. My feeling is however that you've got a level of complexity in here that will struggle to make it coherently onto the screen within 2 minutes or so; you've got to have the mission explained, you've got to get us to understand that 'cloning' is a thing and you've got a number of confrontations requiring screen time and also a chase! It's not going to fit. I have these suggestions to make...

    1) Make the clone the twin - so don't have actual twins, with one of them cloned, make it about one character who discovers he has been cloned.
    2) Make the research facility a genetics research facility so 'cloning' is an idea already present in the story, so it doesn't come out of left field and leave people scratching their head...
    3) Consider making your ending a bit darker still...

    So, something like this maybe... your character receives a video call - from himself! His doppelgänger says something like, 'It's me! You have to help me. You have to come and find me...' Maybe there's a partner, who says, 'what is it?' but your main character doesn't explain. 'I'll be back,' he says and off he goes... Your character finds his double, tracking him (via the phone) to the research facility - a genome library: character breaks in, finds his clone amongst an entire chamber of other cloned people, and lets him out of his chamber or whatever. The doppleganger thanks him - then kills him! (Maybe some shadowy research types carry his body off - all official like, hinting at some kind of larger undisclosed conspiracy...). Then in the next shot - we're back at the original character's house; his partner, pleased to see him, goes to him, says, 'You're back. I was worried about you.' Our doppelgänger - to the camera says something suitably chilling like 'Home sweet home' or whatever...

    I think you could strip out all that stuff about the heist and focus instead on what is inherently uncanny about receiving a phonecall from an impossible someone and I think my just getting rid of the complication of twins + a clone and going for 'clone is a twin' slims everything down nicely. There's a rather lovely unpleasantness bubbling about in your idea and I think you could dial it up and leave your audience with a proper shudder....

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