How It Works
Email Rob the first ten pages of your feature length screenplay (in pdf. format) along with a logline and title. Every Friday one of us (or a guest reviewer) posts one writer's work along with notes and a:
Rating
Trash It (Start over.)
Take Another Pass (You're onto something, but it needs more work.)
More Please (I'm hooked. What happens next?)
Somebody Shoot This!
Readers then vote and comment on your work.
*** We did not receive any submissions for the Write For Each Other page, so it was taken down. ***
This week Dan read the 1st 10 pages of Cillian Daly's ACTUAL DEATH EXPERIENCE.
Hello everyone! My name's Dan and I'll be doing my thang this week. When Rob asked me to write a review, I was so psyched because I love giving people script notes! ...and then I realized... "Oh crap, I have to write a review."
Never done this before, so bear with me...
Okay, so I'm gonna come clean right off the bat and say I was so intrigued by the first 10 pages that I contacted Cillian for the full version...I actually read pretty much the whole first act, so I've gotta hand it to him. Very picky reader here, so for an amateur script this is pretty rare...
So, without further ado:
We open inside an air vent. Something thumping - a big fan. Ha, and there's a Japanese guy inside it: quirky. Oh, and now he's falling backwards, and oh huh he's smiling that's weird and then oh my god this guy just got chopped and blendered into human mist!
What is going on?!
But then, this same Japanese guy wakes up in a recliner in a spa-like laboratory room. All in one piece. Apparently, this was just some kind of simulation. A technician comes over and gives the man a sampling of gourmet peanuts. She hands him an aftercare package, then sends him out the room with genuine tears of joy on his face.
Here's where the concept of the film becomes clear: in the future, the greatest thrill, the most transcending high is not from any drug or roller coaster or extreme sport. The most exciting experience a human being can have in the future is the experience of death. In fact, people pay to have someone else make them feel like they just kicked the proverbial bucket, i.e. our Asian man's little party with the vent fan. However likely this concept is, it's just so bizarre and new to me. I loved the premise right from the start.
The other thing that immediately jumped out to me was just how visually interesting this futuristic world was. The great thing about sci-fi is the fact that there are no restrictions placed on one's creativity. If you can imagine it, you can have it. Cillian takes this to heart. From the spine-less chairs with their robotic armatures, to the glass walls with scrolling orange and blue text, to the employee shirts which diffuse colors at the touch of a cuff, I was just having a blast seeing this world through Cillian's eyes. These are the kinds of touches that really put a movie into the reader's head.
So what about the actual story? Well, we are centering this plot around Elena, one of the technicians who orchestrates the "actual death experience" procedures, or the "A.D.E.s". Right after Elena is finished with Mr. Fukiama, our grateful paying customer, she heads down to the basement of Loacyte Laboratories to help out with Research & Development - apparently this corporation hires test patients to come in and subject themselves to the A.D.E.s. for the bettering of the technology. Regarding Elena as a character, unfortunately for me there's not much that really popped off the page about her the way the world does, and I'll get to that in a moment.
However, something else happens during one of Elena's test procedures that dropped my jaw to the floor. A young anxious college student named Kelly, low on funds, came into the story at this point, volunteering to undergo a test A.D.E. for some quick cash.
The test procedure is running smoothly. Elena and her partner/love interest Ben are true pros it appears. But then, just as a mass of fibrous needles is routinely inserted into Kelly's spine, feeding her nervous system with the "death experience", something goes horribly, horribly wrong.
I won't go into all the gory details, but suffice it to say that Kelly doesn't have quite the same experience as Mr. Fukiama. She ends up dead. Literally dead. Blood all over the actual floor kind of dead. And apparently, this sort of thing has happened before.
I will say at this point, and even in the next twenty pages or so (I know I'm cheating here), I don't get a good sense of why something is going wrong in these tests. And also, if people actually can die in an A.D.E, how is Loacyte Laboratories still doing business? Not only is this an extremely dangerous procedure, it's also illegal, and yet this is still a thriving, wealthy corporation. Some explanations are hinted at, but it is a bit of a confusing picture overall.
We close out our first 10 pages on a meeting between the young baffled technicians and the elderly head of Loacyte, Harold Aignes, and his creepy assistant John Paver. Harold Aignes is a man of ideals. He's not quite as affected by the death of a young test subject as Elena and Ben are, because after all: "accidents fuel scientific progress". He's a cold, compassion-less man, and we are right to surmise that something is not right with him.
The scene ends with us learning that Elena is planning some kind of vacation, and then a contemplative monologue from Walter about the relationship between man and science.
So, I said before that I wasn't too connected to Elena, and part of that just has to do with the nature of only being able to read 10 pages; but also I think it's because we don't get any sense of who she is. What does she want? What is fueling her? Right now, and again it's still early, but to me: she's just an employee, not a person. Switch her out with any other technician in the facility, and you could tell the same exact plot. I don't think anything about Elena's actual character is even really hinted at in these first ten pages, it's pretty much her just going through routine work procedures. And even then she don't have a whole lot of flavor. I would love for Cillian to ask himself, "Why did Elena take this job?" and "How does she feel about what she does?" and "How does she feel about herself?" And then, see if you can give us a small taste to some of those answers. She just doesn't have much personality for me at this point, and I have trouble even visualizing her as a real person. Creepy old Harold Aignes, however, in his pursuit for nothing else but scientific glory: now that was someone who we understood and maybe even empathized with right from the get-go. He was like an actual dude.
My other complaint was the dialogue. I provide a tip to Cillian in my notes to read his dialogue out loud. Hell, act your scenes out even. There were a few lines that just didn't sound very natural, and other parts just felt dry (this may be partly why I was having trouble "seeing" Elena). I know from personal experience that sometimes there's just so much content you want to get onto the page, especially with a premise like this, but you have to make sure that your characters are real people talking in real confrontations, and not just heads spouting off their beats.
Also, it's very possible these complaints are coming from feelings I got after these first ten pages when I continued to read the script, so I apologize - I kind of have that whole picture though, hard to separate it now.
But, anyways: I think if Cillian works on his protagonists, fleshes them out and trusts them to lead his story (and not the other way around), then he could really have something great here. I will give this one a "More Please", but with the strong caveat that your concept can only take you so far if we don't care about the plight of the people in your story. As it is, this is still a very bad-ass script for me, and I had a great time reading it.
Please guys, add your own thoughts below! No right or wrong answers here.
Cheers,
Dan
Never done this before, so bear with me...
Okay, so I'm gonna come clean right off the bat and say I was so intrigued by the first 10 pages that I contacted Cillian for the full version...I actually read pretty much the whole first act, so I've gotta hand it to him. Very picky reader here, so for an amateur script this is pretty rare...
So, without further ado:
We open inside an air vent. Something thumping - a big fan. Ha, and there's a Japanese guy inside it: quirky. Oh, and now he's falling backwards, and oh huh he's smiling that's weird and then oh my god this guy just got chopped and blendered into human mist!
What is going on?!
But then, this same Japanese guy wakes up in a recliner in a spa-like laboratory room. All in one piece. Apparently, this was just some kind of simulation. A technician comes over and gives the man a sampling of gourmet peanuts. She hands him an aftercare package, then sends him out the room with genuine tears of joy on his face.
Here's where the concept of the film becomes clear: in the future, the greatest thrill, the most transcending high is not from any drug or roller coaster or extreme sport. The most exciting experience a human being can have in the future is the experience of death. In fact, people pay to have someone else make them feel like they just kicked the proverbial bucket, i.e. our Asian man's little party with the vent fan. However likely this concept is, it's just so bizarre and new to me. I loved the premise right from the start.
The other thing that immediately jumped out to me was just how visually interesting this futuristic world was. The great thing about sci-fi is the fact that there are no restrictions placed on one's creativity. If you can imagine it, you can have it. Cillian takes this to heart. From the spine-less chairs with their robotic armatures, to the glass walls with scrolling orange and blue text, to the employee shirts which diffuse colors at the touch of a cuff, I was just having a blast seeing this world through Cillian's eyes. These are the kinds of touches that really put a movie into the reader's head.
So what about the actual story? Well, we are centering this plot around Elena, one of the technicians who orchestrates the "actual death experience" procedures, or the "A.D.E.s". Right after Elena is finished with Mr. Fukiama, our grateful paying customer, she heads down to the basement of Loacyte Laboratories to help out with Research & Development - apparently this corporation hires test patients to come in and subject themselves to the A.D.E.s. for the bettering of the technology. Regarding Elena as a character, unfortunately for me there's not much that really popped off the page about her the way the world does, and I'll get to that in a moment.
However, something else happens during one of Elena's test procedures that dropped my jaw to the floor. A young anxious college student named Kelly, low on funds, came into the story at this point, volunteering to undergo a test A.D.E. for some quick cash.
The test procedure is running smoothly. Elena and her partner/love interest Ben are true pros it appears. But then, just as a mass of fibrous needles is routinely inserted into Kelly's spine, feeding her nervous system with the "death experience", something goes horribly, horribly wrong.
I won't go into all the gory details, but suffice it to say that Kelly doesn't have quite the same experience as Mr. Fukiama. She ends up dead. Literally dead. Blood all over the actual floor kind of dead. And apparently, this sort of thing has happened before.
I will say at this point, and even in the next twenty pages or so (I know I'm cheating here), I don't get a good sense of why something is going wrong in these tests. And also, if people actually can die in an A.D.E, how is Loacyte Laboratories still doing business? Not only is this an extremely dangerous procedure, it's also illegal, and yet this is still a thriving, wealthy corporation. Some explanations are hinted at, but it is a bit of a confusing picture overall.
We close out our first 10 pages on a meeting between the young baffled technicians and the elderly head of Loacyte, Harold Aignes, and his creepy assistant John Paver. Harold Aignes is a man of ideals. He's not quite as affected by the death of a young test subject as Elena and Ben are, because after all: "accidents fuel scientific progress". He's a cold, compassion-less man, and we are right to surmise that something is not right with him.
The scene ends with us learning that Elena is planning some kind of vacation, and then a contemplative monologue from Walter about the relationship between man and science.
So, I said before that I wasn't too connected to Elena, and part of that just has to do with the nature of only being able to read 10 pages; but also I think it's because we don't get any sense of who she is. What does she want? What is fueling her? Right now, and again it's still early, but to me: she's just an employee, not a person. Switch her out with any other technician in the facility, and you could tell the same exact plot. I don't think anything about Elena's actual character is even really hinted at in these first ten pages, it's pretty much her just going through routine work procedures. And even then she don't have a whole lot of flavor. I would love for Cillian to ask himself, "Why did Elena take this job?" and "How does she feel about what she does?" and "How does she feel about herself?" And then, see if you can give us a small taste to some of those answers. She just doesn't have much personality for me at this point, and I have trouble even visualizing her as a real person. Creepy old Harold Aignes, however, in his pursuit for nothing else but scientific glory: now that was someone who we understood and maybe even empathized with right from the get-go. He was like an actual dude.
My other complaint was the dialogue. I provide a tip to Cillian in my notes to read his dialogue out loud. Hell, act your scenes out even. There were a few lines that just didn't sound very natural, and other parts just felt dry (this may be partly why I was having trouble "seeing" Elena). I know from personal experience that sometimes there's just so much content you want to get onto the page, especially with a premise like this, but you have to make sure that your characters are real people talking in real confrontations, and not just heads spouting off their beats.
Also, it's very possible these complaints are coming from feelings I got after these first ten pages when I continued to read the script, so I apologize - I kind of have that whole picture though, hard to separate it now.
But, anyways: I think if Cillian works on his protagonists, fleshes them out and trusts them to lead his story (and not the other way around), then he could really have something great here. I will give this one a "More Please", but with the strong caveat that your concept can only take you so far if we don't care about the plight of the people in your story. As it is, this is still a very bad-ass script for me, and I had a great time reading it.
Please guys, add your own thoughts below! No right or wrong answers here.
Cheers,
Dan
( )Trash It
( )Take Another Pass
(*)More Please
( )Somebody Shoot This!
Dan's Notes
What did you think of Cillian's 1st 10 pages?
TO GIVE FEEDBACK ON CILLIAN'S PAGES CLICK ON COMMENTS BELOW.
