I’d like to be the Clone ranger for a day or two

Aug 20 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

DAMN those interfering scientists. First they announce they’ve found the cure for bad hair days, meaning the loss of the universal excuse for looking like you’ve been forced to crawl buttocks-first though a hydrangea, when the real reason for your appearance is that you didn’t dare use your straighteners in case you accidentally left them on all day – again.

As if this wasn’t enough of a blow, now they’re looking for a way to make animated clones more realistic.

An animated clone, in case you’re wondering, is a figure that appears in a movie crowd scene when the producer decides to go the computer route rather than drafting in half the population of South Africa to fill out the backdrop.

Because audiences aren’t stupid – not even the hundreds of thousands of people who turned out to watch SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 last year – they notice when the clones aren’t complicated enough.

They can spot when the extras all look identical or when their appearances are different but they all move in exactly the same way.

In other words, clones need to stand out in a crowd to blend into it.

This has foiled my plan because, in a week when I have to complete a dissertation for the Masters, my overzealous side somehow managed to convince my apathetic side to sign up for, I thought an animated crowd scene would be a good place to hide.

Initially, I was hoping to create a small pocket of space, with just enough room for me, a double bed, a duvet and a Teasmade, that would exist outside of the normal timeline, so I could nap for a couple of days before returning to the normal universe at the same moment I’d left.

When I realised that to do this I would first have to complete a degree in quantum physics, I decided becoming a clone would be a more achievable solution.

Surely I could just pop into a DVD for a bit of a rest – who would notice me in the back row of the amphitheatre in Gladiator when all eyes are on Russell Crowe’s muscles?

Because time passes more quickly in films, I could spend just 10 minutes in there, but emerge fully refreshed.

Now, though, thanks to the scientists, the clones will all have to look different, move differently and sit differently, which is an awful lot to worry about when you’re just looking for a short break from studying.

On the bright side, there’s less chance of me being spotted and erased by a particularly observant editor, but it does mean that I couldn’t just sit there quietly and watch Russell Crowe battle it out.

I would have to plan my outfit, practise a variety of walks and, in extreme circumstances, instigate a Mexican wave.

And I couldn’t even use a bad hair day as a way of standing out because, thanks again boffins, they’ve been uninvented.

Plus, there’s the chance that, if clones are starting to look like different people, then it might mean they’re developing different personalities, too.

I was rather hoping a DVD would be a smalltalk-free zone. I wouldn’t want to feel obliged to gossip about Caligula’s odd sexual habits or give an opinion about the invention of concrete. And what if they only speak Latin? Or if I give away the ending?

The other problem with my plan to hide out in a DVD is that Hollywood + crowds = impending doom. And I don’t need a degree in quantum physics to understand that particular equation.

There are always Trojans or Orcs to battle, depending on your choice of genre, or maybe a trigger-happy alien ready to vaporise your pixelated posterior.

So I’d have to pick the movie carefully – are there any crowd scenes set in a spa perhaps?

Answers on a postcard c/o Clone 2,237, Back Row, Amphitheatre, Gladiator, where I’ll be hiding out – straighteners in my handbag and lips tightly zipped – in the meantime.

lauradavis@dailypost.co.uk