Quoted from ajr Decadence, I hear you, and I can get my story across in one sentence, but there's a bit of a "so-what?" factor in all low-concept logs, including the ones you summarized above. True, we know what the story is about, but do you really want to fly to the theater after reading the "Annie Hall" one, assuming you didn't know it was a Woody Allen flick? Here's mine: A frustrated writer must reconcile his feelings for two women, his crazy friends, and his blue-collar neighborhood during a wild 48 hours in 1989 Queens, New York. I like it, but I can see other people saying "So what?  Where's the zombies and vampires?  Where's the twist?" I think the log from (500) Days of Summer (if I remember correctly from IMDB) was something like "A story about a girl who doesn't believe in true love - and the boy who falls in love with her." Now I would go see that - but does it really leap off the page and drag you to the theater?  American Beauty and Eternal Sunshine are two of the other pictures that come to mind that are incredibly complex and wonderful films and would be done an injustice by a one-sentence summation. AJR

I know what you are saying, but if you already know that people aren't that interested in low concept, there's not much point in getting upset about it if you know what I mean.  

It's a tough sell, no doubt about it.

I didn't see any of the films you mentioned at the cinema, I don't personally go to the cinema to watch films like that. I'll catch them either at festivals or on the TV. I prefer the quirky things in my own home, just a better vibe for me. I like to watch serious spectacle at the cinema.

However, that being said,  you've got to sell your film more. If you don't excited by it you can't expect anyone else to give a damn can you?

You just need to make more of what you have (it might be the case in the script as well, I don't know).

You've got some good selling points:

Crazy friends: Why are they so crazy? Let us know more. Crazy as in party animals? Crazy as in they expose themselves in public and shit on the floor? Crazy people are always good. I bet you could make them funnier in your story as well. Mention it if it's unusual, not so much if it's just the standrad "zany" characters you tend to find in films.

Crazy is good, "crazy" not so good.

Wild 48 hours. There's almost a title there.... 48 straight, or something.

Crazy bastards, wild 48 hours, two women. It doesn't sound bad at all.  Sounds like one of my weekends.  

That blue collar neighbourhood hits my boring bone a bit, but we can live with that. I'd also find some way of re-phrasing the "reconcile" part. .

Actually, that's your key problem.

Frustrated writer, reconcile his feelings, you've got the kind of negative things up front which puts us off a bit.

Using almost the same words:

48 hours, 3 crazy friends, 2 women. A frustrated writer tries to comes to term with his past (over a booze-filled weekend) in 1989 Queens.

No, that's bollocks unfortunately. I was trying to get the audience on your side a bit. The idea is right I think, maybe not the implementation. It also might pervert the sense of the story a bit too much and tip it over into outlandish comedy field.

My feeling is that we need to know it's a comedy first and foremost (that was the first thing you mentioned to me) then let us know it has a soul.

I think the frustrated writer reconciling his feelings is getting killed out there, we've got to cheer him up a bit.

Holy crap, it's tougher writing the log than it was the script!

"Crazy bastards, wild 48 hours, two women. It doesn't sound bad at all.  Sounds like one of my weekends."

Decadence, I think you would like it.  Interestingly, it's just a short distance away over in the comedy section... (o:

Bert,

Thank you sir - much food for thought.  You are a harsh taskmaster, but a good one. (o:

You say more with less words than most anyone I've met, while I on the other hand take 500 words to say hello...

I think I'll solve the problem at TS by going to my synopsis instead of the log, and I'll look at re-working the log in the interim. It's funny because I've gotten a decent amount of requests with my query, but again, that could be because I've included the synopsis.

AJR

Haven't looked into Trigger Street, although I will pipe in and say that I appreciate the thoughtful discussion on writing effective log lines...

All,

So the update is 13 removals and 2 reviews - including a lukewarm one from a neophyte film student written with little regard for punctuation and sentence structure (oh, and the other's a pretty glowing one - WITH proper punctuation!).

My favorite line from the review: "the comedy is very little..."

Ugh, that's like a dagger to the heart, no punctuation guy!  Unless he/she means that the comedy is short in stature, in which case I didn't intend for the comedy to manifest itself on screen in the guise of a dwarf (apologies to Fellini), so we're okay...      (o:

AJR

18 removals, 3 reviews - 2 lukewarm and one glowing - the lukewarm ones are short though and kind of off-point, and I'm finally ranked...

1,456 out of 3,681

Damn - 1,455 other people have to get their movie made before it's my turn...

(0:

Quoted from ajr 1,456 out of 3,681 Damn - 1,455 other people have to get their movie made before it's my turn... (0:

Im not familiar with this site so how they calculate this? whats the criteria? And what a bad idea!

Dimitri,

Not sure really -

You get to rank the script, after you review it, in 6 categories (the 5 below plus an "Overall"):

Concept
Story
Structure
Character
Dialogue

You can choose either poor, below average, average, good, or excellent, for each of the 6 categories.

I imagine most if not all scripts do not receive an excellent or a poor, so most hover in the below average-average-good range...

How do they determine over 3,000 rankings from such tightly packed scripts? Good question. For instance, the no punctuation guy who reviewed mine has both his scripts "currently being evaluated by the Hall of Justice", which means someone reported them for violation of the TS rules.

Does this mean his review should count less in the rankings?  It should, but I don't know if it does.

Quoted from ajr D For instance, the no punctuation guy who reviewed mine has both his scripts "currently being evaluated by the Hall of Justice", which means someone reported them for violation of the TS rules.

What? The hall of justice? Its like playing an online RPG....  
I will definitely take a look...  

The HOJ is basically a self-policing mechanism for which TS members volunteer. For example, you could request from the "docket" a review - and then you have to decide whether the person violated the rules. In other words, did they pad the review just to reach 100 words, did they use filler and not comment directly on the script, did they copy from another review, etc.

For a film, I can't imagine something going to the HOJ for other than outright porn. I guess the dude in question wrote a sex scene or scenes that some deemed too graphic?

And I'm real iffy on my experience there so far, Dimitri, so I wouldn't trip over anything to go and check it out.

3 reviews, 25 people currently assigned - 21 refusals...

And they've worn me down - I've started to play the game and I'm now rejecting scripts as well. And believe me, from reading some of these first pages, they're worth rejecting.

AJR

Okay, now I just got called a "drama" instead of a comedy. And no narrative structure? Please...

I need you guys to talk me in off the ledge and tell me that the real writers hang out here, and that all the film students churning out formulaic crap which has kept me from actually paying to see a movie in person since "Miracle" (Kurt Russell) hang out over there...

AJR

I was bored today so I thought I would give TS another try, maybe build up some credits for a future screenplay or a future draft of my horror. It's not going well so far.

I've requested 2 assignments, rejected one already. I actually started reading the one I rejected and had one and a half pages of notes before I reached page 3. A typo on the title page for "Copyrighted" wasn't the best start. Then the very first word on page one. Then the small factor of the author not using a full stop at the end of a sentence. I could go on but I'm depressed thinking about it. I checked the ranking after I rejected it, it is ranked higher than Grand Avenue, which is a travesty in my mind.  Formatting errors aside, I'm not saying the script is rubbish. Maybe there is a good story there, but based on the early pages, I can't believe the place in the rankings this has.

It only confirms that if you are a regular over there, your script will be treated well. If you're new, prepare for some harsh criticism.

Brian

Hey Brian,

Yeah, I've got two assignments sitting in my bin now, and I'm wondering if I should just bail on them and let whoever already has GA either review it or reject it (I have zero credits left and it's still assigned 23 times), or if I should dive in full force and try to get the ranking up.

Thank God they're comedies. One is about Santa's elves, and I can only hope it shows as much promise as Gary's "Prince of Coal"...

Hey, do free will reviews count in the rankings?  (o:

Quoted from ajr I need you guys to talk me in off the ledge and tell me that the real writers hang out here...

I am fairly certain you have exactly the same kind of folks over there that you have over here -- it is simply a matter of which system they prefer.

I suspect many at TS have tried these boards -- and that a great many at SS have tried TS.

For me, I hated being assigned what to read instead of selecting my own -- and when I was there, after 3 "passes", you could not pass any more.  My first assignment was a rom-com, where the logline -- I am not kidding -- was, "If you hate rom-coms, you will hate this."  And I was, like, "I have to read this?  Oh, boy."

I found nothing there to suggest that the average quality was better than the average quality here.  I just did not like their system.

Truth is, however, under their system or ours, it does take a little time, effort, and reading to "establish" your brand if you want readers -- though I think if you gain a rep for quality feedback, it has more meaning here in terms of getting reads, as people will seek you out.

Difference is that here, you get readers who want to look at your stuff.  There, you get readers who are forced to look at your stuff.

So, two schools of thought, with pros and cons to both.

I prefer Don's system, but that is just me.

Hey Bert,

I was actually thinking the same thing earlier today - which is that over at TS it seems that people are much more "rigid", for lack of a better word, as if they're doing a book report - which in some sense they are since there's a test afterwards.

Whereas here, you can be as brief or as expansive as you want. You can also get really technical and drill in on formatting and narratives, or you can give your general impression of something as someone who wants to be entertained by the piece.

I think that's the main difference - that at TS no one really "enjoys" the assignment, because as you said, it's forced.  I can imagine what sort of level of hell it is being a reader for these contest sites now.  And Script Savvy? OMG, they have to read 150 scripts a month. That's 1,800 a year.  I would pray for grim death.

Still, you can call my script a lot of things... but a drama?

How many dramas do you know that dissect the derivation of the word "douchebag" and ponder its merits as an insult?   (o:

Okay, so I've decided to stop serving three masters (I'm going to exclusively concentrate on SS and a bit more now on Circalit), and I'm not going to review any more scripts on Triggerstreet - I have 16 people currently assigned to my script and if they pass, they pass...

I'm hanging steady at about 1,580 out of approximately 3,700 scripts...

Here's my closing statement on TS. Someone posted a 3rd version of their script and made the top 10.  They got feedback, pulled the script to incorporate the comments, and posted a 4th version - which now sits at 2,392.

AJR