Hi there,

I sent my logline to a few people I'm connected with and the first reply I got made me wonder if the logline might be misleading, so I'd like to know what you guys think about it and what you imagine the story to be like after reading it. What genre would you think this story would refer to? I'm not yet revealing what the guy's association was, I'd like to get some independant opinions first.

Logline:

'The spirit of a comatose N.Y. student forces the australian actress of his dreams to help him run down his shooters as they blunder into a terrorist conspiracy.'

Thanks.

Is it super important that she's Australian? Why not just "the actress of his dreams"? Or is it essential?

Half the story plays in Australia, so I thought it would be important enough.

Quoted from Demento Is it super important that she's Australian? Why not just "the actress of his dreams"? Or is it essential?

I heard Australian females are dreamier. Obviously this doesn't include Nicole Kidman.

R

Thorsten, honesty is the best policy here - that logline of yours is not good. I wouldn't have a clue what to make of the story based on that... I mean I have an inkling but it's not written well.

My interpretation would be:
It could be a thriller, but the inclusion of the 'actress' and his obvious crush on her, and the word 'blunder', leads me to believe there's probably a comedy/screwball element to this as well. 'Forces' her, brings to mind another element altogether.

I notice on another thread Demento offered an alternative to your logline - it read much better - still not perfect, but he was working off the cuff with what info you gave him. You said at the time you quite liked it but then changed it around (which of course is your prerogative) but imh it isn't effective.

Two movies come to mind where the character is in a coma but is still able to operate in an 'out of body' way/alternate reality, and effect real life events: Just Like Heaven - Reese Witherspoon and, If I Stay - Chloe Moretz (I haven't seen the latter movie btw).

Is your main character operating like this i.e., in a coma but still able to effect events via their spirit? Has he teamed up with the Aussie actress to hunt down the people who tried to kill him? In your story, how does that work exactly?

I think what you need to do is give us a short synopsis re plot and then perhaps you'll get some solid advice with regard to making the logline more effectively convey your story.

P.S. Oh, and Ren is right.  ;)

The spirit of a comatose N.Y. student forces the australian actress of his dreams to help him run down his shooters as they blunder into a terrorist conspiracy.'


The spirit (spirit usually means a dead person, not a comatose one) of a comatose N.Y. (N.Y.? Does this matter?) student forces (does he have her family hostige?) the (why THE instead or AN) australian actress of his dreams (is this his comatose dreams? Or real dreams when not in a coma?) to help him run down his shooters as they blunder ( as who blunders? The shooters or the comatose man and the Austrainian actress?) into a terrorist conspiracy.'

Many many issues with the logline. You're telling it like someone who knows the story. Not like someone who wants to give a brief snapshot of what to expect.

Keep it simple and a bit more to the point.

------

A victom of a horrible shooting lies comatose but somehow finds a way to communicate with a woman he is silently in love with in an attempt to bring his attempted killers to justice.

Shawn.....><

Quoted from Ledbetter The spirit (spirit usually means a dead person, not a comatose one)

Except Hollywood writers change the rules when they feel like it. In both of those two movies I mentioned the characters are in a coma but communicate with the living.

Include a brief synopsis in your pitch. I do that precisely because loglines can be misleading.

Hey, thank you for your replies!

@LC

I think your interpretation is pretty correct.

The main story is a mystery thriller, centered around a terrorist organization and it's infiltration of legal authorities like FBI and the government. The student is shot because he witnessed the murder on his professor. The professor's killers notice him and shot him on the run. At first it seems like a random robbery maybe, but throughout the story the heros find out, the professor was shot because he stood in the way of these terrorist's goals.

However, there are two side plots which result from the characters' backgrounds.

The student is a nerd, all into science fiction stuff with a secret obsession of that actress which is starring in his favourite alien conspiracy tv series. Imagine that nerdy fanboy put into a situation where he suddenly faces that actress and is stuck with her (and especially her stuck with him), The conflicts arising between these two characters obviously add a comedic element to it.

The other element is the change, both characters are going through because they are forced to get along with each other and work together. The student is a nerd and a typical loser. He lives in a dream world of tv series but has zero self confidence or braveness to get along in his everyday life. The actress is sick of being an actress and of being 'the cause for wet nerd dreams'. She hates how she can't show herself in public without being crowded by those nerdy fanboys. She dreams of a family life but is unable to handle the pressure of being in the public eye, which makes it impossible for her to find the relationship she is hoping for. She only finds the wrong men who prey on her popularity to boost their own careers or who are after her money and cheat on her behind her back.

The student has to get out of his dream world and transform into that hero he is used to admire in his tv series in order to fight the terrorists. The actress needs to overcome her prejudices. At first she just wants to get rid of her stalker, but as they tumble into that terrorist plot, she transforms into a point where the fight against these terrorists becomes a chance for her to break out of the star life she hates and do something entirely different. She more or less turns into the character she is playing in the tv series. So in the end, they kind of switch their positions. The actress becomes the cartoony heroine she originally played in the series, which she hated. So she kind of becomes the 'nerd', while the student overcomes his nerd life and turns into the subject of a conspiracy, which causes him to wish his old life back. These transformations cause the characters to 'meet in the middle' at some point and both get to understand each other's original views better. This offers the possibility to add an element of chemistry building up between them.

@Ledbetter

The script is a 1-hour tv pilot for a series called 'Mindwalker'. The idea is, the student gets separated from his body while he is in coma. He can't really interact with anything, his 'astral body' moves through objects and persons. The only one who can see him is the actress, he can only interact with her by talking to her. So.. 'spirit' kind of means something like 'astral projection' in this context.

N.Y. = New York

He 'forces' her means his 'spirit' is haunting her until she helps him to get back into his body. He forces her to do so, because neither him nor her can do anything to stop him from emerging at her place. So she is forced to help him in order to get rid of him, which is her goal at the start of the story.

I think it has to be 'the' actress of his dreams, to underline he is an obsessive fan of exactly >>this<< actress.

They 'blunder' into a terrorist conspiracy means they stumble into it while they are following a different, initial goal, which is to get the student back into his body so they can part ways again. When they get in touch with the terrorists' plot they need to change their goals. The terrorists' attention is drawn to the actress when she gets involved into finding the student's body and they plan to airbrush her, because she seems to know too much. So the goal shifts into 'survival' at this point. After struggling to get away from the terrorists' assasination attempts, our heros learn, that the only way to get out of this is to reveal the terrorists' conspiracy to the public, so the goal shifts again into 'stop the terrorists'.

Probably 'blunder' is a bit misleading, like LC mentioned it could lead to the assumption of a comedy story here.

Quoted from Equinox @Ledbetter The idea is, the student (Patrick Swayze) gets separated from his body while he is (dead) in coma. He can't really interact with anything, his 'astral body' moves through objects and persons. The only one who can see him is the actress (Whoopie), he can only interact with her by talking to her. So.. 'spirit' kind of means something like 'astral projection' in this context.

So other than the fact that he's not dead, you're rewriting GHOST... :P

Shawn.....><

Loglines are hard. But this might help. Save me from writing it all over again. :)

http://screenplaywritenow.com/write-logline/

@Ledbetter

Hm, GHOST is a romantic film, the fact that both include a spirit which moves through things is really the only thing both have in common.. so no, I'm not rewriting it.

@CameronD

Thanks for the link, I gave it a read and I've read similiar logline howtos before. I think all the parts of a logline you mention in your link are there,

Protagonist - student's spirit and actress
Goal - run down his shooters
Challenge/Antagonist - terrorist conspiracy
The setting - NY / Australia
Length - It's one sentence

And still, people imagine anything from a thriller, a horror film to romantic comedy up to a rewrite of GHOST - so I guess there must be some better way to form a logline to clarify what this is about.

Try flipping it a little. Lose the terrorist conspiracy. How's this?

A young actress is haunted by the spirit of a comatose student she never met to track down his attackers.

Hmm, that seems to be further off from the actual story to me, because it just mentions an intermediate goal and leaves out the major obstacle. Also, there's no setting in there any more.

Quoted from DustinBowcot Include a brief synopsis in your pitch. I do that precisely because loglines can be misleading.

::)

Here's my pitch for Momma's Boy:


I hope you don't mind me sending you this query. I've written a screenplay you may be interested in reading, entitled, Momma's Boy.

Logline:  A psychosis-suffering housewife, due an inheritance worthy of murder, believes she has resurrected her recently deceased son through the power of prayer and goes on a murderous spree to satiate his unusual dietary requirements.

Brief Synopsis: Angela is being drugged and slowly driven insane by her husband as he wants to lay claim to the inheritance she is due once her mother dies. He is also having an affair with her mental health worker who is in on the plot. Due to being drugged out of her mind, both on prescription drugs and the ones secretly fed to her by her husband, Angela loses track of her son, Elijah, who drowns in a park pond. She manages to get him home, but he is dead. Having read of resurrection in the bible and it not being only isolated to Jesus, she gives prayer a shot. She manages to keep the 'accident' a secret from her husband. Her son comes back to life, he just can't move from the bed and he needs her to get him food, a special type of food, he can only eat brain. She starts out getting small animals before unwittingly moving onto her enemies.

Notes: This is a freaky story, but one of those stories that will leave the viewer satisfied, which is hard to accomplish with a horror these days. A low budget horror, minimum and easily obtainable locations (2 houses and a hotel room). Minimum special effects (only make-up needed, maybe some silicone). Minimum actors.

See if you can tweak any of these:

A medical student and a soap-star actress combine forces and find themselves on the run in an effort to thwart a major terrorist plot.

A geeky med student and an Aussie soap-starlet find themselves the prime targets of an international terrorist organization and must combine forces to avert the ring's latest deadly plot.

A geeky med student and an Aussie soap-starlet find themselves the prime targets of an international terrorist organization and must join forces to foil the group's latest plot.

The spirit of a comatose young man reaches out to an Australian soap-starlet and they join forces in an effort to thwart the latest plot of an international terrorist organisation.

Lying comatose in a hospital bed the spirit of a young man reaches out to an Aussie soap actress in an effort to thwart a terrorist organisation's latest plot.


Add to this a brief synopsis in the same vein as Dustin has outlined to fill in a few more of the gaps, & state genre etc.

Hi LC,
thanks for the input! Lets see, how does this sound?

Disconnected from his body, a comatose young man is forced to rely on the help of his favourite Aussie actress to get back to his body and avoid the clutches of a worldwide terrorist conspiracy.

@Dustin

I like that logline, especially the part of the unusual dietary requirements. Makes me curious to find out what that is supposed to be. The synopsis however would probably turn me off from reading on, that sounds a little too strange for me, but that's because I'm not a fan of such weirdo/zombie horror flicks. I like horror movies, but more the subtle ones which keep the events within a certain 'thinkable' grade of realism.

About a synopsis for Mindwalker, how about this:

Nerdy medical student Andrew Kinderman witnesses the murder of his professor and gets shot by the killers as well. He ends up in coma but his mind separates from his body and materializes in the villa of his favourite tv star, australian actress Anna Chastings, who is the only person who can see him. She is not amused about the unwanted visitor and sends him away, but Andrew learns from a ghost girl that he is anchored to her and can't get away from her until he returns to his body. By proving Anna he is not a stress-induced hallucination, he finally convinces her to follow him home to New York and help him to find his body. Checking through the hospitals, Anna attracts the attention of the FBI who keeps Andrew under witness protection. She can't explain how she is connected to Andrew, but she points them to a second witness, Andrew's fellow student. It turns out, the FBI agent in charge is working for a shady organization which plotted the death of Andrew's professor and now wants to get rid of Anna as well.


I just wrote that out of nowhere, so probably the english is not perfect. That's a synopsis for the pilot only, not for the whole series.

The script is now posted here in the series section, would be glad to hear your thoughts about it.