Loglines for movies without stories

The point of a logline is to give a quick thumbnail of what's filmable. "Snakes on a plane" brings an automatic visual image, as does "Passengers trapped on sinking ocean liner" (The Poseidon Adventure, or Titanic for that matter), or "Air crash victims forced into cannibalism to survive" ("Eat Vincent Spano first!" in the immortal words of Joe Queenan).

jonpiper said:

On another thread (High Concept -- Snakes of a Plane) NMS explained why movies -- usually big budget action movies -- with no story or very thin stories get made.

These movies are not created from spec scripts, but rather from on assignment screenplays.

Are the rules for these screenplays different? That is, does the studio want only a bunch of scenes filled with set pieces? Forget about the important plot points and the protags goal, etc.

How does the writer or director create a logline if there is no story on which to base the logline?

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Often, those movies have no problem at all coming up with loglines, because high concept movies have strong initial premises.

Snakes on a Plane has a strong initial premise. A plane full of people over the Pacific trapped with a whole bunch of poisonous snakes.

In fact, you don't even need a logline. The title is the logline. The title is the premise.

Daddy Daycare. Same deal. You don't even need to bother with a logline. The title tells you what the movie is about in two words. Snakes on a Plane does it in four words (three if you don't consider "a" a word).

What's more, the power of those "title premises" is that when you hear them, those "set piece" moments immediately start laying out in your mind.

That's the strength of a "high concept" movie -- a high concept title, high concept premise.

All you have to do is hear or or read it, and you can immediately "see" the movie unfolding in your mind. Often, you don't even need to know who the hero is, who the villain is -- you sort of fill that in.

Who's the villain in Daddy Daycare. Don't know. In Snakes? Well, I know because I read the script, but hearing the title, I don't know. I don't care.

What comes to mind are those scenes, in the former, of those hapless dads trying to deal with rooms full of unruly kids, a la "Kindergarten Cop" -- and using "dad" sort of approaches to little kid problems.

Those funny moments -- those "set pieces" -- that's what I am interested in, what I want to see.

What's the "story" -- how does it come about that the dads have to do the daycare thing -- is there some villainous guy from child welfare threatening to shut it down and is there one particular dad who has to grow and become more sensitive, yadda, yadda, yadda -- whatever.

Who cares? The reason I, as a producer, say yes to this project is because the title immediately sells the comic potential -- those "set piece" scenes and funny moments.

As far as I'm concerned, all the rest of it -- you know, that "story" stuff -- that's just the framework to hang the stuff that matters on.

The stuff that sells the movie.

Ditto with "Snakes on a Plane."

They may not say it out loud -- they may not even think it explicitly -- but that's really how the process works.

Premises enables set pieces -- performance set pieces attract stars. Action set pieces and effects set pieces and scary or comic set pieces, sell the movie.

And the rest of that stuff -- structure and content and theme and whatever -- that's just the paste that holds the rest of it together.

Which is why so many of the people who make these movies are so confused when the movies don't really work, even when the set pieces are all there.

NMS

Every movie has a story. It's why it's a movie.
Maybe you mean a movie where the story is very hard or apparently impossible to distill into 25 words, never mind 2? Quite different from My Wife Is A Serial Killer or something like that.

How about "honest" loglines?
F.ex:
Wanted: "A bunch of cool people killing each other in cool ways and in slow-motion kind of like in video games!"
Or,
Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: "Another excuse for Spielberg and Lucas to make more money."

jonpiper said:

I
Everything I've read about loglines says that the logline should convey what the story is about, the protag, goal, throughline. Now in this thread some say the logline needs only to present a premise or "high concept"

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If you have a "high concept premise" then that can be the core of the logline. If you don't, you have to do a logline that meets the usual criteria.

The key is that the logline has to be about what's filmable. This is the biggest mistake people make in writing loglines--they focus on the internal action rather than the external action. The logline that ends "...he learns more about himself and others" is a shitty logline; the logline that ends "...he discovers his inner courage by facing down a den of angry hyenas" is probably an OK logline.

A script is about something -the plot, characters, setting, period- and then it's also "about" something -the story, the narrative.- (Hope I'm being articulate here, please correct me if I'm not).
Snakes on a Plane is really not a good example for a greta logline because whatever it's "about" is easier to tell by just knowing what it's about. Like someone said here, it's all in the title. That's what makes it dramatically compelling/filmable: the snakes on the plane. Period.
Another such example would be Teeth: "A teenage virgin in Soso, Idaho has grown teeth in her vagina. What happens when a boyfriend tries to rape her?" (Bad logline but the "about" is there.)
But with most scripts the "about" is more subtle, more hidden.
But I think the point that everyone's making here is you can't put the "about" in the logline. In the logline you have to focus on the about ... the plot, the action. You can imply the "about" in an adjective maybe, here and there, but you can't focus on it, you can't explain it, otherwise you end up sounding generic.

jonpiper said:

I'm confused. NMS's original post implied (on the other thread) that movies without stories (stories in the classical sense - protag's life is so upset that he/she must attain a goal to bring life back into balance or fail to do so) do get made. All you need are a series of cool set pieces. Therefore, it would seem, every story does not have a story!
As GigiZ posted, tounge-in-cheek: How about "honest" loglines?
F.ex:
Wanted: "A bunch of cool people killing each other in cool ways and in slow-motion kind of like in video games!"
Or,
Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: "Another excuse for Spielberg and Lucas to make more money."

Everything I've read about loglines says that the logline should convey what the story is about, the protag, goal, throughline. Now in this thread some say the logline needs only to present a premise or "high concept"

I'm confused!

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In my opinion, a logline is "about" the same thing that a movie or any traditional narrative is "about" -- and that is a problem that someone needs to solve.

Snakes on a plane = problem

Daddy Daycare = problem

You want to make things difficult you can start parsing it out -- protagonist, goal, need throughline.

But what it really boils down to is -- "problem that needs solving."

Then you have to give them enough information so that they can start to picture those moments -- the key moments of conflict in the movie.

It's not that you're describing them in the logline. You're not. But with any premise, there are certain almost inevitable scenes that will suggest themselves to almost anybody who hears it.

It's the fact that such moments suggest themselves to a listener that produces that wonderful reaction that everybody hopes for.

"Gee, sounds like a cool idea."

The reason it sounds like a cool idea is because, when you hear it, you actually start to see those cool moment in the movie that nobody has actually told you about -- they simply occur to you naturally, growing inevitably from the line or two of the premise.

So if I give you premise of, say, "Incredible Shrinking Man" - An Average Man is exposed to a radioactive Cloud and starts getting smaller and smaller and nothing seems able to prevent it.

If you know nothing at all about the movie or the story, it still immediately presents "set pieces" -- you sort of see how the story lays out -- early on, as a grown man becomes half size, there are going to be sort of inter-personal issues. Then he's going to be puppet-sized and maybe he'll have some problem being mistaken for a toy -- and then he'll be down the size of an insect and what used to be a back yard or the floor of his house is suddenly transformed into a huge hostile landscape -- like a jungle in which he'll have to survive.

All of that stuff immediately comes to mind -- just from the initial premise.

But, of course, those "set pieces" -- those moments, by themselves, don't add up to a story, even if they will make one hell of a trailer -- even if those moments are the reason why the movie might get made.

The writer still has to do more (or he should do more) than write those set-piece moments and simply find an excuse to string them together.

He also should be writing a legitimate work of narrative that justifies those moments as part of a larger story with three acts and a through line and character arcs and a theme and all of that stuff that really makes the movie work as a fully functioning story -- not just as a series of action or effects pearls strung on a thread.

NMS

But what it really boils down to is -- "problem that needs solving."

Then you have to give them enough information so that they can start to picture those moments -- the key moments of conflict in the movie.

Agreed but what if the problem that needs solving is not so visual? An Incredible Shrinking Man brings to mind images immediately but what about Sideways? Or if for example you've written a genre movie, like a heist movie or a western? How do you write a log line that gets someone's attention?
I'm not saying that Sideways didn't have a great story or "set pieces" but they don't necessarily pop, do they? Similarly, a heist movie or a western will inevitably be borrowing from classics that have defined the genre and a logline might sound like every other movie in that genre. But a script may stand out because of the dialogue or characters or something that cannot be conveyed in the logline in an eye-catching way.

nmstevens said:

But what it really boils down to is -- "problem that needs solving."

Then you have to give them enough information so that they can start to picture those moments -- the key moments of conflict in the movie.



NMS

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Sorry, I meant to quote this above. Hope it works out this time. Can never get this right!

GigiZ said:

But what it really boils down to is -- "problem that needs solving."

Then you have to give them enough information so that they can start to picture those moments -- the key moments of conflict in the movie.

Agreed but what if the problem that needs solving is not so visual? An Incredible Shrinking Man brings to mind images immediately but what about Sideways? Or if for example you've written a genre movie, like a heist movie or a western? How do you write a log line that gets someone's attention?
I'm not saying that Sideways didn't have a great story or "set pieces" but they don't necessarily pop, do they? Similarly, a heist movie or a western will inevitably be borrowing from classics that have defined the genre and a logline might sound like every other movie in that genre. But a script may stand out because of the dialogue or characters or something that cannot be conveyed in the logline in an eye-catching way.

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Yeah, what do you do if the whole "point" of the movie is the character's emotional growth?

jonpiper said:

These movies are not created from spec scripts, but rather from on assignment screenplays.

How does the writer or director create a logline if there is no story on which to base the logline?

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Umm....why would the writer and/or director of an assigned Hollywood script even need a logline?

zeprosnepsid said:

Umm....why would the writer and/or director of an assigned Hollywood script even need a logline?

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Loglines are used for all different reasons. While a writer trying to break in might use one in a query, an established writer might use one when he first starts to plot out his story. A producer might use one to attract a studio, a studio might use one to attract talent. Talent might use it to attract a director.

Loglines are used constantly throughout the business to communicate a "movie" without taking up too much of anyone's time.

Still, I seriously doubt Pirates of the Carribean had a logline.

zeprosnepsid said:

Still, I seriously doubt Pirates of the Carribean had a logline.

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That would be a naive doubt - sort of silly. All scripts have loglines.

You make it sound like screenplays have official loglines - sanctioned by the studio or something. It's not like a script is assigned a logline at birth, and the logline follows it around - like naming a baby.

Did the writers toil over a logline to put into a query letter? Of course not. But that doesn't mean they didn't concoct some sort of logline to present their "take" on the material.

Story ideas must be communicated in a quick and simple manner. That's the purpose of a logline. What's the movie about?

Through the life of PIRATES, nine zillion different people created nine zillion different loglines for various purposes. For instance, when a story analyst read the script for PIRATES, he created a logline.

I get cover letters all the time from studio heads hocking their latest tentpole venture via a logline.

It's the way business is done. All projects must communicate their concepts, and the logline is the language in which it's done.

Learn the language.

How does the writer or director create a logline if there is no story on which to base the logline?

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Who says there's no logline?

A logline for SNAKES ON A PLANE could go like:

In order to kill a mob informant on board an airplane, a cargo of deadly snakes is let loose, and an FBI agent struggles to save the lives of the passengers.

We're not splitting atoms here.

GigiZ said:

Agreed but what if the problem that needs solving is not so visual? An Incredible Shrinking Man brings to mind images immediately but what about Sideways?

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The "Roadtrip through California wine country" part is the visual.

jonpiper said:

Genre? Setting? Type of protag? Throughline? How well the logline is written? Other?

And don't forget not all readers are looking for the same type of screenplay. We've got to get the logline to the right people.

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It's all of the above. It's usually a confluence of elements. Even if a logline isn't expertly written, a good idea for a movie will shine through.

Yes, it's true that some scripts don't make for the best loglines. A script like JUNO, for example, sells itself in its pages rather than in a logline.

But Diablo Cody had plenty of access to the business before she wrote JUNO. She already had a book published, had done the talk show route and had a manager. She didn't have to rely on a logline to solely attract readers/buyers to her project.

This is why it's vital to consider your place in the business before you set out to write that script about your great-grandmother's earthworm farm.
It probably won't make for an exciting logline - and if that's all you have to announce your script to the world, you're probably screwed. Sadly, a strong script with a dull logline written by an unknown with no conduits to the industry will most likely go unrewarded.

If you devise a script that's concept driven (which is what mostly sells for new writers anyway) and sounds kickass in a logline, you might have increased your odds at attracting attention.

I blogged about this a while back:

http://twoadverbs.blogspot.com/2006/08/think-hallewood.html

jonpiper said:

That's the million dollar question. We've got about twenty-five words to do it.

Perhaps we should turn this around and look at this from the point of view of a reader or producer or agent. What about our loglines would excite them enough to request our scereenplay for a read?

Genre? Setting? Type of protag? Throughline? How well the logline is written? Other?

And don't forget not all readers are looking for the same type of screenplay. We've got to get the logline to the right people.

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Set pieces don't necessarily have to be about car chases and giant robots.

The premise of a well-constructed drama or comedy, in precisely the same way, immediately suggests story possibilities immediately suggests moments and scenes of conflict which are, for those kinds of stories the "set-pieces" that are likely going to get someone interested in reading the script.

Two recently divorced men, one a slob, the other a neat freak, have to move into an apartment together to save money.

That's "The Odd Couple" -- but again, even if you never had heard of it, seen it, knew anything about it -- the comic possibilities are clear. That's because you can immediately start to see the friction between these two guys and how that might generate exactly those kinds of "set-piece" moments -- the "comic" set pieces that will ultimately define the movie.

A single juror out of twelve votes "Not Guilty" in a murder trial, even though the case seems open and shut -- at first.

Same deal -- this gives us a sense of where the story is going to go -- it's one man for innocence out of twelve. All the cards are stacked against him.

But someone reading that knows where it's headed. That somehow or other, over the course of the story, it's going to go the other way.

How? We don't know. Why did he hold out? We don't know.

But it's intriguing. One against many is intriguing. A life (presumably an innocent life) at stake is intriguing. The possibilities of how eleven might be convinced is intriguing.

All in one line.

The real material of drama -- life, death, honor, love, family, justice -- when those things are at stake in a well-constructed narrative -- it really can be expressed in a sentence or two, and it's just as interesting as giant robots and killer snakes.

NMS

Set pieces don't necessarily have to be about car chases and giant robots.

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Although the term has sort of become synonymous with "big stuff," it's really commensurate with the sort of genre. One could say (loosely) that a set piece in ORDINARY PEOPLE is the scene wherein MTM (the mom) squirms while posing for a picture with (her son) Timothy Hutton.

Regardless of the genre, while writing, you should always be thinking about the memorable scenes that will play well in a trailer.

creativexec said:

Although the term has sort of become synonymous with "big stuff," it's really commensurate with the sort of genre. One could say (loosely) that a set piece in ORDINARY PEOPLE is the scene wherein MTM (the mom) squirms while posing for a picture with (her son) Timothy Hutton.

Regardless of the genre, while writing, you should always be thinking about the memorable scenes that will play well in a trailer.

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I think that the "set pieces" -- in whatever kind of movie we're talking about are really those scenes that you decide to write the movie so as to enable you to sit down and write.

It's those scenes that you can't wait to get to -- they're kind of the whole reason you decided to write the movie -- just to have those scenes.

And they might be great action scenes in an action movie, or really scary scenes in a horror movie, or great comic scenes in a comedy -- or incredibly dramatic confrontations in a drama.

Whatever they may be -- they're those keystone moments, the memorable moments. Those high points that people take away with them when they go home.

And if your script doesn't have them -- you're in trouble.

NMS

If you were to crate loglines for Bergman films you'd find that there is plenty of conflict and "set pieces" to write about and those were not films made for Hollywood. As long as there is a story there is a logline.
As far as how to do it best, I think it's a question of making choices -just like in writing- of what to leave in and what to edit out. The point is to not try and fit everything your screenplay is about in the logline. Find the element that's more catchy, as in more likely to grab someone's attention, and try to communicate that.

However, as with all marketing tools, the logline is seriously problematic. I don't think that you can argue that only a bad story can't be turned into a compelling logline. That's like saying that only ugly people don't look great in polaroids. It's a flawed, incomplete way of sharing something that's -hopefully- more complex and multilayered.
But of course, it is what it is. Snap