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A mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge for violent action, attempting to save a preadolescent prostitute in the process.

A depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis decides to turn his hectic life around after becoming infatuated with his daughter’s attractive friend.

After a simple jewelry heist goes terribly wrong, the surviving criminals begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant.

The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.

When (inciting incident), (hero) struggles against (antagonistic force) in order to (goal) before (stakes are lost). These are from Screencraft, with highlighting by Guðmundsson.

Logline examples tv shows movie#

As you can see in Guðmundsson’s markup of the Miyamoto loglines, you wouldn’t know quite what movie you’re getting based on a single sentence. At most, they’re arrows pointing towards story. God help whatever reader had to write coverage on them. Having written a lot of loglines as a reader, I’m mindful that several of my films are difficult to reduce to a sentence including Go, Big Fish and The Nines. Here’s a look at how many loglines had two or more elements:ĭo loglines matter? After all, they aren’t something screenwriters are paid to write, nor are they meant to sell someone on an idea like a pitch. Perhaps these are somewhat interchangeable. Guðmundsson found that the overwhelming majority of loglines have either three or four of the elements, while very few (6%) seem to follow the formula completely.Ī common pattern of deviation seems to be that there is either no goal or no antagonistic force.

Here’s how often Miyamoto’s loglines included specific elements: Element My aim was to identify these key features of an ideal logline. So I went through the ‘ 101 Best Movie Loglines Screenwriters Can Learn From’ as chosen by Ken Miyamoto of Screencraft. I was curious to find if the best loglines, of the movies we all know, do in fact follow this template to a degree. This logline doesn’t say that the egg thief is the antagonist, but it’s a reasonable assumption.

When her frozen eggs are stolen, a glamorous movie star must scramble to get them back in time.

For the logline, that’s often implied by the setup. Likewise, every story is going to have some central dilemma or conflict that serves as the antagonistic force. “A theme park” or “a space merchant vessel” suggests that the staff/crew/guests are the main characters. The logline might shorthand this by using a location or setting. There’s going to be a hero or group of heroes. Most stories and most loglines are going to have these elements. My first logline basically fits this pattern, but notably none of the others do. “When (inciting incident), (hero) struggles against (antagonistic force) in order to (goal) before (stakes are lost).”

It is that there is a certain formula for the perfect logline. There seems to be a dogmatic view, however in the community of screenwriters regarding this issue. It seems counter intuitive for many types of stories to summarize them in a sentence or two. With my limited experience, I tend to agree. I went through the transcripts of your shows to find that you are in fact not huge fans of the concept of loglines. Luckily, a reader has spent a lot of time digging into loglines.

Logline examples tv shows professional#

It’s just not a thing I’ve ever needed to do as a professional screenwriter.īut aspiring screenwriters sometimes do find themselves writing loglines, particularly when submitting material to competitions. Once I stopped working as a reader, I never wrote another logline. They’re short, just enough to give a sense of the project. These feel like the summaries you’d see in TV Guide or on Netflix. Left home alone for the holidays, James Bond’s nephew uncovers gold thieves. Writing a story about a lonely rancher, a New York Times reporter falls in love with her subject. Here are more examples from that time:Ī long-suffering percussionist becomes the director of a dismal marching band.Īn avalanche traps a family in their house, along with a stranger who may be a killer. On the top sheet of every piece of coverage I turned in, I had to write a logline. I ended up working as a paid reader for a little over a year, writing coverage for Tri-Star Pictures.

Logline examples tv shows how to#

We were learning how to write coverage, the industry-standard reports that studios and producers use when considering projects. That’s a logline I wrote for Sam Hamm’s 1988 script “Pulitzer Prize.” It’s likely the first logline I ever wrote, way back in film school.

When a prize-winning journalist makes up a source, she pays an ex-con to be her supposed poet-laureate.

Loglines are one-or-two sentence summaries of a story or screenplay.