Got great advice yesterday, so I narrowed it down too 3 loglines. 1. Three idiotic friends devise a plan to rob an NYC bank, with the help of an bumbling ex-con. 2. Three moronic friends struggle to devise a plan to rob a bank in NYC, enlist the help of a bumbling ex-con. 3. Three friends and an ex-con attempt to rob a bank with disastrously comedic results.
Screenwriting : Logline? by Donell Jones
Logline?
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Definitely #3. Don't call people names: if the producer looking at your logline happens to have a family member with a cognitive impairment, he or she will pass up your probably wonderful script. I know I would. The third logline implies by the description of the robbery that these guys aren't the sharpest tools in their shed!
Hi Donell, I'd have to agree with Laura -- your logline is incomplete. It reads like a premise line not a logline. What are the stakes? Why the robbery? You need much more to create interest. It's too vague. Right now, it seems only situational and appears not to be a complete story. :) Best to you!
That is a premise line not a logline. :) Again... WHY? What are the stakes? Why are they robbing the bank? What has happened that incites the robbery? What happens if they don't? What is their end goal? What do they hope to achieve? Just to have money? If so, that's not enough. Three friends and an ex-con rob a bank... So what? :) You need to give an audience a reason to care, to want to read the script or to see the movie :) A logline needs to tell us who the story is about; what the situation is; and what is at stake -- what is the goal, what is at risk. Example: HAPPY GILMORE, A rejected hockey player puts his skills to the golf course to win prize money in order to save his grandmother's house. Best to you!
All three still have the hook issue: what makes this interesting and unique, something worth spending the ticket price plus popcorn price plus soda price plus candy price for? Why would I pay to see this instead of the other 2 big Hollywood movies coming out that weekend? That needs to be included in the logline: the thing that makes it different and interesting.
Elements such as "complications" or "the staff recognize the ex-con as a current employee" are not stakes but rather small conflicts to overcome. ...Just a side note, I don't think a bank would hire an ex-con (LOL!). Anyway... again, WHY the robbery? Why do they need a large sum of money and need it fast? Another example: THE THREE STOOGES (2012); "While trying to raise money to save their childhood orphanage, Moe, Larry, and Curly inadvertently stumble into a murder plot and wind up starring in a reality TV show." The stakes for Moe, Larry and Curly, if they do not come up with the money, is the possible foreclosure and loss of their home as well as the loss of home for all the other orphans and the nuns who care for them.
So they fail because they're all idiots. End of movie. Unless three idiots surprise themselves and everyone else when their bank heist scheme actually works. Now what are they going to do with $100 million in small bills ??