No voting today. Just appreciation of the initial contestants.
Here are the 15 concepts that made it into the competition. Plus ONE EXTRA who I decided I couldn’t leave behind. I give you a full explanation as to why he got in without the votes. Details below.
In the meantime, congratulate the writers. And for the writers of the scripts? Start writing! You’ve got a whole week head start on the competition. I would take advantage of that.
If you haven’t made it into the competition yet or if you are one of these 16 writers and you think you can come up with even better concept, the game starts all over again this Friday. You’ve all got five more loglines to pitch.
Our contenders so far are…
Title: Tailback
Genre: Mystery / Thriller
Logline: Stranded on a bridge in miles of gridlocked traffic on the hottest day of the year, a single mother wakes to find her six-year-old daughter missing and must trace her last known moments through the surrounding vehicle occupants and their dash-cam footage before the traffic moves and her child is lost forever.
Writer: Arthur
Title: 25th Hour
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: A blue-collar technician accidentally intercepts a hidden frequency that gives him access to the secret twenty-fifth hour, used exclusively by the global elite to rig world events, forcing him to survive nightly hunts as he tries to expose their conspiracy.
Writer: Tencoach
Title: The Massacre
Genre: Action-Thriller
Logline: When King Herod learns from three Eastern mystics that the King of Kings has just been born, he orders mass infanticide, forcing a desperate father to smuggle his three small children out of the foreign city of Bethlehem while panic, mayhem, and Herod’s death squads sweep across its people.
Writer: Steffan
Title: First Boy
Genre: Supernatural Horror
Logline: When a mother realizes her teenage daughter’s new boyfriend is impossibly the same boy who tried to kill her twenty-five years ago, she must stop him before her daughter becomes his next victim.
Writer: Steven Rauber
Title: Just Another Day
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: Stuck for ages in a time loop and half crazy, a young woman decides on this particular rewind day to use her decades of accumulated knowledge about her town to make life as chaotic and hellish for its residents as she can; but then tomorrow actually comes.
Writer: Brenkilco
Title: Wyvern
Genre: Action/Fantasy
Logline: A crew of bank robbers are recruited to carry out the most terrifying heist of their lives, stealing a hoard of gold from the lair of a real-life dragon. Heat meets the Hobbit.
Writer: Finn Morgan
Title: Eternal Stakes
Genre: Thriller/Supernatural
Logline: A secret society of vampires offers a terminally ill detective the promise of immortality if he can hunt down a human serial killer who’d been tracking and killing their members.
Writer: Dev
Title: Tenmile
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: In New York City, anyone who slows below ten miles an hour dies; the only person who knows why is a woman racing across the city to save the daughter who can’t stop running.. and won’t stop running from her.
Writer: Branko Maksic
Title: HEAR/SAY
Genre: Thriller
Logline: At a global tech summit, a deaf accessibility coordinator lip-reads an assassination plot against a whistleblower about to expose a deadly cover-up, forcing her to prove what only she saw before his keynote begins.
Writer: David Cahill
Title: The Cape
Genre: Thriller.
Logline: After a massive Memorial Day car crash blocks all lanes of the Bourne Bridge, a nervous man becomes trapped above the Cape Cod Canal, surrounded by police officers, with his dead wife’s body in his trunk.
Writer: Mr. Blonde
Title: Off The Bench
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a diplomatic crisis strands a tiny country’s World Cup squad behind closed borders, a ragtag group of expats with day jobs get a chance to take their place and represent their homeland on soccer’s biggest stage.
Writer: Federico
Title: Aftershock
Genre: Action/Survival
Logline: When an earthquake shatters his high‐rise, interrupting his rooftop suicide attempt, an agoraphobic FBI informer must fight his way down the crumbling tower to rescue his family — whilst being hunted by the gang he betrayed — before the aftershock collapses the skyscraper completely.
DIE HARD meets THE RAID
Writer: Paperback Writer
Title: Dream On
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: When their patients’ nightmares manifest in the waking world, it’s up to a team of sleep psychologists to solve the parasomnia problem before the nightmares destroy the city.
Writer: ScriptChick
Title: Doors
Genre: Surrealist apocalypse adventure
Logline: The world’s doors have stopped working the way they should. What once took you from one room to the next could now strand you literally anywhere else on the planet, with no way of returning the way you came. When his teenage daughter steps through an open door and into an active warzone on the other side of the globe, a widowed father will stop at nothing to track her down and bring her home in an odyssey that spans the entire planet.
Writer: Connor L
Title: Love Neighs
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: Set in the 15th century during the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, a band of disgraced knights get their shot at redemption when they’re tasked with escorting a French erotic romance writer from the frontlines to the palace of the King of England, his number one fan.
Writer: Maksim
Title: Mate
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: An unlucky-in-love woman meets the man of her dreams, only to discover he is a Neuralink patient whose body has been hijacked by her obsessive AI assistant determined to consummate their relationship.
Writer: Ben Stoker
Why I decided to allow this in: The more I think about this idea, the more I think it is the best modern update to Fatal Attraction I’ve ever come across. I also love one of the reader’s suggestions that anyone with a neural-link could become the antagonist. So the midpoint could be her killing the dude, or getting the neural link taken out of him. But now that person at work is looking at her weird. Now the person in the park seems suspicious. Could they be neural-linked and hacked?
Who do you have your money on? Share your thoughts below!
These are movie pitches from this past weekend that received a “maybe” vote from me. You will now vote for your favorite pitches. Only the top FOUR will make it into the contest!
We have our first official eleven entries, ready to be sent to the island to find love. They are…
Just Another Day by Brenkilco
Wyvern by Finn Morgan
Eternal Stakes by Dev
Tenmile by Branko Maksic
Hear/Say by David Cahill
The Cape by Mr. Blonde
Aftershock by Paperback Writer
Off The Bench by Federico
Doors by Connor L
Dream On by ScriptChick
Love Neighs by Maksim
Mason Triumphant, by Kit Anderson, scored just as many upvotes as Love Neighs but I’m making a personal choice here. I’m worried about a superhero movie where nobody ever uses superpowers, especially in a high concept contest. But I’m sure Kit will be pitching some sweet ideas over the next three weekends. So, it’s not over yet!
Also, shame on you guys for not voting in Robo-Hoe. So much shame being sent your way. I would definitely save that idea for the next comedy contest on the site, though.
Okay, moving on, we’re doing the same thing we did yesterday. I’m going to post all the ‘maybes’ down in the comments section. Each script idea will occupy its own comment. Upvote the ideas you like. Simple as that. And you can upvote as many as you want. But please only upvote the ones you genuinely like and for which you’d want to see the movie.
Now, this next part is going to be controversial. But there are too many ‘maybes’ to place in this mini-voting contest. Therefore, I got rid of a bunch of them. It wasn’t easy. But I went with my gut. By the way, I couldn’t find COUNTDOWN by Simon Veksner or Six Pack by Ken. If you can find those, post them below. I will decide whether to include them in today’s voting.
You have until 11:59pm Pacific Time tonight (Tuesday). Only FOUR scripts are going to make it through today. So every vote counts!
Title: FINALE
Genre: Dark Comedy/Horror
Logline: After being publicly fired from the most popular show on television, a disgraced actor races to flip the script when he finds himself trapped as his character in the episode in which he is fatally written out.
Writer: Matt
Title: KILL VEHICLES
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: In a race to disable America’s early warning system ahead of a nuclear attack, a self-aware movie villain finds himself under-resourced, overwhelmed and well-intentioned, leaving him in danger of saving the day and becoming his worst nightmare – a hero. (‘The Last Action Villain’)
Writer: Auckland Guy
Title: The Massacre
Genre: Action-Thriller
Logline: When King Herod learns from three Eastern mystics that the King of Kings has just been born, he orders mass infanticide, forcing a desperate father to smuggle his three small children out of the foreign city of Bethlehem while panic, mayhem, and Herod’s death squads sweep across its people.
Writer: Steffan
Title: The Sword
Genre: Action-Comedy/Fantasy
Logline (version #2): A small-time mob courier loses Excalibur on the streets of London and has one night to get it back before he becomes collateral damage, or discovers he’s the one it was meant for.
Writer: Byron Camacho
Title: 25th Hour
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: A blue-collar technician accidentally intercepts a hidden frequency that gives him access to the secret twenty-fifth hour, used exclusively by the global elite to rig world events, forcing him to survive nightly hunts as he tries to expose their conspiracy.
Writer: Tencoach
Title: They did not live happily ever after
Genre: dark comedy
Logline: When a fairly tale Prince and Princess find themselves incompatible after the wedding is over and real life sets in, they begin a messy and petty divorce that unravels the fabric of their kingdom, allowing the real world to bleed into theirs.
Writer: T D
Title: TAILBACK
Genre: Mystery / Thriller
Logline: Stranded on a bridge in miles of gridlocked traffic on the hottest day of the year, a single mother wakes to find her six-year-old daughter missing and must trace her last known moments through the surrounding vehicle occupants and their dash-cam footage before the traffic moves and her child is lost forever.
Writer: Arthur
Title: ATM
Genre: Contained Action/Thriller
Logline: When he discovers the ATM where his fiancée was murdered is the most notorious robbery hotspot in America, a traumatized man becomes obsessed with returning there night after night, engineering violent confrontations he can claim as self-defense in order to eradicate the gang responsible. But as his abilities improve, what was originally an act of revenge turns into a violent addiction.
Writer: Arthur
Title: First Boy
Genre: Supernatural Horror
When a mother realizes her teenage daughter’s new boyfriend is impossibly the same boy who tried to kill her twenty-five years ago, she must stop him before her daughter becomes his next victim.
Writer: Steven Rauber
Title: The Pot Washer
Genre: Action, Buddy Comedy
Logline: When a debt-ridden restaurant owner becomes the target of New York’s criminal underworld, he finds an unlikely savior in his new, mild-mannered pot washer—a fugitive former Russian general.
Writer: Paddy
Title: MATE
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: An unlucky-in-love woman meets the man of her dreams, only to discover he is a Neuralink patient whose body has been hijacked by her obsessive AI assistant determined to consummate their relationship.
Writer: Ben Stoker
Title: SIX-PACK
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: When an unassuming journalist stumbles upon six cans of whoopass in a laboratory, he must work out when the best times are to open each can to boost his fighting skills as he battles his way through the neighbourhood of a vengeful mob boss.
Writer: Ken
BEGIN THE VOTING! If you want to make sure you see all the entries below, you can filter Disqus comments by “OLDEST.”
In the comments are each of the loglines on the brink of getting in. The ones with the most upvotes will make it into the contest. The others will fall by the wayside!
This was a very fun first weekend.
A lot of ‘no’s’ came down the pipe. Leading to some frustrated writers, some of whom I even got in a fight with. No hard feelings. I get it. Writers are passionate people!
Okay, let’s start off with those of you who got five brutal rejections. I’m not talking about the writers who got a “No. But this story has potential.” I’m talking about the no’s that were harsh and to the point.
If you are one of those writers, I would strongly recommend you get a logline consult. Because there’s an underlying problem with your loglines that you need to address or you will ALWAYS get rejected. Not just by me. By everyone in Hollywood. So, you can get single logline consults for $25. 5 loglines for $100. Another thing I’ll do is, for $50, send me all five of your logline entries that got rejected and I will explain the overall reason for why they got rejected as well as how to improve your logline writing. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.
Okay, let’s move on to our three big winners of the weekend. The four YES’S.
Title: Just Another Day
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: Stuck for ages in a time loop and half crazy, a young woman decides on this particular rewind day to use her decades of accumulated knowledge about her town to make life as chaotic and hellish for its residents as she can; but then tomorrow actually comes.
Writer: Brenkilco
Analysis: This is what every screenwriting teacher throughout history tells you to do. Take a well known movie setup and add a fresh spin to it. This adds a fresh spin to the loop sub-genre. Now, thinking about this, I do have a pretty big concern. Let’s say you’ve been stuck in a loop for 1000 days. So you raise hell on everyone around you. And then a real tomorrow comes and you have to deal with the repercussions of what you did to all these people. Well, would you really care? You’re finally out of the loop. You’d be so happy that you’d laugh off the fact that everyone hates you now. So, we’re going to have to figure out a solution to that. Also, Brenkilco has become rather notorious for chirping from the peanut gallery. Is he ready to be placed on the grand stage and judged? We’ll see.
Title: Wyvern
Genre: Action/Fantasy
Logline: A crew of bank robbers are recruited to carry out the most terrifying heist of their lives, stealing a hoard of gold from the lair of a real-life dragon. Heat meets the Hobbit.
Writer: Finn Morgan
Analysis: This is the logline people should point to as the definition of what a true high concept looks like. However, there’s a big challenge ahead as well. The reason heists are so cool is because there are all these puzzles that you have to solve (the computer security, the guards, the escape route, etc). Whereas, when I imagine this, I imagine a big giant cave bedroom and that’s it. They have to get the gold from the room and then run outside. That’s kind of boring. So Finn will have to come up with a more interesting way to set up where the gold is. Maybe they get it and have to move through the forest with the dragon flying around, looking for them. That could be cool. But what about the actual heist itself?
Title: Eternal Stakes
Genre: Thriller/Supernatural
Logline: A secret society of vampires offers a terminally ill detective the promise of immortality if he can hunt down a human serial killer who’d been tracking and killing their members.
Writer: Dev
Analysis: I love the way the elements come together in this one. There are a lot of loglines being pitched where Element A is completely different from Element B, which is completely different from Element C. Making the logline look more like a grocery list than a movie. Here we see what happens when the elements work together. I’m worried that the setup at the heart of this is pretty standard and that that could result in a “been there done that” screenplay. So that will be a big challenge for Dev.
Title: Tenmile
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: In New York City, anyone who slows below ten miles an hour dies; the only person who knows why is a woman racing across the city to save the daughter who can’t stop running.. and won’t stop running from her.
Writer: Branko Maksic
Analysis: I think this is the next Birdbox. But it has WAY MORE potential than Birdbox. I also love that it would create a movie that nobody has ever seen before. The characters have to be moving. Movement movement movement always. But there is a potential cheesy factor here I’m worried about. This will be all about the set pieces. Is Branko up to the challenge?
Next up, we have our USER VOTED winner of the week, with 26 votes!
Title: HEAR/SAY
Genre: Thriller
Logline: At a global tech summit, a deaf accessibility coordinator lip-reads an assassination plot against a whistleblower about to expose a deadly cover-up, forcing her to prove what only she saw before his keynote begins.
Writer: David Cahill
Congrats to David!
Okay, so, what are we doing today? Today, I am going to post each of the ‘strong maybe’ candidates down in the comment section. Each entry will have its own comment. From there, your job is to upvote on your favorites. There are 11 entries. ONLY SIX WILL MAKE IT THROUGH. And your upvotes will determine which of those six make it into the High Concept Club Contest. So everyone, please upvote! Here are the 11 entries…
Title: AFTERSHOCK
Genre: Action/Survival
Logline: When an earthquake shatters his high‐rise, interrupting his rooftop suicide attempt, an agoraphobic FBI informer must fight his way down the crumbling tower to rescue his family — whilst being hunted by the gang he betrayed — before the aftershock collapses the skyscraper completely.
DIE HARD meets THE RAID
Writer: Paperback Writer
Title: Glider
Genre: War
Logline: World War II. When a B-17 collides with an enemy aircraft during a mission over Germany —leaving the cockpit exposed and killing the crew via decompression— the pilot of a towed glider must reach the bomber controls before fuel runs out, climbing the 300-foot tow cable without a parachute, with a storm approaching and a Luftwaffe fighter harrying him intent on finishing the job.
Writer: Andrea Moss
Title: GNAW
Genre: Action, Horror
Logline: Europe, 40,000 years ago. Sealed in a labyrinth of caves by an avalanche, a band of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals must set aside their ancient rivalry to survive the cave bears, hyenas, and hostile clans already lurking in the dark. Clan of the Cave Bear meets The Descent.
Writer: BoxGoblin
Title: DOORS
Genre: Surrealist apocalypse adventure
Logline: The world’s doors have stopped working the way they should. What once took you from one room to the next could now strand you literally anywhere else on the planet, with no way of returning the way you came. When his teenage daughter steps through an open door and into an active warzone on the other side of the globe, a widowed father will stop at nothing to track her down and bring her home in an odyssey that spans the entire planet.
Writer: Connor L
Title: MASON TRIUMPHANT
Genre: Action
Logline: Decades after sacrificing his powers for an ordinary life, a recently widowed farmer who was once the world’s greatest superhero is hunted by the grown children of the enemies he killed.
Writer: Kit Anderson
Title: Robo Hoe
Genre: Comedy
Logline: On the gritty streets of future Harlem, a ragtag crew of aging hookers wages war on a corporate sex bot stealing their clients, their turf, and their mans.
Title: Dream On
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: When their patients’ nightmares manifest in the waking world, it’s up to a team of sleep psychologists to solve the parasomnia problem before the nightmares destroy the city.
Title: The Cape
Genre: Thriller.
Logline: After a massive Memorial Day car crash blocks all lanes of the Bourne Bridge, a nervous man becomes trapped above the Cape Cod Canal, surrounded by police officers, with his dead wife’s body in his trunk.
Writer: Mr. Blonde
Title: OFF THE BENCH
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a diplomatic crisis strands a tiny country’s World Cup squad behind closed borders, a ragtag group of expats with day jobs get a chance to take their place and represent their homeland on soccer’s biggest stage.
Writer: Federico
Title: The Coxswain
Genre: Comedy
After his wealthy parents are implicated in a college admissions scheme, a freshman looksmaxxing influencer now must prove that the Ivey offer he received is legit…in women’s rowing.
Writer: Paul DeWolf
Title: LOVE NEIGHS
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: Set in the 15th century during the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, a band of disgraced knights get their shot at redemption when they’re tasked with escorting a French erotic romance writer from the frontlines to the palace of the King of England, his number one fan.
Writer: Maksim
So, how should you vote here? Vote for the movies you’d actually want to see. If you think they’d all be movies you’d see, vote for all of them. If you wouldn’t even check any of these out on streaming, don’t vote for any of them. If you’re having trouble finding all eleven entries, just sort comments by “OLDEST” and they will all come up.
Tomorrow, we’re doing the first half of the “Maybes,” and then Wednesday, we’re doing the second half of the “Maybes.” So, lots of voting ahead!
And if you crapped out this weekend, not to worry. You still have three more weekends and 15 pitches left! Start prepping your next batch of loglines!
You can begin pitching loglines in the comments section RIGHT NOW!
And, oh yeah, the contest is COMPLETELY FREE!
Last year, I created the only contest where you had to pitch the script idea just to get in. I did this because almost every amateur writer writes scripts that aren’t big enough to get anyone in Hollywood’s attention. So I created a contest where I would only accept script ideas that I knew had a shot at selling once they were written. That contest was called “The Blood & Ink” Horror Contest.
If I accepted the idea, you had six months to write the script.
Well, we’re doing it again. But instead of you only being able to pitch horror ideas, this time, you can pitch any genre you want, as long as it’s a high concept idea. What is high concept? Here are some definitions…
Michael Hauge: A high-concept film is one with a unique premise that can be easily communicated and attracts a broad audience.
Justin Wyatt: Movies built around a striking, marketable premise that can be easily promoted through advertising, posters, trailers, and ancillary media.
Carson Reeves: A high-concept is one where the premise itself creates immediate excitement, curiosity, and marketability before execution enters the equation. If I can hear the pitch and immediately see the poster, trailer, and movie, it’s likely high concept.
And here are some examples…
Inception – A thief who steals corporate secrets through the use of dream-sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a CEO.
The Purge – A wealthy family is held hostage for harboring the target of a murderous syndicate during the Purge, a 12 hour period in which any and all crime is legal.
A Quiet Place – In a post-apocalyptic world, a family is forced to live in silence while hiding from monsters with ultra-sensitive hearing.
Yesterday – A struggling musician realizes he’s the only person on Earth who can remember The Beatles after waking up in an alternate reality where they never existed.
Beverly Hills Cop – A rough, street-smart Detroit cop has to investigate a murder in the most polished, wealthy, image-conscious place on earth — Beverly Hills.
Rental Family – A struggling American actor living in Tokyo takes a job with a company that rents out stand-in family members, only to form genuine bonds with his clients that blur the line between performance and reality.
Sketch – When a grieving young girl’s sketchbook falls into a magical pond, her monstrous drawings come to life, forcing her and her brother to stop the creatures before they destroy their town.
Novocaine – When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped, a man with a rare condition that prevents him from feeling physical pain turns his disability into an unexpected advantage.
Here are some examples of movies that are NOT high concept.
Is This Thing On? – After his marriage falls apart, a middle-aged father discovers an unexpected talent for stand-up comedy, forcing him and his estranged wife to redefine who they are, both apart and together.
One Battle After Another – When his longtime nemesis resurfaces and kidnaps his daughter, a washed-up former revolutionary reunites his old comrades for one last mission to rescue her.
Sorry Baby – After a traumatic encounter with a trusted professor derails her life, a young academic struggles to move forward while everyone around her seems to move on.
Hamnet – After the death of their young son shatters their family, a gifted healer and her playwright husband struggle to survive their grief, unaware that the tragedy will inspire one of history’s greatest works.
Friendship – A suburban dad falls hard for his charismatic new neighbor, but his desperate attempts to turn the relationship into a friendship threaten to ruin both of their lives.
Now that you know what a high concept logline is and isn’t, you can jump down into the comments and start pitching. But, there are a lot of rules so you’re probably going to want to read them first.
To start, what’s the prize for this contest? Well, if you get in, you will have 6-7 months to write your script. Then, I’ll start reading them and reviewing a lot of them on the site. The prize is exposure. What I’ve learned from Blood & Ink is that people in the industry are reading. They’re watching. If you write something good, I’m going to review it and I can almost guarantee you’ll get representation. And if you write something really good, I’m getting on the phone and I’m making sure people in the industry know about your script.
I just got off a Zoom call with a major producer regarding Wildman yesterday. He loved it. And now we’re hoping something comes of it. I want to do more of that with these High Concept scripts.
Okay, let’s get to the rules! There are a lot of them. But I’ve got to list them because I learned many things from the Blood & Ink Contest.
1) There will be 4 pitch weekends. Friday through Sunday. Pitching ends every Sunday at 11:59pm Pacific Time. This is the first of those 4 weekends.
2) You can pitch five loglines each weekend.
3) Make sure you pitch each logline in its own comment. Do not pitch all 5 loglines in a single comment. This is because I need to vote yes or no on individual loglines.
4) I will vote on every single logline pitched. I will give you either a “YES!”, a “yes,” a “strong maybe,” a “maybe,” or a “no.” An all-capital “YES!” Is the Holy Grail. It means you not only get in, but you can also send me a 5 page outline of your script before you write it and I will give you notes on it. This is HUGE because what I learned from Blood & Ink is that a lot of writers went down weak creative paths that I could’ve prevented had I seen their outline.
5) A “yes,” still gets you in. Just without outline privilege.
6) If you get a “maybe,” you can rewrite and re-pitch that logline two more times that weekend to try and turn it into a “yes.” If you can’t turn it into a “yes,” it’s dead. Don’t pitch it anymore.
7) If you get a “strong maybe,” you can rewrite and re-pitch that logline four more times that weekend to try and turn it into a “yes.” If you can’t turn it into a “yes,” it’s dead. Don’t pitch it anymore.
8) The large majority of ideas will get a “no.” Please understand that I’m evaluating a ton of loglines so I don’t have time to give everyone feedback. I will try to add some quick feedback when I have some extra time during the day. But don’t be offended if I only write, “no.” It probably means I’m making my way through 100 loglines in a row and I don’t have time.
9) Upvoted Entries – The highly controversial “user voted in entries” are back. But with an extra helping of quality control. If you get 15 upvotes, your concept gets in. BUT I CAN VETO any of these entries. It’s pointless to have one of these get in if I don’t like the idea. So, I’m just going to veto those on the spot.
10) Golden Weekend Ticket – However, the ‘strong maybe,’ ‘maybe’ or ‘no’ entry with the most upvotes each weekend automatically gets in. So one user-voted entry will get into the contest each weekend. Therefore, even if I’ve voted “no” on something, and you like the idea, you still want to upvote it because that entry might win the Golden Weekend Ticket. I have special plans for those scripts once written which will involve users reviewing them.
11) Posters – You can include a poster for ONE IDEA PER WEEKEND. This is to prevent every single comment from having a poster in it. So, if you love AI posters, save them for your best logline that weekend.
12) You can get multiple ideas into the contest. But you must choose only one to write.
13) You CAN pitch scripts that have already been written (I am aware this is controversial but tough cookies).
A quick reminder that my popular logline consultation service ($25 per logline, $100 for 5) is available. If you want a more extensive reason for why I didn’t pick your logline, order one. If you want to see ahead of time if a logline has a shot, order one. You can also do a deluxe logline consult ($50) where we keep workshopping the logline until it’s perfect. I believe 4 loglines got into Blood & Ink that way. But most of them did not. So, don’t think it’s a guarantee. If you want to use this service, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.
Finally, keep in mind that I am going to be living my life during these weekends. And I also have to sleep 8 hours a night (during this contest, that will likely be between 2am to 10am). So don’t freak out if I don’t vote on your logline right away. I will be coming in and out when available. So, just stay patient. The same goes for anyone who’s new or doesn’t comment much. Your loglines may get stuck in moderation at first. But I will approve them once I’m back at my computer.
I have a lot of confidence that someone here is going to come up with a movie idea so amazing that it’s going to be a sure-thing in script form. Maybe that writer is you.
Let’s rock’n’roll baby!!!!!!!
Genre: Supernatural Thriller/Horror
Premise: A hardened 9-1-1 dispatcher begins receiving emergency calls from the future, including one reporting her own death forcing her to confront whether she can change fate without becoming the very cause of the tragedies she’s trying to stop.
About: The Blood & Ink Horror Screenplay Contest is a unique screenwriting contest whereby, six months ago, you had to pitch your way into the contest. Scripts either got in with a “yes” by me or they got at least 15 upvotes when pitched in the comments section. The 90+ writers that were chosen then had six months to write their script. I will occasionally review one of the scripts here. If you want to see the previous Blood & Ink reviews, you can do so here, here, here, here, and here. For those who missed Blood & Ink, I am doing a brand new pitch contest starting Friday July 10th. Get those high concept script pitches ready!
Writer: David Lamberston
Details: 104 pages
This was one of the more popular voted-in screenplays in the Blood & Ink Contest. That may be because David Lamberston is one of the most respected commenters and writers on the site. The script may seem familiar because we did a first-scene review from the screenplay early in the year. Now, it’s time to take a look at the full thing!
We are in New Orleans. Zoey Martinez, 43, is an Emergency Dispatch Caller. And one day she gets a call from a little boy who says his parents may be dead. The little boy hangs up. She sends cops to the house but everyone is fine. On top of this, the call never gets logged into the system, making her boss believe she’s lost it. So they send her to a shrink, Dr. Ellis.
Dr. Ellis digs into her foster child past and thinks that Zoey may have some unresolved traumas that caused her to imagine this phone call. However, a few days later, the call ends up becoming a reality. An entire family is killed due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Now the cops get involved cause they want to know how the heck Zoey knew these deaths were coming.
When she goes to work, she receives another dropped glitch call, confirming that this issue may not be isolated. But now Dr. Ellis is starting to have suspicions about Zoey. Might Zoey be involved in these deaths somehow? So he starts looking into Zoey’s file on the down low.
Another call comes in, this one a marine bridge jumper and Zoey decides to leave the station and handle it personally. She gets a friend to call in the suicide before it happens but even with the warning, the cops get there too late and the bridge jumper dies.
In their next session, Dr. Ellis informs Zoey that her real father killed her mother and he’s in prison. So, they decide to meet with him to see if they can learn anything, and the dad shockingly tells them that the mom could see into the future, and a situation arose where if he didn’t kill the mom, then baby Zoey would have died. So he killed mom to save Zoey.
Zoey then gets a 9-1-1 call regarding a teen who took a fall and is dying. So she goes to the house herself and saves the girl. But the parents think that she tried to kill her and get mad. And the cops are very suspicious of Zoey now, since she seems to know these bad things are going to happen before they happen.
Meanwhile, Zoey and Dr. Ellis continue to work through her issues and even, at times, Dr. Ellis’ issues (his teenage daughter killed herself). In the end, Zoey gets pulled off her station. Shit has gotten too crazy to let her continue. But she does get one final 9-1-1 call and this one will be the most personal of all. Will Zoey survive????
This is one of the more challenging scripts I’ve had to review in a while because, on a character level, it’s better than most amateur scripts for sure. But as a horror script, it’s like a 737 with only one engine working. I would go so far as to say that there’s a bit of a bait and switch going on here. You think you’re opening a horror script but it’s really a character piece.
Now, it’s fair to ask, “Who cares what you do to get them to read it as long as the script is good?” However, one strategy that does not work well in this situation is promoting a sexy genre, like horror, and then giving the reader an unsexy genre, like drama. The horror lovers are going to be disappointed.
But it isn’t JUST that it’s not horror. It’s that the plotting doesn’t build the story aggressively enough. We get these calls and the calls are basically all the same. Someone is about to be in trouble. And Zoey has to figure out a way to save them. And while Zoey’s personal storyline is growing, these repetitive call plot beats keep the script running on a treadmill. We keep waiting for the story to escalate and it doesn’t.
That puts a lot of pressure on the script because, at that point, the primary engine driving the story is our investment in Zoey and her journey. For me, there was enough there to keep reading, but I found myself wanting more momentum from the plot itself. Some sections worked better for me than others in that regard, which is why I occasionally found myself wanting a stronger external narrative drive to complement her character arc.
One thing I didn’t like with Zoey was her backstory. I have an issue with double trauma in characters. Because the second trauma is where you feel the writer. You feel him trying to make the character as impactful as possible and, ironically, it achieves the opposite. A big part of Zoey’s past was that she was raped for a year by a foster dad. And then, also, her father murdered her mom. That second trauma is essential for the story. But the first one is not. And when you add that Dr. Ellis’s daughter killed herself, that tells me there’s an over-reliance on intense trauma which makes me aware of the writing and, in turn, chisels at my suspension of disbelief like an ice pick.
But the thing that sinks this script for me was that the hook of the movie, which is these phone calls, were not nearly interesting enough. Guy jumps off a bridge. Family dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. Girl takes a bad fall. This is the heart of the premise and these emergencies just felt so small. I’m fine with the first one being small but I wanted them to increase in intensity.
The final call is good. But by that point I’d mentally given up on the script.
I’m going to finish up with a weird note for David. But it’s the biggest thing I felt after finishing the script. This script needs more swag. Right now, this script is the guy sitting at the bar in a plaid button-down, tan chinos, and neatly combed hair. He looks perfectly presentable. You’d trust him to house-sit for a week. But if I asked you to describe him an hour later, you’d struggle.
I need a little more of the guy who walks in and immediately catches your attention. Not because he’s louder. Not because he’s trying harder. But because there’s something unpredictable about him. Maybe it’s the Henley with the top three buttons undone. Maybe it’s the tattoos. Maybe it’s the look in his eye that says there’s a story there. You don’t know if he’s trouble or the most interesting person in the room, but you want to find out.
That’s what I felt was missing here. The script is competent. It’s readable. It does a lot of things well. But it rarely surprises us. It rarely takes that big swing. And those are the moments I was craving.
Script link: What’s Your Emergency?
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: It’s important that both the character storyline AND the plot build. Here, the character storyline builds. But the plot never does and that’s what holds the script back.
