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!
