Categories: Comedy
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Strengths Well-defined POV Clear, difficult goal Active protagonist Filmable incident Stakes and urgency Causality and coherence Action, not decision
A concept with a lot of comedic potential.
Here is a suggested revision for your consideration:
A class-action settlement typo awards every resident of a commuter-bedroom town one million dollars IF nobody leaves for thirty days. Now the mayor must outwit the losing corporation's attempts to lure at least one resident across the border. (38 words)
My rationale:
Break the logline into 2 sentences. (Shorter sentences for folks with shorter attention spans--which is just about everyone these days.)
"Losing corporation" instead of "corporate saboteurs" because it tags the antagonist with big stakes on the other side of the bet.
"Mayor" instead of "clerk" because the former has more credible authority to enforce a lockdown. Of course, the clerk can be a supporting character, the mayor's sidekick.
"Bedroom-commuter town" instead of "bankrupt" because I suggest it is a bigger, more urgent, more direct, more personal complication for town residents than bankruptcy which can drag out in the courts for months and which will impact residents indirectly and unevenly. IOW: give residents more immediate and urgent skin in the game, more personal and *ongoing* temptations to leave town.
As in the 1971 comedy "Cold Turkey" where a tobacco company offers $25 million to any American town that quits smoking for 30 days. Going cold turkey isn't easy and the temptation to relapse can be irresistible and *ongoing* for the duration of the challenge.
FWIW
Some good notes. Yes, COLD TURKEY is a useful comp that successfully navigated a premise similar to this. A bit old to use in a pitch, but useful as a template film. King's UNDER THE DOME would be another one, though the containment of the community there was involuntary.
I scored your version on the Logline Medic (as mine had scored 10/10) and the score on yours was 9.5. See below. I actually like the IF because it's a 'human tell' for logline creation.
Logline medic:
The inciting typo/settlement is treated as already-past backstory rather than an event we witness happening now. The corporation's 'attempts to lure' residents reads as a stock dramatic beat rather than a specific scheme, and the mayor's pursuit reads dutiful rather than obsessive. Tighten the phrasing (the capitalized 'IF' is clunky) and give the mayor a concrete trait plus one vivid, specific tactic the corporation uses.
SHARPER VERSION
Copy and Edit
When a class-action typo hands every resident of a bankrupt commuter town a million dollars apiece—if none of them leaves for thirty days—the town's cash-strapped, silver-tongued mayor must outmaneuver the corporation's escalating bribes and legal traps to keep every neighbor inside the county line.
However...
'Town's cash-strapped...mayor' (?) It's the town that's going broke, not the mayor.
"...keep every neighbor inside the county line." The challenge is to keep the residents within the boundaries of the *town* -- not the county.
And the "sharper version" is also longer (42 words). IMHO: the golden rule of loglining is that less is more.
Stephen: good point that the IF is a "human tell."
