“Blue Dog Down”, a contemporary Western thriller.
Taking on warring Texas drug cartels, a female Iraq war vet of color, a teenage hunk from the feed store, and a cattle dog, come to the aid of a neighbor who\'s son has been kidnapped.
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I think this one has lots of potential, but at the moment it’s a little bit too busy and doesn’t quite qive us enough information.
I’d suggesting starting with the female war vet (and only include the ‘of colour’ part if it’s vital to the plot), leave out the teenager and the dog, and continue with what she must do. Ie, save the son from the drug cartels.
I’d recommend adding a specific threat too – a time deadline before they kill the son or something similar.
Cheers & good luck.
C
Just a little confused here. Is it about taking on the warring Texas drug cartels or a kidnapped boy? Was he kidnapped by a drug cartel? If the drug cartels are the kidnappers you might want to put that last, in conjunction with the mention of the kidnapped boy.
Thank you!
Revised: “Taking on warring Texas drug cartels, two cowgirls, an Iraq vet of color and an ex-NYC fashion model, have 72 hours to save a son from kidnappers.”
It’s a mentor-mentee, mirrored opposites, protagonist story. The rugged rancher gal (Halle Berry) has to teach the dressed to kill fashion model (Charlise Theron or Jennifer A.) everything she needs to survive on a ranch being over-run by gangsters. It’s a black/white with fence jumping stallions of each color also. At the end, they swap. Halle comes into the last 2-stepping celebration scene dressed to kill, while Charlise has become a rugged rancher cowgirl in boots.
The new logline (above) is better since as soon as I put it up on InkTip, someone pulled the “treatment” to read. I have tried several different loglines, but no readers of the treatment or the script until today. Thanks!
Taking on warring Texas drug cartels, two cowgirls, an Iraq vet of color and an ex-NYC fashion model, have 72 hours to save a son from kidnappers.?
First, let me say I’m glad to see you’re using Ink Tip. It’s a fabulous resource. Don’t be confused by the fact that you see a “hit” on a logline, as there is no guarantee it was even read. It may have just come up in a search for “keywords” such as “drug cartel” or “Texas”. That being said, the second logline is a bit better than the first but it still reads a little more messy than it should. I don’t see the need for the “of color” in the logline, even if it does have something to do with the plot. The “hook” seems to be the incongruity of the group. How does this odd-ball group gt thrown together to take on a drug cartel? I would concentrate on that, even leaving the kidnapping story out of the logline.
I’m interested in seeing how this plays out in the best logline it can be!
This one is a Western in a bidding war in Cannes right now, “Jane Got a Gun” centers on a woman whose outlaw husband returns home barely alive and riddled with bullet wounds. She is forced to reach out to an ex-lover and ask if he will help defend her farm when her husband?s gang eventually tracks him down to finish the job.”
ZzzzZzzzzz….. Predictable is what I call that and from The Black List that made that awful “The Beaver” script famous. Most log lines that get made are absolutely terrible. And we need some ‘color’ in these stories. ‘The Help’ was a huge success and more women added to the mix. Women stories rule right now.
I’m convinced that the absolute worst loglines sell scripts. Why? I think that Hollywood has extremely prosaic taste in story lines like this one, “One year after meeting, Tom proposes to his girlfriend, Violet, but unexpected events keep tripping them up as they look to walk down the aisle together.” “Five Year Engagement” More ZZZZZzzzzzzzZZZZZZ
I fall asleep or walkout of more movies than I sit through. Why? Life is too damn short to be sitting through 90 minutes of boring crap, even if I did pay for it.
First, let me say I whole heartedly agree with Lynda Obst, “Hwood’s lost confidence in its taste — if it hears an idea, it must turn it into a comic, a graphic novel or a book and sell it to itself.”
Secondly, I could care less, SEM, if they read my logline or not with a ‘hit’, all I care about is a script read or at least a synopsis or treatment read.
Thirdly, this is a story about the darkest moment, when a woman facing life alone loses her son to kidnapping, so leaving that out is ludicrous. Also, from one of the best script doctors in the business at PitchFest in Burbank, “Always start your logline with an action”, so “Taking on warring drug cartels,” will be the start.
“Color” is important, as is the fact that African-American female ranchers that end up looking like Halle Berry, are as rare as hen’s teeth. I want unique and unusual, as I’m so over with boring, predictable or samo-samo. I want some ‘color’ in my film and if people don’t like ‘color’ then pick another boring piece of junk that I’ll never go see. A thousand movies a year like that… not interested in writing one or seeing one.
I live in the Hill Country of Texas and I’ve met some of these characters and I know that Austin is “The US Base of a Violent Drug Gang”, so… I had the President of the Austin Screenwriters group shout me down that there is no Mafia in Central Texas, and she writes scripts about pixies and unicorns. So uninformed people that want to boil a logline down to either boring, predictable or wacky, do not get my attention.
Mostly, from reading tons of loglines, if I’m not interested to see that logline play out on the screen, then it’s a very bad one as far as I’m concerned. It could fit a hundred producers taste to a T, but then that’s the kind of crap they’re producing out there in Hwood.
Well, GXavier- it seems you’ve put me in MY place, haven’t you?
You posted the logline on a logline site designed to help, correct, formulate and JUDGE loglines. You received feedback then argue (at least I consider it an argument) over the feedback you’ve received, from me at least, when
a) it comes from a good place of sincere help, and
b) it’s one’s honest opinion.
Clearly you didn’t think the logline was perfect, or you wouldn’t have changed it once to place it on Ink Tip!
You may be missing the point of a logline, my friend. The logline helps GET you the read. As it stands now, IMO, it won’t do the job, but I’ve been wrong before. If you have to explain ANY part of the logline further to get people to understand your story, on a basic level, it’s not the most effective logline it can and should be. Writing loglines is a learned art and skill, one of which I think I’m pretty good at generally speaking.
Also keep in mind regarding those loglines of movies you consider “snoozefests”: they all have one thing in common. They are produced movies currently in, or soon-to-be in, wide release. Hollywood (and Texas) roads are littered with “writers” attempting to buck the system and make it, damn-it-all.
For your sake, I hope you do, and I wish you the best of luck in doing so.
The more HR I read, the more crap I see as loglines and then movies. I’m guessing like so many including H’wood, I need to be in the Indie market. Hollywood rarely makes good movies anymore, they just distribute Indies, so the people in Austin film community who told me not to bother are correct. I’m not interested in making another Hollywood ‘snoozefest’ is so true. Many writers do buck the system as Indies because H’wood is so illogical and frankly boring.
The next movie I’ll see will be Kathryn Bigelow’s, an Indie producer that Weinstein usually distributes. At least I’ll stay awake.
I wrote here that the rewritten logline is getting synopsis and treatments read, so now the crux of the story, the kidnapping needs to be removed? You must be in Hollywood, SEM.
It sounded to me that the “taking on of warring drug cartels” was the crux of the story, and the kidnapping was the inciting incident.
But what do I know? I only read your logline and got that silly impression.
I can only ask for your forgiveness and move on.
That was it — the impression I meant to make in one sentence.
The revised:
Taking on warring Texas drug cartels, two cowgirls, an Iraq vet of colour and an ex-NYC fashion model, have 72 hours to save a son from kidnappers.
That reads that an unmentioned person, or persons are taking on the warring Texas drug cartels and two cowgirls and an coloured Iraq vet and a fashion model.
I take it there is meant to be a full stop after cartels? If a full stop is put after model. Then put the word They before, have 72 hours… it reads more succinctly.
About the coloured Iraq vet. Does the colour refer to an Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Jamaican? The list goes on…..
According to “The Chicago Manual of Style”, this is the proper sentence:
“Taking on warring Texas drug cartels, two cowgirls (an African-American Iraq war vet and an ex-NYC fashion model) have 72 hours to save a son from kidnappers.”
There is no full stop (a period) without a verb, “Taking on warring drug cartels” is not a sentence, it is an introductory participial phrase. This is very common, proper English grammar. Color is correctly spelled, not ‘colour’. I originally wrote ‘African-American’, but my script consultant suggested “of color” was better. So everybody’s an expert…
The Blindside: “A homeless, oversized and under-educated African-American teenager is taken in by a well-to-do white family.”
The Blindside: A homeless, oversized and under-educated African-American teenager is taken in by a well-to-do white family.?
Notice how absolutely nothing about ‘football’ (a huge draw for that film) is mentioned. I recently read a script consultant’s web site that said whatever you do, DO NOT let on what your story is about in the loglne. H’wood only asks to read a script if they are curious as to what it is about because the logline makes it a total mystery. Then read the next script consultant’s web page and he/she says be sure to include the crux of the story and/or at least the hook and protagonist’s quest.
I know one thing. If you pick one of the choices above, someone will come along and tell you to rewrite it to the other way. Yup, that’s H’wood.
I don’t believe that’s the actual logline for “The Blind Side”. That is the TV GUIDE’s one-liner.
“The story of a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All American football player and first round NFL draft pick with the help of a caring woman and her family.”
Okay, thanks, SharkEatingMan. Actually the logline I posted was from IMDB. The one you offered here tells the story well, but would it get the script read? Only if a producer were interested in a football movie which it was. I still think the fact that she is a well-to-do white lady in the South and he’s huge and black and poor is integral to the GREAT STORY. She fought the town and she won. Then a Christian marketing group picked it up and marketed it from the pulpits across the country (this fact is from a panel at last year’s Inktip Pitchfest).
So which one would get the most reads, the IMDB version or this one you put forth about football? Maybe we need different loglines to send out to different people. Or maybe even more mysterious? Not in my opinion. No one likes to be tricked and no one wants their time wasted.
So I’m of the opinion that to write an obsfucated logline just to get someone to read a script with a plot that is of no interest to them, makes no logical sense to me. Why waste people’s time? It’s like me — soon as I see werewolf, zombie or vampire, I’m “Next!”
I have to assume that the logline should match the story to prevent people from tossing the script across the room on page twenty when they realize what it’s REALLY about, and they’ve wasted time they could have been reading a script closer to a story subject they’re looking for.
GXavier- I searched for that logline, and couldn’t find it anywhere. The one I wrote was actually taken from IMdb. Whether or not it is the original or official logline, I cannot say, but whatever it was, it managed to get the film read and made. It may have also been adapted from a book; I don’t know. I’m confused about the “she fought the town and she won” line, because that was not in the movie I saw.
I not going to try and convince someone the importance of a logline- it is a fact of the business, and if one chooses to ignore it, then it’s up to them. I feel I have a solid understanding of the importance of them, and how to right a good one, and this took trial and error over time. I offer logline assistance, and am proud to say that three clients of mine recently won a logline contest, largely based on that assistance.
If your original logline, or any variation, gets your script read, sold/optioned and produced, it is a great logline no matter what anybody says.
Thanks. My point is, if the plot is not something someone is interested in, it’s good to know up front so making the logline as intriguing but mysterious as possible is not a good way to go in my opinion. They either want a contemporary Western with 2 female mirror/mentor protagonists or they do not. So to try to hide that fact to get them to start reading the script is counterproductive in my opinion. Winning against all odds is the key, and The Blindside had that in spades in my opinion. The only thing was the young man was already really good at football but the film made it seem like he had to learn to play, so the arc was a lot steeper.
“DO NOT let on what your story is about in the loglne. H?wood only asks to read a script if they are curious as to what it is about because the logline makes it a total mystery. ” What the heck !?
That runs counter to the advice given by people who sell spec scripts and the advice given by those who buy spec scripts. And, on the face of it, the advice is simply bizarre. To quote someone who sells spec screenplays regularly “I think people screw themselves by being so secretive – you want to excite as many people as possible about your script”
Does anyone have any theories why there is such a glut of bizarre advice?
Mac, you are right (as usually).
“Hollywood” has no time to read your script. That’s why you are a winner if you manage to convince in 25 words (or thereabouts) that there is a COMPLETE story with a clear character and a sound structure.
Mac- “Does anyone have any theories why there is such a glut of bizarre advice?”
I don’t think that POV is qualified as “advice” (I certainly don’t think so) and I have no idea who actually said it, but it seems to be more one person’s skewed viewpoint on a subject they evidentally know very little about.
Yet, unfortunately, this thought process is pretty common among newer screenwriters, as it is promulgated through repetition until believed to be true; thus, following the old adage “The blind leading the blind”. I am preparing an article this week in my continued series of “Debunking Screenwriting Myths” and I list a number of such misleading or oft-repeated distortions.
It kind of reminds me of the now-famous utterance “We need to pass it to know what’s in it.”
Some posters here have been applauding intriguing, but totally mysterious loglines, so Ieft. Now that people have come to their senses, I’m back.
I’ve been getting synopsis reads with: “Taking on warring Texas drug cartels, two rancher women (an Iraq war vet and an ex-NYC fashion model), have 72 hours to save a son from kidnappers.”
My famous music producer friend in NYC, who has all the music connections, won’t let me let it stay in the drawer because he thinks it’s a winner, so he has me converting it to a Kindle book. H’Wood seems to prefer popular books over spec scripts these days. I also think I can be making some money on Amazon with it, while I find a producer.
Yeah good luck with that!
Lol