Hanging at Picnic Rock
Clint CurePenpusher
When a women?s prison workgang is attacked by 19th Century demon possessed, private-school girls, the head prisoner must destroy them to save the new inmate.
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People un familiar with Picnic At Hanging Rock may not get the pun name.
The antagonist description is so convoluted it is almost comical, not sure if this was the intention or not though. Either way the antagonists are not immediately clear and require a second if not third read to get and the resulting inciting incident the prisoners being attacked is vague.
Are all the inmates under attack? Are all the inmates in danger? Or just the new inmate?
The MC description is unclear, is there such a thing as a head prisoner? Is this an official role in the prison system to help the prison control the inmates? Or is this an un official pecking order leadership?
The stakes are unclear:
Why must the MC save the new inmate? What will happen if she fails? Why must the MC save only the new inmate and not the rest?
Hope this helps.
No, I imagine that people who have not heard of the film will not get the pun. However, it is pretty well known here, in Europe and in the US where it is a popular school play.
Yes, it is meant to be comical and is a line from the film delivered by one of the prisoners. It can be cut back for the logline though.
It should be clear from the first line that the entire work prison work gang is under attack.
In the WIP (Women in Prison) genre there is often a head prisoner sometimes referred to as the ‘Queen Bee’. I don’t think it’s an official position but it is often recognized by the ‘Sadistic Warden’.
I’m not wanting to overstate it but I want to imply that the ‘Queen Bee’ is saving the ‘New Fish’ because she is hot for her. Maybe if I wrote ‘the young and pretty new inmate’? She doesn’t care about the others.
In that case I find the MC selfish and negative as she will only save the object of her sexual desire. Why would I empathise with her? Or want to see her succeed?
Maybe she needs to lead the gang in a fight against the demonic attackers?
The love or sex interest B plot doesn’t need to be mentioned in the logline in this case.
The description of “…head prisoner?”, regardless the genre conventions, isn’t achieving the desired effect best to change it to something more easily understood. Perhaps something more pragmatic such as the “gang leader” or drop it all together and just specify her as an inmate that leads her fellow prisoners to fight against something.
Definitely trim the antagonist description and specify the nature of their demonic powers. Soul eating demons? Killer demons? What specific danger will the demons present this is not necessary but may help generate more interest if the danger is unique.
I don’t think it really matters what she wants, what will make an audience empathise with her is the lengths she will go to get what she wants.
Can’t disagree more.
What the character wants will define them as either the protagonist or the antagonist. Most antagonists think they are doing the right thing and will go to great lengths to get it. However this doesn’t meant the audience will empathize with them and want to see them succeed.
How do you explain the appeal of a film like Throw Momma from the Train? Two men want to kill their mother, and their spouses. Why do people want to watch that? We want to see how far they will go to achieve their goal. My protagonist is trying to save the girl, that’s no where near as morally dubious as those characters.
>>How do you explain the appeal of a film like Throw Momma from the Train
It’s a comedy. Is this a comedy?
And “Throw Momma…” was written by a screenwriter well established in the industry. He didn’t need a great logline to get his foot in the door, get a reading for the script. He had something better: a network of contacts.
In addition to DPG’s comments bellow this is just one example of a film that differs to the rest where as for most films this would be inaccurate to say.
Ultimately if your MC has a selfish goal that does nothing for anyone but her self she is not a character worthy of the audience to invest in emotionally. In doing so you are reducing the appeal of the concept so better to structure it so her goal has at least one aspect to it that is noble.
So are you saying that ‘Throw Momma from the Train’ was an unappealing premise? I’m still not convinced that an MC can’t be selfish. What about Hellraiser, looking past Frank as the MC, who isn’t selfish in that movie? Clive Barker wasn’t already established in the film. Taxi Driver? What about Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds? I’m not sure Ray even changes that much, he still goes through with his selfish plan to dump his kids off at their Mums? I’m not even convinced that my main character is seen as selfish as her devotion to the object of her desire gives her something the audience shares some empathy with.
What’s the MC’s goal in Lolita?
Have you seen The Good the Bad and the Ugly? All that those guys want is money? Ocean’s 11? The Italian Job? I can keep listing films if you like. It’s not a rare thing for the MC to have a morally dubious goal and still make a connection with an audience. I find it really weird that you seem to think that it can’t work. What sort of movies do you watch? Are you only watching christian television?
I suggest you change your tone if you indeed want others to give you constructive criticism.
Some of the examples you gave align with a MC that has questionable morals but some of your examples didn’t. Regardless just as you can list many examples that work on the premise that the MC of a story has questionable morals. There are more examples of the opposite and in fact if you look back through the last 3000 years of story telling the number of MCs with questionable morals is far less than MCs with the opposite.
As I previously SPECIFICALLY wrote you are reducing the appeal of the story, nobody said on this post that the story won’t necessarily work.
Also as previously mentioned unless you are an established writer with several produced scripts under your belt you are better off structuring a story with a greater chance of selling. This means making it about a character with a greater chance of appeal to the audience.
Other wise you are getting hung up on one issue and ignoring the rest. The antagonist description is unclear and as such the obstacles are not immediately clear. For a (quoting Snyder) Monster In The House type of film the monster needs to be very clear and the dangers immediately understood.
Are all the inmates in danger or just one?
Additionally the MC description is unclear as “head prisoner” is not a widely understood term. What is her inner flaw? What about her and her struggle will be more interesting than any other MC fighting a supernatural being?
In my mind the goal is still too narrow for a MC the stakes will rise and the story easily improve if she were to need to save the whole work gang instead of just one inmate for herself.
I am sorry to have offended you. That wasn’t my intent but I just don’t think we are on the same page. I do take my concepts to producers and listen to their feedback but if I was told SOME of the things you have said to me I would feel that I had taken it to the wrong producer. Other feedback you have given I have already addressed and appreciate.
retributionfilm:
The fundamental principle is that the main character needs to be someone the audience WANTS to watch. Usually, that entails a main character the audience can empathize with, emotionally bond with, root for. Lacking that, the MC must be interesting, compelling, someone the audience will WANT to watch in spite of his dramatic ‘ugliness’ because of the passion and urgency he brings to his struggle for the dramatic goal.
>>>Ocean?s 11, The Italian Job
They are likeable, ergo sympathetic characters, from leader of the heist on down. Yes, they are engaged in illegal activity, but they have compensating virtues, like a sense of humor, loyalty to their comrades. More importantly, the Mark, the victim of the heist, is an even worse crook, has committed worse crimes, is a genuine SOB, cruel, merciless, no sense of humor.
The trick is to cast and use the antagonist in such a way as to make the protagonist look like a saint in comparison. AKA: the Photoshop effect, make a bad, unsympathetic character look good (or at least not so bad) by placing him in relationship to foes who are even worse.
Like Aaron Sorkin did with Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network”. (Although Sorkin had already established his rep as one of Hollyweir’d’s hottest screenwriters. And “The Social Network” was brought to him to adapt from a best-selling book based on real events. With his reputation and connections in the business, he didn’t need to write a logline for that project. Anything with his name on it automatically gets read.)
You want to write a script with an unsympathetic MC? Write it. I’m just saying your goal of SELLING the script, getting it produced is likely to be complicated by the fact that a story with an unsympathetic character is harder to sell in a logline (and in a script) than the former.
fwiw
I don’t see your Queen Bee as being particularly unsympathetic, but it shouldn’t take too much tweaking to make her endearing… (maybe by changing her description to ‘Queen Bee’ could help here, I think it is well known enough with being associated with the highest ranking prisoner in a women’s prison…)
For me, regardless of a Protagonist’s moral fibre, if they are INTERESTING, then I think, like dpg, that they need at least one endearing trait that you could highlight in the logline via her description… but this eludes to a character driven plot … horror (or, for Snydites, MITH), is driven by the monster, in this case, the attacking demons (ghost’s of the school girls?), as well as the sin committed — so if the logline’s focus is more on demons – maybe by giving us the inciting incident that causes Miranda and Co. to attack the prison (the sin) you don’t have to worry so much about describing your lead with as much detail as something from another genre. Alternatively, the relationship between the Queen Bee and New Fish needs more attention if you are going for something other than horror. My take, anyway.
I think it has potential, but the logline could make more of the joke (or, the hook…)
Best of luck.
It’s actually a short film i made in 2009 that has done well for me despite it’s shockingly low production values (to simulate a gun shot wound I put a wig on a balloon and popped it) and I have often wondered why. I put it up as a logline to see what feedback it might attract if I was ever to expand it. I’ll have another think about the logline but I did try and write it out as clear as possible based on what worked in the film.
The biggest lesson I learnt was to give your target audience what they want, which I had done by accident. That means sticking to the rules of the genre (even though this was a mash of two) which is why I have argued so strongly for the main character to be someone very flawed. I’m sorry if that got read as me not taking advice.
Also, I never said I wanted to write a script with an unsympathetic character.