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After being traumatised by domestic violence, a young teenage boy is taken on a therapy camping trip by his mother and sister to disrupt his paranoid thoughts about his father before he falls further into madness.
In response to:?After discovering her husband has been secretly abusing their son, a newly divorced mother takes her reluctant child and his sister on a therapeutic?camping trip?in order to help him overcome the ordeal.? Since it's labeled as a horror story, in this case I think having the protagoniRead more
In response to:?After discovering her husband has been secretly abusing their son, a newly divorced mother takes her reluctant child and his sister on a therapeutic?camping trip?in order to help him overcome the ordeal.?
Since it’s labeled as a horror story, in this case I think having the protagonist be a child might work better for a seemingly more psychological horror. Also, I think this version lacks a clear, definite goal. “help him overcome the ordeal.”?Could be something that takes years, it’s an internal, non-visual goal that has no defined endpoint in the logline. A lot of people go to therapy to help their mental state – what makes this case film worthy?
In response to:??After being held at gunpoint by his father in a drunken rage, a young teenage boy wants to forget that the experience ever happened and goes on a therapy camping trip with his mother and sister, but a figure that looks like his father seems to be following him.?
Looking at this verison, the problem is that you’re attempting to use the background as the inciting incident. In this case, why he’s at therapy doesn’t necessarily matter, the inciting incident is when he thinks he sees his father. As a result of seeing his father, what does he set out to do?
I would suggest something like:?After seeing his abusive father following him at camp, a traumatized boy must ….
I assume it may be a case that he isn’t actually seeing his father, but it’s a symptom of his mental deterioration. As a result of this, what?must he do?? What is a clear, defined objective goal which would have a visual representation for the climax of the story?
I mentioned “Get Out” before. The goal of that movie? For the main character to, you guessed it, get out. He must escape from the people who are trying to harm him.
See lessWhen an FBI agent comes in contact with someone’s mind altering dark side, she must make to tough decision to kill him and end the monster’s destructive ways or face the consequences of her actions of letting him live.
When an FBI agent comes in contact with someone?s mind altering dark side, she must make to tough decision to kill him and end the monster?s destructive ways or face the consequences of her actions of letting him live. In general, this logline suffers from obscurity and generality. Let's see, first,Read more
In general, this logline suffers from obscurity and generality.
Let’s see, first, the 3 essentials:
So, all we have is a generic FBI agent, with no other personality traits.
Then, we have:
1. Someone with a mind altering dark side: I agree with the previous comments; you need to get more specific. This is most probably your villain, but it can be anything: Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader, The Thing, The Orphan, Dracula?or a psychic, as Richiev put it. What does your story have?
2. Then, we have the agent’s decision to kill him: since when do the police make decisions to kill or not to kill people? Police officers or FBI agents are supposed to arrest criminals, not kill them.
Moreover, as it has been said a lot of times in this forum, a decision is not a movie action. A decision lasts for a few beats. It cannot drive the plot of a whole movie.
3. The consequences of letting him live: vague, too; we know nothing about that. Elaborate, please.
4. Are you sure this is a horror and not a thriller or a crime film?
See lessA secret agent must work with his criminal and the train security to survive the ride when the train is hit by a meteor and people get possessed by the strange meteor.
There's a lot to unwrap here...you're giving us too much information, and tossing it out like dollar bills at a cheap strip club. Rather than make the story sound compelling, this merely raises questions just to understand the thing: If he's a secret agent, what's he doing with a criminal? Is he undRead more
There’s a lot to unwrap here…you’re giving us too much information, and tossing it out like dollar bills at a cheap strip club. Rather than make the story sound compelling, this merely raises questions just to understand the thing: If he’s a secret agent, what’s he doing with a criminal? Is he undercover? If so, who’s the criminal? A partner? An informant? If so, his status as agent ain’t much of a secret. How much security does a train have? Are they trained to handle events of this nature? If there’s some type of emergency, wouldn’t they just stop the train? Why don’t they stop the train? Why are any of these people on the train? How does a meteor possess these people? What does any of this have to do with our hero the not-so-secret agent and his apparently compliant criminal?
Maybe make the agent something like a U.S. Marshall so he has a reason to be transporting a criminal, and instead of working together the bad guy takes advantage of the distraction to try and escape, so our hero not only has to recapture & contain the guy but contend with all this other crazy shit going on. You can even really stack the deck against him by eliminating and/or infecting security, so he’s the only one who can save the day. And instead of the train being hit by a meteorite (proper name once it impacts Earth) maybe the train passes by an impact site and passengers are affected by the radiation or something…that way the train can keep moving, and the infection now threatens all the upcoming destinations.
As for the logline, stick with the basics: protagonist, antagonist, conflict, stakes.? “A U.S. Marshall transporting a criminal by train must contend with violently possessed passengers when they ride through a mysterious meteorite’s impact zone.” Not very graceful, but one can always play around with the phrasing to make it flow better, and the important thing is that?the story & characters are clear. If they’re not clear in the logline, odds are they won’t be clear in the script.
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