Penpusher
Posted: 2020-06-21T00:48:30+10:00 In:

A lonely and conflicted gay teenager learns to accept himself and take pride in who he is with the help of an unlikely friend who introduces him to the world of boxing

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    4 Reviews

    1. Penpusher

      Thank you – loads to work on, lots to think about.

      The crowd funder goes live mid-July.  The shoot is scheduled for 4 days in September.

      I shall keep you posted!

      Rowe   : )

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    2. Samurai

      Hi Rowe, from the logline I couldn’t quite get the Intention and Obstacle. Let’s see..

      “to accept himself and take pride in who he is” is more a subjective need than a goal. I’ve been told while there’s no hard-fast rule for using a subjective need as a goal. You know like “to win the love of” or “to win back his family” that kinda thing. It’s best to go in with a clear, action, specific, external action goal – in this case “to win the tournament”, “to get money from tournament”.

      As DPG once told me, one can use a subjective need for the intention if the hook is strong enough. Like “Groundhog Day” or “Harold and Maude”. Strong hooks for very subjective goals.

      As for obstacles – I mean, a ton of them I’m sure. However – we need a stronger and a lot more specific one. I’ll just throw some ideas out there to help get the ball rolling.

      Anyways…

      INTENTION: to win the tournament? (subjective need could be to win over homophobic father?)
      OBSTACLE: homophobic high school bully? (plenty of conflict if he’s fighting someone he loves or was a lover of some kind.) homophobic former best friend?

      A gay teenager sets out to win a boxing tournament against his high school bully?

      A gay teenager sets out to win a boxing tournament against his closeted former lover (plenty of conflict here.)

      Again – these are just ideas I’m throwing out there.

      I wasn’t sure how necessary “unlikely friend who introduces him to world of boxing was” to the logline. I suppose it’s an interesting inciting incident. We’d have to be more specific with this “unlikely friend”. I mean plenty of conflict with a homophobic next door neighbour. Something like that? Perhaps his “unlikely friend” is an openly gay queen and former boxing champ (very Oscar baity role ha.). Someone who helps him come to terms with his sexuality and lifestyle and direction in life. I keep thinking a gay Mr Miyagi who helps the protagonist to come to terms with who he wants to be in life. Interesting.

      Not sure about “lonely” and “conflicted” as well. For the logline anyways. Keep them for now.

      Anyways – it’ll be interesting to see how this develops. Very interesting concept. (The image in my head is of Brokeback Mountain meets The Karate Kid. Which is certainly a new twist on an old idea.)

      Good luck with this!

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    3. Penpusher

      Thank you so much for your feedback!

      I’ll try and answer your points….

      The story is set in the present day.

      Sport IS still absolutely rife with homophobia, but the boxing session our protagonist goes to is specifically LGBT friendly.

      The teenager’s contemporaries from school are homophobic and violent.

      So I think the objective goal is:  learning to defend himself physically from school bullies via learning to box with the help of a new friend and ally whilst simultaneously coming to terms with his sexuality because he can’t learn to use his body (box) until he can look at himself in the mirror, look himself in the eye, accept himself.

      The visual at the end is:  we see our protagonist smile for the first and only time in the film. We know he’s going to be alright because he’s standing taller and is facing the world, and himself, with newfound confidence, strength, and optimism.

      How to say this through the logline I really don’t know    : /   Help!

       

       

       

       

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    4. Singularity
      The character is an interesting one with a lot of potential conflict outside the ring — if the story is set in the bad old days when there was no tolerance or acceptance of homosexuality in the sports world.  But there is no clue that such is the case. What is the time period of the story?
       
      A more problematical issue is that the logline lack some required elements in an industry standard logline.  See the required elements outlined in the formula.
       
      For one thing, the logline doesn’t provide the protagonist with an objective goal.  “Learning to accept himself and take pride in who he is” refers to his character arc — but a character arc is not a plot. A character arc is what unintentionally happens to the protagonist as a result of the plot.  And a plot is about the intentional pursuit of a concrete objective goal.  
       
      Loglines are about the plot, not the character arc. “Learning to accept oneself and take pride” refer to subjective needs, not objective goals. But loglines are not about lessons to be unintentionally learned.  Loglines are about some concrete goal the protagonist intentionally pursues.
       
      “Concrete objective” means that the goal is can be a visualized,  can be seen on the screen. Movies are a visual medium and every element in a logline needs to refer to something or someone that can be seen on the screen.  What is the visual for “learning to accept himself”?  What does “take pride” look like?
       
      Rocky Balboa’s objective goal in the origin movie that launched the franchise is to remain standing at the end of 15 rounds.  That’s the visual: when the audience sees him on his feet at the end of 15 rounds, they know he’s succeeded.
       
      What is you character’s objective goal?  Which is to say, what’s the visual that will let the audience know he has succeeded — or failed?
       
      Hope this helps.
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