Encounter
A rigid and rational psychiatrist finds herself questioning her beliefs when a potentially dangerous man is brought into a mental institution claiming he was abducted by extraterrestrials. Under the guidance of her unconventional supervisor, the young, inexperienced psychiatrist must decide if the patient will be involuntarily hospitalized or if he is telling the truth.
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This is more of a setup than a logline.
And I suggest you research mental health law. Only if a person presents behavior that constitutes an immediate danger to himself or someone else or the community is there sufficient legal justification for involuntary commitment. Believing in extraterrestials does not constitute, ipso facto, a sufficient legal reason, ‘potentially dangerous’ behavior to warrant an involuntary commitment.
I don’t understand why you don’t think this is a log line. Can you please clarify. It includes the hero’s function: a psychiatrist. The hero’s weakness: young, inexperienced and rigid. The inciting incident: a dangerous patient brought into the hospital. The goal: deciding if the patient is mentally unstable or telling the truth about an alien abduction. And the stakes: the patient will be involuntarily hospitalized.
Also, I have researched the law regarding mental health, which is why the patient is described as dangerous. The log line doesn’t say he is potentially dangerous because he claims he was abducted, it says a potentially dangerous man claims he was abducted.
To clarify, in the story, the patient breaks into a house in the country, in the middle of the night, naked and raving about aliens. The scared homeowners attempt to defend themselves and their property and end up being threatened by their own kitchen knives. The patient then steals their clothes and vehicle, which he crashes into a police vehicle while attempting to evade arrest.
Since the patient is raving about aliens when he is arrested, the arresting officers take him to the hospital, believing him to be mentally unstable. When this happens, patients are evaluated over a 72 hour period. If the psychiatrists decide that the abductions the patient has been experiencing are delusions and he is mentally unstable, he would be involuntarily committed since he has engaged in dangerous behaviour.
Your clarification helps make sense of your story. Take my initial response to indicate that some might confabulate the patient’s claim about extraterrestials as evidence of being “potentially dangerous”.
I wrote that it reads more like a setup than a logline because: 1] it’s too long; 2]The presentation of the patient who claims been abducted by extraterrestials is only the inciting incident. The plot of the story, the central component of the logline, whatever it is, is not about the shrink deciding what to do, but what she does AFTER she decides; to wit, her objective goal. (Her objective goal isn’t to waver for 90 minutes deciding what to do — is it?)
So, what is her objective goal?
If the psychiatrist is the protagonist then the logline should say what’s at stake for her, not for her patient. If the patient is the protagonist then it’s correct to say what’s at stake for him, but then he should probably be the first person mentioned in the logline.
If the psychiatrist is rational as you say, then her “beliefs” aren’t really an issue. For somebody like that beliefs and faith is irrational.
Considering that just our galaxy contains billions of stars and there are countless other galaxies in our universe, it would be very strange indeed if Earth contained the only life in all of that. So thinking that there are aliens is in fact rational.
On the other hand:
If there are intelligent life elsewhere, and they have the means to travel the immense distances between stars, why would they use that incredible technology to travel to a backwards planet where people destroy their own planet and fight wars over natural resources and who has the best imaginary friend, to abduct some redneck and stick objects up his rectum? To think that intelligent beings would travel all this way to abduct somebody is not rational.
Those are my two cents.
Her objective goal, basically, is deciding what to do with the patient. But that doesn’t necessarily involve her wavering for 90 minutes. Under the guidance of the attending doctor, the evaluation includes hypnosis sessions, looking into similar abduction cases, visiting UFOlogists, UFO enthusiast groups and listening to their theories and visiting crop circles as well as the site of the abduction. They visit the patient’s apartment, where he shows them something he has been developing to communicate with UFOs. She contacts famous psychiatrists in this field, like John E. Mack and Susan Clancy. Despite her better judgment, the doctor starts to become convinced that alien life forms are visiting Earth and have been for a very long time. She wonders if her judgment has been clouded by the development of feelings for the patient. She then discovers something from the patient’s past which makes her question everything she has learned about the patient so far. I think all of this falls under deciding what to do, but maybe I need to make that sound more interesting? And shorter. And reword the potentially dangerous part.
So… we agree? Someone can be rational and skeptical about aliens coming to Earth and abducting humans. As far as why aliens would want to abduct humans, there are thousands of theories, which is what I would like to explore with this screenplay.
Can’t another person’s fate be what’s at stake for the protagonist? Because of her, a sane person could be wrongly committed or a dangerous mentally unstable person will be released. The protagonist and stakes of 12 Angry Men comes to mind.
I’ve rewritten the log line based on both of your notes. What do you think of this version?
Arrested for breaking into a house naked and assaulting the occupants, a mental patient has 72 hours to convince two psychiatrists that he was abducted by aliens or he will be involuntarily committed.
It could, but only indirectly. I think that if you go that route, then it would be her career and/or reputation that is at stake if she makes the wrong call.
It’s better.
But if he’s commited it would be because he’s voilent and considered a danger to people, and being right about the abduction wouldn’t get him off, because he was still voilent and, unless I’m mistaken, would remain commited until he was no longer considered a danger to himself or others.
He was only violent because he was left out in the middle of nowhere, with no clothes, after he was abducted and was forced to break into a house and defend himself from the scared homeowners who thought he was deranged. I’ll have to research this, but I think if someone does something illegal because they were put in a life threatening situation by someone or something else, the charges would be dropped.
>>>but maybe I need to make that sound more interesting?
I would have to yes.
You’re (later) rewritten logline, by focusing on the patient, seems to make him the protagonist. Now I’m confused. Who is the protagonist, the patient or the psychiatrist?
Also, getting involuntarily committed seems to be small potato stakes, and rather benign, in comparison to the infinitely bigger stakes and threat if the patient happens to be right.
What’s your genre, a psychodrama about psychiatrist is in jeopardy of succumbing to her patient’s paranoid delusion, a folie ? deux? Or a sci-fi movie about an encounter with extraterrestials?
Hi NatureBucket,
Personally I find more scope to this if the psychiatrist is the protag — it lends itself to a more compelling ride if we are forced to question whether or not this guy is telling the truth or not… we’d get that from the psychiatrist’s POV — just imo…
Also, the purpose of a logline should be to describe, as succinctly as possible, the main ACTION of the film… as dpg mentioned, what you need to focus on is what your protag actually does as a result of a decision –this prompts action, which is what readers want to see in a logline, and what paying audiences want to see in a cinema.
I can’t see any real stakes here atm either, as, if the Dr has no pre-existing belief in extraterrestrials, or any valid proof from the patient (or any emotional influence, like the ‘L’ word…) then I can’t really see a dilemma — She’s ‘rigid and rational’, and would simply be doing her job (duty) by committing him. If any of these elements existed in the logline (i.e. she begins to investigate his claims of the abduction and comes across some clues that convince her he may well be telling the truth/ she falls in love with him/ has witnessed some kind of unexplained alien type sighting in her own past etc etc etc…) then I think the logine/ story would have potential.
My examples below are probably not what you have in mind story-wise, but just to show a potential couple of angles etc…
‘After falling for her seemingly delusional patient, an ?ber rational psychiatrist helps to break him out of a high security hospital in order to rendezvous with aliens that he claims had previously abducted him.’
or
(obviously a tad long…) ‘After discovering her violent patient is telling the truth about his family being abducted by aliens, a highly strung psychiatrist breaks him out of a high security hospital in order to rendezvous with the aliens before he is committed for life.’
Anyway — best of luck — does have potential and has hints of Terminator 2/ Close Encounters/ and even Bram Stokers Dracula (well — the stuff that deals with the mental patient etc…;))