Reality 4
A solitary man unable to sleep for 15 years survives by recording everything he sees and playing it back to differentiate between reality and hallucinations, until he becomes the only witness of a multi million dollar crime and every single person wants to alter his reality.
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very interesting! Memento meet The Machinist.
I think you can improuve your ligline avoiding some minor details :”for 15 years”… it’s not relevant, 15,20, 50, the important is that he cant sleep at the moment of the crime. Then you can start with the inciting event and describe it more clearly: what crime? what is a multi-million dollar crime? You can be more specific to improuve the logline.
Finally, be more specific about the enemies: “every single person”, this is not a compelling character, this is vague.
The concept is very interesting, this is definetely the kind of movie I want to see, as a logline there some more work to do in my opinion.
As FFF mentions above the lack of specific events and character flaws makes for a vague description of the plot. Best to be more specific than less and describe the crime that is the inciting incident. Essentially everything mentioned prior to the crime is redundant in the logline.
A bigger problem though is the lack of a goal, what does he ultimately want to achieve?
What does a solitary man mean? Is he socially inept? A monk? Suffers from Aspergers syndrome?
When you say unable to sleep, do you mean an insomniac? Because depending on the level of insomnia they do sleep only very little.
Or out right doesn’t sleep at all? If so he couldn’t survive for more than a few months and therefor 15 years sheds doubt of the basic logic of the premise.
Here is a cut down version:
After witnessing a master burglar steal the crown jewels a long term insomniac must help catch the thief as he struggles to tell reality from his hallucinations.
Hope this helps.
Thanks guys, How about this?
When a man with narcolepsy who struggles to tell reality from hallucinations witnesses a bank heist, he must remain sane as the thief seduces him trying to alter the evidence that resides deep in his mind.
Narcolepsy is a disorder marked by chronic sleepiness. So what does he suffer from — chronic insomnia or chronic sleepiness?
People suffering from narcolepsy may experience hipnagogic hallucinations, but so may people not suffering from narcolepsy — its a normal momentary mental phenomenon. Momentary hypnopompic hallucinations may also be experienced when one is waking up — again quite normal.
Neither momentary hipnagogic nor hypnopompic are considered markers of insanity, which is a chronic condition.
Now, if you want to do sci-fi riff off of a normative, benign, mental experience, okay, but the challenge is to get the reader — and viewing audience — to suspend disbelief, buy your premise. And right now, I’m not sure what I’m being invited to suspend disbelief about.
Also: why not that he witnesses a murder scene rather than a heist? 1] Higher stakes. 2] And works better with the nature of hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations: their brevity. A murder could take place in a few seconds; a heist may take many more seconds to transpire.
I Applaud your efforts at a High Concept …..Inception type premise.
However i think as DPG Says it is important to know the distinction and specific rules of the Story.
Know the World of the story before writing the Story.
Seems to complex.
Needs to be clearer.
Goodluck 🙂
Bear in mind it is easy to fault peoples efforts but to post log lines is a learning , sculpting and refining process necessary to learn the importance of the Structure.
No Guts No Glory.
I tried to shorten the premise with……When a grieving husband has a stroke he awakens to discover his desire for revenge has become reality.
Best of Luck 😉
That is rather radical surgery to the concept. And, it seems to me, unnecessary. I am drawn to the original premise of a man’s testimony being in doubt because of momentary hallucinations arising from his disorder. That’s the hook.
It is a sci fic in terms that the condition is nonexistent. its a medical trial gone wrong, this person survives thorough a lot of medications and isolation from the world. now his brain has had too many toxins and his only chance for survival is to go into an induced coma and let the brain “heal”. But afraid of going insane while he dreams in a coma state, he sets out to fabricate the perfect happy dream, by following and recording a woman who he has fallen in love with, and playing back her videos over and over. However while stalking her he becomes the only witness of _insert crime_, When before she rejected him as a psycho, now she seduces him and starts editing his footage, which until now has been the only connection to reality that he could trust. He is on a race against sanity and his brain switching off, and he needs to fabricate his dream before it turns into a long nightmare.
— i understand there is a lot of things at play, this log line exercise has been really interesting and thank you all for the feedback. I’ll keep working on it 🙂