A teenage Jewish boy Harles in a Nazi death camp sets out to prove his love to Hitler’s daughter Ida who once pretended to be Jewish.
AndrewriterPenpusher
A teenage Jewish boy Harles in a Nazi death camp sets out to prove his love to Hitler’s daughter Ida who once pretended to be Jewish.
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Andrew.
I have a finite amount of time to spend on logline.it each day so I must appologies for not reading your deataild second reply. I did, however, read your first so I’ll respond to that.
In my opinion the concept suffers from a few fundemental problems which I have described in my post above, therefore, I won’t recount what has already been posted. You’re welcome to read back through the notes you’ve received already and study them in more detial instead of posting explenations as to why they’re wrong.
However, seeing as the major issues are not being understood I will elaborate on them for clarity’s sake. The first big problem is the lack of a clear, visual, and outer goal. This means the concept lacks a single objective that the MC can achieve, will be visibe to a camera and is clearly defined. To prove one’s love could mean any number of things;
Does he save all his food rations to prevent her from starving?
Does he break her instead of himself out of the camp?
Does he write a poem, a song or a novel to imortelize her in?
Any one of the above options could fall under the umbreal of “…prove his love to her…”. Therefore,? whatever his objective is needs to be made clear in the logline. Without a clearly described objective, or goal, the plot is unclear and describing the plot is the primary function of a logline.
Secondly, his inner journey is a derivative of his flaw and currently he has no flaw described in the logline. Your explenation of inner journey “… to evolve into a person who wants to define the reality from the isolated boy he was through his desire of love and pain…” doesn’t describe a flaw rather it elaborates on the situation he is in.? Ask yourself; Is he naive? Is he childish? Is he delusional? What is it about his character that needs to change in order for him to become a better person? then add that in.
About the story you currently have for the boy, his love interest stakes pale in comparison to the daily struggle for life. Ultimately, the boys story seems melodramatic and un original, more to the point you still have yet to describe a plot. It still isn’t clear what exactly he does to get the girl, or why, he seems to have no inciting incident and no clear goal – what does “…prove his love…” actually mean?
You’re missing the point DPG is making. If you are already making up a holocaust story why not then take liberties with the characters to serve a better story. If Hitler had a daughter and she got caught up as a prisoner in a death camp then her story would provide her with a significant inner journey – she realises how wrong her father is and decides to help the prsoners, she evolves as a person. However, if you look at the boy (and I mean this with all due respect to his pain and suffering) what is his inner journey? How does he evolve?
To make it work you would have to make her his secrete daughter, if he never announced that he had children it could be argued that he could have had a daughter in secrete and this is her story – however imporbable it is plausable. If no one knew she was his daughter she would have to prove her family relation to him from inside the death camp and strugle to help the prisoners, big obstacles and big stakes.
>>>>But actually, Ida is Hitler?s daughter who followed him to Poland to take a short look around his doing.
Too facile. Not credible. I am not able to suspend disbelief. ?
(And, btw, who is the mother? You got to explain that, too, as Hitler never married Eva Braun until the final days of the war and there is no record that they had a love-child.)
And if I could suspend disbelief, having her as the protagonist is the better approach, the more interesting story. ?Unlike him, she doesn’t need ?200+ word explanations why she should be the protagonist and why her story might be worth telling.
All ?she needs is 8 words: “Hitler’s daughter struggles to survive in a death camp.” ?Boom! Your story has High Concept.
She’s the hook, not him. Without her, he’s just another Jewish boy struggling to survive the war and the Holocaust.
Dismiss my disbelief as you will — but IMHO, your story hook is the girl, not the boy. ?She is more interesting. She should be the protagonist of the plot. (He ?can be her ally/love interest.)
On the matter of logline basics:
>>>sets out to prove his love
How? ?How does that translate into a specific objective goal? ?That objective goal needs to be what the logline is about.
On the matter ?of credibility:
The premise requires the audience to suspend disbelief on a number of elements. ?That Hitler had a daughter. ? That she pretended to be Jewish. (Why? What’s her motive?) That she ended up in a concentration camp. (Again, why would she put her life in peril pretending to be Jewish?)
That is too many elements for me. I, for one, am unable to suspend disbelief. ?Others’ mileage may vary.
And if I could suspend disbelief, I think that the story told from her pov would be more compelling, more dramatically interesting. ?IOW: she’s a ?more interesting character; she would make a better protagonist.
On the matter of marketability:
Fictional stories on the holocaust are a hard sell because the truth is so much stranger so much more compelling . ?Because there are so many true stories ?of heroism, suffering, and sacrifice.
The last movie that comes to my mind with a fictional take on the Holocaust ?that ?was ?both a critical and commercial success was “Life is Beautiful” (1997) ?And it succeeded because it was framed by a specific dramatic allegorical and controversial conceit — denial, intentionally, artfully deceiving a loved one about the truth. ?The plot is driven by the father having a very specific objective goal and modus operandi: ?to protect his son from the horrors of the Holocaust by pretending they are going on a holiday.
fwiw
Just drop the names and you have a solid logline. The tradition is no names. Putting them makes your line feel strange and unpolished. They aren’t needed at all, as they have no impact on the story, which is the logline function, to show story.