The Hole
After an explosion, a marine wakes up in a place with other people from different times, his mission is to lead the group to recover artifacts spread in different times in history and avoid an alien invasion in the future.
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That sounds complicated. I would suggest a mini series just to test the waters.
Actually I wasn’t sure if it is better as a series,short of course, more than a movie this is still a work in progress so I appreciate your comment.
No problem. The way I see it, a mini series would be better because of what I am reading now.
Here are a fer questions for your concideration.
After an explosion, [What caused the explosion?] a marine wakes up in a place with other people from different times [How far back in time are you talking and where did these people come from? i. e. What countries?], his mission is to lead the group [How was he put in charge and why?] to recover artifacts spread in different times in history [Alien artifacts?] and avoid an alien invasion in the future [When and where does this all take place? How far in the future? Is it in the Marine’s own life time?].
Always check for grammar and spelling.
After an explosion, a marine wakes up in a place with other people from different times. His mission is to lead the group to recover artifacts spread in different times in history to avoid an alien invasion in the future.
One question that should never have to be asked after reading a logline… “Why??”.
You need to establish the causal connection between the alien invasion and the historic artifacts… (in the logline…), otherwise you can guarantee that the above question will be asked again and again by any potential investor/ reader; and the ‘Why’ is not …”I HAVE to know, so i’s just gotta read me that script…”, it’s “I can’t see the reason for this… So I’m gonna jump into this here pile of 1000 plus query letters and find one that does…”
Best of luck with any revisions.
…”…find one that does…tell me WHY…” 🙂
Yes, some of those questions have answers already except the alien invasion how far in the future it’s going to be. I haven’t put it on a timeline yet.
Thank you for the correction, it looks better.
Here is an idea. Concider a cross between the Terminator and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The Marine could already be in the middle of a war with aliens. He comes across an alien device that inadvertantly sends him back in time. The explosion could be from the time travelling device that was damaged. The unintended result from the explosion could be like what happened in that television show Quantum Leap, where the inventor, Sam Becket, keeps travelling back in time, albeit, in his own time line.
Eh?
Why what?
Exactly what Tony Edward said. As written, the logline gives a script reader an excuse not to read the script rather than a reason to read it. The logline logic doesn’t compute: there is no causal connection between the aliens and the artifacts.
I recall an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation where Captain Picard went on a vacation. While on vacation he gets himself mixed up with a human woman, aliens from the future, and a Ferengi who are all looking for an alien device from the future, which somehow, ended up being hidden in the past. Perhaps those alien artifacts that were placed on earth throuhout earth history, were the cause of the war.
You have two inciting events in your logline.
1) After an explosion,
2) a marine wakes up in a place with other people from different times,
I would chose the second one, I don’t think the first one is necessary to the logline.
—–
“After a marine awakes with people from different times, he must lead the group to recover artifacts spread throughout history to avoid an alien invasion in the future.”
—–
Still not sure what the artifacts have to do with the alien invasion but I hope this example helped consolidate your original logline.
Hope that helped, good luck with this!!
I recall an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation where Captain Picard went on a vacation. While on vacation he gets himself mixed up with a human woman, aliens from the future, and a Ferengi who are all looking for an alien device from the future, which somehow, ended up being hidden in the past. Perhaps those alien artifacts that were placed on earth throuhout earth history, were the cause of the war.
Second attempt: (I am taking a few liberties with this one)
After a marine awakes with people from different ages, he must lead the group to recover the three parts of the spear of destiny spread throughout history to repel an alien invasion in the future.?
The “Spear of Destiny”? You sure about that?
Just an example of a specific artifact instead of the somewhat vague “artifacts spread in different times in history”
tbh could be any artifact but I think being more specific about which artifact and why it would be helpful against aliens would help.
After an explosion, a marine wakes up in a place with other people from different times, his mission is to lead the group to recover artifacts spread in different times in history and avoid an alien invasion in the future.
After a marine awakes with people from different ages, he must lead the group to recover the three parts of the spear of destiny spread throughout history to repel an alien invasion in the future.?
The hook of your logline is the marine waking up with characters who have all been transported there from different eras of time. That’s an interesting hook and you need to milk that element dry.
The big question, of course (apart from why they must retrieve artifacts from different historical times) is who has put this bunch of people together and why? It can’t just happen for no reason, and all I can do with your logline is assume that the aliens have transported them through time and put them together (my reasoning being that aliens in your story would more than likely have the ability to time-travel than the humans). So why would the aliens (or whoever is responsible) do that?
About the artifacts – you need a time lock. The marine and his group must find these artifacts before the aliens find them. The aliens need them to complete their invasion (you decide why and how), but the marine somehow discovers that if he can find them and destroy them first, then the aliens can’t invade. Maybe the artifacts make up some kind of time-travel device or it creates wormholes or whatever, so their main armada can’t get to Earth without it. This brings me to my next point:
You have to personalise the story. You have the marine as the central character, which is good, but the main antagonistic force is the ‘alien invasion’, which is not specific enough. You need one antagonist that represents the aliens and this is the person that the marine will be fighting – they’re both racing each other to retrieve the artifacts.
For me, the explosion and the marine waking up are not important enough elements that they should be in the logline. You take them out, you’ve got more room to get in the important stuff, like so:
“A marine must lead a group of time-travellers to retrieve the four sections of ?????? before an alien soldier can use them to lead his invasion armada to Earth.”
Hope this helps 😉
Wow! thank you everyone for your comments.
For those wondering if there is a person behind the quest yes there is. All members of the group are translated to this place that I call “The Hole” for the moment, and there is a person “The Master” he can see all the events in history past, present & future. “The Master” can’t interfere, but after watching how aliens planted special artifacts (I’m doing research on this) on different times he decides to recruit people and this is where the explosion comes, the marine should have died instead “The Master” translate him to “The Hole” avoiding conflict with history of course this is not always true.
This project is on very early stages, I followed the site advice to post the logline to see if it is worthy to spend months, literally months on it. 🙂 Thank you!
Great description, I can really see it. To make it easier to read, I would change it to this: “A marine wakes up after an explosion with people from other times. He leads the group to recover artifacts from different times in history to avoid an alien invasion in the future.”
To avoid an invasion in the future, a marine is tasked by a mysterious entity to recover hidden alien artifacts spread through the past.?
Hope that helps, good luck with this!
After reading this logline, I was blown away — pun intended. There seems to be a lot more than a 90 minute movie can cover. It has a Lost feel to it with aliens thrown in the mix. I personally think you should go the TV series route, because based on this logline, you’ll have plenty of characters, time periods, the 1st explosion, etc.to develop.
“To avoid an invasion in the future, a marine is tasked by a mysterious entity to recover hidden alien artifacts in the past.