Title: Good On Yer, Moondyne Joe.
Genre: Historical drama (with fiction)
Historical data:
On the 7th of March 1866, James Bolitho Johns a.k.a. Moondyne Joe ecaped from Fremantle Prison (again), near Perth, Western Australia.
Disliked by the governor and the prison governor, he was liked by the people, Moondyne Joe’s escape became a source of amusement against the governor. They even wrote a song for him.
You’ve provided details from the story, but very little that gives us a sense of what the story is about, like who the main character is, what his goal/conflict is, and what the stakes are if he fails. Also, as others have mentioned in logline comment threads, we don’t need to know the specific names, just a general sense of who each person is. For instance: A “Victorian-era Robin Hood” escapes from prison…
This is all very confusing. Not being from Australia, I have no idea what the Toodyay magistrate is or who Moondyne Joe is. Who is Ruby? Who is Vixiana? The point of a logline is to entice us to want to read your script. This is enticing me to go, Huh?, scratch my head and move on to the next, even though I sense there may be a pretty good story underneath the muddled logline.
Protag – Victorian-era Robin Hood (per Mike D)
Antag – the police (even better to single out an individual cop nemesis)
Goal – evade capture again? (is this cinematic enough?)
Stakes – imprisonment
Hook – ?
Monique Mata,
A magistrate is a peron who sits in judgement in a court, (the judge) the Toodyay magistrate is the magistrate in/of the town of Toodyay.
The main character is James B. Johns a.k.a. Moondyne Joe. He is the central figure. Who is Ruby? She is his (Moondyne Joe’s) lover.
Who is Vixana? She is a witch.
His evading capture, is this cinematic enough? Like a lot of films it is what happens on the journey that counts.
In Jaws, if the sheriff had killed the shark in the first ten minutes, the film would have flopped, but the tension was kept up so the journey to the sharks death was made to be cinematic.
What country do you come from?
To find out about Moondyne Joe, type his name in the address bar, there are more details about him on the web than I could state. (Even though I live in Toodyay.)
After that, by all means keep scratching your head.
You’ve actually made my point – I don’t want to have to google any element of a logline to decide whether I want to read the script. And it’s a pretty good bet that I’m not the only one that feels this way.
I thought as much, but I wanted to be sure.
Given that this site is for people to try and write a logline for their film script. To improve on what they’ve written due to the helpful insight of others.