The Glass Blower
jamesmichaelPenpusher
Twenty-year-old Nicole is a cleaner at a prestigious art college but dreams of becoming a glass blower. When a new teacher, Kiera, discovers her talent Nicole accepts her help and they form an unconventional relationship leading Nicole to a buried secret that has been kept from her since she was a child.
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Bit of a copy of “Good Will Hunting”, here … only with girls. Nicole should at least want to be a sculptor or artist, rather than a “glass-blower”. Glass-blowing sounds lame as a dream or goal. A teacher helping out a diamond-in-the-rough student and forming an “unconventional relationship” with her sounds, itself, very conventional and very much done before as a story (“Educating Rita”, “Dead Poets’ Society”, even “Pretty Woman”). There is some meat and potential with the “buried secret’ idea, however. Perhaps the logline should have emphasised the teacher’s role in embolding Nicole to confront her secret. Perhaps, then, the logline would come across as less bland.
Steven Fernandez (Judge)
Too much focus on her becoming a glass-blower and not enough on the secret.
I’m assuming the teacher discovering her is a first act development, so the buried secret is where the story starts. Where do we go from here – What is she trying to do? (she already has her dream job after all) And what’s stopping her?
Nicole appears to be a passive protagonist. Nicole accepts Kiera?s help leading her to a buried secret are not active enough. Passive protagonists often make for a slow and uneventful story. The promise of drama seems to arrive in Act two when a buried secret is introduced which is far too late. If we can?t readily identify with Nicole, it is imperative that the stakes you create for her are high and clearly difficult in order to maintain audience interest.
Too wordy, but also not enough of the “right” words that provide the important information. You can start by deleting name, age and occupation as they are essentially irrelevant to a logline (in most cases, unless, of course, the name, age and occupation IS the story). You may want to define what the “unconventional relationship” is in greater detail, as this seems to be the entire hook of the story. Just a side note: I don’t think a potential lesbian relationship would be considered “unconventional” much longer, so I’m hoping it is something deeper. You can allude to a secret, but it best be an awesome secret. If not, then you may consider revealing that as well.
I like the concept, however, and especially the title. My hope is that her glass-blowing is significantly ironic to the story, or directly related in some way, since the emphasis is quite heavy on this aspect, as previously pointed out. Good job!
There are two interesting goals here… to become a glass blower, and to find out the buried secret. I would focus on one, and tell us what Nicole must do to accomplish it, why its important to her, and what’s stopping her from doing so.