Hi! I?m creating a Logline for a Animated short movie. I appreciate your feedback
alejobPenpusher
When dark and disturbing children’s drawings come alive. Its creator, a little girl distressed and insecure, must face and erase these drawings from her life before they control her forever.
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I like the premise, has a Stephen King feel to it.
Especially if the little girl was put up to, Drawing her fears, by a “Randolf Flagg” Type character pretending to be a child psychiatrist.
Here is an attempt but it will probably need to be tweaked, to more fully represent the story you have written (or the story you visualize)
“When her drawings come alive, a terrified 5-year-old has until midnight to overcome each one of the fears her drawings represent or be sucked into her paintings forever.”
As already noted, the added stakes suggested presents a lot more immediacy to the story. How do these drawings control her? What might a child be distressed about? Perhaps those could be worth touching on in the logline as well. Sounds interesting though!
Why are there two sentences, and one of them a sentence fragment? What is the “it” that’s been created, and shouldn’t it be “It’s”? Has she created the manner in which the drawings come alive, or just created drawings that do somehow come alive? Why do they come alive and how? Why is the little girl distressed and insecure, and why are the adjectives describing her placed after the noun instead of before? Does she need to face them after they come alive or erase them before they do? Or erase them after, which would involve avoiding the live manifestation to get to the original drawings? Does she have to remove them from her life or literally erase them from the surface on which they’re drawn? How exactly do they control her?
Not a single aspect of the story has been made clear. Give us the protagonist, antagonist, conflict, stakes. Do it in one sentence without commas and make everything clearly communicated.
I think there is? a nucleus of an interesting idea in the logline.
But I agree with mrliteral that whatever that nucleus is needs to be brought into sharper focus.? Check out the screenwriting forluma.
(1st revision)
An emotionally traumatized little girl must overcome the feelings her disturbing drawings represent when they come alive from drawn papers to completely master her personality.
Better length and structure but still isn’t clear what actually happens in the story.
As mrliteral said. It’s not clear what is supposed to happen.
“Overcome the feelings” — feelings refer to a subjective story thread but a logline focuses on the objective story line.? And feelings are invisible; they can’t be seen.? What’s the visual for “overcome feelings”?
Also, every element of a logline should refer to something that can be visualized? (or at least heard); that is, a person, place, action, event or dialogue.
Given the situation, given her feelings, what must she do?? What becomes her course of action, her objective goal?
(2nd revision)
When her father dies and dark drawings begin to torment her, a traumatized little girl must find a way to get rid of her disturbing art creations and find inspiration to move on with her life.
Great concept! I like your second revision.
It’s not clear to me, though, what the stakes are in that second revision. WHY must she find a way to get rid of her disturbing art creations, and HOW are they tormenting her?
I like that the drawings are coming to life, and I’d try to keep that element. ‘When her terrifying drawings come to life, a young orphan must find a way to stop her own nightmare images from killing her.’ For example.
Keep it up!
Hi alejob.
I thought I’d give this a go. I’m not sure about the ellipses. (Probably breaks some logline rule or something.)
When her drawings come alive, a little girl discovers she has no control over them, and must erase them before they become increasingly darker, more disturbing… and powerful.
Hopefully reader fills in they were dark/disturbing to begin with.
“Powerful” suggests the best is yet to come.