When the soul of Al Capone takes over a small Indiana town, an outcast teenager must team up with his bully to find a way to return Capone to his ethereal prison.
obie1productionsLogliner
When the soul of Al Capone takes over a small Indiana town, an outcast teenager must team up with his bully to find a way to return Capone to his ethereal prison.
Share
If you tell us someone must team up with an opposite, you should give us a reason why.
The premise is unclear – what does it mean when Capone’s soul takes over a town? Are the streets haunted with his ghost? Is there suddenly an underground alcohol smuggling business run by a ghost? What ever it is this is the inciting incident, and the way in which it impacts the MC needs to be clear.
Secondly how does this impact the MC? I can’t see why an outcast teen MUST do something?as a result. If anything I would think that, considering it’s Al Capone, underaged people would be able to gain access to booze – most teenagers would be delighted?
World building should be left for your screenplay and your logline should just focus on the core story. That would be that Capone’s spirit is haunting a town, and this kid must team up with the bully (for some reason?) to stop him… what? The fact that there is a prison for these things suggests a police force designed to deal with it which leads to the question of why are these kids left to deal with it? If you try to set up a world in your logline more questions are raised than answers. Hope this helps.
As the others have said. ?The logline raises more questions than curiosity in my mind.
Assuming that I buy the premise of the spirit of Al Capone “taking over a small town” (whatever that means), why of all the people in the town, does it fall to the teenager to locked him up? ?And if non-St. Al could escape from a prison into which he has been cast by?spirits with far more muscle than a merely mortal?teen, what mojo has the teen got that the spirit powers don’t that will enable him to succeed?
The fact that you all are asking so many questions gives me a good feeling. You all raise good questions, some answered by the story itself, some not (questions I hadn’t thought of when working on the project; so thank you). So I ask this question…
How much needs to be covered by the logline itself? How many questions should be answered by the logline?
With that in mind, I’ll attempt to rebuild and post an edited logline.
I realize a logline can’t answer the questions I’ve have asked. Nor should it. ??Ideally, a logline ?should sell the plot, ?not raise questions about the credibility of the underlying premises.
But this one does raise questions about the credibility of the underlying premises.
Why is it up to the teen to lock him back up? ?Why can’t god or the devil do their job?
If spiritual entities far more potent than a mortal teen couldn’t keep Capone in the celestial cooler, what mojo does the teen have to succeed where god and satan have failed?