Categories: Drama
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Strengths Action, not decision Concision
Needs work Clear, difficult goal Filmable incident Stakes and urgency Specificity Causality and coherence
The logline is concise, but it would benefit from more specificity. Like a defining characteristic for the immigrant father and son that distinguishes them from all the other stories about immigrant parents dealing with alienated children.
And a concrete, objective goal. In the context of making a movie, "concrete" and "objective" means a goal that is visible. It is an action, destination or object that can be filmed. What does "seek redemption" look like? What's the visible moment, the scene that tells the audience the protagonist has succeeded?
The logline would also benefit from clearly defined (and visible) risks and stakes. Risks: what danger, what jeopardy must the father incur in his struggle? Stakes: what is lost if he fails to reconcile with his son?
Trying to keep his house and career intact is vague. It seems to be a complication, but it is unclear how the complication exacerbates his relationship with his son, prevents a reconciliation. Does the father face losing his job, foreclosing on the house, deportation? Is there a ticking clock in that complication, a deadline after which all will be lost?
This was incredible, thank you so much!
I just came up with a new one. I’m not sure if this is the one but, I think it’s an improvement from the last logline.
A Haitian immigrant father seeks to repair the relationship with his estranged American born son when he returns to his house after 5 years. In doing so, he wrestles with the turmoil of their past while trying uphold a deteriorating house and an assigned task that could alter his entire life.
Now you're presenting a character that is more specific and a situation that is potentially more dramatic -- and topical.
But I need some clarifications:
I infer from the phrase "his estranged American born son" means that he isn't. That he entered illegally, has been deported by the policies of the current administration. Is that his dramatic predicament?
And does "...returns to his house after 5 years." refer to him returning to Haiti? And if so, with his son? And where does the mother fit into this situation?
No, the son is returning back to the house for reasons I honestly haven’t really figured out yet (lol), but in my mind I view it as a situation that causes him no other choice but to move in with the person he likes the least. Nothing with immigration policies.
The son, who lived in another location within the US, is returning to his father’s house in America. I view the location within a suburban area.
The mother’s role? TBD. But I have given it some thought. I’ve thought about the place that the son is coming from being his mother’s….
His estranged son returning to live with his father seems to be the inciting incident, but if he's estranged why does he return? And if that is the inciting incident, it should lead off the logline, not be buried in the middle.
"Uphold a deteriorating house" -- vague.
"...an assigned task that could alter his entire life." Either it does or it doesn't. If it doesn't then it has no business being part of the logline. If it does, the task and the alteration it causes need to be spelled out.
"...wrestles with their past..." That may be a subplot or a complication to the main plot, but the *main plot* is about what happens in the present tense, about the protagonist going forward and looking forward.
A logline is not about a protagonist driving through life by looking through the rear window of his past. Rather, it is about a protagonist driving through life by looking out the front window toward a future concrete goal.
What is that future concrete goal?
YES to this comment. What is the concrete goal.
Wrestles with = vague. Five years = zzzz.
COMPRESS THE PRESSURE and give us a specific goal. You're talking backstory - things that happened BEFORE your movie starts.
What does this character want and what is stopping him from getting it? A specific thing - not 'the past' or etherial opposition.
The estranged son lives with him but... when he falls in with a local gang to survive...
...when he falls in love with a spirited girl outside their insular community....
SOMETHING. Something has to happen, or you don't have a movie.
I think I got it.
When his estranged son moves in, a Haitian immigrant father fights to restore their relationship, repair his collapsing house, and save a laboratory from shutting down for good.
OK. But loglines are about one primary objective goal. There may be other goals the protagonist is juggling, but a logline focuses on the most important goal driving the plot, the one that constitutes the spine on which everything else hangs.
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