When the sole survivor of a destroyed lifeboat is pulled aboard a sinking luxury liner, he is plunged into further chaos as the crew begins to abandon the doomed passengers of the SS Arctic.

by Garrett · Penpusher · 41 pts 12 views

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Though this logline is written from a single perspective, this story follows a few different character perspectives aboard the sinking ship. I couldn’t find an elegant way to describe the story from more than one perspective, so I’ve described it from a perspective that has an element of irony to it. (That irony being that this character has survived one boat disaster and is now facing another bigger one.)

The to-be screenplay is based on the true events of the 1854 sinking of the SS Arctic.

4 reviews

dogger · Legend · 87,210 pts ★ Accepted

Strengths Filmable incident Real stakes

Needs work Clear goal

Since your story is based upon an historical event, I suggest that the logline should include the date.

I couldn't make sense of this version of your logline until I discovered from some online research that the precipitating event for the tragedy was a *collision* of two vessels. So, I suggest that detail should be incorporated in the logline.

As for telling a story from multiple points of view, well, that's tricky. James Cameron, who knows a thing or three about plotting, incorporated multiple points of view in his movie, Titanic.

But all of them hung on one plot spine, the love story between Rose and Jack. The relationship between those two characters is the primary focus of the movie. And a logline should be about the plot spine, the primary focus of the story.

One possible plot spine might be what his objective goal became after the crew abandoned the passengers. That appears to have been why the sinking was not just a tragedy, but a scandal. (Just as in the sinking of the Titanic, a major scandal was that the ship was not equipped with enough lifeboats.)

And like it or not, your script will be compared with the sinking of the Titanic. So, what is the unique selling point that distinguishes this tragedy from the tragedy of that befell the passengers on the Titanic?

Anyway, it's an interesting project. Very best wishes!

Garrett · Penpusher · 41 pts

Hi dogger,

Thanks for making me aware of the clarity issue, which is significant as the ship collision proceeding this event is indeed the inciting incident of the film. As the current version of this logline is currently for my own personal use, I've tried to focus on a unique event that happens shortly after the inciting incitent, which is likely around the Break Into Two story beat (as far as Save the Cat story structure is concerned). Now I'm reminded that this particular maritime tragedy has fallen out of common knowledge—it was after all shunned from public interest after the sinking of the Titanic—so I will need to be more clear about the context of the event when re-writing this is a pitch-ready logline.

Now regarding how to make this idea stand apart from the 1997 Titanic film...

The inspiration of my screenplay stems from my own mixed emotional response to James Cameron's Titanic. Whilst the fictional elements of that film make for an entertaining movie, in retrospect, I find some of the romanticized creative liberties muddy the truth of the sinking a bit too much for my liking. It's with this in mind that I want to differentiate my sinking ship film by presenting a raw, honest and downright horrific retelling of the sinking of the SS Arctic.

The underlying theme of this project is, "truth is stranger than fiction," and the interesting part is that this particular sinking has some very hard-to-believe details that, when presented as truthfully as possible, could appear far fetched to the average viewer. These details, if presented well enough, could juxtapose interestingly with the theme I have in mind.

(Note: The theme I've mentioned is more of a structural theme to help guide the core identity of the screenplay. In other words the character driven plot isn't centered around truthfulness.)

Garrett · Penpusher · 41 pts

Hi Karel,

The character action is vague at the moment for two reasons: one, the story follows multiple points of view and I had trouble writing an interesting logline from an ensemble-like perspective; two, I focused on the irony of this particular character's situation in attempt to present a unique angle on the tragedy.

For further context the logline is for a historical event (the 1854 sinking of the SS Arctic) that I'm currently researching. The screenplay isn't written, nor is the outline of the story finalised just yet. In other words I don't know how much active screen time this particular character has because he's not the only character to drive the action beats of the story.

Naturally survival is the goal of all the characters, but the problem of this particular sinking was that both the crew and most able-bodied passengers went against orders and instead cowardly fought to save themselves. This bit of context is a bit hard to boil down into words, hence I used "abandon" as a brief way to hint at the struggles faced during this particular sinking.

At the moment this logline is just a guide to work alongside the planning/writing process. I will definitely edit it once I've got a better idea of the active characters of the story.