Perhaps, but I don’t think it is required or even possible in many cases. ?Whereas loglines are (now) expected in every case for original spec scripts.

The purpose of a logline is to sell a script. ?I know we use them here to pitch ideas for scripts, send up trial ballons — and that’s another valuable opportunity the site provides. (A shout out to Karel!) ?But it was originally designed as a promotional tool, to entice producers and directors to read a finished script.

Now, I realize ?that for historical documentaries, ?a script may be written before any video is shot. ?I’ve amassed a pile of documentation for an historical drama set between 1908 and 1920. ? Enough enough to do a documentary. ?And in both cases, I would use the same logline. Because the story is done and finished — I know how it ends. ?It’s ?essentially the same “plot”.?

But in documentaries for a current ongoing events, you don’t know how it’s going to end. ?You may not even have identified a protagonist, a ?person around whom you will frame a narrative.

A logline is a concise description of a plot. ? And the formal definition of a plot, per Aristotle in the “Poetics”, is an imitation of action, ?a mimicry of real life. ? Which he differentiated from ?histories — the “written documentaries” of his day. ? ?Aristotle said dramatic stories need a plot to succeed whereas histories don’t.?

?Although documentaries must, of necessity, edit reality, they are supposed ?to make a good faith effort to ?conform to known?facts. ?Plot is under no such obligation; it’s has the freedom to bend, wantonly ignore the facts, or make up fictions to fit it’s dramatic purpose.?

Shakespeare’s “Richard III” is a fabulous — and fabulist –historical drama. ?It distorts events and warps characters for the purpose of its plot. ?A documentary of Richard III, faithful to the known historical facts, ?would present a different story, a different portrait.