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When the most trusting man in America journeys to Nigeria to collect his expected inheritance promised to him in an e-mail by a prince, he must overcome bitter reality and find his prince in order to see the good in people once again.
Richiev's version, while it encapsulates the concept nicely, also highlights the disjunctive logic that makes the concept a head scratcher. A logline is a statement of a plot with a cause and effect relationship between the inciting incident and action that follows. So words like "after" and "when"Read more
Richiev’s version, while it encapsulates the concept nicely, also highlights the disjunctive logic that makes the concept a head scratcher.
A logline is a statement of a plot with a cause and effect relationship between the inciting incident and action that follows. So words like “after” and “when” in the inciting incident clause could be replaced by the word “because”. So:
Because he?s scammed out of his life savings, a beloved but over-trusting school councilor, travels to Nigeria to prove the Nigerian prince does exist and there?s still honesty in the world.
How logical is that?
What the logline really says is: “IN SPITE OF being scammed out of his life savings…” IN SPITE OF past scams and cons, the school counselor remains an incurable naive fool. So what’s the character arc? If he gets the inheritance, then what has he learned, how has he changed? Well, he doesn’t have to change, doesn’t have to grow as a character to get the inheritance. He just has to persist with his defining character trait — continue to play the naive fool.
Will it play? Well, didn’t it play as a running joke for Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther franchise? And isn’t the Fool Triumphant a standard and beloved comedy trope?
Maybe it will work again with this story as a mashup: Professor Clouseau meets the Nigerian scam artist. I suggest that the joke is that the counselor is truly being conned again, has fallen hook, line and sinker for a Nigerian scam –but this time, like Clouseau, his folly manages to outwit the cleverness of the scam artist, the “Beautiful Prince”.
Good luck and best wishes with your concept.
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What Tony Edward said. And if you have as much material based on real life anecdotes and incidents as you suggest, you can't possibly cram them all into a feature film. The concept might work better as a long form TV series rather than a feature film. We are in a golden age of long form TV/streamingRead more
What Tony Edward said.
And if you have as much material based on real life anecdotes and incidents as you suggest, you can’t possibly cram them all into a feature film. The concept might work better as a long form TV series rather than a feature film. We are in a golden age of long form TV/streaming series now. And it might work better as a comedy of human relationships– sex is the perfect vehicle for that.
Whatever, the logline ought to focus on the pilot episode that sets the series in mottion. A great example is the one for Breaking Bad: “When a law-abiding chemistry teacher is diagnosed with a fatal cancer, he determines to cook meth to earn enough money to pay for treatment and provide for his family after his death.”
Five years of award-winning and highly-rated episodes flow from the story set in motion by that logline and pilot episode.
See lessOn the eve of his gay uncle?s anniversary dinner, Marcus must again struggle with alcohol and the impact it continues to have on the family.
>>>you confuse me with your advise. My SOP ;-), alas. I asked for an earlier clarification on the uncles when it seemed to me that they might be central characters of the plot. But as it now seems that the central character is the nephew and the central dramatic problem is his alcoholism, the sexualRead more
>>>you confuse me with your advise.
My SOP ;-), alas.
I asked for an earlier clarification on the uncles when it seemed to me that they might be central characters of the plot. But as it now seems that the central character is the nephew and the central dramatic problem is his alcoholism, the sexual orientation of the uncles seems to be incidental.
Which is not to say their sexual orientation can’t be part of the story. It certainly can. Again, my only issue is in respect to the logline. The logline is a brief description of the basic elements of the plot, elements linked together in a causal relationship. (The most obvious example of story where the sexual orientation of the main characters is central and causal to the plot would be “Brokeback Mountain”.)
Is there a causal relationship between the nephew’s alcoholism and the uncles being gay? Does the plot of your story turn on the sexual orientation of the uncles? If the answer to those 2 questions is no, then what is the necessity, the value added to the logline by including that piece of information?
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