1. Posted: August 14, 2017In:

    When a gunman suffering PTSD takes a first year class hostage, two trainee teachers work together to calm both the terrorfied children and the crazed gunman.

    Gabe Logliner

    Inciting Incident: The inciting incident seems quite ambiguous. The logline begins by stating that two?teenagers have been taken hostage, but the rest of the logline?implies that more students have also been taken hostage. Is it a class, a group of students or the entire school who are at the mercyRead more

    Inciting Incident:
    The inciting incident seems quite ambiguous. The logline begins by stating that two?teenagers have been taken hostage, but the rest of the logline?implies that more students have also been taken hostage. Is it a class, a group of students or the entire school who are at the mercy of the ( I’m guessing) gunmen?

    Action:
    The action is disproportionately passive given the circumstances and the genre. ‘Calming’ isn’t an action that lends itself to a thriller, I think. As a moviegoer, I’d either expect the protagonists would try to get the students out of the school discretely, or take out the gunmen, or both.

    Goal:
    Obviously the goal is to keep the students safe, but form my understanding it’s got to be stated in the logline.

    Hope this helps.

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  2. Posted: August 4, 2017In:

    Thanks!

    Gabe Logliner

    I think there are way too many moving parts, perhaps too many for a logline. ?As a result, number 1 seems to be missing an inciting incident, but the action doesn't seem to connect with the goal/consequence. For 2. there seems to be no connection between the inciting incident and the action, the actRead more

    I think there are way too many moving parts, perhaps too many for a logline. ?As a result, number 1 seems to be missing an inciting incident, but the action doesn’t seem to connect with the goal/consequence. For 2. there seems to be no connection between the inciting incident and the action, the action and the goal. For number 3, the action and the goal seem to be disconnected. For number 4 the Inciting incident and the goal seem to be disconnected. Number 5’s inciting incident and goal seem to be disconnected, but are also far too loaded i.e. they raise a lot of questions i.e why is an incarcerated pianist sent back to save a girls life, is that person really the best person fro the job??I’d imagine if the genre were comedy, then this might not be a problem.

     

    I think I was in the same boat as you. I had written a chunk of the synopsis then got stuck, THEN tried to write the logline, and I couldn’t fit what I had written into the logline formula. It was painful, but I had to ‘go back to formula’ (to quote a popular spider-man movie), in order to unstick myself. ?Hope this is helpful. Good luck, ChimCham 🙂

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  3. Posted: August 2, 2017In:

    A father, convinced his young daughter has inherited his terrifying ability to commune with evil spirits, must find the man who disabled his ability, to reawaken it.

    Gabe Logliner

    I think it's a really interesting concept, ?but I believe there should be a stronger causal link between the inciting incident, action and outcome. But in saying that, the inciting incident isn't quite clear. In my opinion the father losing his powers should be the inciting incident, his action is tRead more

    I think it’s a really interesting concept, ?but I believe there should be a stronger causal link between the inciting incident, action and outcome.
    But in saying that, the inciting incident isn’t quite clear. In my opinion the father losing his powers should be the inciting incident, his action is to recover them in order to help his daughter to control her emerging powers she inherited from him. ?The stakes however, don’t appear to be too threatening. Why is it a huge deal that his daughter’s power has awakened? Surely she’d be able to control them with some practice like her father presumably has? ?Just my thoughts, though. Thanks for sharing 🙂

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