Hello all, I've written a comedy / mockumentary pilot based in a fictional, rural Australian town. It centers on four film graduates initially planning to travel interstate to document the ideology, of a far-right anti-immigrant political movement. However, when they stop in a country town for refreshments and fuel, they realise over a few hours, many of the residents live in the time before social media and smartphones.
Some new residents have relocated from "the big city" bringing forms of modern technology with them. This alienates them from some of the more eccentric and grumpy locals.
The overarching conflict is: the collision between modern and old-fashioned living, creating a whirlwind social commentary. It will show in real-time what could happen when simple-living people have too much information shoved in their face, and how they each process it.
I've asked the Stage 32 Success Team to recommend executives with taste geared towards this concept, and whether the logline could be improved. I've received both; pitching to those executives and been advised to post here for logline pointers. If anyone has any tips, I'm open to such ideas.
Logline:
Four film graduate students travel interstate through Australia to document a far-right anti-immigrant political movement. However, their plans are altered when stopping for refreshers in small town, Kindapa, by discovering most of the population lives in the time before social media and smartphones.
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Hallo Nicolas! This seems interesting. I’m certainly not a screenwriter or a film industry professional, but as a viewer, I like the plot.
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The logline is too long. As the word suggests, a logLINE should be one sentence.Try paring it down to its essentials. All other details can be in the synopsis.
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Hi, Nicholas Burton. Your series sounds interesting. What about this for a logline: As four film graduate students travel through Australia to document a far-right anti-immigrant political movement, they discover most of the population lives in the time before modern technology and _________________ (the students' goal/what they do after the discovery).
You could add the stakes at the end of the logline, but that might make your logline long. I suggest keeping your logline to around 35 words or less. You can use more words if you need to though.
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Why is the far-right anti-immigrant political movement important to the logline? It sounds like your characters get waylaid and don’t get to their destination. Unless that movement is IN the small town.
Just label them as graduate students doing a research trip if politics doesn’t come into the story.
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Maurice Vaughan and Mike Boas, thanks for your inputs. Mike, I hadn't looked at the logline like that frankly. I thought given the political documentation was their initial reason for travelling, that setup was needed. Maurice, this is a good template to work off, I'll be able to cut the wording down. This is probably not the right angle to come from, but I've long thought IMDb movie pages were typical logline examples.
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You're welcome, @Nicholas. The loglines on IMDb pages are for marketing movies and shows. They're different than loglines for spec scripts.
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Nicholas Burton Sometimes we can't see the forest because we're at the beach.
Four film students road‑tripping through rural Australia stumble into a small town where life still moves without smartphones, forcing them to rethink the connections they’ve been missing.
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Needs to be more concise for a logline.
Maybe:
Four film students travel to a small, Australian town to document a far-right, anti-immigrant political movement. However, their plans hit a snag when they discover that most of the residents live without social media or smartphones.
A question I immediately had when reading it was, why does it matter if the residents don’t have smartphones or social media? Wouldn’t the students be able to document the movement with their own tech?
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@Robert Dillon, I appreciate the feedback but you clearly misinterpreted what I wrote. The students are stopping in Kindapa for refreshments on the way to their destination. This destination is interstate and that's where the political movement resides. The residents of Kindapa are living in a bubble without modern technology. It's like a twist on Back to the Future.
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And ... Once the snack-seeking collegiates discover the "bubble," what happens?
If "Back to the Future," a time travel story, is invoked, there is a ticking clock, dramatic tension and real stakes. If Marty's future parents don't bond at the '55 dance, he and his siblings disappear into oblivion, and the father is relegated to future failure because he folds instead of confronting Biff. How is this story a reversal of that?
Where are the stakes and the dramatic tension in this story. They're not in the logline.