From the course: Creating a Short Film: 02 Writing
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Creating a logline
From the course: Creating a Short Film: 02 Writing
Creating a logline
- A logline is a sentence that sums up your movie. This is not to be confused with a tagline, which is a marketing statement that's just catchy, like Alien's famous tagline, "In space, "no one can hear you scream." But this isn't really telling you anything about the story of the film, really. A logline, on the other hand, is a one sentence summation of what the film is about. Think about how movies are summed up in cable TV listings, or IMDb, in the newspaper, or Netflix or whatever. These are essentially loglines. When writing a short film, or a feature film, I always recommend starting with the logline. This really is the first step in my mind to writing a story. Now, one little sentence sums up all of the main elements of the story. It briefly describes the protagonist, it describes their objective and their obstacles. The logline, Heather, my co-writer and I, came up with for The Assurance was, "Alone in the wilderness, "a child struggles to understand the role her "sister plays…
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Contents
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Plot vs. character-driven stories1m 9s
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What is a story?1m 49s
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Making a strong protagonist4m 29s
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Having a character arc2m 51s
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Creating a logline3m 6s
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Using a three-act structure3m 29s
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Identifying story beats5m 19s
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The importance of conflict8m 9s
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Writing the truth3m 48s
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Showing, not telling4m 34s
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