19 November

Loglines, loglines, loglines. It's all about the byte these days. The sound-byte that is; or the Twitter-byte, the FB byte, mashable, diggable, indexable and cross-referential. And really it all started with movie loglines. Not to be confused with sluglines, or master shot descriptions, e.g.,

INT - SID'S BEDROOM - NIGHT

(Interestingly and incidentally, the term "sluglines" has been co-opted for commuter-topia in Washington, D.C. We support citizens with initiative! It's also originally defined nautically:
log line

–noun Navigation.

the line by which a log or patent log is streamed.

Origin:

1605–15

n. Nautical
The line by which the log is trailed from a ship to determine its speed.)

I'm talking the original Tweet: the movie logline. As in,

Five strippers undergo cosmetic surgery in a small town.

A student and three nerdy CIA agents teach everyone a valuable lesson.

and my favorite:

Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.

-- Log Line for The Wizard of Oz, attributed to Richard Polito of the Marin Independent Journal, who writes humorously sarcastic briefs for the paper's daily TV listings.

Have fun here and create your own movie loglines.

This practice started during the heyday of Hollywood studios, when they had vaults full of ready-to-go scripts and their own virtual tin-pan alley of screenwriters. The staff of readers would peruse each script and then write a one-liner on the cover and spine that stated what the movie was about. Then producers would sift through the vault looking for a next project, with stacks of scripts piled high like logs--thus the genesis of the term. It was a heartless, cold process, and one which many writers still instinctively recoil from. "How can you sum my epic-- the ultimate good versus evil, swords-and-sorcery journey, a tale of the disparate races in a world much like our own (or New Zealand) joining forces with strange and wonderful creatures, engaging in mammoth battles, gripping love stories, and hearty frolic, punctuated with moments of sheer wonder and telling political commentary, into one line?"

Four midgets set out with eight others to destroy some jewelry, overcoming all odds to save the day for their fairy kingdom. (Lord of the Rings)

Or something like that. Please forgive me, J.R.R. But it can and has to be done. Here's a great post about why screenplay writers need to learn to love the logline.

This also speaks directly to the dichotomy created by the business: the term "high-concept" refers to a concise, readily marketable logline; often this means it's in reality a low-concept feature that will pander to the masses. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, to be perfectly honest--toil away in obscurity, you auteurs of letters too profound for the common man; we'll bring you back some popcorn from the cineplex.

So that's what I've been working on today--the logline, the one-paragraph synopsis, and general promotional copy. Luckily I have the distance of not being the writer on this project, but it's still a difficult and thankless task. Stay tuned for updates to see what I come up with...



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