THE STORY VAULT BLOG

I saw a post where the author stated that during an elevator pitch one shouldn’t present the logline of the screenplay. This probably comes across as odd advice — and on the surface it is. And the fact that is seems contrary to accepted belief is exactly why we should examine it.

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How many loglines do you come across in a given week? How many actually intrigue you? If you’re a producer, an agent or a manager how many scripts do you actually request for every 100 loglines you read? And how do you feel about those screenplays when you read them?

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How often is that screenplay something that excites you?

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Let’s be honest, we’re looking at very long and unfavourable odds.

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So why do we continue to adhere to this pitching method? Why do we put so much emphasis on the logline?

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As you can see, I have a lot of questions.

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I sat down and thought about why this approach yields such poor results for all the parties involved. This is what occurred to me.

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The logline usually doesn’t convey tone

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Why is tone so important? Well, for the obvious reasons and one that’s maybe not quite so obvious. We don’t normally respond emotionally to a logline (unless it has some personal meaning or connection for us), but we respond emotionally to tone. Tone aids us in determining how the story is going to make us feel.

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Here is the logline from “The Grand Budapest Hotel:”

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A writer encounters the owner of an aging high-class hotel, who tells him of his early years serving as a lobby boy in the hotel’s glorious years under an exceptional concierge.

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This tells us what the movie is about, but nothing about how it is written.

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Imagine now the different tones that the following screenwriters would bring to this story.

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Quentin Tarantino

William Goldman

Joel & Ethan Coen

Diablo Cody

Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio

Christopher Nolan

 

The tone would be vastly different from that which was delivered by Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness. In many respects these would be entirely different movies.

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Tone expresses what kind of a ride the movie is going to take us on. It’s something a logline rarely conveys effectively.

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And now I come to the hardest part of writing these articles. How do I wrap it up?

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To summarize…

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In the Olympic task of writing and producing a great movie the logline is bronze, tone is gold. (What silver is will be for another article…or not.)