Lecture 1b: Your Logline

1. Lecture 1b:Your Logline Professor Christopher Bradley The Wizard of Oz (1939)

2. Previous Lesson • What kind of distance learning course is this? • How can you succeed in this course? • What do we study in this course? • What are the assignments? Thelma & Louise (1991) Written by Callie Khouri

3. In This Lesson • How Do I Find Inspiration? • The Writing Process • Creating a Logline Shakespeare in Love (1998) Written by Mark Normand and Tom Stoppard

4. Finding Inspiration Lesson 1b: Part I Disturbia (2007) Written by and Christopher B. Landon and Carl Ellsworth

5. Writing is a Challenge • Aristotle said, “We become brave by performing brave acts.” • Every writer, no matter how great or famous, confronts the blank page. Barton Fink (1991) written by Joel & Ethan Coen

6. Meeting the Challenge • Meeting the blank page courageously brings endless rewards. • The truth can be terrifying. For example, what might your writing reveal about you? (Wouldn’t it be cool to find out?) • The more you write, the more you become who you really are. Poltergeist (1982) Written by Steven Speilberg

7. Strategies for Starting • Use your current habits. • When are you most productive? • Associate joy to writing (It’s Terrific!) • Reward yourself! (A cookie a page?) Written by Orson Welles (1941)

8. Examples of Strategies • Write at the same time each day. • Write at the same place each time. • Before you write, read, watch a film or listen to music that inspires you. • Have everything you need right there so you won’t have to get up. • “Warm up” with “freewriting,” writing whatever comes into your mind.

9. Journal Keeping • Think of a journal as a gold mine. You can go to it again and a gain for inspiration and ideas. • A journal is an excellent place to practice. • You might write down • Story ideas • Conversations you overhear. • Events that made you react passionately

10. Freewriting • “Freewriting” frees you to write! • A screenplay is written in a specific format, but you can loosen your mind by writing randomly with no expectations. If it sucks, it sucks! No problem! • Write down whatever comes to you. You’ll be surprised at the valuable jewels you’ve created when you sift through it later.

11. The Writing Process Lesson 1b: Part 2 Cat People (1982) Written by DeWitt Bodeen, Alan Ormsby and Paul Schrader

12. Writing is a Process • Great art often looks like it “just happened,” but almost without exception, the artist did extensive studies and planning to get that “unplanned” look. • Narrative is like architecture. • There are so many aspects to writing a great screenplay– shaping the story itself, building characters, creating authentic dialog, staying true to the theme– planning is imperative!

13. Steps in the Process • The Story • The Logline • The Step Outling • Treatment • Pages • Rewriting Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiter) (2007) Screenplay by Stefan Ruzowitzky

14. Step #1: The Story • Inspirations for writing • Personal Battles and Victories • Personal Lessons and Losses • The News • Listen! • “Write what you know.” • And find out what you don’t know!

15. The Story • Bring your experience to the table, not as an end, but as a jumping-off place. • Don’t just dictate what happened, reinvent what happened as a metaphor. • Take what actually happened and ask, “What if…?” What if I could bring him back to life? What if I could have controlled that roulette wheel with my mind?

16. Choosing a Subject • Write about what ignites your passion! • Questions that might lead you to a story might include: • What makes you angry? • What makes you terrified? • What do you want very badly? Even if you don’t think it’s possible? • Who made you a different human being? • Freewriting and journaling can help with discover these!

17. The “Size” of Your Story • What is the overall tone of your story? • Is it an epic? • Is it small, intimate and observed in detail?

18. Writing in a Genre • Not everything in your writing comes from your own life. Writing movies often involves writing genre stories such as the Thriller, Western or Romantic Comedy. Unforgiven (1992) written by David Webb Peoples

19. Being Original within a Genre • Copying another movie’s elements can make your story stale. You want a fresh story! • It’s okay to take inspiration from other movies, but ultimately you must add something of yourself to make it interesting.

20. Step #2: The Logline • You should be able to tell your story in three to four sentences. • For example: The Wizard of Oz: DOROTHY GALE is transported by a cyclone from the drab plains of Kansas to the magical world of Oz. A fraudulent wizard promises to transport her home if she destroys the great enemy of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West. She succeeds, but the wizard is unable to make good on his promise. Dorothy learns she can transport herself back to Kansas using tools she already has.

21. The Logline Build a logline by asking yourself: • What is the conflict or dilemma my protagonist faces? • What major complication makes the problem something that seems insurmountable? • How does my protagonist overcome the problem (or how is my protagonist defeated by it)?

22. The Logline A Logline includes: • A Set-up (The Johnsons adopt a baby of mysterious provenance and promise to raise it safely.) • The Main Complication (The baby sprouts antennae.) • The Climax (An alien spacecraft attacks, takes the baby and decimates Happyville, leaving only the Johnsons alive.) • The Resolution (Mrs. Johnson finds her infertility unexplainably healed. She’s with child.) So now you have a beginning, middle & end for your story!

23. Assignments Meet the Parents (2000) Screenplay by Jim Herzfeld and John Hamberg Lesson 1b: Part III

24. Eboard Post • Write out your logline, keeping it to no more than 4 sentences. This can be difficult, yes, but it forces you to know the most basic spine of your story! • You’ll give it another look once you complete your treatment.

25. End of Lecture 1b Next Lecture: The Treatment The Exorcist (1973) Screenplay by William Peter Blatty