HIGH CONCEPTS and LOGLINES
A logline states who the main character of the story is, his primary objective, and what is stopping him from achieving that objective.
A high concept is an exciting logline whose purpose is to get an agent or producer to read the screenplay
A high concept is not limited to any specific genre, but can be used to promote a comedy, action/ adventure, drama, horror, or fantasy project. It is meant to excite the audience, to tease them into wanting to see more. It is not so much a story design tool as a marketing and selling gimmick.
A high concept statement of your project is a one-line sentence intended to excite an agent or a producer. Your objective is to get him to read your script, or to buy your script, or to take your project up one level higher in the studio. How do you excite a producer or studio executive?
Studio executives are in the jobs they have because they want to produce movies that make money. When pitching a story idea, you must understand the motivation of the studio executive. You are asking them to put at least $50 million into your movie project plus another $25 million for prints and advertising. To justify that type of expenditure, they are going to have to make back at least two times their investment. This means that your project must gross at least $150 million. You must persuade the executive your story has that kind of box-office potential.
How do you do that? The easiest way is to tell him that it is very much like another picture that has recently grossed over $150 million, but much better! Your project is just like yesterday's popular movie but different in a way that will generate more money.
Your project will not be commercially viable in the mind of the producer or studio executive unless there is an existing popular movie to which it can be compared. The screenwriter must understand that there are only a very few people in Hollywood that can actually give the "green light" to a studio feature film production. The rest of the development executives are there to listen to pitches and read scripts in the hope of finding a viable commercial project that they can take up to the next level. They will not pitch your project to their boss unless they think he will want to make it. You must excite him and make him believe that your project has the potential of becoming the next megahit.
So how do you design a high concept for your story? Start by looking at a list of films that have box-office grosses of over $150 million in the last five to ten years. These lists are available from The Hollywood Reporter or on a web site like www.BoxOfficeMojo.com.
Why only the last five to ten years? Because what the mass audience likes changes. What was popular ten years ago may no longer be popular today. So it is best to look at only those blockbusters made in the last few years. Find a film that you personally enjoyed and that is in some respects similar to your story. It can't be identical, because then the studio executive will tell you that it has already been done. What you have to do is place the story into a different context. The point is to establish a reference film for the studio executives so that they can visualize your story and imagine its commercial potential.
Use only successful films! You defeat your objective if you tell the executive that your story is just like a movie that bombed and was pulled out of the theaters after the first weekend. Can you blame a producer for not wanting to put $50 million into that project? If you pitch "Ishtar in Salt Lake City" as the high concept for your movie, it will not get you a deal at a major studio.
Another way of creating a high concept project is that instead of taking one successful movie and placing it into a different context, link together the titles of two successful movies. For example, "The Terminator meets Men in Black" would be a new high concept, as would "Pretty Woman meets Apollo 13" for some out of space fun. You could also try to pitch "Forrest Gump meets Mission Impossible" or "Big Daddy meets Godsford Park" for two "fish-out-of-water" stories.
Some high concepts use popular books in their statement instead of movies. For example, the movies Batman, Spider-Man and MIB were adaptations of popular comic characters. Jurassic Park, Jaws, and Harry Potter are inherently high concept projects because they were based on popular novels. This establishes a reference for the producer and gives him confidence that there will be a market for the movie.
Bob Kosberg believes that, "Science fiction and fantasy score well when combined with comic elements ... the studios are looking to make films that have cross-over appeal or that will attract a wide audience margin."
Ultimately, it is not "character studies" that are high concept movies. In our list of megahits, only Forrest Gump could be considered a character study. Kosberg believes that "when it is time for the studio to decide whether they want to buy your idea or not, its plot is going to be more important than character growth. But characters do not sell in the pitch meeting. Premises sell.
"It is a well-structured story that can be related to a commercially successful film that will close the deal,” says Kosberg.
Below are high concepts and loglines for some "spec" screenplays developed by RMS Productions Company.
Elixir by Richard Michaels Stefanik
"Princess Bride” meets “Return of the King”
A sword and sorcerer fantasy set in the time of Elizabethan England, where a group of witches, alchemists, and magicians pursue the "elixir of life," that potion which can transform a person into whatever they want to become.
Once in a Blue Moon by Maria Iacuele
“Practical Magic” meets “Ruthless People”
During the Christmas Season, a feisty young woman fights the effects of a 'love potion' while trying to save her Toy Store from being taken over by a sinister competitor.
Double or Nothing
Richard Michaels Stefanik and Michael R. Herst
“Get Shorty in Las Vegas" becomes “Some Like It Hot 2013”
A gangster comedy about a loser who tries to run away from his life by buying a new identity, only to find that the Mob, the FBI, and a widow are now after him because he bought the identity of a mafia hit man that became an informant.
Entanglements
Richard Michaels Stefanik and Glen Underwood
"The Fugitive meets Minority Report"
A SciFi Thriller set in 2024 about a man who creates a Quantum Computer that can break any security code in the world but then is framed for murder by the greedy CEO of his corporation. He tries to prove his innocence and get back his wife, but is relentlessly pursued by Federal Agents and a Crime Syndicate that want the code-breaking computer.
Writing Assignment: Write a one-sentence descriptive logline for your story. Express the high concept in terms
of a single sentence or the comparison of two commercially successful movies.
UNIQUE OBJECT
&
MAIN CHARACTERS
The Unique Object
The Protagonist
The Antagonist
The Love Interest
The Climax Scene of the Movie
THE UNIQUE OBJECT
The unique object guarantees conflict. It is that which both the protagonist and the antagonist want to possess. The unique object will often change hands between the protagonist and antagonist many times in the story.
Examples of this are how the Ark is handled in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Aztec Coin in Pirates of the Caribbean. The desire for the control of this unique object leads to the life-and-death struggle that concludes in the climax scene of the story. Below are listed the unique objects in some of the megahit movies.
Wizard of Oz The Ruby Slippers
Return of the King The One Ring
Raiders of the Lost Ark Ark of the Covenant
Pirates of the Caribbean The Aztec Gold Coin
Harry Potter The Sorcerer’s Stone
Avatar Unobtanium on Pandora
Writing Assignment: Write a one-page description of the unique object for your story. Explain why it is so important that both the protagonist and antagonist are willing to die for its
possession.
THE PROTAGONIST
The protagonist is the main character of the story. He/She/It is the character with whom the audience must emotionally bond and have the most empathy. The audience should identify with the point-of-view of the protagonist. It
is his primary objective that becomes the story objective. Whether he can achieve this is the concern of the audience.
Perseverance and will power are the most important personality traits that a protagonist must possess. He must have an unshakable commitment to his primary objective. He also must be sincere and believe in the rightness of what he is doing. While he may have moments of se1f-doubt, he overcomes them and continues pursuing his objective.
He must have sufficient resolve to overcome all the obstacles that he will confront while pursuing his objective. He needs this strength to engage in the climactic battle with the antagonist. A character who gives up too easily would not be able to withstand attacks from the antagonist and his supporters. The protagonist must have the strength and stamina to carry the fight to its conclusion.
Not all of the protagonists are male. Some, like Rose in Titanic, are female, and some, like Nemo, Shrek, Sulley, E.T. and Simba, are non-human. The strength that the protagonist needs is not always physical strength, as shown by the examples of Elliott, E.T., Frodo, Harry Potter, and Cole Sears. What they have is the commitment to accomplish their goals. Their lives and the lives of the ones they love, if not the very existence of the world, often depend on them achieving their goals.
The protagonist is the character who makes most of the major decisions in the story. The choices and actions that he makes during conflicts reveal his values. These values will help him achieve his objective.
While most of the popular films have only one protagonist, some have a protagonist with dual personalities. Batman (Crime Fighter and Reclusive Millionaire), Indiana Jones (Adventurer and University Professor), and Spider-Man (Crime Fighter and High School student) are examples of this. These protagonists are more intriguing for the audience because they help the members of the audience fantasize that they also could possibly live a secret adventurous life. This increases the audience's involvement with the protagonist and the story.
In E.T., both Elliott and E.T. share the role of the protagonist. This is essential for a story in which the feelings, emotions, and thoughts of two characters merge through telepathic communication. This technique helps to explain the success of the film, because merging the two characters into double protagonists doubles the audience's empathy for the protagonist and increases the audience's concern for the story's outcome.
Some films have more than one protagonist, which expands the scope of audience identification. J and K are the dual protagonists in Men in Black, Nemo and Marlin in Finding Nemo. Pirates of the Caribbean has three protagonists: Liz, Will Turner, and Jack Sparrow.
Independence Day has four characters who share the protagonist function: Captain Steve Hiller, David Levinson, President Tom Whitmore, and Russell Casse.
Dorothy is the protagonist in Wizard of Oz and Jake Sully is the protagonist of Avatar.
Writing Assignment: Write a one-page description of the protagonist for your story. Cast this role with a contemporary bankable Hollywood actor or actress.
THE ANTAGONIST
The antagonist is the character who opposes the desires and primary objective of the protagonist. He is the villain who is always in conflict with the protagonist, either directly or through his surrogates. While both the protagonist and antagonist must persevere to bring the fight to the climax, the antagonist is the character who is ruthless and will stop at nothing to obtain his goal. He is the relentless force that the protagonist must finally defeat. He is also the character that generates the most dangerous obstacles for the protagonist.
Some antagonists are anti-human and reptilian in appearance, such as the Great White Shark (Jaws), Raptors (Jurassic Park), the Aliens (ID4), and the Edgar-Bug (MIB). These characters are naturally terrifying and repulsive to most people in the audience.
The antagonist usually wants power and control over the lives of the other characters. He or she will break all codes of human conduct to achieve this end. The antagonist often has a complete disregard for human life and will readily kill any character that opposes his objectives. He will even kill his most loyal friends, if it serves his purposes. Terror and betrayal are the standard modes of behavior for the antagonist, as best exemplified by the Joker in Batman, who kills his loyal bodyguard Bob. The audience learns that this is a character that they cannot trust.
The audience must understand the motivation of the antagonist, and these motivations must be believable. The more negative emotional involvement the audience has with the antagonist, the more engrossed they will become with the story. The audience should hate him so much that they will want to see the antagonist destroyed at the climax scene of the movie.
For example, in Batman, the Joker reveals his evil nature by disfiguring works of art in the Flugelheim Museum and scarring the face of his beautiful girlfriend, Alicia. He is a character that has no shred of humanity left with which the audience can identify, even though he does make them laugh.
At the beginning of the story, the antagonist is more powerful than the protagonist. This makes the protagonist's struggle to achieve his primary objective much more difficult. The antagonist is usually in control of the concrete object or the protagonist's love interest during the third act,
before the climax scene. The protagonist must defeat the antagonist without destroying the love interest, while still attempting to achieve his primary objective. By this time in the story, the audience should have a great empathy for both the protagonist and his love interest and, therefore, the audience's emotional stake in the outcome of the climax will also be high. In the climax scene, the life-and-death battle, the antagonist wants to destroy the protagonist.
In Lord of the Rings, the Dark Lord Sauron through his supporters wants to destroy Frodo and capture the One Ring, Voldemort wants to kill Harry Potter to get the Sorcerer's Stone, and Scar wants to destroy Simba in The Lion King so that he can control the Pride Lands.
In order for the writer to ensure that the audience hates the villain, the writer will have the antagonist associated with characters that are evil, vicious, and deserving of the audience's enmity. This is usually the function of the villain's henchmen.
In Star Wars, the Commander of the Death Star destroys the planet Alderan even after Princess Leia has told him what he wants to know. He kills the whole population of a world just to test the destructive capacity of the Death Star.
In Spider-Man, the Green Goblin attacks and terrorizes Peter Parker's Aunt May.
In Raiders of the Lost Ark, this is accomplished by having one of Belloc' s associates, the fiendish German, be the character that is hated for his sadistic acts. Hate by association is then transferred to Belloc. This technique allows Belloc to function as a realistic rival for the affections of Marion, the love interest of the story. The audience can have sympathy for Marion's emotional conflicts as she tries to choose between Jones and Belloc.
Deception is often used by the antagonist in his battle with the protagonist. Sometimes the true identity of the real villain is withheld from the protagonist and the audience until the climax. This device has been used in the Harry Potter movies, in which we finally discover that Voldemort is really controlling Prof. Quirrell in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’ s Stone, and Voldemort is really Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets.
The Wicked Witch of the West is the antagonist of Wizard of Oz and Colonel Miles Quaritch is the antagonist
of Avatar.
Writing Assignment: Write a one-page description of the antagonist for your story. Cast this role with a contemporary bankable Hollywood actor or actress.
THE LOVE INTEREST
Story gurus sometimes call the love interest the "romance," but the character plays the same function unde
r either name. In many films, the love interest, either male or female, is a character both the protagonist and antagonist desire. In other films, the love interest is the prize to be won after the climactic battle for power and dominance is resolved. Not all of the popular films include this character in their story, but most of the megahit movies do.
Having a love interest in the climax scene intensifies the emotional drama for the audience. The protagonist is then faced with a moral dilemma: save the love interest and lose his primary objective (and the unique object), or focus totally on obtaining the unique object, and risk having the love interest be killed. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana chose to first fulfill his mission to get the Ark of the Covenant, and left Marion tied to the post in the tent. In Spider-Man, the Green Goblin forces Spider-Man to choose between saving the life of MJ or a tram filled with children. Jack decides to sacrifice his life in Titanic so that Rose may live, just as Russell Casse sacrifices his life to destroy the Alien warship in Independence Day so that his children and the human race can survive. In The Matrix Reloaded, Neo must decide between saving Trinity or Zion. Neo chooses to save Trinity.
Having another character besides the protagonist and antagonist caught in the middle of the life-and-death battle of the climax scene enhances the excitement and intensifies the emotional involvement of the audience in the climax. The love interest complicates the situation for the hero and increases the emotional stakes. The antagonist usually uses the love interest as a hostage and is willing to kill her if the hero will not surrender.
Story Design Page 2