Today's Lesson - 17/11/09

Loglines - Today we started on our second unit of work; Pitch and Pre-production. As you can probably tell from the name that there are two main parts to this task. We started looking at the first part wich is the Pitch. We'll look in more detail in the next lesson about how to write a whole pitch but for now we were looking log lines.

So what is a logline? A logline is pretty much this: a single sentence summarising the main story of a film. We looked at a few examples (see below) but then tried to improve our loglines by using carefully chosen adjectives. This is important because a successful pitch needs to grab the audience's (usually the studio or producer who will make your film) straight away.

Read through the example of The Wizard of Oz to see how it works.

After a twister transports a lonely Kansas farm girl to a magical land, she sets out on a dangerous journey to find a wizard with the power to send her home.

Here's the examples from the board to help you:
1. A giant shark terrorizes a seaside community, only a police officer afraid of the sea can save the day.
2. A masked serial killer returns to his childhood town to reek havoc and spread terror.
3. A roguish pirate seeks to recapture his ship from the hands of a mysteriously cursed crew.
4. An elderly man heads off for adventure in memory of his wife, unaware that he has company in the shape of an annoying young boy.

You then had a go at writing your own and I was really pleased with the results.

In other news, firstly there is nothing wrong NOTHING AT ALL with crying at Pixar's Up. OK? You've got to remember that this is one of the best movies of the year (second at the moment only behind Star Trek, which I'm rewatching soon, so I'll let you know if it stands up), and it's meant to be emotional. And funny. It really is very good. Talking of things that are good (well lets hope so), you really need to see the 'Where the Wild Things' trailer (go here: http://wherethewildthingsare.warnerbros.com/), now how good does that look? Very, is the simple answer.