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story High concept vs Low concept

Don't you love when a movie or book tells a story, but beneath the obvious plot, there is something more; another story. You could say it's the real story. High concept vs Low concept. I think all good stories have both.

High concept. The obvious story. The one that can be described in a few sentences.
Low concept. The less obvious story. The one that is not so easy to describe, usually deals with character development and deep issues.

Here are a few movies and how I would describe their high and low concept.

The Sixth Sense: High concept: A kid sees dead people. Low concept: It's about grief and accepting death.

Unbreakable: High concept: A guy discovers he's a superhero. Low concept: Realizing that suppressing who you are can lead to your own destruction while excepting it can make you whole.

Signs: High concept: A family reacts to an alien invasion. Low concept: A minister who has lost his faith struggles to find it again.

I could be wrong about these 3 examples, but that's what I saw in each of them. Before the idea of High and Low concept was introduced to me, I simply called these things subplots, and indeed they are, however I think what makes them good is that they truly have nothing to do with the main story. They exist at a near subconscious level. I think this is different than having hidden messages or agendas that are being pushed. It's something very relatable; the acceptance of death. Being who you are. Blaming god (or someone else).

In the past 10 years I don't think I've written a single story that didn't have both a High concept and a Low concept.

I'm hoping some of the members here will chime in and maybe give some examples of other movies that can be looked at this way...
 
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I've heard people talk about it in different ways, but I thought it might be helpful to just post a few links of various descriptions. I think you're right, and it's worth taking a minute to demystify this, since it people use these terms so often.



It seems like the consensus revolves around the level of focus on the core premise as the differentiating factor.

Personally, I like High Concept stuff better. To make an example of low concept gone wrong, I'd say "A Scanner Darkly" practically defines that. Robocop on the other hand is High concept, where it's hard to think of a scene in the film that didn't directly propel or rely on the central fictional concept.

I guess my question would be..... What ratio is District 9?
 
I know this is semantics but... for me I define them as high concept vs. high brow. High concept are easy to understand and comprehend, and high brow are more intellectual and cerebral. I don't consider any movie "low" concept. It sounds like a dig.
 
It's kind of a weird distinction in the first place, because you could, even by these definitions make a case for and against the same movie being low or high concept. It does have that sound to it, as though high concept films are "above" the low concept ones.

As I understand it so far, low concept is about the journey, and high concept is about the destination. Avatar is about Pandora, but Napoleon Dynamite is just about Napoleon Dynamite. So maybe Rocky is a low concept sports movie?
 
Agree, just talking about the perception. Like, low concept might need another name, like a cool gene name. Lo-Fi doesn't mean the fidelity is below standards. That's it! Spell it Lo. Lo-Concept. Now it is hipster approved. 😁
 
I think with certain genres low concept would be a better fit and make a better movie. Rocky needed to be about Rocky. If it had been about the sport of boxing, it wouldn't have been nearly as effective.

I think there's always some grey area as well, and should be in most cases. Look at the original Robocop vs the 2014 remake. In the original, the lions share of the clock went to action and robots in a dystopia, but we also saw a personal story that got us invested in the main character. The sequel made an attempt, but ended up relying more on the high concept side, and was a weaker film for it.

Interesting case studies for pure high concept would be maybe Demolition Man, or "The Island". I enjoyed both, but it is pretty noticeable that the sci fi side always takes precedence in every scene in those films.

I guess the perfect blend might be around the mix we saw in 1982's Blade Runner, where Ford and Scott brought a lot of recognizable human emotion and reactivity into a very alien version of the world. If you compare the romantic scenes from both movies for example, it's night and day, with Demolition Man and the Island constantly riffing on the details of the new dystopia during relationship development sections, and Blade Runner simply presents normal human relationships taking place in a bleak futuristic world.
 
I know this is semantics but... for me I define them as high concept vs. high brow. High concept are easy to understand and comprehend, and high brow are more intellectual and cerebral. I don't consider any movie "low" concept. It sounds like a dig.
In computer science theres high level languages and low level languages.

The low level languages are actually much more difficult to write in, they are 'low' level because they are closer to the hardware, and the higher level languages have layers upon layers of abstraction making them more human and less machine and hence easier to write in.

Just another way of looking at the terminology.
 
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I always thought high concept and low concept coincided with how much money it was going to cost, not the overall story? Or more fictional as opposed to more practical and realistic regarding fiction stories.
 
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