logline I've got a logline

[Ccolebrook]

I don't post here as often as I read, but that's about to change.

This is my rough draft logline to a Sci-fi I've been working on since November 2009. Let me know if it hooks you.

A selfish moon-born orphan is captured in an extraterrestrial invasion whose presence shatters the budding, altruistic society that raised him. While Earth's proud children return to dog-eat-dog in the face of the apocalypse, the orphan's experience with the aliens redefines his duty not only to Earth and his civilization, but to civilization throughout the galaxy.

 

[Buddy Greenfield]

Maybe call the ship Nxy (Goddess of night and daughter of) Chaos (The shapeless void who gave birth to the universe?) , or if you are into Titan, how about Appetitan ?

What is your title?

-Thanks-

 

[Ccolebrook]

Lmao, appetitan cracked me up.

I haven't landed on a title quite yet. My original title was Moonkinder, but I'm going to change it once I think of a more applicable one.
The pull of the Earth
Ascent

I'm not sure. I'm just writing down any that seem like they might lead me to a better one.

 

[Buddy Greenfield]

lol it made me laugh too.

EDIT: But it can still work.

"To feed on the futility of war Appetitan, an intelligent form of black hole sets
its sites on the battle plagued Milky Way galaxy"- Devour Earth.

-Thanks-

 

[PositiveFuture]

Kudos on setting it on Earth BTW. Making the audience care about Beltuguese 4 getting snarfed by the World Eater is a hard sell. Set it on Earth and you've won half the battle. It's important to have a logline and a concise synopsis but your strength is you have a lot of other compelling scenes and characters.

- I was wondering if you'd thought of making the Titan more aetheric/energetic? Something that enslaves worlds and drags them into a hive-matrix. There's a lot more scope for originality and subtlety there. If you make it just yr basic standard tentacled-world-eater you've got two options:

1) Make the tentacles out of rubber. Very expensive. Then you've got to stick a dozen midgets in there to operate the thing- a la Jabba the Hut or Falcor.
2) Make the tentacles CGI. You save on midgets but CGI studios don't come cheap.

Either way it's going to be super expensive and the chances of making it look good are low. Have an aetheric Titan and you can still do some good CGI but your options widen immensely, and you can do some cheaper graphics, maybe like Aronofsky did in 'The Fountain'

Got my Thesaurus out to help you with names for the Titan:

http://thesaurus.com/browse/world?posFilter=noun
http://thesaurus.com/browse/eat

planet, globe, cosmos, creation, earth, heavenly body, macrocosm, microcosm, nature, sphere, star, terrene, universe

absorb, attack, banquet, bite, bolt*, break bread, breakfast, chew, chow down, cram, devour, digest, dine, dispatch, dispose of, fall to, feast upon, feed, gobble up, gorge, gormandize, graze*, have a bite, have a meal, have for, ingest, inhale*, lunch, make pig of oneself, masticate, munch, nibble, nosh, partake of, peck at, pick, pig out, polish off, pork out, put away, ruminate, scarf, scoff, snack, sup, swallow, take food, take in, take nourishment, wolf

Planet Grazer
Star Scoffer
Das Uber-Masticator

*

Scouring Greek myths for evocative names sounds like a good idea. You are going to visually depict what this thing does, so past the script stage your name doesn't have to be so representative.

 

[Buddy Greenfield]

Planet Grazer is interesting. Star Grazer would be something if it fit.

-Thanks-

 

[PositiveFuture]

lol @ Star Grazer. All those names would fit for a parody like Spaceballs.

 

[Buddy Greenfield]

I’d use Star Grazer in a heartbeat if it fit a particular story.

-Thanks-

 

[Ccolebrook]

I was wondering if you'd thought of making the Titan more aetheric/energetic? Something that enslaves worlds and drags them into a hive-matrix. There's a lot more scope for originality and subtlety there. If you make it just yr basic standard tentacled-world-eater you've got two options:

Well the Titan is separate from the hive matrix. It's the other side of the spectrum. Where the Hive mind is a collective of conscious beings, the Titan is an animal operating on instincts, eating planets, following the natural order. A danger to budding conscious species that the hive wants to induct and therein lies the conflict between the two. The Earthlings go from thinking they're alone in the universe and craving first contact with alien life, to finding that they're just some backwater species in a bustling, conflicted, life-filled galaxy (something that the audience finds out right off the bat).

As far as making the Titan, I'm just planning on submitting this to competitions, and selling it if I can. I'd love to make movies, but certainly I don't have the resources to make this one. It's a big budget hollywood sci-fi adventure movie designed to show what I can do on paper with no limitations. So I'm just kind of writing it and going wherever it leads me without regard to how hard or expensive it would be to film. It's entirely possible this kind of movie will never get made, but it's the damned best thing I've written so far. Just hoping it can get me some kind of credit to put on a query letter.

Thanks a ton for the help on the Titan name and the logline and stuff guys. I've already learned so much from posting this thread. I don't know where I'd be if I hadn't found this forum.

 

[PositiveFuture]

It's a big budget hollywood sci-fi adventure movie designed to show what I can do on paper with no limitations.

Fair enough. I understand you're not going to be able to do this on a budget. Some films you can't really scale down. I think you've got the potential to write a first rate script.

going wherever it leads me without regard to how hard or expensive it would be to film.

It's good that you give yourself free reign. I do things differently. When I write, I always imagine I've got a producer sitting over my shoulder:

Can we lose that initial scene? Looks expensive.
How about shooting it in a warehouse?
Do you really need that third main character?
Can we shoot in Prague instead of New York?

IMO, the 'Screenwriter vs Producer conflict' doesn't need to be so tense. Scaling things down can lead to some great creative decisions. See Jaws and Reservoir Dogs, off the top of my head. Having said that, I understand your script is a big as hell production that'd cost millions, so good luck.

Are you just intending to write it or will you make some shorts/trailers to show your idea?

 

[Ccolebrook]

Are you just intending to write it or will you make some shorts/trailers to show your idea?

I'm just writing it. I did some shorts and directed some stuff in film school, but I'm more drawn to writing than to filming (filming is still a blast).

Thinking about it though, maybe once I finish my latest revision I should go through and see if I can't make it more appealing to a producer. Hell, that's what I really want. If I could sell this I would be elated. I'm sure the budget could be lowered without sacrificing the good points of the screenplay.

 

[PositiveFuture]

maybe once I finish my latest revision I should go through and see if I can't make it more appealing to a producer.

That's what I mean. Just write with them in mind. A producer has only two questions.

Can I sell the damn thing?
How much will the damn thing cost to make?

When I do any project I have a 2-3 track approach. Plans A, B + C.

Example:

Plan A: 100,000 dollars a day: 20 tentacles envelope New York City. 1000s of extras, demolished buildings, tons of props.
Plan B: 10,000 dollars a day: The action is shown as newsreel footage. Heavy soundscape as characters hide in an underground shelter.
Plan C: 1,000 dollars a day to Micro: The action is told through split second flashbacks (complete with booming sound) as the main character lies strapped to a hyper advanced interrogation/psychologists couch. For this your only real expense would be a bunch of cool looking props.

*

In this breakdown, Plan A may not always be the best. THX-1138 is an example of an excellent sci-fi film done on a budget.

Show a producer you have written with them in mind and you'll get more respect/interest. I don't know much about the industry but I guess they're sick of seeing scripts that'd take 30 million plus to make from unknown writers.

I'm in the middle of a heavy project and need some diversion. I'm not interested in muscling in on your story, but if you need any help give me a shout. Post any scenes from your synoposis and -if I have time- I'll try and do a producer breakdown for a bit of practice.

Ultimately it's your vision and you have the final say... a producer should be a facilitator not an authority figure.

 

[PositiveFuture]

I'm not trying to twist your vision, BTW. I was just giving examples of how things could be scaled down.

Another thing you could do is sell non-exclusive rights. So you sell the 'Indie' script to an indie director/studio, but give yourself a contractual option to sell a big budget version to a larger studio later. In this way, the Indie producer is kind of making a pilot for you.

It'd be a tricky contract to structure, and some studios would hate it, but you could sell it to the Indie studio by showing how the bigger budget version would draw attention to their movie.