Movie Making Manual/Pitching/Logline

A logline is a very short, catchy summary of the story, usually not longer than one sentence. It serves as a way to communicate with great efficiency what a story or script is about. Typically a logline is used to help industry people quickly determine whether the story in question is one which a producer, director, or studio wishes to make. The logline first came into being in the script vaults of the old studios. Loglines were often written on the cover or even the spine of a screenplay, allowing a producer or director of a certain genre to quickly scan hundreds of scripts and narrow their search to just scripts which were in the genre they wished to produce. A good logline contains the following three parts:

• Who the Main Character is (MC, also known as the Protagonist).
• What the Main Conflict is (i.e. what the MC wants and who or what is stopping them).
• What is at Risk, if the MC fails.

Writing a good logline is very difficult for most people because of a failure to understand the three basic tenets of a good logline as outlined here.