Today I went to a Script Development Workshop run by the NZ Film Commission and the NZ Writer’s Guild at the NZ Film Archive.
Steve Barr talked about Assessment and taking notes, and later went into Loglines. Kathryn Burnett spoke about Rewriting, giving exercises for responding to assessment in rewriting, and later went into Synopses. Kath Athukata-Brown, a Script Executive at the NZFC spoke about changes in funding at the NZFC (in the Writer Development Loan, the Early Development Fund, and the Advanced Development Loan), and later went into Treatments.
I managed to take away a lot of good ideas on the three scripts that I’m working on (two of my own, one that I’m helping to develop). I believe what I learnt at the workshop will make me a better Scriptwriter/Producer/Director. I must admit that writing a good Logline is HARD. It’s something I need to work on. A good piece of advice was to get together with Script buddies/film geeks, and work out loglines for famous films.
The logline (not to be confused with the tagline) is 1-2 sentences on the film. From our notes:
[Someone interesting] must [do something difficult] to [avoid something bad].
“A girl lost in a strange and magical land must defeat a wicked witch to find her way home.”
Often followed by a second sentence introducing complication or further conflict.
“A young Maori must impress the village’s traditionalist leader to assumer a leadership position. But the young Maori is a girl, and the leader is her grandfather who thinks girls can never be leaders.”
So, the logline that I came up with for one of my projects is:
“An outlaw on the run must cross Arizona to return to his dead father’s estate. But facing his past is what he’s running from.”
Yeah, it’s not 100% yet, but it’s a start.
Busy Times 