Comments on: The Judges – Circalit Loglines (13)

By: ozzywood

ozzywood — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:02:00 +0000

I agree with Steven.

This is exactly why I hired The Judges. And why I’m paying them the big bucks.

Well, actually, they’re not paid anything and every single comment posted here is an act of generosity, for which I would expect the authors of the loglines to be grateful.

This is also the spirit of “Logline It” (https://loglineit.com/) and I’m excited to see that writers do take the feedback very well and re-shape their loglines following the input from their peers.

By: Steven Fernandez

Steven Fernandez — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:55:00 +0000

In reply to Heather Zack.

I totally disagree that us judges should not be allowed to express that a story concept is poor even if the logline may (or may not) be effective at selling the story as well as it could be sold.

For one thing, I assure you producers and production execs are even more harsh, unforgiving, and “subjective” than us judges are here. If a logline implies an unorginal or flawed story concept, then they (producers and execs) will not give the submission a second glance – they’ll just toss the script without bothering to read as much as the first 3 lines.

Like it or not, the purpose of a logline is to sell the script. To cry foul because “my script is really so special that no logline could possibly encompass all its dimensions” is to be unprofessional and certainly uncommercial. You logline must reflect at least some of the specialness of your script (assuming there is any to start with). Period. You can not ignore brute commercial considerations here.

Thirdly – and speaking for myself – I see a dire need for local writers to be critiqued and pushed to lift their game from a story point of view. I do not accept that locals should be coddled or protected from genuine and considered criticism of their proposed story concepts. They are supposed to be adults. So they should take it on the chin. We may certainly disagree in the end. That’s fine. But I, for one, will not apologise for insisting on much higher standards. If only because local norms simply don’t cut it on the world market. Again, like it or not.

Steven.

By: Heather Zack

Heather Zack — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:16:00 +0000

Sorry about being subjective in my other comment.
I however feel that after reading these, if I may be subjective a bit, is that perhaps no one has read the scripts, so you can’t actually tell rather if those plots are already in the script and if they aren’t in the script, the writer then probably feels as though they now have to write it into the script.

I think instead of you guys being subjective to the writers, you should only tell them what they NEED to improve on… it’s not fair for US not to being subjective, but you guys can be subjective? That’s like saying “Well, because this guy murdered 10 people, we’re not going to put him on death row, because it would be wrong… as two wrongs don’t make a right”

I can write the story, but I can’t come up with the synopsis… not without exposing too much of the mystery… not in the way I’m writing it.