Movie Making Manual/Pitching/Logline

This Module is part of the Movie Making Manual

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.