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Day 6 Assignments
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DAY 6 – What Makes Your Story Marketable?
Lisa’s Marketable Components
What I learned by doing this assignment is to figure out what makes the story and characters stand apart from previous stories.
1. Tell us your current logline.
An upstate NY mom kidnaps Santa Claus to save her business during the annual It’s a Wonderful Life Christmas festival.
2. Look through the 10 Components of Marketability and pick one or two that have the most potential for selling this script.
G. Wide audience appeal.
J. A great role for a bankable actor.3. Do a quick brainstorm session about ways to elevate those two components for this script and tell us how you might pitch the script through the two components.
Everyone loves a family Christmas movie! Mary, the female lead character is desperate when she kidnaps Santa Claus to save her business and her family. She’s a part that any A-list actress would be excited to portray.
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Hi Lisa,
Nice. I thought the logline was supposed to imply what happens at the end (?) Nevertheless, it’s definitely one line, which I have trouble creating for my piece. BTW, I never told you that my family lives in Rochester, NY. So we are region-kin!
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Thanks, June! I’ll go back and try to add a reference to the ending in my logline. I’m in the DC area, but I attended the It’s a Wonderful Life festival one year in Seneca Falls…that’s where I got the idea for the story.
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Day 6
Anna’s Marketable Components
What I learned doing this assignment; gave me some confidence in marketing my script which still feels like a mammoth task.
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CURRENT LOGLINESILENT NIGHT Pilot of a 3 part series
inspired by a true story
It’s Christmas when Alfie, a homeless Newfoundland dog with superpowers meets Dylan, a traumatized mute boy.
Alfie helps Dylan become intrepid, win over the bullies in unique ways and find his voice.
Business hooks/pitch
SILENT NIGHT is in excellent box office company with many successful Dog/Christmas-themed movies
Hotel for Dogs, Beethoven, Marley and Me are a small selection of many high-grossing box office movies featuring dogs.
SILENT NIGHT has a wide audience appeal; a family movie with a characterful choice of dog breed, and a Christmas theme set in the story world of an English seaside village. The co-star Dylan; a young teenager endures and triumphs over multiple difficulties that the audience can relate to.
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June Fortunato’s Marketable Components day 6 – for RETIREMENT
What I learned: My pitch passed the dreaded “husband test” who is the hardest person to convince!
1. Tell us your current logline.
When Crazyass Roy, 60s, meets his twin spirit, Kim, also in her 60s and she plays the same mooch game, it’s instant lightening in a bottle. They do crazy things together and he falls in love with her and wants to take care of her instead of the other way around. If only she’d stop running. Together, they learn to trust, to face their demons, and to give in to love.
2. Components of Marketability
A. Unique. A romance between two 60+ people, VietNam vet, set in Philadelphia, and the dialogue is culture changing.
D. It’s a first. It might just be a first to tell a genuine love story where someone isn’t cheating on a wife. Also, that they’re both recently ‘unhoused’
G. Wide audience appeal. Audience appeal to boomer generation. There are a LOT of boomers.
J. A great role for a bankable actor. More than one role for bankable stars. Especially since actors in their sixties get cast as curmudgeons and these folks are vibrant and full of pizazz.
When we did this assignment on January 19th, I chose Unique and Wide audience appeal- but thanks to the many lessons of this class, I’ve added Bankable actor and It’s a first.
3.How<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”> you might pitch the script through the two components.
Audiences in their 60s long for representation in stories about everyday people that have heart, romance and redemption. This is an incredibly sweet, deep and life-affirming story about two unique “still-hippies” – two broken halves – who find each other to make a whole, but only after helping each other face their wounds. The language is indelible, unique and culture changing. The cast is filled out with an ensemble of nurturers, and the city locations are within reach of each other.
Actors Kick-ass lines show off the comic timing and range that Roy that has, while Kim flouts her theatrical largess, a singing voice, smart as a whip intelligence and a fighting spirit. Both protagonists hide deep spirit wounds and yet, find love, find joy, and find belief again.
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Cameron Martin’s Marketable Components
What I learned doing this assignment…My wife pointed out that my story is literally “FINDING NEMO in space,” which I found funny and poignant since for years FINDING NEMO was my favorite of the Pixar films. Still, I found this to be a good check at the end of a process. By that I mean that I kind of already think this way when coming up with a concept. One of the creative processes I was taught in college involved combining two things that ordinarily wouldn’t go together, and making something new from it. However, my first feature script took too many things (THE MATRIX, The Bible, Mythology, Hinduism, Taoism and GHOST IN THE SHELL) and combined them. After writing that script, it was really hard to pitch because it wasn’t just THE MATRIX but with a unique spin. Taking lessons learned from that script, and some of the earliest lessons from the ProSeries, I think I came up with a concept that’s a lot easier to pitch based on the “similar to a box-office success, but unique” angle. And, after going through this assignment, I believe I succeeded in that goal of being able to sell my script with these two Components of Marketability.
Logline: This is a Space Horror story about a widower who must reconnect with his his Asperger’s son and save him from the parasitic alien worms that killed his wife, and that his son is obsessed with.
1. Unique.
2. Similarity to a box-office success.“ALIENS meets THE MARTIAN” where a widower and his Asperger’s son use their creativity to survive an outbreak of alien parasitic worms. (Unique and Similarity to a box-office success)
THE LAST OF US was an award winning, critically acclaimed game that earned a massive fan following, and it did it through a heartfelt father/child journey and intense horror, action, and problem solving. What if we told that same story, but put it in space?
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PS81 – Dana’s Marketable Components
What I learned:
Learning the multiple elements of marketing, I reevaluated my script and tried to create a one sentence pitch using as many of the components as possible.
Logline
The psychotic personality of a man suffering from dissociative identity disorder calls a radio psychologist and threatens to kill one member of her kidnapped family every hour on air unless she can persuade the man’s conscious personality to surrender control by the end of the show.
Marketable Components
A. Unique
F. Edgy
G. Wide Audience Appeal
J. A Great Role for a Bankable Actor
The film is a race against time psychological thriller experienced through the tortured emotions of a struggling radio psychologist forced to become the empowered savior of her family by violating her Hippocratic Oath and pushing a psychotic patient to commit suicide on air.
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Dev Ross – Marketable Components
Logline: Outshined by a new hate group, a fading KKK Grand Dragon plots to regain power by murdering a rising black leader – who also has plans to murder him.
<font face=”inherit”>Unique. My story is unique because it combines the genre of Sci-fi with Thriller while being edgy and, most importantly, like DON’T LOOK UP, it captures the zeitgeist of our </font>tumultuous<font face=”inherit”> times. Like the Matrix, it addresses series issues in a fantastic way. </font>
True. (It isn’t true but it is based on my interview with a GRAND DRAGON.
GREAT ROLES for two bankable male actors while offering three great female supporting roles.
My pitch would hammer on the uniqueness of my story: Sci-fi Thriller that captures the zeitgeist of our times with an edgy approach, that neither spares nor compromises either side of the race conflict. This story has fantastic roles for two male actors in their fifties, one white, one black. Each role digs deep. Both explore the good and the evil that co-exists in all of us.
What I learned doing this assignment is how much I am into and believe in my story – deeply. It was a bizarre logline that I created out of Hal’s exercises that forced me out of my comfort zone into a whole new area for me. What I learned is how very much I love this and can’t seem myself not doing it.
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Kate’s Marketable Components
What I learned doing this assignment is I like this part of marketing although Ihave very hard time seeing what I actually have. – the forest for the trees as it were.
Current Logline
AMAHLA’S DAUGHTER
A young African-American actress finds her idealized long absent father in a small rural community where the theatre troupe is preforming, and when the fiery Latina ‘mayor’ leads a sting operation against his development plans finds herself caught in the middle, as she uncovers the truth of mother’s death and ultimately sets herself free.
10 Components of Marketability – two that have the most potential for selling this script.
G. Wide audience appeal.
• It is a classic underdogs defeat powerful rich guy, populated by a rich mix of Characters;
• 2 x50+ key women characters – a fiery Latina (lead) and Chinese American businesswoman (supporting)
• 20+ African American actress (Lead)
• 20+ Chinese American male (Supporting)
• 60+ white ‘charming bad guy’ (Lead)
• 6 additional 20+ actors
• A wealthy orphaned/abandoned young woman with a travelling theatre troupe
• a mystery about her parents relationship and mother’s death
• a sting operation to defeat the land grab – to develop a landfill
• a love story killed by jealousy
• a play within a playJ. Great role(s) for a bankable actor(s).
Nia: 20+ ½ white/1/2 black woman, her coming of age story. An orphaned/abandoned young woman traveling with a touring theatre troupe. Carrying idealized images of her parents and particularly her father who she hasn’t seen in 16 years – whose repressed memories surface when she finds him again against the backdrop of the potential destruction of this rural community at his hands.
Luciana: 50+ Lesbian, Latina, flamboyant, fiery, loyal. Saving her town from a despicable developer with whom she had personal dealings 20 years before, she orchestrates a sting operation against Darrogh, who she holds responsible for her best friend’s death 16 years ago. After Nia arrives, she finds forgiveness and love again.
Darrogh: 60+ wealthy, bitter, paranoid, lonely and revengeful. After his wife died, he left his 7 year old daughter with his parents and set out in revenge on the woman (Luciana) that he blamed – incorrectly – for the death. Ultimately he cannot live with his pain, loss and the humiliation of being tricked by the very community he was setting out to destroy along with his daughters’ refusal to be owned by him.
Min: 50+ Chinese American business women, Tiger Mother. Instrumental in working with Luciana to make the business sting work
Shaunn: Chinse-American , 20+, in the troupe with Nia, a key player/actor in the sting, would do anything for Nia even work with his mother.
3. Ways to elevate those two components for this script. It is just inherent in the story – it is the story
How I might pitch the script through the two components.
A 23 year old African American actress on tour, with 2 50+ women – fiery Latina community leader and Chinese American businesswoman – use theatre to con an arrogant, greedy vengeful developer who also happens to be her father, saving a rural community from becoming the worlds’ largest landfill.
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Dev Ross – One sentence phone pitch – What makes your story marketable
An aging, once powerful Grand Dragon is usurped by a new and charismatic young supremacist so plots to regain his dominance by murdering a rising black leader.
A fading Grand Dragon, usurped by a charismatic young white supremacist, plots to regain his dominance by assassinating a black leader, only to discover the black leader is also hunting him.
Fighting for dominance over the white supremacist movement, a fading Grand Dragon plots to assassinate a rising black leader only to face shifting realities where he is both himself and the black leader he plans to murder.
2. Write a one-sentence phone pitch for your screenplay. First tell us the biggest hook and then incorporate it into your one-sentence pitch.
The biggest hook is the main character is both men – one white, one black in two different realities.
“Cain and Able” captures the zeitgeist of our times as racism, sexism, climate change, and the multi-universes collide.
What I learned is that by doing these exercises faithfully, I find myself releasing what I thought were great loglines to embrace new ones.
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Day 6 – What Makes Your Story Marketable? – Assignment
Mike O – Marketable Components
What I learned doing this assignment is
Pick two components and tell us how your script already fulfills them AND how you might highlight these two in order to elevate the pitch.
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1. Tell us your current logline.
As executor of her estranged father’s estate, Brooklyn discovers the truth about her parent’s divorce. On the verge of recognition and financial success as a painter, romance finds her at a crossroads: a treacherous employee and a mother’s deception conspire to undermine her world. Brooklyn rises above deceit and tragedy in order to create her happy ever after.
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2. Look through the 10 Components of Marketability and pick one or two that have the most potential for selling this script.
01. Unique (THIS ONE)
02. True
03. Timely — connected to some major trend or event.
04. It’s a first
05. Ultimate
06. Edgy
07. Wide audience appeal (THIS ONE)
08. Adapted from a popular book
09. Similarity to a box-office success
10. A great role for a bankable actor (THIS ONE )– ties in with #1, character’s uniqueness—————————————-
[1] Unique — This means some important part of the story or characters hasn’t been seen before. It needs to be something important enough that the public will be willing to go to this movie and not another.
The protagonist, Brooklyn, is able to feel her father’s presence whenever she is close to one of his paintings. She uses painting in his cabin to bond with him. *She sees/imagines him beside her guiding her as she paints. *Use of FLASHBACKS shows her dad helping her as a little girl with her water colors and crayons. He is her muse whenever she paints. *Show a photo of him with her as a little girl clipped to her easel in her art studio… *Show her talking to him, as if he’s beside her, when she is alone painting in her studio. *At the end of the movie, we see Brooklyn ‘talking’ with her dad at his grave: show him hug her, then go lie down at his grave and slowly settle into the earth…
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[7] Wide audience appeal — This one is essential. Will this story appeal to a wide audience? The larger the audience, the better. Especially if they are avid movie-goers. Anything that will get teens in the door is hot.
The protagonist, Brooklyn is in her late twenties, she is pretty (physical attraction, easy on the eyes) she talks to herself, is OCD, and imagines her father beside her whenever she is painting. (Appealing to an A-list actress).
Brooklyn’s best friend and mentor, Carolyn, is happily married w/ children. She is in her late forties. She will appeal to that market segment as she is hardworking, successful, and always trying to “set” Brooklyn up with some guy. Meaning well, she mothers Brooklyn, thinks of her as the daughter she never had.
There is Brooklyn’s love interest, Tarek, he’s in her early thirties, single dad. He has two sons: one is cute and irrepressible, the other more serious, less trusting… hurt by the death of his mother. His character will appeal to those in the audience who have gone through what he has and can identify with him.
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3. Do a quick brainstorm session about ways to elevate those two components for this script and tell us how you might pitch the script through the two components.
How I would pitch those two elements:
#1 Unique & #10 Bankable : The protagonist is a woman, a gifted artist, who is OCD, someone who has been sheltered, and who buries herself in her work to avoid life. The inciting incident and our hero’s journey begins with tragedy. As the executor of her father’s estate, she discovers her mother’s deception, the depth of a father’s posthumous love, and comes to terms with her past, ‘finds herself’ and discovers she is capable of true love.
#7 Wide audience appeal: Brooklyn’s initial reticence, her fear of the unknown will speak to the Millennials, and Z generation. Her best friend and mentor, Carolyn, will draw ‘parents’ to the theater as her character’s insistence on helping, guiding and being a ‘mother’ to Brooklyn will speak to this audience segment. Brooklyn’s personal growth and the fact she finds true love is a requisite of all holiday feel-good movies and is a universal draw
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Antonio’s Marketable Components
What I learned doing this assignment
Being selective about the components that could integrate a good pitch.
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Pick two components and tell us how your script already fulfills them AND how you might highlight these two in order to elevate the pitch.
1. Tell us your current logline.
When an MMA prizefighter mysteriously disappears, his girlfriend embarks in an impossible rescue mission to the underground fighting world where she stops at nothing to save him.
2. Look through the 10 Components of Marketability and pick one or two that have the most potential for selling this script.
C. Timely — connected to major trend and
The performance of female MMA fighters has proved to attract a wide audience around the world. Not only female stars have emerged, but also an increasing number of women join MMA practice.
E. Ultimate.
Visually and technically, the level of physical skill, acrobatics, variety of fighting skills and weapons is higher, rich and only comparable to what superheroes do. Spectacularly reinforced with roof top and inside the cage Parkour maneuvers.
G. Wide audience appeal.
Aims at a worldwide audience, the Dragon Balls, Ninja Turtles generation, and the world legion of MMA female fighter, martial arts movies, and Parkour fans. Can be filmed in fewer than five or six locations and small sets.
I. Similarity to a box-office success.
Is a female-led Enter the Dragon, Mortal Kombat, Blood Sport
J. A great role for a bankable actor.
Samantha Win: actress (Mortal Kombat, Wonder Woman), international (Olympic) Wushu medal winner
Gal Gadot: actress (Wonder Woman) trained in kickboxing, capoeira and jujitsu
Valentina Shevchenko: Bantam weight UFC champion AKA “Bullet” (Halle Berry’s movie Bruised as Lady Killer)
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3. Do a quick brainstorm session about ways to elevate those two components for this script and tell us how you might pitch the script through the two components.
One sentence: A female-led Mortal Kombat.
Wide audience appeal: A female-driven, action movie that aims at a worldwide audience, the Dragon Balls, Ninja Turtles generation, the world of MMA female fighters, martial arts moviegoers, and Parkour fans.
It can be filmed in fewer than five or six locations and small sets.
Ultimate: Visually spectacular skills. Some of the martial arts styles and weapons are new for western audiences.
A great role for a bankable actor: There are trainable western actors who possess a good background in martial arts, as well as MMA champions, who could play the protagonist role. Among them:
Samantha Win: actress (Mortal Kombat, Wonder Woman), international (Olympic) Wushu medal winner
Gal Gadot: actress (Wonder Woman) trained in kickboxing, capoeira and jujitsu
Valentina Shevchenko: Bantam weight UFC champion AKA “Bullet” (featured in “Bruised” as Halle Berry’s badass opponent, Lady Killer)
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Never Posted this assignment….
Marketing Day 6 – What Makes my Story Marketable?
Anita’s Marketable Components
What I learned doing this assignment: Business Hooks and Story Hooks. This will be my mantra for marketing materials.
Pick two components and tell us how your script already fulfills them AND how you might highlight these two in order to elevate the pitch.
1. Tell us your current logline.
A young woman who can’t access an abortion abandons her baby at birth only to learn years later that the child is her best hope for a life-saving transplant, leading her to search for a daughter she never wanted.
2. Look through the 10 Components of Marketability and pick one or two that have the most potential for selling this script.
A. Unique.
B. True.
C. Timely — connected to some major trend or event.
D. It’s a first.
E. Ultimate.
F. Edgy.
G. Wide audience appeal.
H. Adapted from a popular book.
I. Similarity to a box-office success.
J. A great role for a bankable actor.
3. Do a quick brainstorm session about ways to elevate those two components for this script and tell us how you might pitch the script through the two components.
C. Timely – After Roe vs Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court, individual states are running with their own legislation banning abortions. It’s all over the news. I couldn’t do more to bring it any further into the public eye. One possible door to knock on is an organization that cares passionately about this topic that might want to produce a film? (long shot). That said, there are several actresses who are outspoken feminist activists who would likely love this script!
G. Wide Audience Appeal – Everyone in the <st1:country-region w:st=”on”><st1:place w:st=”on”>U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> (and beyond) has an opinion on the access to abortion issue. It is hotly debated and people fall passionately on either one side or the other. I wrote this script with various POV’s in mind – the pregnant mother who did not want the baby; the married father of the child who wanted her to have an abortion; the adoptive parents who desperately wanted a child; the legal system and its debaters; the Catholic Church; the religious conservative anti-abortion sister; pro-right activists, etc – are all reflected in some way within this story.
The unique and edgy components are that the child grows into a beautiful sociopath.
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