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Lesson 6
Reply to post your assignment.
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14 Replies
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George Schwimmer’s High Concept/Elevator Pitch
What I learned doing this assignment is to write lean and mean High Concept and elevator pitches.
High Concept pitch:
A former CIA agent teams up with Merlin the Magician and uses time travel to stop a murderous cabal.
Elevator pitch:
I’m polishing up a four-quadrant script that’s like Back to the Future meets 48 hrs.
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What did I learn: to pick the most interesting stuff – for the reader! You don’t need to pick it all. Hence, pending on the audience you might want to focus on different things.
Title: Red
By: Camilla Erlandsdotter
Format/Genre: 1 hour serialized TV/ gangster.
Pilot.
You make it back to New York alive with the vivid nightmares of World War I and a criminal record in your baggage. What are your options?
Samuel and Jacob, two Jewish blood brothers who grew up in a New York reform school and served in the first US Tank Brigade, robs the wrong speakeasy! Now they have a blood thirty local gang lord and his corrupt police henchmen after them!
Ignorant of the danger, Samuel and Jacob go to Coney Island on a double date.
Samuel is infatuated by the astonishing Anna but feels helpless. Aching, he watches his buddy flirt with Anna’s friend. Anna is so cold, but when Samuel is at his most vulnerable, she opens up to him and they kiss!
Is there true love for him after all?
The boys are set up for a romantic dinner with the girls in an Italian restaurant when the local crime boss and his henchmen crash the party!
Samuel’s future is crushed.
He’s abandoned by Jacob, badly beaten then arrested on a fake charge. Will he ever see Anna again?
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Jon C. Scheide Synopsis Hooks
“What I learned doing this assignment is…” a new way to construct a very tight, hook driven synopsis.
Title: OFF THE GRID
Genre: Detective / Thriller
No good deed goes unpunished.
Feeling good about himself after dropping a subpoena on a dead-beat-dad, Marty, a private investigator decides to help a stranger, which puts him on a collision course with a whip-smart former supermodel, her abusive pro-football player husband, his corrupt bookie partners and shady cops, some of which may be family.
Of course, Marty ultimately takes the case.
It’s simple, safeguard Claire while she finalizes her celebrity divorce and sets up a new quiet life. But after the wife-beating husband gets physical, the goon squad puts pressure on Claire’s family, and Marty’s own Uncle tells him it’s better if he just walks away… which is what cost him his career as a cop, Marty knows what he has to do.
Teach Claire how to truly disappear and live off the grid.
Before the ink dries on her divorce papers Claire and Marty make their move, switching cars, slipping on and off subways, confusing the husband and escaping the hitmen sent to make sure what she knows disappears with her. In the last moment Claire hopes that Marty will join her, but no …
Marty too, realizes he has fallen in love and to protect her, Claire must disappear, even from him.
Some time later.
A one way ticket arrives, a second chance, if Marty’s willing to take it. There’s only one choice.
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Ian Patrick’s Synopsis Hooks
What I learned doing this assignment is to start with story hooks when creating a synopsis
COM:
Timely: Between recent Nazi marches and seditious attacks against our democracy, I believe audiences would love to see action heroes taking these people down.
Similarity to a Box Office Success:
The Equalizer (Black hero acting alone), Mississippi Burning (defeat of white Nationals)
MIT:
B. Major hook of the opening scene
Broussard and his senior partner are assigned to witness a Neo-Nazi march where a car deliberately strikes one of the marchers, who then falsely blames it on the Black Lives Matter protesters.
C. Any turning points
After a long distance shooting death, Broussard turns to an old Army buddy at the VA to let him go through records that might identify radicalized sharp-shooters who have recently been discharged.
Broussard finds emptied fertilizer bags in the garage of the AST leader, leading him to conclude that they’re planning another Oklahoma City bombing.
A. Major twist
Broussard’s hunch causes the FBI to follow the AST leader’s truck. Allegedly loaded with the explosive fertilizer, it barrels toward City Hall where the visiting Governor will be giving a speech on the front steps. The stop and search shows the truck to be empty and Broussard realizes he’s been set up by the AST to fail.
B. Reversals
Convinced that a plot will still go forward, Broussard deduces that the Governor is still the target but from the sniper posted half a mile away.
C. Character betrayal
Brossard’s Lieutenant pulls him off the case despite all of his work in disclosing the identities and plans of the AST members.
D. Big surprises
Broussard is captured by the sniper who informs him that he’s going to be framed for the assassination, followed by his ‘suicide’.
First draft synopsis:
How do you stop a terrorist threat when your superiors are telling you to stand down and follow protocol? Newly-appointed African American detective MILES BROUSSARD determines to work on his own to identify the leaders of the white nationalist group American Storm Troupers who are committing crimes and blaming Jews and Black Americans.
Deducing that another Oklahoma City bombing is in the works, he convinces his Lieutenant and FBI supervisor to stop a truck driven by the AST leader that is speeding toward City Hall. When it’s found to be empty, Broussard is thrown off the case for raising false alarms. But of course he refuses to take no for an answer.
After being captured by an AST sniper, he discovers that the real plan was always to frame him for an assassination which the AST will use as justification for their fellow terrorist groups to start a race war that will engulf the entire country.
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Peter Saltzman’s Synopsis Hooks
What I learned: that I still have a lot of work to do on structuring this new version of my first season. The good news is that this exercise forced me to nail down some key elements, including turning points.
1st DRAFT OF SYNOPSIS: (I’m leaving out my hooks because they’re literally and figuratively all over the place.)
Genre: 30-minute Sci-Fi/Comedy
What would you do if your entire universe was a grocery store that was fading into oblivion?
Welcome to Eatam’s, the store with everything and more—the place that knows what you want before you do!
An amazing world, but Eatam’s rundown parking lot is experiencing frequent violent weather events, and items and people in the store are losing their tangibility.
At the center of the store is The Piano Bar from Hell, where the brilliant but reclusive Jackie Diamond holds court. He and his music might be the key to saving the dying universe. It’s the only place unaffected by the unfolding catastrophe.
Jackie is convinced that his music is somehow protecting him. But cleaning lady and closet radical Alice is convinced that Jackie’s fawning patron, store owner Dick Wald, protects him for some nefarious purpose while letting everyone else fade into non-existence.
Jackie needs to decide: does he risk using his privileged position to help the inhabitants of Eatam’s escape oblivion? If he does, where will they go? If he doesn’t, where does HE go?
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SERIES ENGINE: As the series develops, Jackie and the crew must burst the bubbles of increasingly larger universes—each with bigger problems.
If you like the concept, I’d be happy to send you the pilot script.
Peter Saltzman
BIO: A world-class composer and pianist whose works have been published and played around the globe, Saltzman has also been a semi-finalist in a ScreenCraft TV pilot competition for an earlier version of The Bubble.
Email: xxx
Phone:xxx-
This reply was modified 2 years ago by Peter Saltzman. Reason: Came up with a better opening hook, shortened overall. Still need a better series engine
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
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Tom’s High Concept/Elevator Pitch
What I learned from this is crystalizing the pitch is really really hard.
High Concept Pitch:
A story about how most people feel on New Years Eve: This time next year my life will be great.
Elevator Pitch:
A young go-getter’s New Years Eve wish takes him from blind ambition to peace and serenity.
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David’s High Concept/Elevator Pitch
What I learned from doing this assignment is the value of marketing your script in a concise, effective manner using your main hook.
1. To find your main hook, give us what is most unique about your lead character’s journey from a big picture perspective. A sports crazed fan steals the Stanley Cup, only to realize he’s living a shiftless life.
2. How can you tell it in the most interesting way possible? Seeking revenge after a heart-wrenching loss, a sports crazed fan attempts to pull off an epic heist: steal the Stanley Cup… What if a sports crazed fan stole the Stanley Cup?
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3. Using the 10 Components of Marketability, what is your Elevator Pitch? Seeking revenge after a heart-wrenching loss, a sports crazed fan steals the Stanley Cup, only to discover he’s living an aimless less.
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What I learned from this assignment is to shorten my Elevator pitch and concentrate on the character journey.
HIGH CONCEPT: A dog groomer who doesn’t trust men, only dogs, secretly rents out the dogs she grooms to members of her chess club so they can walk them to meet women, only to find out her dog wants her to be with her nemesis.
ELEVATOR PITCH: I have a RomCom about a L.A. dog groomer who doesn’t trust men, only dogs. When she gets in financial trouble and is about to go out of business, she secretly rents out the dogs she grooms to members of her chess club so they can walk them to meet women, only to find out her dog wants her to be with her nemesis. He’s a fast-talking country-boy TV pitch man from Alabama who is a great chess player but falls apart trying to talk to women. She becomes his dating coach and tells him to learn from the dogs of the ladies he is interested in, because they will indicate the personality of the woman. When he uses her dog, however, he discovers the dog knows what is best for her, and him: for them to be together.
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Rita’s High Concept/Elevator Pitch
What I learned doing this assignment:
Multiple versions was a little easier than I thought it would be. I still need to test this with others to see which of my versions is most effective. I don’t trust my perception just yet but these are my choices.
HIGH CONCEPT
A lonely professor just wants a date with a handsome contractor but she ends up building a life.
ELEVATOR PITCH
I’m working on a script based on my own experience with the notion that true love only comes once in a Blue Moon… after you fake your way into a new business.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by Rita Roberts.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by Rita Roberts.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
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Jalynn’s Synopsis Hooks
What I learned doing this assignment is the synopsis gets tighter and better using the COMs and MITs as hooks.
Hooks
a. Unique about the villain: Hunter’s “dead” father returns to his life as an ex-con.
Unique about the hero: The first time Hunter “acts out” he gets caught by police and thrown in juvie court.
b. Major hook of opening scene: Hunter’s “dead” father comes home.
c. Turning points: When he sees his dad, Hunter realizes his mother has been lying to him all his life and has an emotional breakdown.
-Hunter confronts his father who tracks him to a state fair and has to decide whether or not to kill him for killing his mother.
a. Major twists:
-This violin-playing “A” student gets angry and is recruited by a thief to assist in a robbery.
-Hunter falls for a horse, then gets his first crush on a girl who’s a better cowboy than he is.
b. Reversals: When an angry Hunter gets to Promise Ranch, the connection he has with the mustang inspires him, mellows him, and gives him something new and important to live for.
c. Character betrayals:
-Hunter’s father terrorizes his mother and eventually kills her.
d. Big surprises:
–Hunter’s horse alerts him to a rattlesnake before it strikes.
-Hunter fights off coyotes to save his injured horse.
Great roles for two bankable actors: A teenage heartthrob and an aging well-loved actor.
Wide audience appeal: four-quadrant movie range of audience appeal for both male and female, plus over and under 25.
Title: Heart of a Mustang
Written by Jalynn Venis and M.J. Evans
Genre: Drama/Contemporary Western
Hunter is a happy teen who plays violin and has a comfortable life until his “dead” father comes home. When Hunter learns this man is a drug-dealing ex-con instead of the military hero his mother painted him to be, Hunter jumps the rails. He skips school, makes a new friend, and learns what it takes to be a thief. Before the day’s end, Hunter gets caught robbing hotel guests, and a judge sends him to Promise Ranch for troubled boys.
But how does a juvie sidestep bullies, rattlesnakes, hungry coyotes and murder on the prairie?
Hunter bonds with a wild horse and learns to train her from an old cowboy named Smokey who’s as good with troubled teens as he is with mustangs. Plus, Hunter meets Haylie and gets his first crush on a girl who’s a better cowboy than he is.
When Hunter confronts the man who murdered his mother, he must decide if he wants to be a killer like his father or the talented young man his mother raised him to be.
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Lindy Baker’s Synopsis Hooks
What I learned doing this assignment is after I have created a list of my components of marketability combined with my list of hooks, I create a synopsis that will become my query letter.
FIRST DRAFT
This crime drama is inspired by my own true story.
What if you were born having visions of future events? And what if you have no power to stop these events from happening? Added to that is the abandonment and rejection from many people intimidated and confused by your abilities, who simply can’t get where you are coming from because it is just too far out of their box.Lauren had visions of the bombing of the Twin Towers. No one listened. Lauren, a professional psychic, going through a divorce, hates who she is. Needing to find some kind of purpose in having visions, she works cases of missing children to fill the holes in her empty life.
A recent case she worked on had a failed ending, Even though lacking in confidence, her compassion takes over and she cannot resist the pleas of a woman whose 6-year-old great niece is missing. Intently following rainbow clues from visions, she is led to suspect upon suspect. She remembers and employs one of her psychic skills and locates a town, Rainbow.
In her frantic search she accidentally finds evidence in what appears to be an abandoned trailer. The trailer disappears overnight.
An undercover group of pedophiles, behind a series of disappearances of children, unleashes their intention to destroy her. It’s the power of these evil people against everything she is. Should she walk away from the case or stay and fight these people and locate the missing girl?
Hooks
– The hero resents her ability and refutes its value for herself. She’s an intelligent, educated, and elegant person with a sense of humor but highly frustrated at not being able to stop events before they happen. She appears totally together, but she is hanging psychologically on the edge.
– Even though emotionally off balance, she’s accepted the pleas of a woman to find her missing 6-year-old great niece.
– The mother of the missing child lies about the child’s whereabouts, and then meets the press as if she is modeling for them so her behavior is suspect.
– After a man has reported seeing a woman lead the child away, the beauty shop owner who is the mother’s boss, is caught dressed in a wig and uniform looking very much like a woman.
– After clues of rainbow placards, rainbow dreams, seem to be leading nowhere, Lauren employs a psychic skill she has and realizes Rainbow is the name of a town.
– A second child is missing with the same sequence of events, and it appears there is a serial killer on the loose, but shocking evidence turns the focus to a group of people.
– Lauren checks out a ranch in Rainbow and has a meltdown. Lauren questions her purpose in life and is revolting against this ability that she has that creates a lonely existence, rejections and disconnect with others.
– After a meltdown, finding herself without a GPS for directions, the psychic stops in the middle of nowhere for directions and uncovers a mobile home packed with shocking evidence.
– Upon the arrival of the friend from Los Angeles, who is a cop, the evidence is completely, and impossibly gone.
– Although her cellphone is stolen, she has photo evidence anyway, and it is NOT on the cloud.
– A series of threatening events: being followed, stolen phone, dog killed, detective’s insult.
– Lauren must decide if she is to continue on this dangerous path of faceless criminals with the possibility of being killed, or to walk away without finding the child. -
Dave’s Synopsis Hooks
What I learned doing this assignment is the need to organize the synopsis around hooks, rather than giving a summary of the plot.
Pitch based on Unique: The country has divided into a series of independent states based on identity, livelihood or political outlook. Each state presents different challenges to the pair, which result from its unique identity.
Wide audience appeal pitch: The husband and wife are young (25) and in love, which is evident in all their communications and in the husband’s determination to rescue her. There is a great deal of adventure, as they have to negotiate a number of attempts on their lives that are orchestrated by the head prison warden of the state where the wife is being held. The husband and his friend share good chemistry as they confront these challenges.
Story takes place 50 years in the future, when America has divided into a series of independent states based on ideology (an environmental state, an evangelical Christian state), primary source of income (business state, mining state) or identity (Native-American state).
The protagonist has never even been in a fist fight but must resort to violence several times during the course of the story, including in the climactic scenes.
The other protagonist is a 25-year-old woman journalist who displays great courage under the most harrowing circumstances, as she is imprisoned in a military state by a sadistic warden and scheduled for execution.
The protagonist is shot at in four different states and wounded in one of them.
Different states are in vastly different shape due to their central focus (business state is heavily polluted and its working class is rebelling against it because of terrible wages and working conditions)
The protagonist and his best friend undertake a long and very hazardous journey together. Though they’re good friends, they’re temperamentally very different: one is intellectual, somewhat timid, very moral, while the other is physical, enjoys getting into fights, and lives a much more physical than cerebral life.
Synopsis
Fifty years in the future, America has divided into a series of independent states based on livelihood, identity or political outlook.
A young English woman journalist reporting on social conditions in the military state discloses that political prisoners are being executed. She is quickly imprisoned as a spy.
Her husband learns of her imprisonment and sets out to free her, along with his best friend, whose courageous, adventurous nature contrasts with his intellectual personality.
They plan to fly to Los Angeles, near the capital of the military state, but their plane is forced to land in New York. They must travel across the continent overland in time to save her.
The states they travel through vary widely from peaceful to hostile. The protagonist has never been in a fist fight before but is forced to engage in violence on several occasions as they face four assassination attempts. Both the protagonist and his wife survive their separate ordeals due to their strong love for each other.
When they reach the military state, they must outwit the prison’s warden, and the protagonist must defeat an airport guard in a fight, allowing them to escape on a plane to freedom.
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Kathy’s Synopsis Hooks
What I learned doing this assignment is to select hooks to put into a synopsis.
Great News! A young woman heals after returning from living in Saudi Arabia. Bad News! She discovers she needs to become a second -class citizen again.
America meets Saudi Arabia
A young naive woman who meets and falls in love with an older and wiser man who works in Saudi Arabia marries him after a whirlwind courtship.
After they marry, her world changes when she quits her job and leaves her family and friends to join him there. Believing she found love and is in the newlywed stage, physical and emotional abuse start to take place on Saudi soil.
Thinking that he can control and manipulate her through the culture there, his world changes when she starts to stand up to him.
After leaving and not putting up with his games anymore she returns back to America where she goes into marriage counseling and receives the support she needs.
She learns that she has no marriage because of domestic violence and divorces him to go back to school to finish her education.
After building her self- esteem, self-worth and life back up again she learns America is going backwards where women are second class citizens.
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Jani’s Synopsis/Hooks
GENRE: Drama
TITLE: LIVE FOREVER
Joe sees his father’s ghost and wonders, will he be next?
Joe arrives in New York City to set up his Serpentarium Show in Central Park. He meets Becky, an autistic woman, falls in love, until Jet shows up and lets all the poisonous snakes loose.
Becky and Joe make a quick getaway to upstate New York. Becky decides to join him as a vigilante until…
…Chaos sets in and their world is turned upside down. Jet winds up killing Joe with the same garrote that was given to Joe by his grandfather. Becky becomes Jet’s next victim. Instead, she winds up killing Jet with the same garrote. Becky escapes to Central Park where she first met Joe.
While crossing the street, Becky gets hit by a van. Will Becky die, only to reincarnate to meet Joe again in another lifetime, so they can live forever?
What I Learned:
I learned that hooks are the key components in keeping a producer, manager and audience engaged.
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