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Lesson 6
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Nick Walsh / High Concept/Elevator Pitch
What I learnt: Find the most powerful hook of your story and express it in a single sentence to get a producer’s attention, then wait. Don’t over state. Bare bones only.
- To find your main hook, give us what is most unique about your lead character’s journey from a big picture perspective.
Most Unique Thing:
How do you court the woman of your dreams while pretending to be a priest?
How do you hide in plain sight when you are hunted?
2. How can you tell it in the most interesting way possible.
- Dilemma
To stay for love and risk capture, or run away to freedom and risk capture.
- Main Conflict
Protestant laws and attitudes against the lowly Irish Catholic.
- What’s at stake?
Freedom. Michael will be hanged if he is caught.
- Goal/Unique Opposition
How do you ask the woman of your dreams to go on the lam with you when the state is looking to hang you and she thinks you are a priest?
3. Using the 10 Components of Marketability, what is your Elevator Pitch?
I have written a pilot for a TV Series drama entitled, “The Rogue of Connemara”. It’s the Irish equivalent to Roots.
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What I learned from doing this assignment is that a successful synopsis is built almost entirely on hooks, and to think of my script in terms of these hooks when pitching. Then, I need to make sure I deliver on those hooks in my script, and the hooks will inform my re-write.
Lesson 6: Turning Hooks Into A Great Synopsis
(Hooks from COM):
<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color); background-color: var(–bb-content-background-color);”>Great Title: STEALING BUDDHA’S DINNER
True Story: Y
Timely: Trend/rise in Asian representation in film; diverse cast
Wide Audience Appeal: Written for a Teen / YA audience
Adapted From a Popular Book: A Chicago Tribune “Best Book of the Year” that I have the rights to
(Hooks from MIT):
What is most interesting about your villain and hero? Both are “God-fearing” teens…they just believe in different gods. Bich is a Vietnamese refugee trying to survive high school during the 80’s in the U.S.
Any turning points? Jennifer turns on Bich when Jennifer doesn’t get the lead role in her wackadoodle church play. Bich’s new step-mom broadcasts Bich’s Asian identity in a tone-deaf school assembly. Bich’s dad steals her money so he can throw a party to impress his Asian community. Bich’s estranged mother they left behind in Vietnam turns up in the U.S.
Emotional dilemma? Bich must choose between her Asian identity and her American identity.
Major twists? Bich’s dad’s Lunar New Year party becomes the last-minute venue for the school dance.
Character betrayals? Jennifer betrays Bich; Bich’s father betrays Bich (steals her money).
Surprises? School dance is saved by Bich’s awkward Asian family’s Lunar New Year party (with Bich’s money she hoped to buy a trendy American jacket with).
*****
Hooray! Bich and her family escaped Vietnam seconds before the fall of Saigon! But how will she survive high school in America without the 80’s junk food, music, and fashion approved by 10/10 teens?
Bich makes a deal with the devil—who goes by the name of Jennifer—to score her favorite American food. Meanwhile Bich’s saving up for a designer jean jacket that will skyrocket her to the fashion hall of fame. And with the school dance coming up, she’ll be twerking to the entire American Top 40—preferably with her crush.
Uh-oh! Jennifer “outs” Bich as a heathen Buddhist when she can’t help Jennifer land the lead in her wacky church play. Bich’s feisty new step-mom masterminds a tone-deaf “Tet” assembly at her high school starring Bich. Her father steals her jacket money to fund a wild party the night of the school dance. And Bich’s estranged mother just showed up stateside. Everything’s coming up “Asian” and Bich just wants her MTV!
Wtf? “Lunar New Year” isn’t the theme the high school dance committee picked, but it’s the one they’ll get when the dance is forced to relocate to Bich’s father’s party.
Can Bich and her awkward Asian family “Make Asia Great Again?”
STEALING BUDDHA’S DINNER is a mostly-true story based on a Chicago Tribune “Best Book of the Year” I control the rights to. At once funny and sad, and both universal and specific, it’s SIXTEEN CANDLES but with a diverse cast that celebrates the recent rise in Asian representation in film.
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Assignment #6 Aurora’s Synopsis Hooks
A. My Synopsis.
A Roman cohort parades the Carnyx, a unique barbarian battle trumpet in Rome. It was captured by Theophilus Cato, a Centurion, who is a popular war hero from the Sacrovir Rebellion. Cato’s popularity is troublesome to Sejanus, an ambitious Praetorian whom the Emperor puts in charge and plots are formed against Cato as be is loyal to Emperor. A trusted new friend and mentor begins working against Cato.
Cato’s Jewish slave Philip is attacked during a foot race. Cato discovers Philip secretly collaborated with Jewish rebels in Rome, and has naively implicated Cato in a murder. Cato’s best soldier, a Jew, is strangled and tossed down the Gemonian steps, accused of rebellion. Should Cato serve the anti-Semitic policies of Sejanus’ regime or protect his beloved family of unruly Jewish slaves?
Despite being a loyalist, Cato is accused of sedition, as he refuses a new assignment to guard his beloved Emperor in retirement because it involves spying for Sejanus. The popular war hero that had entertained crowds by parading the Carnyx, now faces a crowd pleasing death as a rebel on the Gemonian stairs.
Sejanus has a nightmare based upon a poem written by Roman poet Virgil foretelling a virgin-born warrior king that brings down the Roman Empire. This matches with Jewish prophecies of a virgin born Messiah who is a world conquering King.
Despite the fact Cato loves and understands Jews, he volunteers to travel uncover with his household on a mission to find and assassinate this Jewish Insurrectionist in Galilee, thus abandoning his cohort and his beloved Emperor. Cato, the man who values loyalty is disloyal.
Cato and his slaves are attacked at his Villa during the slaves’ Seder meal, catching Cato unarmed.
A shy young Jewish girl, a guest at the meal, is a trained fighter, and with Philip’s clever defenses, the two frighten off a gang of anti-Semitic thugs.
Cato’s cook, Hannah, Philip’s mother, is blackmailed into promising to spy on her Master during his mission.
B. Original list of hooks from Assignment #4
1. Centurion Theophilus Cato parades the Carnyx, a very unique and creepy sounding captured barbarian battle trumpet (think the sounds made by the aliens in the most recent War of the Worlds) that very few people know about because only recently was one reconstructed and someone learned to play it.
2. Loyalist Cato’s dilemma- does he serve the anti-Semitic policies of a new Roman regime or protect his beloved family of unruly Jewish slaves?
3. The surprising execution of Cato’s favorite Jewish soldier, by spectacularly tossing him down the Gemonian steps.
4. The violent attacks on Cato’s slave Philip during his foot race.
5. Slave Philip is secretly collaborating with Jewish rebels.
6. An anti-Semitic attack on Cato and his household during a Seder at Cato’s villa.
7. A young Jewish female refugee, presenting as passive and vulnerable, is really a trained and vicious fighter able to defend Cato’s household from attackers and in the process also kill a man posing as her uncle, but who is in fact her captor.
8. Cato refuses to guard his beloved Emperor Tiberius because the new assignment involves spying for Sejanus on the Emperor
9.Roman poet Virgil wrote a poem about a virgin born warrior king, son of the sun-god that brings down the Roman Empire.
10. Cato, who loves and understands Jews, agrees to ferret out and kill a Jewish Insurrectionist.
C. I learned doing this assignment that the prior list made making the synopsis easy. However many of the points had to be reworded and many elements were also not necessary to telling the story in shortened form.
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Richard Senne’s Synopsis Hooks
What I learned doing this assignment is… by using the hooks to really tell the story you have a compact, yet thrilling synopsis. This really helps a lot.
Organize your hooks into a sequence that makes sense for the story:
Her team is killed by a bio-weapon, leaving her as the sole survivor.
Jessica survives the lethal attack and gets discharged from the military.
Jessica meets up with Owen, her old college boyfriend, who owns a drone company and gives her a job.
The military advisor, Ardashir, is exposed as a psychopathic terrorist.
Jessica uses the harpoon mechanism to stop Ardashir’s drone attack on Washington DC.
Jessica doesn’t crash the drone after harpooning it, but brings it back to crash and kill Ardashir and the terrorists.
Synopsis:
I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill them all.
Jessica is the sole survivor of a bio-weapon attack, but gets kicked out of the military.
Determined to take revenge, she hunts for the terrorists. Her resolve wavers when she meets her boyfriend from college and begins to work with him. Her doctors, who are the terrorists, conspire against her and give her drugs to make her paranoid.
Jessica viciously beats a co-worker she believes is a terrorist. But she has the wrong guy.
Her doctor manipulates her and she goes to the mountains for rest. She discovers one of her doctors is a psychopath determined to experiment on her. They have a secret base to launch a bio-weapon drone on Washington. Before she can tell anyone they take her captive.
Can Jessica escape and stop the attack before thousands die?
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