What’s your logline?

What’s your logline?

Logline: A brief (usually one-sentence) summary of a story that states the central conflict of the story, often providing both a synopsis of the story’s plot, and an emotional “hook” to stimulate interest.

This weekend I sat in on a Festival Strategies and Creative/Business Development Master Class with Kathleen McInnis. It’s something special she hosted for us as part of her Emerging Filmmaker’s Facebook group. We discussed the business aspect of branding our creative selves and our creative work to better fit how the industry and our audience could market us. 

It’s very similar to the work we’ve done on “Pioneers in Skirts“. When we first started making the film there were so many assumptions of what the film was about — so much so that we had to quickly hone in and fine tune our marketing to make sure people knew our goals with the film.

It helped that my mom, and the producer of Pioneers in Skirts, had a career as a global brand & activation marketer. I mean, no big deal. So she really spear-headed making sure we were on point with our materials – our logline, our synopsis, our tone in social media, our photos and articles shared – everything.

Which brings me back to Kathleen’s class, which was a nice refresher that you MUST be this way in your life as well.

You have to watch how you market yourself –

• Your logline – how do you tell people about yourself? are you assured? or are you floundering, wishy-washy?
• Your synopsis – what defines you as a filmmaker? what aspects of your life make you uniquely qualified? what makes up your voice?
• Finally, your tone in social media, photos & articles shared – are you keeping in tone with your goals and your voice? are you adding value? showing people what you can do?

These are a lot of questions to ask yourself, so I’ll share with you some of my conclusions as you ponder your own. 

In the class, I workshopped my personal logline —

As ambitious women are forced to maneuver a work-world built for company men, Ashley wastes no time planning her escape while clearing a path for the women coming up fast behind her.

I was lucky – I made a movie about my experiences so I could very easily apply the lessons-learned to my every day. But I’m also defined by where I come from (North Carolina), my humor (weird), my experiences (wild), my outlook on life (everything is random / honesty). So, the idea is to have this all ready to go at the tip of your tongue. Practice it. Make sure the content you share relates to this somehow.

​I think we are all striving for authenticity and connection. So, if I could give you one suggestion for your logline – make it unequivocally you. ​

Now your turn – What’s your logline? ​

And, remember – you can watch Pioneers in Skirts right now!