Loglines

A good screenplay should have a certain unity, a completeness.  As a proxy for success at that, Hollywood craves a clear, one sentence summary of your story.  If your story will make a good film, the theory goes, the external conflict, internal conflict, the stakes and the antagonist will be clear in a single exciting-to-read sentence.

I've listed my screenplay with inktip.com, so far just using a free one-week trial.  InkTip takes a script and makes it available for production companies or agents who are looking for scripts, with a searchable database of tags.  I've turned up in searches about 7 times for about 4 different companies, but nothing in my log-line inspires anyone to read my synopsis or script.  Currently the logline is:

    Locked in the contest for control of the future, the great powers of earth panic when a young mathematician creates       machine intelligence and runs, pursued by their agents across the world, up the great space elevator and beyond, before he unleashes the permanent Resolution.


This is still too long, doesn't describe the hero's problem (except that he's young).  Here are some alternatives, but they all leave out so much that they disappoint and bore even me:


1.  A young man creates machine intelligence and is hunted by evil agents of the USA.
2.  A young man takes a risk by revealing his design for machine intelligence, but when the world comes looking for him he must step up and take responsibility before it changes beyond recognition.
3.  The war of all with all is founded in the human soul, but in 2054, a young mathematician threatens us all with the spectre of machine intelligence, machine peace, machine love.
4.  Or something else.  These are surpisingly hard to write and I should be reviewing 'The Monstrosity of Christ' and 'The Social Network'