Cut · Heist1:02
The Last Reel
Logline: A retiring projectionist and a nervous usher have one closing night to lift a reel of unreleased footage from the cinema vault before the chain demolishes the building.
Western · 1 minute target
Pick the genre, and the film knows how to look
Genre is not a label here. It is a tone block that rides on every scene and a three-act skeleton the beat sheet follows, so a western and a noir drafted from similar loglines come out looking like different films.
The Tab, a trailer in the Western genre. Logline: A drifter rides into a town where the saloon owner has bought every debt on the street, and offers to settle all of them with a single hand of cards.
The twelve genres
Heist, noir, road movie, ghost story, western, survival, screwball comedy, coming of age, espionage, creature feature, dystopia and tearjerker. Each one was chosen because it has a visual signature a short film can establish in a single wide shot, and a story shape that fits in one to three minutes. A heist has a plan and a reversal. A road movie has a departure, a stop that goes sideways and an arrival that changes what the travellers wanted. A tearjerker has a visit, an object and the thing finally said.
What the tone block does
When a beat is shot, the genre’s tone block goes ahead of your line. For noir that is hard low-key light, venetian-blind shadows, wet streets reflecting neon, a patient slightly low camera and performances that are weary and guarded. For screwball it is bright flattering light, two people arguing in the same frame, whip pans and rapid overlapping delivery. The renderer reads that first and your beat second, so the lighting and the pace are consistent across every scene of the flick without you writing them into each line.
The tone block also carries sound: rain on glass and a lone piano for noir, cicadas and a song from a car window for coming of age, ventilation hum and announcements for dystopia. Scenes are rendered with audio, and the tone block is why a genre sounds like itself.
What the skeleton does
Each genre has a three-act skeleton the beat sheet drafter follows. It is a shape rather than a plot: act one sets the want, act two complicates it, act three pays it off, but the specifics differ. The western skeleton has a stranger ride in, lines drawn and a standoff at dusk. The espionage skeleton has a handover with a wrong signal, a lone trace, and a face-to-face where someone is burned. Your logline fills the skeleton, and the result is a sheet with the genre’s rhythm already in it.
Mixing and bending genres
A flick has one genre, but the logline can pull against it. A heist logline drafted under the tearjerker skeleton becomes a film about why the crew needs the money. A screwball logline under the ghost-story tone becomes a very dry comedy. The genre is set when you add the flick and can be changed on the card before drafting; after that, change it and redraft if you want the sheet to follow the new skeleton.
Made the same way
Each with the logline or beat that made itTrailer · Noir26s
Rain Check
Logline: A private investigator hired to find a missing accountant realises the woman who hired him is the one the accountant was running from.
Cut · Road Movie1:58
Salt Flats
Logline: Two estranged sisters drive their late father’s pickup across the desert to scatter his ashes at a drive-in that closed thirty years ago.
Questions
- Can I add my own genre?
- Not as a tone block. Pick the closest of the twelve and put the specifics of the look you want in the director’s note and the beat lines.
- Does the genre change the price?
- No. Scenes are priced by seconds, quality and resolution; the genre only changes the prompt.
- Can I change the genre after shooting?
- Yes, but scenes already shot keep the tone they were shot with. Reshoot the beats you want in the new tone and cut again.
- Who owns the genre films I make?
- You own them under the terms of service. Copyright law varies by country, so take advice locally before commercial use. Read the terms.
- Are the genres suitable for all audiences?
- Every flick here is held to a PG-13 line: adults only, no sexual content, no gore. Creature feature and survival are written to be tense rather than graphic.
Start with the sample logline, or your own
The studio opens with this logline, genre and runtime filled in. Change anything.