How to Write a Hybrid Concept for Screenwriters — With Examples

How to Write a Hybrid Concept for Screenwriters — With Examples

Hybrid Concept is an unholy desecration of Concept that is useful as little more than a marketing tool. So why learn how to write a Hybrid Concept logline?

Simple: a Hybrid Concept logline creates a shortcut to emotion by referring to very obvious films—preferably ones that put shit-tons of asses in seats—and is mostly designed to communicate to folks who travel light in the brain cavity.

In short, Hybrid Concept is how you would pitch to a totally uninterested philistine in a desperate attempt to get said philistine interested in what you’re talking about. In many ways, it’s little more than using a definition to define itself.

How do we arrive at Hybrid Concept?

Take two films—or potentially too seemingly opposite situations—and put them together to sell the film. 

Unsurprisingly, Hybrid Concept feels cheap in many ways. It gives us fuck-all to flesh out the story, but where its power lies is in its description of tone.

I rest my case with how Gene Roddenberry pitched the original Star Trek:

Star Trek

(1966, Gene Roddenberry)

Wagon Train in space.

Wagon Train was a popular show from the 1950s where a group of pioneers went across the country and stopped in various towns, so every week it was in a different location. Similarly, every week, Star Trek dealt with a different planet or a different problem on the ship itself.

The pitch here means that it’s a science fiction story, but each week we can refresh with different locations and situations even though we have a fixed crew to keep the story stable. 

Bear this in mind during our later discussion of the Traveling Angel.

Next, let’s look at Alien:

Alien

(1979, Ridley Scott)

Jaws in space.

(Just in case you were wondering, not every Hybrid Concept ends with “in space.”)

This is quite possibly the greatest Hybrid Concept of all time. If you really wanted to encapsulate the tension and fear of the original Alien, I’m not sure you could do better. Not to mention that I much prefer this film to Jaws.

Still, try to pitch the horror and muscle tension of Alien in a better way: you’ve got this monster, and it’s on this spaceship, and it’s picking the crew off one-by-one. Arguably, given the confines of the story itself, you’d be better off calling it The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in space.

That’s just a lot to chew on. Nah, better to just punch us in the gut. Jaws is terrifying as shit, so tap directly into that fear. I thought so.

Let’s look next at Flipper, TV show or 1990s film:

Flipper

(1964, Cowden and Browning)

 Lassie in the water.

Yup. That’s it, right? It’s a boy and his dog, except the dog is, you know, a dolphin. 

Let’s try Clueless:

Clueless

(1995, Amy Heckerling)

Jane Austen’s Emma set in 1990s Beverly Hills.

You’ve got two opposing situations: Austen’s novel set in Somerset in the 1830s and you’ve got 1990s Los Angeles. Smack Jane Austen’s “clueless” teenager into the 1990s and you’ve got a film. In fact, you’ve got a respected film that has become a classic.

Likewise, Mean Girls:

 Mean Girls

(2004, Mark Waters, w. Tina Fey)

Heathers in the noughties.

Heathers is a difficult film to define, but people who know it know it. It’s a cultural touchstone, but one that is dark, violent, and unashamedly satirical. The problem is that all of the murder, sex, and comic violence in the original Heathers just becomes too much for a lot of people.

Mean Girls fixes the problem: it takes the same main ideas about high school popularity that Heathers addressed with total insanity and turns them into a much more upbeat, family-friendly version of the same thing. It would be remiss of me not to call Mean Girls for what it is: a sanitized version of Heathers.

In fact, that’s not even a knock against Mean Girls. It’s a well written movie that is presented extremely well: wherever it came from, remember that execution is 95% of the battle. Plus, the Heathers reference gives us a perfect way to sell it using Hybrid Concept!

Let’s take the Keanu Reeves classic Speed:

 Speed

(Jan de Bont, 1994)

Die Hard on a bus.

What do we know about Die Hard? We know that it’s a violent action film in a limited space. John McClane is trapped in the Nakatomi Building within the first ten minutes of the movie! What else is in the building? Alan Rickman and his band of terrorists, of course.

In Speed, however, we have everybody on the bus and they can’t get off. Instead of terrorists, we have a bomb that will go off if the bus travels less than 55 miles per hour. 

Of course the whole film basically takes place with reference to the bus. Limited space. There are a couple of people we see who are off the bus (just as we see the driver and the cop in Die Hard), but basically everything else is in that limited location.

That’s how Die Hard was originally sold: an action movie in a very limited space. Even better, the Nakatomi Building was actually the Sony building IRL and–unsurprisingly–it was a Sony Pictures film. Never hurts to get a free location, does it?

Speed, using the Hybrid Concept, we can take to be an action movie in a very limited space. It’s just that it’s a different space. Instead of saying the Nakatomi Building, we just say a bus. Simple.

Interesting note: sometimes the hybrid concept films themselves can be used as reference. What was different between Die Hard and Speed? The bus has to maintain its speed. In a crowded city.

Take the bit that’s new and tweak that into a Hybrid Concept for a different film. Make sure a man’s heart rate has to stay high for the entire duration of the film. This time, it’s the Jason Statham film Crank:

Crank

(2006, Neveldine and Taylor)

Speed with sex and drugs.

Boom.

As a final note, the Hybrid Concept simply needs to hang on a core referential idea. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the film itself: occasionally an iconic character is all that really matters. 

This all seems too cheap!

Meh, yes and no.

To redundantly reiterate yet again, the Hybrid Concept procedure is not used so much to write a movie as it is to sell a movie. 

For the purposes of creating something interesting, it may or may not be useful. You’d probably be just as well off sticking a bunch of DVD covers to the wall and throwing darts to see which two they land on. Doesn’t count if you hit the same cover both times.

However, there are certain things that it is exceptionally useful for; first among these is to sell your idea to someone who might not really be able to understand what you’re trying to do from something, you know, creative.

Let’s say you’re having trouble establishing the tone of your story. If you’re in front of someone who’s in a position to give you money, it’s often useful to have a Hybrid Concept logline in the back of your pocket.

The Homework Part:

As an exercise, knock back a couple of shots and aim for five to ten of the weirdest Hybrid Concepts you possibly can. The more opposed, the better. Let me get you started:

>LA Confidential meets The Muppet Movie.

>Toy Story meets Irreversible.

>Deliverance on a cruise ship.

>Thelma and Louise meets The Disaster Artist.

>The Getaway with vampires.

OK, that last one wasn’t mine, but you get the idea.