A fresh, unique, and compelling story premise that can be easily summed up in a single sentence or two.
A High Concept is a bare-bones description of the premise of a proposed movie, show, or whatever, used to pitch it to a producer or an audience.
A High Concept work is one that can be explained with a short, to-the-point, and (it is to be hoped) intriguing description; one that can sell on its own merits. This type is loved by producers who can get a full pitch and explanation of what is going to draw in the viewers within ten seconds. From these few lines they can imagine the trailer, the marketing, the Target Audience and merchandise.
Occasionally, as in the page quote, a line of dialogue or narration from a film will sum up its High Concept for us — it sometimes seems like Meddling Executives demanded a good soundbite to put in the trailer. Let Me Get This Straight... is a frequent contributor.
High Concept pitches tend to follow a similar pattern as there is only so many settings, nouns and verbs combinations, some of which have been catalogued as a specific trope. Sitcoms, Situational Comedy, are especially flexible on combinations of characters and settings, including the Work Com and Dom Com. Much of the time a High Concept runs into Recycled with a Gimmick, but these include:
- "Show A meets Show B"
- "One's an X, the other's a Y: they fight crime"
- "Film X in the style of Creator W"
- "A Boy and His X."
- A Sit Comic taking a rising name in comedy and giving them a show like Seinfeld
- A Spin-Off with an Ensemble Dark Horse from a currently popular show given the primary focus, such as Frasier taking Kelsey Grammer's character from Cheers.
- Take a talent headliner with a punchy premise (this works best if they are already on board): Raven-Symoné has psychic powers; Billy Ray Cyrus' daughter Miley Cyrus lives a double-life as a normal teenager and pop icon, Will Ferrell as a racecar driver.
- If the absurd comedy route is taken, thus results a Juxtaposition Gag.
And more specific tropes:
- "Die Hard" on an X: A Closed Circle, near Real Time action film inspired by Die Hard.
- The Magnificent Seven Samurai: Outnumbered warriors protecting a peaceful village, based on Seven Samurai
- Wagon Train to the Stars: A Band of Brothers who are Walking the Earth finding new adventures in every town, originated from the pitch for Star Trek: The Original Series
The Reality Show genre also runs off this, especially if they can crib from something recent.
The opposite of High Concept would be Low Concept. In other words, you can't boil down the premise of a show to a simple pitch or tag line. Slice of Life shows, comedic or otherwise (such as The Middle or Parenthood) are a common example of a Low Concept show.
Not the kind of concept invented while stoned.
Compare Laconic and Conceit. See also Pitch the Work, a Just for Fun page for a game that involves listing High Concepts for works.
