Jacob has lost faith. When a woman who says she's from the future appears at his door with a grave warning, Jacob must decide whether to believe her or face the consequences.

good luck!

thanks - that logline you've suggested is getting pretty close. i'd watch that movie!
i'll take another stab at it.

hey nicholasandrewhalls
Irony catches the readers attention. Not all loglines have irony, but most of the good ones do, for example .

A lawyer that can not lie (liar liar) a king that can't speak to his people (The kings speach) That is irony.

"a future where criminals are arrested before the crime occurs, a drug addicted cop struggles on the lam to prove his innocence for a murder he has not yet committed. (Minority Report) Irony.

Jacobs own work turns out to be his down fall? Irony?

Your logline should be in between 25-30 words.

Names and age are irrelevant unless they are relevant to the story.
The protag is a developer. How would you describe him, character-wise? Lonely? obsessive-compulsive? Drug addict? (like Minority Report) Something that he needs to overcome at the end of the story.

"After being warned from a woman claiming to be from the future. A obsessive developer must make the choice to heed her warning or continue his work that may bring the downfall of man"

something like that but better... Hope it helps.

Thanks guys - super helpful. How about this?

"Jacob has lost his faith. When a woman who says she's from the future appears at his door with a warning, he's faced with an impossible choice - to believe her at the cost of his reputation and sanity, or fail and be responsible for revisiting the evils of the past on the future."

The stakes are clear to me (and hopefully, with that new logline, clearer to you), but I'm struggling identifying my antagonist. The woman explains that the military applications of the work he is doing (developing more accurate weather prediction software) leads to the development of the first time machines, and that allows a malevolent military the ability to alter history in their favour. So the antagonist might be the 'big bad military' she describes. But the conflict of at least the first half of the story concerns itself mostly with Jacob's incredulity. So he's kind of his own antagonist? (is that possible?). In the final act, it is revealed that the woman is actually an employee (from the present) of a rival software company who were direct competitors for the military contract Jacob's team has been working under. Her objective was to make him believe his work was dangerous to the future of humanity, so that he would sabotage it from within, and force the brass to pull their funding from his company and give it to hers. So ultimately she is the antagonist, but as this is a third act reveal I didn't think it right to include in the logline?

Genre wise I guess it's science fiction, because it deals with time travel. But in the same way that Primer or Another Earth are science fiction films, or Monsters is a monster movie - low key sci fi, perhaps?

Also - Andrew, I've never had to identify the irony in a story I've written. Is this really necessary, and if so how do I identify it?

I agree with Mdavidson, it is very vague.

fill out the elements below, maybe it will make your logline more clearer
.
Protag- Jacob
Antag- ?
Goal- heed warning, to survive, to change/learn?
Inner - rediscover faith?
Outer -?
Irony- girl from future is daughter etc?
Hook- ?
Genre- ?

Someone gave me this info, helps me a lot when doing my logline. Hope this helps you too, best of luck.

>Jacob must decide whether to believe her or face the consequences.
The first part of the logline is specific enough, but this is too vague, IMHO, and doesn't tell us what the stakes are or who the antagonist is.