High Concept: The Authoritative Insider's Guide to the Art and Technology of Hollywood Storytelling by AEI client and Hollywood studio veteran and Harvard Ph.D. Garby Leon lays bare the secrets, the history and the strategic studio thinking behind the phenomenon of high concept, Hollywood's most sophisticated creative approach and marketing strategy, and one still largely unfamiliar to the world at large.

In the movie business a high concept idea is often generated at a point very close to a project's inception, and most often it literally is the first idea that sparks a project, the high concept becoming the project's creative square one. High Concept: The Authoritative Guide looks in depth at how professional writers and producers hit that elusive and valuable target again and again, finding and creating professionally viable and commercially exciting high concept ideas upon which to launch movies to a marketplace that can be understood and anticipated with subtlety and finesse. The discussion offers aspiring professionals, observers of Hollywood and even armchair moguls all the tools they need for playing the high concept game themselves, for creating original high concept ideas and for applying the high concept approach to their own lives and careers. Despite all the technique, strategy and thinking that go into developing a high concept project, the challenge always remains for the artist to discover the most brilliant possible solution for the questions and problems posed by high concept stories and ideas.

Far from being a simple formula, the term high concept carries with it an implied sophisticated understanding of both the movie industry and popular culture in the contemporary marketplace. Gaining a sophisticated understanding of how that marketplace interacts with the creative process is utterly necessary for anyone seeking to understand how Hollywood works. Following that, many insights arise on how high concept affects allied information and media fields, such as journalism, popular fiction, music, advertising, marketing and politics.

In succeeding chapters High Concept: The Authoritative Insider's Guide takes a critical look at basic literary terminology used to discuss story structure and design, then builds a rich definition of high concept by using functional descriptions and creating a multi-faceted phenomenology of characteristics and results that play a part in high concept professional activity. Discussion then returns to the real world of the movie business as the book takes you "into the room" and looks at typical situations that arise in Hollywood creative meetings, then offering a complete analysis of all the critical thinking that will be brought to bear in judging an idea.

Other chapters give an historical context, discussing how high concept arose in the first place, then moving intoa practical discussion on how a high concept plays its role in the execution of the high concept screenplay, with sections discussinggenre, character and story development and how all interact under the high concept regime. After a chapter with closer analysis of several contemporary examples of high concept movies, the book then inspects some non-high concept motion pictures, how they arose and what it all means for filmmaking culture in the era of high concept. Finally there is a discussion of the use of high concept in fields outside the motion picture industry, and at the very end several critical appendices offer personal reflections on Hollywood career issues and a critical bibliography with an overview of other books in the field.

In all this High Concept: The Authentic Insider's Guide becomes far more than a book on screenwriting - it reveals and explains why the world is the way it is, identifying and detailing the use of high concept in marketing, politics, advertising and public relations, the high concept shaping how ideas, products and trends are sold and purveyed, and even how nations communicate. From its investigation into how the dream factory creates and weighs new ideas, it looks at how the pervasive influence of high concept marketing has grown far beyond California's movie studios, becoming a strategy for media mythmaking and a potent tool for branding and selling everything: books, broadcasting, journalism, music, art, pop culture and politics. In looking at all the complex ways high concept works in our real world, we can see more clearly what it really is - a very special kind of idea, one with its own inner dynamic, one that has, in a sense, its own life and an energy that can carry its message to millions.