The Three Stages of Pitch

One of the toughest things for many screenwriters to come to grips with is the Pitch Meeting. Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio were so bad at meetings that Steven Spielberg told them, "It's a good thing you guys write better than you pitch."

Lynda Obst, who produced films such as The Fisher King (1991), Sleepless in Seattle (1994), Someone Like You (2001), The Invention of Lying (2009), had the same problem when she started in Hollywood.

In her book, Hello, He Lied, and Other Tales from the Hollywood Trenches, Lynda says that when she first came to town, she wrote notes for herself, as she came to grips with this unusual social event.

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Pitch is transactional theater. The quality of its performance is an important factor in its outcome. Regardless of the nature of the story we pitch—historical drama, cartoon adventure, police procedural, inspirational coming of age, brainless comedy, classic remake—there is a customary structure to both its content and its performance. Each pitch has three stages.

1. The Prep

Before the segue into the pitch, the producer has to prep the room. We do this by talking about the spouse, the boy/girlfriend or lack thereof, Gymboree, yoga, diets, the playoffs (if it's the right season; any playoff will do), or whether some mogul is going to buy Sony or MCA or Disney or anywhere at all. Gossip is currency in prepping the room. Charm rules.

2. The Windup

The job of the windup is to warm up the room. No self-respecting producer should ever rely on the writer for personality and ease. (Notable exceptions are some comedy writers, who are like standup comedians. This brings to mind the perennial question: If the pitch is funny will the script necessarily be funny? Hard-learned answer: No.)

First of all, the writer is likely to be only person in the room more nervous than the producer. Second, his talent is often in inverse proportion to his ability to pitch—read: schmooze. Consider the almost axiomatic observation: Good writers pitch badly and bad writers pitch well. The exceptions—the good writers who pitch well—are a function of gifted personality. They're charming. They are often the most highly paid, more often future directors.

A tip: Writers for whom solutions come too quickly are suspect. The writer should know that the solution to a story point is supposed to be harder than that.

3. The Concept

Then the wired producer must meet his optimal challenge, the mark of a truly gifted pitcher: He must present the concept whole—the miniaturization of the idea. It must be succinct. This is the famous high concept. Its seminal influence is the TV Guide log line.  The most common (and banal) form of the high concept idea is the hybrid: as in "Pretty Woman meets Friday the Thirteenth" (a great-looking whore is dismembered by a horrific, hockey-mask wearing creep). It requires virtually no imagination. By combining the names of past hits, one forms genetically engineered new movie ideas—sort of.

The appeal of these ideas is that they appear to reduce the risk level for the buyer. And they don't take deep concentration to grasp. No limb jumping here. Just by referencing these past hits, we share their patina of success.

Before the meeting the producer should have prepared the writer to be able to tell the story without going into excruciating detail. Members of the pitching party should have resolved among themselves any major plot disputes. This sounds obvious, but I can't tell you how many pitch meetings I've seen go awry through internal debate. Like an escalating marital rift, these meetings dangle perilously on the precipice of collapse unless grand synthesis is quickly found. This is your job (producer). Subtle theoretical issues can remain tactically open as these minor snags often invite debate from the buyer, intriguing and involving him.

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Hello, He Lied    IMDb    Website    Sleepless in Hollywood

First posted: 31 August 2013

Pitching to the crowd

Thomas Mai is a film producer and sales agent, turned crowdfunding pioneer. He is currently running Mission: Pozible for the crowdfunding enterprise Pozible. He describes his job as helping "filmmakers connect with their audience before, during and after they have made a film." He has been involved with eleven crowdfunding exercises. 
    The following article first appeared in Truly Free Film last October.

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Filmmakers: You Are Being Lied To

Filmmakers, you’ve been lied to. Film school has taught you to pitch the WHAT about your project — WHAT is the story, WHAT is the cast, WHAT are the target group for the film etc — but the WHAT is not the most important element when it comes to crowdfunding. The WHY is!  You see it comes down to your likability on camera.  ‘But I’m cool and I’m a great filmmaker’ I hear you say. While that’s good for you, that’s not why people want to engage with your crowdfunding campaign.

More people will support something that is important to them, something that matters to them. Whether you are doing a drama, a comedy, a sci-fi project, or a documentary on environmental changes, more people will support you if you tell them WHY it matters that you make the film and therefore WHY it matters to them. You have to smitten your audience and become an ambassador for your own film.

Having run eleven crowdfunding campaigns, I can tell you this from my own experience — People don’t support WHAT you do, people support WHY you do it.

In crowdfunding you’re communicating directly with your audience. Meaning all the old pitching rules go out the window. For the past 100 years pitching for films has been business to business (B2B), meaning that you were speaking to a person or entity that represents the business side of the film making whether that be the distributor, investor, TV station or sales agent. These gatekeepers were integral as they were the ones that would make the film available to your audience. With crowdfunding though, you’re pitching directly to the audience, the consumer. It is a Business to Consumer model (B2C) with your audience wanting to know the WHY. The better you communicate the WHY the better the conversion rate from people watching your crowdfunding trailer to people funding your film.

Which is why I always say YOU should be in the trailer. Not only because you are unique, but because your take on the WHY is what makes your film stand out. Which brings me back to my point that the more “likable” you are in your crowdfunding trailer the better your chances are of raising money.

Think about this for a second, would you ever give money to someone you don’t like or don’t trust? Add passion, humour and the WHY in your crowdfunding trailer and you are off to a great start. Isn’t it better that you can have a direct relationship with your audience to help get your film made? If you had told Charlie Chaplin that there is a free tool where you can get millions of people to hear your message for free and then ask them to all contribute and send you money, he would have signed up in a second. Instead Chaplin had to fight tough battles with the studios and start United Artists.

Yes crowdfunding is a great way to raise money, but if you forget about the money for a second then you will find that crowdfunding is a great way to build early awareness, marketing and most importantly an audience. If you are successful at crowdfunding you will no longer only represent a vision, script and a budget, but you will also get to represent your audience and that is where the real value is in today’s film industry.

There are three questions that you need to answer in your crowdfunding trailer:

1. Why is your project important?

2. Why should people care?

3. Why should people give you money?

If you can’t answer these questions, you are not ready to start a crowdfunding campaign, in my opinion. Start with the WHY and it will be easier for you to build an audience, awareness, early marketing and crowdfunding.

Happy crowdfunding.

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Eight easy ways to kill a movie pitch stone dead

This is post #1,100.
Last month the venerable Lucy Hay posted the following as part of the lead up to London Screenwriters' Festival (24-26 October 2014). Lucy is, of course, a novelist, script editor, screenwriter, a blogger who helps writers, and one of the organisers of London Screenwriters’ Festival. She is a mother with a backpack full of practical common sense and a ton of experience hearing pitches. Here she shares eight easy ways to kill a pitch utterly stone dead. (Don't try this at home unless you have your own cliché-o-meter.)

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8 Pitch Killers To Avoid At London SWF

At London Screenwriters Festival, you’ll probably be turning your thoughts to making the best impression you can, especially when speed pitching, not to mention sending out those one pagers afterwards.
   Human beings prize novelty: if your pitchee has heard or read the same thing over and over, chances are your pitch or (just as importantly) YOU will not stand out during the festival. And standing out, as we know, is half the battle.
   So what are those Pitch KILLERS that make Execs, agents and filmmakers roll their eyes and say, “What else have you got?” Well, maddeningly, this can depend on the individual … but a decade of script reading/ talking to my colleagues has prompted me to share the following list:

1.) Dystopian / Post Apocalyptic. Yeah, we get it: THE FUTURE SUCKS. And why not. Science Fiction usually has something to say about our present, so it’s no accident recession and austerity spawns negative views of what’s coming next for the human race. Also, if the future is a barrel of laughs, then why are we watching? Drama is conflict and all that. So it’s not that I’m asking for UTOPIAS (though if you can pull it off, by all means); but rather, why not use DIFFERENT WORDS that mean “dystopian” and “post apocalyptic”? We are writers, after all. FYI, I’m bored to death of “not so distant future” as well. Get those thesauruses out!

2.) Steampunk. I don’t care what anyone says; Steampunk is NOT a genre—it’s an aesthetic, related to an arena. But regardless of what you think, Steampunk is like Marmite. People really do seem to love or hate it. So know where the people you’re pitching to stand on this issue. Do they love or hate Steampunk? If you can’t find out in advance, be aware even just uttering this word can be a calculated risk. For the record, I hate Steampunk, but someone got one past me only recently, which I recommended “up the chain” … How? The writer never once called it Steampunk. Yes, the language you use can make all the difference. ‘Cos it’s PROFESSIONAL WRITING.

3.) Supernatural. This word is defined in the dictionary as: “attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature; manifestations or events considered to be of supernatural origin. Synonyms: preternatural, unearthly, weird, miraculous.” It’s often an industry “catch all” for ALL things “not natural”, whether that’s vampires and werewolves; the paranormal; or—get this—ALIENS. 
   Note: no one cares whether you think aliens should come under the “Science Fiction” banner … That’s a genre. 
   “Supernatural” is not a genre, it’s an adjective; it describes the weird and (not so) wonderful, the NOT every day, of which aliens are definitely part. So be very careful if your pitchee says this word about your project that involves aliens. DO NOT OBJECT and start ranting* about how Sci Fi and Fantasy are two different distinct genres blah blah blah, otherwise you may just talk yourself out of the game. 
   (*Yes, I have witnessed this. Countless times. Never let your Geek side overcome your writer side!)

4.) Guilt ridden/ Guilt struck. So your protagonist did something in the past that HAUNTS him/her (especially her)? LE YAWN. This is one of the most overused adjectives in loglines and verbal pitches, to the point I want to reach over tables or through laptop screens and give the writer a bop on the nose. 
   Look, I get it. You want to give an idea of character motivation and relate it to backstory; sometimes guilt can do that (though it is horribly overused, especially with female protagonists). Again: get those thesauruses out!

5.) Learn to live & love again. Dudes, seriously. Not only is this red alert on my patented B2W cliché-o-meter, it tells us next to nothing about the goal or mission of the protagonist or how the story works. Turning up most often in dramas and romantic comedy pitches, this phrase is super redundant, as any story about relationship can end only two ways anyway: they stay together, they get pulled apart. So tell us which way the story goes and how!

6.) Heal old wounds. OK, amber alert on the B2W cliché-o-meter, so slightly better because at least it gives us a hint of backstory and that there will be a happy ending (albeit vague) BUT … And there’s always a “but” with me … It’s still crap. Soz. For one thing, every member of the audience signs up for a story arc in the characters they watch, so “healing” is again pretty redundant, as is “old wounds”, as the notion of the flawed character is universal in our culture. Again: be specific!

7.) Confront old demons. Aaaaand we’re back up to red on the B2W cliché-o-meter! I can’t stress enough how much of a DANGER cliché is to your pitches and submissions. Just as people in the industry do not want stories that have already been told, they do not want submissions the same way they’ve always seen them. Now I like to play what I call “Script Reader Bingo” and keep records and lists of phrases, words, characters and storylines that crop up again and again, year on year. Here’s how many times I saw the phrase “confronts old demons” in 2010: 67. In 2011? 85. 2012? 22 (and I barely read any scripts that year, ‘cos I was ill!). 2013 knocked every year’s block off though, with 126! That’s practically once EVERY THREE DAYS.

8.) Prophecy / Destiny. It comes down to this: if you write or talk about prophecy or danger in your pitch, there’s a very strong chance you’re taking your characters and/or plot into passive territory. Ditto that for characters “discovering” exposition handily via the mediums of diaries, psychic powers, or amulets/other objects. And guess what: we generally watch TV and go to the movies to see characters DO STUFF, not have it all served to them on a plate as stuff happens TO them. In other words: reject the passive; go for the ACTIVE. Every time. Because your audience will.

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The powerful tool people forget when pitching

Minda Zetlin is a business technology writer and speaker, co-author of The Geek Gap, and president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. She is a regular contributor to Inc.com and Inc. magazine. 
     She recently attended the National Publicity Summit to see what it was like to be on the receiving end of the pitches. Here is her report, as published in Inc. magazine. It is not aimed at screenwriters, but you'll be able to translate the key points with a little thoughtfulness.
________________________________________________________________________

It was an educational afternoon. I learned that being on the receiving end of a pitching event is much less nerve-racking but much more wearing than being the one doing the pitches, because no sooner is one brief pitching session finished than someone arrives for the next one. I met about forty people, some of them authors with interesting concepts that I was happy to hear about. But to my surprise, almost no one who pitched me used what I've found to be the most powerful tool in these settings.

That tool is asking questions.

All of the people who pitched gave a description of their product or concept and why they thought it would appeal to the readership of this column, and then they waited to hear what I thought about it. None of them asked what kinds of stories I was looking for or what kinds of topics appealed most to my readers.
     Admittedly, they had only a very short time (less than three minutes!) to sell me on their ideas, and I'm sure they thought there wasn't much time for back-and-forth. But even in the shortest of pitch sessions, asking questions is a powerful and smart thing to do. Here's why:

1. You'll break the pattern of endless pitching.

A rhythm develops when you step or sit in front of someone and launch right into a spiel. Pausing to ask a question or two breaks that pattern in a good way and gives the person you're pitching a short breather from the onslaught of sales pitches. And because so few people think to ask questions in this setting, your pitch session is likely to stick in your prospect's memory.

2. You'll engage your potential customer.

"The sexiest sentence in the world is: 'Talk to me.'" A colleague of mine with a very successful track record from pitching events told me this once, and it's really stuck with me. Asking people what they want shows that you care about what they want. And most people are more open to transacting when they feel cared about.

3. You can better match the prospect's needs.

Years ago, I met with an editor from CreditCards.com at a pitching event. I had a set of pitches about the credit card industry all ready to go, but early in the conversation, I asked the editor what she was looking for. The answer surprised me: offbeat and unusual topics.
    I didn't have one of those prepared, but I had recently been given a debit card that my bank printed while I waited and that had no raised letters or numbers. I pulled it out of my handbag and showed it to her, and asked if she'd be interested in a piece on these weird flat debit cards. She was, and her company has been a regular client ever since. If I hadn't asked, I wouldn't have known to pitch that topic and might never have landed that first assignment.

4. You won't seem in a rush to make a sale.

Veterans of pitching events all know it's extremely rare for a deal to be completed in a meeting just a few minutes long. Your objective should be to make a connection, one you can follow up later on outside of the hullabaloo of a pitching event. Asking questions signals your intention is to build that relationship rather than just make a quick deal.

5. You'll be better able to continue the conversation.

If all you've done is pitch your product or idea, then the only follow-up you're able to send is more information or a written sales pitch for that same product or company. Asking questions opens up many new possibilities. If you learn, for instance, that the person you're pitching is interested in some newly released technology, you might send an article on the topic with a note reminding your contact of your meeting. Building that kind of relationship puts you in much better shape to make an eventual sale.

6. You'll gain a competitive edge.

Looking for a way to stand out from the crowd? Many people making pitches try to make an impression with a little schwag or a slickly produced piece of literature. I like schwag as much as the next person, but to be honest, asking questions and getting to know what a prospect really wants will make you stand out much more in that person's mind than a gift of the latest cute gadget. Especially because no one else is doing it.

7. You'll make the pitch about the potential customer or investor, not you.

This is the most important reason to ask questions during a pitching session. You came to the event with one goal in mind--to sell your product or gain investment for your company. But the person sitting across from you has his or her own agenda, which may involve buying products or making investments but is certainly not the same as yours. Asking questions lets you quickly focus your interaction on fulfilling the person's needs, not yours.

And that's the quickest way to make a sale.

The Three Stages of Pitch

One of the toughest things for many screenwriters to come to grips with is the Pitch Meeting. Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio were so bad at meetings that Steven Spielberg told them, "It's a good thing you guys write better than you pitch."

Lynda Obst, who produced films such as The Fisher King (1991), Sleepless in Seattle (1994), Someone Like You (2001), The Invention of Lying (2009), had the same problem when she started in Hollywood.

In her book, Hello, He Lied, and Other Tales from the Hollywood Trenches, Lynda says that when she first came to town, she wrote notes for herself, as she came to grips with this unusual social event.
___________________________________________________

Pitch is transactional theater. The quality of its performance is an important factor in its outcome. Regardless of the nature of the story we pitch—historical drama, cartoon adventure, police procedural, inspirational coming of age, brainless comedy, classic remake—there is a customary structure to both its content and its performance. Each pitch has three stages.

1. The Prep

Before the segue into the pitch, the producer has to prep the room. We do this by talking about the spouse, the boy/girlfriend or lack thereof, Gymboree, yoga, diets, the playoffs (if it's the right season; any playoff will do), or whether some mogul is going to buy Sony or MCA or Disney or anywhere at all. Gossip is currency in prepping the room. Charm rules.

2. The Windup

The job of the windup is to warm up the room. No self-respecting producer should ever rely on the writer for personality and ease. (Notable exceptions are some comedy writers, who are like standup comedians. This brings to mind the perennial question: If the pitch is funny will the script necessarily be funny? Hard-learned answer: No.)

First of all, the writer is likely to be only person in the room more nervous than the producer. Second, his talent is often in inverse proportion to his ability to pitch—read: schmooze. Consider the almost axiomatic observation: Good writers pitch badly and bad writers pitch well. The exceptions—the good writers who pitch well—are a function of gifted personality. They're charming. They are often the most highly paid, more often future directors.

A tip: Writers for whom solutions come too quickly are suspect. The writer should know that the solution to a story point is supposed to be harder than that.

3. The Concept

Then the wired producer must meet his optimal challenge, the mark of a truly gifted pitcher: He must present the concept whole—the miniaturization of the idea. It must be succinct. This is the famous high concept. Its seminal influence is the TV Guide log line.  The most common (and banal) form of the high concept idea is the hybrid: as in "Pretty Woman meets Friday the Thirteenth" (a great-looking whore is dismembered by a horrific, hockey-mask wearing creep). It requires virtually no imagination. By combining the names of past hits, one forms genetically engineered new movie ideas—sort of.

The appeal of these ideas is that they appear to reduce the risk level for the buyer. And they don't take deep concentration to grasp. No limb jumping here. Just by referencing these past hits, we share their patina of success.

Before the meeting the producer should have prepared the writer to be able to tell the story without going into excruciating detail. Members of the pitching party should have resolved among themselves any major plot disputes. This sounds obvious, but I can't tell you how many pitch meetings I've seen go awry through internal debate. Like an escalating marital rift, these meetings dangle perilously on the precipice of collapse unless grand synthesis is quickly found. This is your job (producer). Subtle theoretical issues can remain tactically open as these minor snags often invite debate from the buyer, intriguing and involving him.

_______________________________________________________________________

Hello, He Lied    IMDb    Website    Sleepless in Hollywood

Avoid pitching disaster

Josh Linkner, jazz guitarist

Many screenwriters hate having to pitch their latest idea to someone who could really make a difference to their lives. Stomach tightens to a knot. Throat dries up. Palms become clammy. Vision blurs. Mind goes blank... Well, okay, that's just me.

The thing I dislike even more than pitching is practice pitching. I think that's worse because you're under intense scrutiny without the trade-off that maybe, just maybe, this hassle will bring a reward.

But enough about me. Meet Josh Linkner. He is a Berklee-trained professional jazz guitarist performing regularly in jazz clubs throughout the United States. He is also a venture capitalist.  

Josh was the founder of four successful technology companies. He has been honored as the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, the Detroit News Michiganian of the Year, and is a President Barack Obama Champion of Change award recipient. Josh is a regular columnist for Fast Company and Inc. Magazine, and his work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, and The New York Times. He currently runs Detroit Venture Partners, together with business partners Earvin “Magic” Johnson and NBA team owner Dan Gilbert, and is also Adjunct Professor of Applied Creativity at the University of Michigan. 

Oh, and he is also the New York Times Bestselling author of Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity, one of the top 10 business books of 2011. And he is a regular blogger at joshlinkner.com where he recently had this to say on the subject of pitching to a venture capitalist. (No different to pitching to a producer or agent, really.) 

Most of us have something to pitch. You may be pitching your startup to a VC to secure funding. Or perhaps you’re pitching your product or service to potential customers. Whether you are pitching your case to a jury, your hypothesis for a research grant, yourself for a new job, or your best friend for a date with that cute guy, a simple rule applies: the better the pitch, the better the results.

As a venture capitalist, I hear pitches every day. In this highly competitive environment, a strong pitch can be the difference-maker between securing millions in funding and completely missing the mark.

There are many obvious cliché moves: give a firm handshake, communicate with passion, make strong eye-contact, and try to relate with your audience. Yet there are approaches I see constantly that sabotage an otherwise good pitch. To significantly improve your batting average, avoid these disaster moves when pitching just about anything:

1) THE RUN-ON SENTENCE: One of my pet peeves is listening to someone drone on for a 45-minute monologue. In your big moment, your instinct is to communicate everything you know, the entire history of your idea, and endless amusing anecdotes. Avoid this urge! Your pitch will be 100 times more powerful if you can make it concise. Make every word count.

2) THE FACT LEAP: Anyone who is being pitched has turned on their highly-developed BS-detector to full tilt. We are questioning everything you say and trying to poke holes in your story. So the minute you exaggerate a stat, make an outrageous claim, or state a fact that can be challenged, your credibility crumbles.

3) THE OVERSELL: If you make a strong point once, it resonates. If you feel the need to make the same point several times you end up diluting the power of the message. If you keep pushing a point, you transform before our eyes from a passionate world-changer to a used-car-salesperson or infomercial pitchman. If what you are pitching it that special, you don’t need to oversell it.

4) THE S.A.T.: When responding to a question, just answer it directly. If you tell a four-minute story that includes 73 data points, the listener feels like they are taking an S.A.T. exam in which they need to sift through all the irrelevant stuff in order to get the answer. This does not help you shine or get your message heard.

Grandiose braggers may entertain at cocktail parties, but they rarely win the battle of the pitch. Keep it authentic and real. Your startup with 11 beta customers isn’t a billion-dollar company just yet. Think big, but stay humble. After hearing a pitch where the daring hero outperforms Groupon and Apple in their second year with trillions of revenue and six billion customers, I’m ready for a shower instead of a closing dinner.

Hone your pitch to stand out from the hapless masses that continue to fall into the same traps. In turn, you’ll land the job, get the girl, win the capital, and seize your full potential.

And now for something completely different, Josh Linkner and band. 

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