the PITCH - how the hell do i write one!!!

scarletkitten said:

ok so..... trying to write a pitch and I am completely lost hahaha

i know my story inside out, im very passionate about it, i love the characters, i love the relationships, I love the general atmosphere of the show, but its so hard to convey the excitement I feel about it. its not like anything really happens, but loads does, Im not sure what aspects to focus on, do i just say what I personally love about it or do I try to adopt a more generic tone about the whole thing????

help!!!

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First, I think you're confusing you're terminology. A "pitch" is generally something that is done verbally, not something that is written, although occasionally one may be asked to provide a "leave behind" -- a sort of summary of the proposed work to remind whoever it is of the high points of the pitch.

That's the whole point of a pitch -- it isn't a treatment, it isn't an outline -- you've been asked to "pitch' the project -- to go somewhere and essentially tell someone the story of your movie -- either the movie you've already written or the movie you'd like to write.

And no -- it's not so easy to do under the best of circumstances.

It's not a question of what you "personally" love -- I think it's more a matter of thinking like this.

Of course you're the writer, but on some level you wrote the movie because you wanted to see it. You were so passionate about this idea that you spent however long you spent turning it into a screenplay. What you want to do is to focus on what it was that informed that passion because, unless you're somebody whose passions run in exceptionally odd directions, the things that excite you are likely to excite other people. You need to communicate that -- what is it about your script that excites you -- that makes you want to see the movie that's inside it?

The purpose of the pitch, or a document intended to sell your script, is to communicate that passion -- what it is that is special about the premise, the characters, the unique scenes and moments that make you -- and would make anybody, want to buy this script, make this movie -- go see this movie.

NMS

"Green Lantern is a super hero movie about this asshole test pilot who finds a dying alien. The alien gives him a magical ring that enables him to create stuff out of pure THOUGHT. But there's this evil force on the way to destroy the planet, and he has to save it." - This is pretty much verbatim the description given to me by a twelve year old who just saw the film. The kid was totally jazzed about it. (I thought it was ... okay).

That's a fair 'pitch'. That's what exited the kid. The character, the situation, the danger. Note the word 'asshole' - okay, you don't want that in the pitch probably - but that's the word this kid used instead of 'arrogant'. And it really painted the character.

How would you describe the film to a twelve year old? That's a good place to start.

HI

At the conference we did a pitch workshop where we had to deconstruct our pitch so that we would know in inside out. Here is how you write your pitch.

1st) Break it down into 3 Key Elements.
2nd) Write a Strap/Tag Line of about 25 words to describe your pitch.
3rd) Sum it all up in ONE word.

Write on a piece of paper 3 sections:

Positive, Minus, Interesting

Then get a couple of people who will be honest and write down everything you can think of and place it in one of the sections.

Also:
Who is your target audience?
Why will this idea appeal to them?
Find out WHO you are pitching to. - Do your home work.
What do you want fro the pitch?

Kev