Some Practical Advice For Surviving Your Next Pitch
Stay hydrated, stay on script, stay with the emotion
I’ve been pitching a movie this week (it’s a project I’ve been developing for a while, with a director attached, discussed in my halfway through 2024 roundup) and it’s been nice having a packed schedule of (virtual) meetings for us to take out an idea together. Even just a few pitches in it’s been fun to feel how the energy has changed with each pitch, and just this morning it feels like we’ve hit our stride and finally know what we’re doing.
Earlier this summer, while we were working on crafting the pitch, I wrote about best practices for putting a pitch together. I love love love when someone shares concrete guidelines for what these sort of things should look like, because when you start out in this business nobody tells you! Well that post is all about what a pitch should include and what a pitch is supposed to do.
This week I wanted to get even more granular about process!!!! How are we doing it?! Why are we doing it that way?
If that’s interesting to you, then read on…
This pitch is based on IP. So in advance of our meetings our producers have sort of teed up the project with the people we are pitching to with a primer on the original source material, and background on myself and the director. Which is great because this way we don’t have to spend too much time talking about the source material, or ourselves. After a few minutes of small talk we can get straight into… “here’s our vision for the movie.”
We’ve been setting 1-2 pitches a day, which is the perfect amount. But we do have one day where we have three pitches back to back (which is too much but we will survive). All our pitches have been in the mornings — this is partly due to time zone constraints, but I personally think pitching to people in the morning is best. People are still drinking coffee, and they haven’t yet gotten to the part of the afternoon where they’re watching the clock waiting for the day to end… Morning mind is less distracted and less tired, IMO.
The director and I wrote our pitch in Google Docs so we can both have it open on our separate computers to look at while we’re pitching, and we’ve written out a script where the two of us trade back and forth throughout the pitch — the areas that feel more about tone/visual aesthetic/style are the director’s, and getting us through the majority of the story beats is for me. Then for our more visual set pieces, we switch again from writer to director. And back again when those sequences end.
Why hand off throughout? It’s more engaging! It’s way less boring than listening to one person lecture at you for 15-20 minutes. Remember high school? It helps keep our audience awake, and it lets each of us bring our own unique skills to the pitch. Some things are in fact better to hear from a director than a writer! And vice versa. So we’re switching off every few minutes throughout and it seems to keep things from feeling too tedious.
Another selfish reason this has proven useful is… it gives you a chance to drink some water! And catch your breath! I tend to pitch material at a brisk pace, trying to keep us in the emotional mindset of the characters as I’m talking, and so it’s nice to be able to hand off for “and then we have this great setpiece…” so I can just breathe. I also think the changes in tempo just help everyone stay tuned in and not get too distracted.
The perfect pitch should get you emotionally connected to the movie. If something heartbreaking happens, it should feel heartbreaking. Pitching is, after all, performance, so you want to be channeling the emotion of the movie as you’re telling it. Our movie has some heartbreaking stuff in it. Ideally as you pitch it you want that catch in your throat feeling. It comes across to your audience! Even over zoom!
And speaking of zoom…
I always try to load zoom early because zoom always seems to need to update. And before I do, I turn on a little light above my monitor so I am well lit and look nice! Seems silly but, don’t forget, this is Hollywood! Appearances are in fact important here. Anything you can do to have a more professional surrounding, and a more professional appearance on zoom is important! It helps demonstrate that you are in fact a professional. This is what you want people to think! Another way to demonstrate that is… upgrade your webcam! The built in cameras on macs tend to not look great over zoom and upgrading mine to an external camera has been really useful so that I look more like a real person and less like a pixelated smudge,
As we end our pitch our director wraps up by expressly stating what he wants the audience to feel emotionally as the movie is ending. I think it’s a really clean and clear way to end a pitch, and I never would have thought to wrap it up that way but it really feels nice to have someone succinctly say at the end “and here’s what we want them to leave with.” I would highly recommend finding a way to do something similar!
And then we say thank you and remind them that we’re open to answer any questions that they may have. The q&a portion tends to be where you can actually tell whether the pitch went well, because this is where you actually get to hear from the people you’ve pitched to. You can usually tell immediately by the tone here whether people are at all interested. If there are no questions… uh oh. If there are questions but they are mainly about trying to understand… uh oh. If there are questions where they seem thoughtful and interested in the world and the characters and collaborative and invested in understanding… great!
And then… you wait. Or you immediately hop on the next zoom and do it again.
Movie rec of the week: I missed it when it came out but just watched I Want You Back (2022) starring Jenny Slate and Charlie Day. Written by Isaac Aptaker & Elizabeth Berger, it’s a really sweet rom-com with great performances and a very funny subplot about Little Shop of Horrors. A fun and nice time, currently streaming on Amazon.
What do you guys make of pitching? Any tips or tricks you guys have? I’d love to hear ‘em!