Pitching

What are three major tips from this article that you took away on how to create a great pitch?

    Three major tips from this article on how to create a great pitch are to focus on essential elements of your story, begin by revealing how you came up with the idea, and to leave the buyer in suspense.

    Focusing on the essential elements of you story is important as you are making this pitch in a very short amount of time and you want to be able to have time left to ask and answer questions and possibly make a second pitch if the buyer passes on your first one. Some key elements that should be established are the protagonist, their "everyday" life at the beginning, why we empathize with them, what opportunity is presented early on to get the story going, what situation are they put into by that opportunity, what visible goal or outer motivation are we hoping the protagonist accomplishes by the end, what is the conflict that makes the goal seem impossible, and what are two antecedents to your screenplay (successful films with the same genre, tone, and/or potential market as yours). In order to get all this information in, you need to avoid trying to tell the whole story and to not get caught up in explaining detailed scenes.

    Starting off the pitch by explaining where you're coming from can both give the buyer some context and also might give them the same excitement that pulled you to write the story. This can be from a personal experience, or that the story was based off of a true story, or a novel that you got the rights for, or an article that spurred your creativity.

    Leaving the buyer in suspense is important because it will leave them wanting more after your pitch. This can be used to push them to ask more questions and be more interested. Some ways to do this can be to put the title and tagline at the end, that way the buyer has a better understanding and the title has more value, and to not say what the ending is. Although you want to keep them in suspense, if the buyer asks a question—like what the ending is—you should answer it clearly and succinctly.