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The Wind-up and the PitchCynthia's Column August 2005 This is the time of year when a little pitching tool kit upgrade is what's called for. Here's your pitching tool kit:
Tool #1: Title. Choose a strong title that is genre appropriate. It should not be a poetic title for an action adventure, for example. And if it's a comedy, the title should be funny. If your title's not great, and you're planning to fix it later, fix it now! I mean it. A project with a good title is much easier to sell. Tool #2: An Ad-line. Also called a Slug-line. This is a way to start marketing your project immediately by writing your own ad-line for it. Some examples from movie marketing: If Adventure had a name, it would be Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark Two words that strike fear into every American's heart: Jury Duty In space no one can hear you scream. Alien A comedy from the heart that goes for the throat. As Good As It Gets Home Alone. A family comedy without the family. From zero to hero. The Mask. Parenthood. It could happen to you. Rock Star. The story of a wannabe who got to be. A comedy about truth, justice and other special effects. Wag the Dog Meet a man who never met a woman he didn't love. Alfie Your ad-line will give you a sharp, clever way to open your pitch. (It'll also give you a great opening for a query letter. Most of these tips for pitching are identical for query letters.) Something like this: YOU: "If adventure had a name it would be Indiana Jones. Raiders of the Lost Ark is an action adventure movie set in..." and you're off and pitching. So start by spending the time to come up with a great ad-line. It might take a few hours to write and ten seconds to deliver, but there are many stories about an ad-line selling a project almost by itself. "What two words strike fear into the heart of every American?" was an ad-line that instantly sold Jury Duty. (If you don't remember it, it starred Pauly Shore.) Tool #3: Genre. Get clear on your genre. You need to orient your "Catcher" quickly. You don't want the producer or agent trying to figure out if it's supposed to be funny or scary. Clue them in immediately. "Home Alone is a family comedy without the family." Here the genre is incorporated into the ad-line. Family comedy. So figure out your genre. Mystery? Comedy? Romantic comedy or wacky comedy? Black comedy? Action adventure. Suspense thriller. Horror is big right now in Hollywood. The only genre that is having a hard time in movies at the moment is Drama. If you have a drama and could possibly call it something else, I would. Even if you have to call a divorce drama a Love Story, it'll be easier to sell. I know, I know. Not my fault. You guys need to buy more tickets to movies like Crash and White Oleander and The Hours if you want to write and sell these. Tool #4: The Premise Line. Find a way to get your idea, the premise of your story, into one sentence. I don't care if this takes you a day. Even if you think it's dumb and your idea is too complex and brilliant to be stuffed into one measly sentence. Just do it. Great and complex movies can be summarized in one sentence. I'll do a couple for you. "Shakespeare in Love is a romantic comedy about how falling in love for the first time made it possible for young Will Shakespeare to write Romeo and Juliet." See? It's easy. Here's another: "Gladiator is the story of a Roman general who became a slave, the slave who became a gladiator and the gladiator who defied an empire." Okay, I stole this one from the ad-line. But you get the idea, right? Do this homework. Do it now. Tool #5: The Hook. Now you tell the beginning of your story. The part with the hook in it. The Catalyst. The thing that gets the story rolling. Not the back-story. Not the background exposition. Not the explanation of who the main character is. The event that starts the dramatic or comedic action rolling. The Hook sentence for Home Alone might be: When Kevin's family leaves for the airport to fly to Paris for Christmas, there are so many siblings and cousins, no one notices they're missing one kid. Kevin." Now we're in a story. We're hooked. Tool #6: The Good Parts Version. When my daughter Molly was around 12, she (God knows how) happened to see The Blair Witch project. When she found out her three cousins (good little Mormon girls, unlike us heathens) hadn't seen it and never would see it, Molly proceeded to tell them the movie. At the breakfast table. I listened in to the story (I had not seen the movie) and Molly's ten-minute version made everyone's hair stand up. At breakfast! She scared the hell out of all of us. When I saw the movie, later, I was disappointed, because Molly's version was better and scarier. And she was a kid. This is what a good pitch should be. Short. Intense. Producing the emotion in the listener that the movie or book itself aims to produce. If it's scary, scare 'em! If it's a comedy, make 'em laugh! If it's supposed to be sad, let yourself be touched by your own story. If you're blinking back tears, you're doing your job. A good pitch is like sitting around the campfire telling the "good parts" version with no thought about yourself, how you look, how you're doing. It's ALL about the story. Don't tell the whole story. Tell the set up and the hook. Then hook them further into the story by telling, in abbreviated fashion, the first 25 % or so. (What in movies is called, Act One.) Summarize, in a few sentences, the middle (Act Two) and don't tell the ending unless they ask you how it ends. Your goal is to make them want to read your manuscript. So leave them wanting more. You can do all of this in five or six minutes. In a ten minute pitch session, like the ones at the conference, you'll need a couple of minutes to transition in and out, so work and practice until you get a lean, clean six minute pitch. How do you start? "Hi. I'm Cynthia Whitcomb." Nothing else about yourself. Really. Those four words, or you can use your own name if you like it better than mine. The fifth word should be your title followed by your ad-line, genre, premise and hook Like this: "Hi. I'm Simon Pegg. Shaun of the Dead is a smash hit romantic comedy with zombies. It's a black comedy set in contemporary London. Slacker Shaun is a loser whose girlfriend is dumping him out of the shear boredom of going to the same pub every night. He is so self-absorbed that he doesn't even notice when his neighborhood begins to be overrun by zombies..." See? Easy. Prepare. Practice. Warm up, wind up and pitch! Cynthia Whitcomb is president of Willamette Writers, and has had 29 of her screenplays produced. She is author of The Writers' Guide to Writing Your Screenplay and The Writers' Guide to Selling Your Screenplay. She teaches screenwriting classes at Portland State University.and through Willamette Writers. |