The Art of Pitching - Punch Your Ticket to Hollywood

It's an impulse. Every time I spot an odd or striking commercial, television show, or television movie, I can't help but say to myself, "I wonder how their pitch sounded." Or sometimes if appalled by the stupidity I'm witnessing right there in my living room, I'll ask, "Who pitched that, and how in the world did it get green lit?"

Take for example the series of Hillshire Farm commercials, they sound like they're re-arranged cheers from an all-Black high school. I love them! But for a while I was obsessed with trying to imagine how the idea was pitched to the company, the ad agency or whoever was responsible for "making it happen." Even the most off-the-wall idea can shine if it's pitched right.

I'm still reading J. Michael Straczynski's book on scriptwriting, and what section should I happen to stumble upon right after the first episode of the new reality show, On the Lot? That's right. Pitching.

On the Lot produced by Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg that takes 50 budding directors and puts them through a series of filmmaking challenges. Of course the reality show wouldn't really be worth its weight if it didn't include an elimination process. That's right, it's a Filmmaker's Next Top Survivor Idol Camp...Or something like that. The winner of the show gets a million dollar development deal with DreamWorks.

The very first challenge for the director-buds, was pitching a story idea, and some of these pitches were really painful to sit through. Some of the directors choked in front of the judges - Carrie Fisher, Brett Ratner and Garry Marshall - like the pitches were monologues in an amateur theater production of Othello. One of them in particular was so over the top, I almost thought the judges should run and take shelter. Some, though, were right on target.

According to Straczynski, there are five things you can do to minimize the stress and increase your odds of selling stories.

1. Don't get too tied up in the details. Broad strokes are key, ensuring your story has a beginning, middle and end. Too many details puts you at risk of forgetting things or loosing your audience's attention.

2. Don't pitch too many things at once. If you allow too many stories to fly around in the air, your audience might zone out. Be respectful of their time.

3. When pitching multiple stories, bring a variety of pitches. For example, you might want to pitch a couple of fully worked out ideas and a couple of premise lines. There's great potential in quick pitches.

4. Don't read your pitches from a page. Straczynski suggests telling the story the way you would around a campfire. It's okay to bring in reminder notes, but staying off the pages helps keep you flexible.

5. Don't be ashamed of being afraid of pitching. Most people are terrified of public speaking regardless of experience with pitching. But I'd like to add, that just because you're experiencing fear, doesn't mean you should tack on disclaimers at the top of your pitch.

When you're done, you'll know soon if you've hit the mark. If the response is positive you'll soon be happily trotting off to construct an outline of some sort. However, if the answer is no, try to find out what you did wrong and remember to peer through the fog, because the opportunity of "next time" is sometimes hard to perceive after the fresh stinging welt from rejection.