WHERE'S THE DRAMA?

                PITCHING - A VERY DRAMATIC BUSINESS

                           There must be blood, but it needn't be a blood sport

Pitching can be a rather dreaded and unnerving activity for most of us. The idea of fronting up to someone and telling them how great one's story is can seem at times almost unAustralian. The diffidence with which one navigates the cool hipness of the so-called film scene frequently conspires against the expression of genuine emotion or personal committment.

A script or story idea may have much to recommend it, but if the screenwriter, director or producer is unable for whatever reason to imaginatively and succinctly conduct the listener/investor/production comany into the core emotional experience that the film offers, the script or project may never have its time in the sun.

The first and most important thing you need to understand is that you are NOT selling a script - or rather a collection of words ABOUT a script; you are selling a character - and that CHARACTER is YOURSELF.

When Kurt Vonnegut was voted into the Academy of American Authors he was asked to give a speech. Omn the night he sat up on the dais nervously riffling through the pages of what he was going to say. A colleague who worked for the Academy, who was sitting next to him, turned and asksed what he was doing. ""Just making some last minute corrections in what I'm going to say," Vonnegut replied. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," his friend said; "they're not interested in what you say, so much as what you are."

One could equally apply this wisdom to the art of the pitch. It's the characters, stupid! and YOU are the CHARACTER! As a character you are addressing an audience. The words you employ to communictae your ideas may certainly be relevant and useful, but on their own they won't
be enough. What they are looking for is not something that you or anyone else can easily put into words - something extra is required - that secret ingrediant that is some times referred to as charisma or spontaneity. Really it is about you - the ego with all of its anxieties and negativities - getting out of the way. "Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still."

The greatest pitcher is like a jazz musician through which a great riff drives the action - improvisional, fluid, unafraid and living dangerously - and above all - fresh. Alive. Inspiring!

So here are some questions/tips that may be helpful in organising your thoughts and, and helping you develop a strategy for creating a fresh and successful pitch.

You might also want to bring your pitch along to the next PITCH SPORTZ workshop and test it out in the arena... But for a start, you might ask yourself:


What is it? (your project - genre, style, medium, etc)

Who is it for? (at whom is your project aimed?)

What sort of experience do you want your audience to have… and why is it important?

What other shows is it like?

What makes it UNIQUE?

What is the HOOK? Does it have a hook?

Why do you LOVE it? Show us the love!

Remember : When you pitch you are both CASTING AGENT and CHARACTER.

Cast the character that is appropriate to the pitch. The well-cast “character” is that part of you that can most effectively present (make present) the energies inherent in the project.

Memorise the pitch – don’t read it.

If you use AV aids make sure they are appropriate. Don’t bring in polaroids to hold
up if they can’t be seen.

Don’t race through what you have to say – pace and timing speak volumes as to your
feelings concerning what you are pitching. The truth is always in the SUBTEXT.

Don’t give us the impression that you want to get to the end as quickly as possible. We will begin to doubt your commitment and love for the project.

Make sure the combination of YOUR CHARACTER and YOUR PROJECT are Credible – if you're pitching a show about a funny, quick-paced and original comedy series, don’t do it in an unfunny, plodding and stale manner. We won’t believe you!

Never apologise! I don't care what you MEANT to do, only what you actually DO!

"Right now it's only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea."

                                                                                        - Woody Allen


I think it was Frank Pierson that first told me about the writer whose first feature won an Academy Award for "Best Screenplay" and how he worked for 20 years afterwards, writing screenplay after screenplay (and making quite a good living at it), before getting the next one up, which, by the way, also won an Academy Award. On first hearing this I thought: "...hmmm, long time between drinks."

Pierson's point was that the writer had made a career for himself on the strength of a lot of talent, one Oscar, and an endless supply of development money. The writer, Horton Foote, certainly had talent, but let's try to contain our enthusiasm when it comes to development grants. Sure, they temporarily validate your existence - "look, they gave me money! - I exist!" - but that doesn't necessarily mean the screenplay upon which the lolly has been bestowed is worth the paper it's written on.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that worthy screenplays are never funded; it's just that in nearly ten years of reading everything that's been thrown at me, there are only a handful that generated enough excitement to make me forget I was turning the pages, and only a few of those were ever actually made.

Everyone knows the old adage, "It's not WHAT you know but WHO you know". I wish I had a dollar for everyone who had ever complained about how someone else got the grant or the prize because they had a friend in high places. I don't begrudge friends in high places; I only wish they knew more about Drama... A LOT more about Drama, which is the life-blood of that most peculiar and seemingly uncontrollable form of artistic expression known to humanity as filmmaking. Unfortunately, the ignorance of friends - not to mention our own ignorance - leaves an after-taste in the mouths of audiences who, apart from the filmmaker's family and close mates, invariably wind up becoming vocal advocates for why you shouldn't see the movie.

Dramatic screen storytelling isn't quantum physics, though it some times looks like it. When it doesn't, it more closely resembles a backroom in some over-stuffed Thrift Shop of the Soul, where the deaf and blind paw over a morass of secondhand ideas in search of the next resurrection. If only it were that good!

The industry seems to require judges - watchpeople on the gates of the City of Light, guarding the public taste, making decisions about what is worth seeing. So be it. But, ah! how much more exciting and worthy of conversation it would be if the gaggle of readers, assessors, project officers and producers were more intimately acquainted with the BEAST. And what a beast it is! That "heart of darkness" that requires nothing short of a subconscious in which to shelter itself. Drama is NOT pretty, nor is it safe or respectable. It presents us with everything we would ran away from if we encountered it in our lounge room or on the street. Too bad, those who sit in judgement also run away whenever they all too infrequently encounter it on the page.

But do not despair. YOUR fate and that of your story/screenplay/film is not really in their hands. It resides in a much more dangerous place that - in YOUR hands! One might lament, even unto death, how one missed out, how someone else got the money, how a lesser talent was recognised and plucked from oblivion... but be careful. The hands pluck you from oblivion, are also capable of returning you there. Where the the writing we have lost in development? Teach us to type and not to type; teach us to sit still! Never ask for the money out of fear; never seek the gold out of a need to prove you exist. If you only ever went to "them" when you didn't need them, they would never refuse you. If you NEED them, they will disrespect you! This is the truth:

YOUR script is in your own hands, and you the master/mistress of your own destiny, so long as you work obsessively (mediumistically) with the relationhips that are your story's life - namely, with your characters, with your audience and with your tribe/s. Of course, like Chaplin, you may start out with no idea at all as to who these characters are, but, as Charlie himself realised: "...the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up... I began to know (the tramp), and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born."

In the midst of working obsessively one enters the Drama that IS the screenplay, and by this movement - into the heart of ALL of the characters - one is able to transform every boundary, expectation and prejudice. In the act of becoming a MEDIUM for character, one crosses the border from script development to self-development, escaping the mediocrity and quiet desperation that comes from believing one doesn't already have what one needs.