Breakthroughs in Pitching
Breaking In and Staying In #7 - The Final Issue: The Pitch.
Hey everyone - this will be the final post in the Breaking In series. Thanks for following along. If you want to read all of the previous posts, check out the Breaking In page in the archives.
Real quick before we get into pitching, I want to mention that I’ll be moderating the panel “From Idea to Studio Ready: Crafting the Indie Comic” with MARK OF DEATH creators Steven E. Gordon, Elle Leon Nostas, and Andrew Penczner at LA Comic Con this Saturday, Dec 2nd. We’ll talk about what it takes to create an indie comic, and how to build your own IP you can use to pitch to film and TV studios. Grab your tickets and come say hello! 2pm in panel room 407.
It’s graduation day, and the final spin of the Breaking In (and Staying In) wheel:
Step 4: The Pitch
If you’re here and ready to pitch the project that will open up a door for your career, I’m going to assume that you have done the work we’ve already covered and that you haven’t skipped all the way ahead to pitching an exciting idea that requires tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars without any proof that you can pull it off.
A pitch for a movie or show isn’t just expressing a great idea for a story, it’s a business plan.
If you wanted to open a restaurant, you wouldn’t walk right into a bank without a plan and say “Hey, I’ve got a great idea for a burger restaurant that I just know everyone will love. Give me five million dollars to lease a building, buy equipment, hire a staff, and you’ll see!”
That is an insane thing to do, no matter how much that banker likes burgers.
So why do we start our careers thinking we can call a stranger who has no idea who we are and say “I want to make a movie about an astronaut who starts the first ever hockey team on Mars. Wanna give me two hundred thousand dollars for a script and one hundred million to make it? My name’s Chris, by the way, what’s yours?”
Like we discussed before, we start out thinking that the idea is the thing that holds value, when it really comes down to the execution.
That’s why you don’t skip steps on the wheel. They are the work necessary for you to walk into a pitch and say something absolutely crazy, and have a chance to get paid to write it.
Okay, let’s get into some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from pitching many, many projects that will never see the light of day, and a few that have…
Say Less
When I first started pitching, I was determined to prove that I belonged in this seat, asking them to trust me with their time and money. The way I would prove this was to overprepare and know absolutely EVERYTHING there is to know about the world, characters, and story beats, and delivery all of it at breakneck pace without a breath.
The only thing this convinced them of was that I had no idea what I was doing. And maybe that I cared a lot and was working hard to learn, but still, that I wasn’t ready.
Isn’t that counter intuitive, in a way? Isn’t it part of the job of a pitch to show them that we have done the work and the plan is solid?
Yes, absolutely, but when I approached the pitch as a one-sided conversation where my goal was to convince someone to see things my way, I lost them. Why? Because nothing about being convinced is fun.
When you get a call from a telemarketer whose job is to speak at you as quickly as possible until they can convince you to buy an extended warranty on your car or donate to a fake police association (watch this show if that raised your hackles), would you consider the experience fun? Engaging? Exciting?
Absolutely not. Chances are, like me, you are doing anything you can to get off the phone as quickly as possible once you realize this isn’t your doctor’s office or mechanic calling with an update.
So why would we ever try that same tactic when selling ourselves as the fun, engaging, exciting voice behind a new film or tv project?
The job isn’t to convince someone to give in, it’s to show them something exciting and open the door with an invite to come inside.
Instead of trying to convince them that you know EVERYTHING they could ever have a question about by pitching every excruciating detail in an hour long story rant, you can just say less. Much less.
The 80/20 Rule
Also known as the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule is a perfect way to help you decide how much is enough vs. too much.
The idea is that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes, or, that 20% of your work actually results in 80% of the results. 80 percent is pretty good! That’s almost 100 percent. But if you wanted to get to 100% results, you’d need to do the remaining 80% of the work.
With diminishing returns like that, I think anyone’s goal in a pitch is to nail an 80% understanding of what this film or series is going to be. It’s not complete. There’s endless details to dive into, but those only affect 20% of the story, so it woudn’t be very efficient of us to spend all of our time in the pitch discussing them.
To me, if someone understands 80% of the story laid out in front of them, they have enough info to know whether or not they are going to buy something like that. 30 more minutes of details won’t win them over, and actually could make them less excited.
What does it look like for a pitch to be 20% of the story, but result in 80% of their comprehension? Well that’s different for every pitch, but I think of this as saying just enough to get them to “you see where I’m going with this” level. You give them the character motivations, the flaws, the conflicts, the important story beats in just enough detail so that when you introduce the next big story dilemma… well, they get that would create a relationship conflict, or test a character’s fear, or send the plot in a new direction.
No need to detail every piece of how that works, because they see where you’re going with this. That means that clarity is key. Saying less means being efficient, not being vague.
Once the idea is clear enough, jump ahead to the next important beat that pushes the story forward.
But won’t this leave them with lots of questions?
Questions are a good thing
For a long time, I was afraid that questions always meant I’d left out important information. Details that they actually wanted to be in the pitch, and the fact that I’d left them out meant I’d screwed up. I saw questions as holes being poked in my pitch, and in my ability to pull this off. It felt personal, so I wanted to avoid them at all cost.
In reality, questions are a sign of engagement. Why would they choose to ask for more details, willingly spend more time with you in this uncomfortable conference room or on zoom while their dog whines at the door, when they could just say “great pitch, thanks very much, we’ll let you know!” and end it there?
We should invite questions as a sign of interest, and see them as an opportunity to get to know what this person sees as important for this project.
Maybe their questions give you an opportunity to discuss something in more detail that never felt quite right in the pacing of the pitch. Great!
Maybe their question points out a place where you don’t have a perfect answer just yet. That’s okay, too! Clearly this person is a critical thinker and can see that this may be a bump along the way. It’s okay to say you hadn’t considered this yet, and ask them if they have any thoughts on it. Write down their question, take it seriously. They may even offer a great idea you may never have come to on your own.
The Breakthrough
Finally, I want to share the big idea that has helped me more than any of the above.
I’ve clearly spent a lot of time practicing and experimenting and workshopping pitches for myself and others, all with the goal of getting someone else to buy them so I could, you know… have a job. I’ve worked very very hard to learn how to build the bullet-proof pitch because I love having a job.
And what I’ve learned on that journey is that there is no bullet-proof pitch.
As much as we think that everything is up to us to get right, there is no way to ensure that someone else will buy our pitch. There are too many factors completely outside of our control, factors you likely would never and could never fully understand before walking that project into a pitch.
Once you accept that, you can head into a pitch excited to do the one part you can control: share a project you’re really excited about. That’s the fun part of pitching.
Who cares if you get turned down by 100 companies who could never greenlight a project like this, whether you spent a week or three years trying to perfect the language? You only need to find the one place that says yes. The one partner who can make this happen.
You can focus your energy on sharing the most compelling story possible on the path to finding the right partner.
And when you do, and you sell that pitch and put in the work and deliver something you care about and are proud of…
…you can start over at Step #1. Every successful project is followed by a period of frustration and plateau. We killed ourselves to sell that movie about an astronaut who starts a hockey league on Mars, but now have become the “sports in space” writer who can’t get a job writing the rom-com we’re passionate about because nobody knows if we can do that. They only proof we have is that we can do sports in space, and our agent is only getting calls about the football on Jupiter movie that Josh Gad is circling, and the luge on Saturn’s rings tv series for Amazon.
If you really want to make that rom-com, you’re going to need some proof that you can pull that off.
Want to hit the books and learn a lot more about the pitch process while developing your own series or feature pitch?
I have a class for that! Check it out here.
Join the Discord or leave a comment below and let’s talk!
And big thanks to Josh Blake for making an illustration for this series! You can see his work at Gallery 1988 and on his website www.joshsethblake.com