4 Alternative Ways to Pitch That Will Guarantee You Are Remembered

So you’ve taken my sage advice about making your physical script stand out and now, by some shocking turn of fate, you’ve been invited to pitch your idea to a panel of producers, experts and industry tag-alongs. Congratulations! But that’s enough celebrating, as everything you do from this moment forth is life / death for your script’s chances of success. Your impending audience has sat through hundreds of these pitches and now it’s your turn to step up to the plate, and I’d wager that their love for the forum has been waning exponentially. That, my associate (I’ll let you know when I consider us to be friends), is where you blow their minds...

1) Don’t Pitch, Make Them Read

What better way to convey the story in your script than to use your allotted 5 minutes to stage a dramatic reading of your best scene? Rather than forking out your hard-earned Netflix money on local “actors” though, get those producers up on their feet and channelling your characters. They’ll understand far more about your story come the end of that epic shootout scene you just made them perform with water pistols and desks for cover. And that’s the best bit – by making them do it, you’re in the Director’s chair by default, putting you in charge of the situation. They’ll like that.

You must be careful with your choice of scene though. No sense in making one of the producers reading that “it was all a dream all along” if they don’t even know what the protagonist was dreaming to make that such an amazingly original twist. Equally, the possibility that one of the panellists might be a little apprehensive about getting intimate with their colleague for the “steamy shower makeout” scene is perfectly natural. Just be sure to make them feel comfortable by closing the blinds, lighting some scented candles and playing “Careless Whisper” through that boom box you brought along.

2) Pitch in Disguise

Don’t take that the wrong way – no one really knows who you are yet. The point is why be yourself, when you could be someone better? The idea may sound a little “90s sitcom” in theory, but if no one tries it real life, then how do we know that it isn’t the greatest idea since sliced lemons? There are 3 steps to ensure complete success: 1) Research who founded the company you are pitching to, 2) Invent a distant, untraceable relative of that founder, and 3) Go nuts. You can even play the angle of coming to town for a “routine inspection”, before slipping in that the founder’s dying wish was that *INSERT YOUR IDEA HERE* be made (Note: Check the founder is dead before playing this gambit).

The elegance of this idea comes from the fact you barely need a disguise at all, providing the panel hasn’t actually met the founder’s third cousin’s husband’s nephew before. However, if you have developed a taste for the theatrical after staging those dramatic readings, then perhaps you would consider disguising yourself as your story’s protagonist, come to pitch their life story. It’s a risky move, especially if the panel are in the habit of asking for any form of identification or evidence that you are, in fact, a real person, but a strong defence in the face of such questioning is either to feign outrage or just break down into tears.

3) Subtly Pitch Everything You’ve Ever Done, Ever

This is typically reserved for a no-holds-barred, last ditch attempt at securing some sort of deal once crushing desperation has set in, but why not pitch every pitch like it’s your last? It may be a little scattershot, but if your aim is good, then something has got to land, right? You step into the boardroom, ready to pitch your Sci Fi disaster movie about combating global warming with global cooling, but with every point you make, you liken it back to a different script you’ve previously written, no matter how different. Come the end of your 5 minutes, you’ve not only completely pitched one movie, but also 20+ parts of other movies. Now you’ve got real talking points for the 5 minutes of Q + A...

But wait, they’re still only asking about how ridiculous the global cooling idea is! Curses! No, don’t curse them (at least not yet) - you can still turn this around by suggesting that the answers they seek lie within your other ideas. Before you know it, they’ll want to pick up all of your projects and turn them all into an expanded cinematic universe, because they simply won’t make sense without each other. Yes, the “all or nothing” approach has given you “all”, and now all you have to do is write all 20 of those movies in all of two months. Just think, not long ago you were sceptical as to whether or not this was sensible idea!

4) Say Absolutely Nothing

One of the key laws that successful films and television shows follow is “SHOW, DON’T TELL”. In the spirit of this all-encompassing ethos, your pitch should absolutely be the same. Don’t even introduce yourself when you walk in – if you do your job right, they’ll be able to interpret your name from your behaviour. Just hold up a series of pictures, illustrations and stock photos for 5 minutes and I guarantee you’ll probably, maybe, get a standing ovation at the end. After all, what else could pictures of a bemused otter; Battersea Power Station and Cilla Black stand for, other than one woman’s struggle against her family’s constant pollution of their local river?

If you feel like pictures may actually be a little too reductive, or even too expository, perhaps the medium of interpretive dance may yield the strongest pitch. The emotion you could convey with a simple “running man” may move your audience to tears, or even prompt them to join in the dance party. From that moment, your story transcends mere words on a page, and captures the hearts and minds of a microcosm, indicative of the whole country and maybe the world. Months later, during shooting the final scenes, you may realise that you’re making a completely different movie from that original pitch, but hey... It’s still a movie.

James Cottle, after studying Scriptwriting for 4 years, is now an embittered real life freelance writer, and seeks to unlearn everything he knows. But he needs your help... Follow him on Twitter @Jxmxsc and share this blog to help spread his anarchic plight for reform amongst the writing masses.