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| Your pitch can make or break your TV series. |
You have a great idea for a movie or television series? That
was easy. The hard part is pitching your idea. The art of pitching is a
necessary skill one must develop if he or she wants to survive in Hollywood.
Most executives have a very short attention span meaning you have only a minute
or two before the executive loses interest. This is why the art of pitching is
also known as “the currency of Hollywood”.
How do you start out a pitch? Start out with your hook. What
will cause the viewer to be interested in your show? It needs to contain the “what if” question.
Most pitches consist of one sentence, and no more than two sentences. The pitch
for The Bourne Identity was “a man
with amnesia discovers he is a governmental assassin who has been targeted for
death by the organization that employs him”. This is not as easy as it sounds. Summarizing
your movie or television series idea in a few sentences can be extremely
difficult even for most professional writers. Most expert pitches are revised
several times before they are pitched to executives.
Screenwriter Blake Snyder recommended walking up to
strangers and pitching to them your idea. He said to repeat this over and over
until you have perfected the pitch. This method will help in three ways. First,
it will help you to prefect your pitch. Second, you will know what works and
what does not work. Lastly, it will give you the confidence to pitch in front
of executives.
No matter what method you use to perfect your pitch, you
need the executives to take interest in order to start the process of bringing
your idea to the big or small screen. Thus, the pitch is the Hollywood currency
you need to survive in this industry.
