Pitching to Get Started; Pitching to Sell

A writer needs to pitch twice.

The first time is when you’re thinking about an idea and may want to try it out on fellow writers and friends to assess their interest.

The second time is when you are ready to sell a storyline and hope that it has the pizazz necessary to create interest in your script.

There are good ideas and not-so-good ideas, and usually the best way to test an idea is to see what kind of interest you get with a simple pitch.

“Two teen-agers meet at summer camp and fall in love”. Ho-hum. It sounds like a million other ideas and there’s nothing special or compelling. If you pitched this to a few friends and you saw their eyes glaze over, you’d know it needs some work.

So, how to change the pitch? A good unique pitch will imply conflict, give a sense of the action of the storyline, suggest character and give a feeling for the context if the context is unusual or particularly cinematic.

CLICK HERE to read more by Dr. Linda Seger - http://www.inktip.com/sa_article_page.php?cat=sa&sub=resources&pg=48

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OPTIONING A SCREENPLAY

One of my ex-students read a great screenplay recently. He thinks it could make a fantastic ultra low budget independent new media film (for under 400k). He asked about the process of showing the script to two potential backers but he’s afraid he might get cut out of the loop.

He wants to try to produce the script himself. He plans to option the script before he shows it to his potential backers. He then plans to give them the general idea about the story but when it comes to optioning scripts, he doesn’t really know how to go about it.

The writer of the screenplay is non WGA and she has not sold anything prior to this. My ex-student wants to be fair to the writer, but also doesn't want to tie up much of his own money if the deal fails to go through.

To maintain control of the project before he shows it to his backers, he will option the script for six months by paying a nominal fee of one dollar. The option for the script (for this or any other price) will be a contract stating the purchase price the writer will accept as the price for the screenplay.

With a planned budget of 400k, if the deal is acceptable and if he obtains the financing, the usual fee to purchase a script is 5% of the budget. Because he wants to pay as little as possible, he plans to try to get the script for 2.5% or 10K but this agreement will be subject to bargaining with the writer.

©2008, Stanley N. Lozowski. All Rights Reserved.