Life's a Pitch

Attended another pitchfest yesterday - the Great American Pitchfest to be exact.  For those not familiar - a pitchfest is an event where aspiring screenwriters pay a considerable amount of money to try to sell, or pitch, their screenplay (or potential screenplay) to a large room full of production company executives.  Or those that report to executives.  Or those that report to those that report to executives.


You stand in line for a particular company - the larger, more popular ones have longer lines, naturally.  Then you're herded into a waiting area.  A bell rings and you scurry over to the numbered table, introduce yourself and then get five minutes to sell.  The bell rings again, you thank them for their time, and get in line for your next target.  Rinse, repeat.  If you don't take any breaks and happen to hit the companies with the smaller lines you can squeeze in 15 or 20 pitches in all.  I think I managed 16 - about the same as last year.


There's an art to pitching, of course.  A popular format is title, genre, comparison, logline.  Most of my meetings yesterday went like this: "Today I'm pitching a movie called Going PlaceS.  It's kind of like "Click" meets "It's a Wonderful Life."  The logline is, what if your GPS didn't take you where you wanted to go but where you needed to be?"


You can usually tell what's going to happen next by their reaction.  If they smile or seem interested, that's good.  If, half way through this brief intro you notice them yawning or counting ceiling tiles, that's not so good.


The goal is simply to get them to request your script.  Even if it's requested, the chances of it being read past page 5 are pretty small.  Of anything happening beyond that even smaller.  But in a business so heavy with competition (something like 80,000 scripts are registered - not written or submitted but just registered - each year) wanna-be writers without serious connections have little choice but take those odds as long as they may be.


My results this year weren't as good as last, which is funny because I was pitching essentially the same story.  I'd rewritten it but the premise and logline were the same.  Whereas last year 15 of 17 showed what I'd call significant interest, this year about half did.


Three people requested the script - one actually took the only hard copy I had with me - complete with scribbles and notes.  Another person asked about my other projects and ended up requesting another script I'd written called, "Getting Old is Murder" - a story that received no love whatsoever at another pitchfest a couple years back.


So fewer requests than last year, but as mentioned above just because many people request that doesn't mean anything.  I think I'd trade 15 requests resulting in nothing for 1 request resulting in something.


If nothing else comes of it at least it was entertaining.  And standing in line with my competition, chatting about story ideas it became clear that I'm certainly not the worst writer out there.  Of course, if you see a sci-fi/horror flick about giant, vampire chickens on the big screen next summer that will prove that I know absolutely nothing about this industry after all.