| Three Steps to a Winning Pitch |
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| Marguerite Pigott | |
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Page 1 of 3 Filmmakers can pitch their projects in two ways: on paper or orally in person. Paper pitches -- packages submitted to various buyers and funders in hopes of securing development or production funding – are addressed elsewhere on this website. This article focuses on verbal pitches.Verbal pitches can take place in a variety of locales: when you run into someone at a party or festival; on the phone; or at a formal meeting with a buyer. How do you prepare for each eventuality? And how do you pitch effectively to people who hear pitches all day, every day? Step One: Research your buyersTo pitch effectively, you need to arm yourself with up-to-date information. Know what your buyers are looking for, what their business reality is, what their successes and failures have been. No matter who you run into, or what opportunity materializes for you, you’ll be able to take advantage of it.For instance, if you happen to run into a buyer from a broadcaster who you know needs to buy product from a specific region (their business reality), and you happen to have a co-production in place with a company from that region, well, what luck! If you hadn’t known they need product from that region, you would have wasted an opportunity. You can find out all this valuable information through legwork and resourcefulness:
Step Two: Think like your buyerIn Step One, you researched your buyers and their needs. Turn that information into an advantage by accurately assessing if your project fulfills a buyer’s needs, and how. For a broadcaster, does your project count as Canadian content? Does it work within their brand? Does it fill a programming need? For a distributor, are you bringing partners to the table with whom they want to form relationships? Is your project similar to projects they’ve succeeded with in the past?If your research shows you that your project isn’t suited to a buyer, don’t make the mistake of pitching it to them anyway. You’ll make yourself look like you don’t care about their needs. A producer’s relationship to buyers needs to be long term and productive for both parties. An inappropriate pitch jeopardizes the relationship. Continued... |
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