Development for Beginners - Pitch Festivals
by Julie Winters
Pitch festivals are quite possibly one of the most
fascinating events that occur in Hollywood. Someday, someone will get smart
and make a short film about them.
Pitch festivals involve groups (sometimes
hoards) of amateur writers flocking to conference locations (usually hotels)
around Los Angeles, paying hundreds of dollars and waiting in line endlessly,
desperate for YOU to listen to their ideas. Royalty is often not treated with
such reverence! So you (yes YOU, the “assistant” who will be referred to as
“executive” when within these subjects’ presence) will wake your ass up out
of bed before noon on a Saturday morning, trek down to the Roosevelt Hotel (or
similar), eat and drink the offerings of your fair hosts (Fade In Magazine holds
one of the most professional of these festivals) and sit your ass down to hear
some pitches.
If you’ve never sat in on writers meetings or heard pitches before,
this is a great place to start. Usually, the writers you will meet with (think
anywhere form Aunt Judy from Iowa to that ex-con your sister dated in high school)
have never pitched before either, so look at this as a practice round. Do not
expect to leave these festivals with a new project for your company under your
arm (although stranger things have happened). Do, however, expect to meet the
other assistants/executives who are also hearing pitches (you should set at
least three lunches or drinks with new people each time you attend a pitch festival).
Also expect to get some great, practical experience dealing with writers. You
will develop and improve your communication (listening and speaking) techniques,
rejection techniques and quite honestly, your schmoozing techniques. In working
with these writers (and you should really look at yourself as a teacher to them,
and as the experience as a teacher to you), you will be able to perfect skills
you will need later in life when you are passing on a script an agent submitted
to you. By this I mean you point out the weaknesses AND strengths of the material
(even of you hated it) and express your appreciation to the agent/writer for
having given you the opportunity to consider it. This, my friends, is Hollywood.
Love it -- or leave it and make room for those who do…
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