Celluloid Blonde

So I am talking to my students about pitching.  And I’m talking about pulling information for a short one liner describing story.  And someone gets stuck.

In every pitch, the short pitch, the medium pitch, the long pitch, the phone pitch, the lunch pitch, the elevator pitch, the wow nice to see you in line at the store pitch – in every pitch – you have to be able to drop the premise statement on the person you are talking to.  That is the fast one liner that tells someone, in about one sentence, what the story is about.

[This by the way is also cavalierly referred to in most circles as a logline.  Even Greg Beal has given up saying that is just wrong.  It is vernacular and jargon now.]

This is the bit that blows most people out of the water.  This one sentence. I have been dragging it out of writers for so long, I literally have a formula for it:  Title is a Genre about Protagonist who must Goal or else Stakes.

But that applies to plot driven stories.  Plot driven stories are pretty easy to figure out.  There is a strong goal, there is a big price to pay if the character fails (No, Frodo, don’t keep the ring!), you can just traipse out Lord of the Rings there plugging in the bits and you get Lord of the Rings is an fantasy action/adventure story about a hobbit who has to carry an evil ring of power across a continent and destroy it or his world will be plunged into darkness forever.  It is not that hard with a strongly plot driven story with big stakes.  Just plug the pieces in and bam, there’s a premise description.

Where it gets messy is a situational character driven story.  There are no big stakes in situational character driven stories.  No “the protagonist must do this or else this terrible thing will happen.”  So basically you just have a character in a situation, and writers are often not real good at pulling just that one definite situation out of the story.  So you ask them, so what’s it about?  And you get, Well, there is this woman, and she has issues with her mother, and her dog doesn’t like her, and also she has this accounting job….  And meanwhile the listener is sitting there going, Okay, okay, okay, but WHAT’S THE STORY ABOUT?

The assumption when the above happens is the writer can’t write for shit and the story is a mess and the listener should not walk, the listener should fucking run, for the nearest exit, and probably pull the fire alarm along the way.  That’s not always true though.  Sometimes the story is great, the writer just really and truly sucks at narrowing down a story description.  So —

I drew a map.  (Yeah, I know, I am unhinged, but also I came up with a math equation that actually works putting a premise statement together so stick with me here.)  The map is to show someone where they are going to find the bit of story that should be in that premise statement —-

[click the above link to continue reading]

A strategy should always be reduced to the one or two words that best represent what you’re attempting to do and the brand position you are attempting to establish.

It becomes the road map and simple shorthand that filters everything you do in marketing communications.

A great explanation is put forward by Francis Ford Coppola in an article titled, “On Risk, Money, Craft and Collaboration.” Simply replace the word “theme,” with strategy.

When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In “The Godfather,” it was succession. In “The Conversation,” it was privacy. In “Apocalypse,” it was morality.

The reason it’s important to have this is because most of the time what a director really does is make decisions. All day long: Do you want it to be long hair or short hair? Do you want a dress or pants? Do you want a beard or no beard? There are many times when you don’t know the answer. Knowing what the theme is always helps you.

I remember in “The Conversation,” they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn’t know, and said the theme is ‘privacy’ and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you’re not sure which way to go.

Max Adams’ “Pitching A Script”

Max Adams Teaches Pitching your Screenplay

I attended The Hollywood Filmmaking and Screenings Meetup at the Neon Venus Art Theater on Melrose last night. Max Adams presented “Pitching a movie script.” Max is the author of The Screenwriter’s Survival Guide and has worked with Hollywood Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Universal, Tri-Star and Columbia Pictures. Her produced works include Excess Baggage [credited] and The Ladykillers [uncredited].

Max gave a standing room only group of about 70 people a refresher on the basics with a few great tips. She says establishing genre is the most important thing you can do when you start your meeting. You need to give the suits “permission” to laugh. Then establish a verbal 3 paragraph essay – this is what I am going to tell you, then tell them your story and conclude with, this is what I just told you. Also tell them who is the protagonist.

Max also shared some good advice for a new independent film maker – shoot the money scene first – even if it isn’t convenient, so that you can pacify the executive producers immediately. Otherwise, if you show them basic early footage, they’ll wonder what you are doing with their money —

[click the above orange link to continue reading]

*max is a faculty member of :::gotham writers’ workshop::: and :::the university of utah::: and is the founder of :::the academy of film writing:::

It was during my first year in L.A., toward the bottom of my third glass of wine, as my office clock passed 10:30 a.m. and the writer leaned forward, blouse largely unbuttoned, to pour me a fourth while continuing to propose her TV series about the wine industry, that I realized I’d arrived. Here it was: the all-out Hollywood pitch, complete with alcoholic props. This was the heralded showbiz tradition, as lampooned in The Player, practiced by quirky writers and smooth-talking producers in this town and roundly mocked by people (including me) outside it for generations. I had expected, of course, that hearing pitches would be a necessary part of my job as a studio executive. However, I had no idea how to respond. So I looked to other executives as examples, and what I saw surprised me. It turns out people’s methods of receiving pitches—their catches, if you will—are at least as quirky and clumsy as the proposals that provoke them. Over the past five years as a TV and movie executive, I’ve learned that while there may be as many types of pitches in professional entertainment as in professional baseball, there are also as many ways recipients accept, repel and bungle them when they’re delivered. The behavior of the Typical Executive can be just as weird as that of the Pitching Writer. The difference is that executives aren’t judged by it. Until now…

[click the orange link above to continue reading]

MASTER CLASSES IN SCREENWRITING ||
from screenwriter max adams

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JANUARY2011

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THE ART OF THE PITCH
ONLINE 6 week master class | the art of the pitch |
START DATE 01.11.11 || •this class is full || *next class 09.13.11

VISUAL WRITING
ONLINE 6 week master class | visual writing |
START DATE 01.11.11 || •now registering || open

:::CLASSES:::
:::REGISTER:::

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MARCH2011

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HIGH CONCEPT WRITING
ONLINE 6 week master class | high concept writing |
START DATE 03.15.11 || •now registering || open

CHARACTER WRITING
ONLINE 6 week master class | character writing |
START DATE 03.15.11 || •now registering || open

:::CLASSES:::
:::REGISTER:::

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MAY2011

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NON STATIC WRITING
ONLINE 6 week master class | non static writing |
START DATE 05.17.11 || •now registering || open

STRUCTURAL WRITING
ONLINE 6 week master class | structural writing |
START DATE 05.17.11 || •now registering || open

:::CLASSES:::
:::REGISTER:::

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The Wind-up & the Pitch
Screenwriting Column 11
by Terry Rossio

My writing partner and I have been told
flat-out a number of times that we do not
pitch well. On one occasion, we weren’t
five steps out the development executive’s
door when our producer turned to us and
said, “That was, without a doubt, the worst
pitch I’ve ever seen.” This was our own
producer, remember. Supposedly one of
the people on our side —-

[click the above link to continue reading]

*Note: I’m not sure I believe Terry in this
article but I ransack Terry’s board for
subjects associated with whatever I am
teaching because he writes great articles.
I will have to corner him and shake him
down about this “board” thing next time
I see him.

I have one seat open in the 5150 workshop, three seats left in the January pitch class, and seven seats still open in the November visual writing class.

*irony, everyone wants to know how to sell, no one is worried enough about how to write, hmm

:::class info:::