• THE 25 WORD PITCH. Often a little trite but it’s essential as a hook to get people listening to you about your project. You’ll also meet a lot of people who say, ‘So, what are you doing here?’ and if you end up boring the arse off them with a sprawling convoltuted rant it’ll demoralise you to the point you want to give up before you’ve bumped into Harvey Weinstein in a strip club in Kreuzberg. My quick pitch is: ‘A stranded Russian sailor falls in love with a sleepwalking widow’. Okay, so that’s 11 words and you might think it sounds rubbish – but the point is; short and succinct.
• THE SYNOPSIS. Usually 1-3 pages for a feature, this expands on the 25/11 words and lets the reader know what’s actually going to happen in your film. For good examples of synopsis’ see the Sight & Sound film reviews.
• DIRECTORS VISION (What’s that? Pretentious? Probably). I’m not so sure that this is essential, but it’s something I’ve come across in several feature funding applications (UK Film Council, microwave…) and it will help to bring the story alive. Spend 1-3 pages talking about your unique vision of how you’re going to bring the story to the screen; camera, lighting, production design, staging, performance, editing, sound design… well, you get the point.
• THE TREATMENT. Usually 30-40 pages (Although you could go shorter; say 25 pages) this is the meat of your pitching package, people aren’t going to read it until after you spoken to them, but if you don’t have it then things can’t progress any further and you are wasting your time. I know this from personal experience. This is essentially your whole film told scene by scene in a story format rather than a formal script format, dialogue should only be included rarely and only when essential.
• ADDITIONAL MATERIALS. If you have them; additional materials are great. Storyboards, concept art, visual referance, a showreel, examples of your previous work, music that’s been composed for the film – blah. Blah. Blah. But beware! This has to supprt your pitch not confuse or distract. Any gimmicks or uneccessarry gumph that someone has to wade through is going to bore them and ultimately – put them off.
• ACTORS. If you’re lucky enough to have heavyweight actors signed up to your project then by all means; harp on about them as much as you can! They bring a certain financial insurance to a project that means investors know they’re likely to see a return. If, however, you haven’t got anyone signed up then keep sthum – don’t start saying things like, I’m thinking of Jason Stathom and Juliette Binnoche – talking about actors you don’t have is meaningless and amateurish.
I’m sure that doesn’t cover everything, but we don’t have time to chat all day so I’m going to have to move on to the business of presenting yourself/your company. As I’ve already indicated, this isn’t really my forte, but these are the things I’ve tried to do;
• BE AMAZING. Be an award winning, bankable – yet respectable – wunderkind director; who has spent the last few years turning heads with ground-breaking short films and music videos and has a script under his/her arm that makes Charlie Kauffman look like the scribe of Battlefield Earth. Failing that, as I have done with such aplomb, try some of these other things.
• PS. GET A FANTASTIC PRODUCER. Actually, while we’re on the subject of important things that I haven’t done yet, I feel I should probably mention getting a great Poducer. Get one. Find someone who digs your project – very important – and has experience making the type of film your pitching. They’re going to give the project a lot more weight; a producer will ask questions and make points that you wouldn’t think to and that’s the beauty of the relationship. Also, if they’ve got connections already then you’ve got a massive headstart. Not sure how you find one of those, so…
• BUSINESS CARDS. It’s all a bit American Psycho but this is another essential tool of the festival waltz. Even when you register for a pass to the Film Market they’ll ask for a card to keep on record. This is important, it’s part of the first impression you make – I say keep it simple – avoid design that is ‘SO NOW!’ because pretty soon it’ll be sh**t, frankly. It’s also, most importantly, just a practial object; it helps people get on to your website and contact you and when it falls out of their wallet/cardholder it reminds them that they met you. You MUST have one. I spent £75 (mates rates) having some cards designed and printed and that’s a pretty reasonable investment.
• WEBSITE. This is a touchstone for the people who you meet, a place to house some examples of your work; they might just visit the site for two minutes, but there has to be a point where people can check you out. If, like me, you don’t have much money, then do it yourself. Once again, just try to do something simple; avoid having flashy gizmos that’ll probably look like a bag of hammers two weeks after you stayed up all night – jacked up on pro-plus, coffee and haribo – designing them.
• DVD/SHOWREEL. Increasingly, now people don’t want to be given a DVD, it’ll just get lost in their bag somewhere or used as a bar mat, but I’ve produced a smalll number of DVDs – 20 – with a selection of short films (30, 12 and 5 mins respecitvely). I’ve done this because in the event of meeting someone who takes me seriously they’re going to want to see what kind of films I make and I’d rather it wasn’t at web resolution and relying on a dodgy Wi-Fi connection.
• ACCREDITATION. If you can apply for some sort of official accreditation to the festival then you’ll get access to the people and places that’ll help you get on in your mission, plus people will treat you as one of their own. Unless your showing a film or one of the exhibitors you’ll have to pay even if you get accredited, I didn’t so I’m just bying a multi-day pass. In Berlin the passes cost from €60 for a day up to €300 for multi-day access to the market floor and all Market screenings. I’ve opted for a €120 (OOOOOOOuch!) pass, which gets me into the European Film Market, (but not the screeings, for which you can still buy individual tickets) this gives me access to all the stands hosted by companies that might be giving out funding plus all their contact details and, weirdly, the details of which hotels they’re staying in.
• CLOTHES. Fairly obvious really, don’t dress like a tramp and don’t dress like you’re about to walk down the red carpet – unless you actually are. In Cannes you are required to wear black tie to any screening in the main cinema, not sure if that’s the case here, I’ll find out.
• HAIRCUT. I guess the most important thing is to just be yourself – because there’s no point in trying to be anything else – unless your me, in which case, make a bit of an effort yeah Max! Really, I just wanted to include a ‘Haircut’ section so that we could come full circle and finally get away from these dastardly bullet points. Be gone!
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