Jaws In Space E-Book

Charles Harris

• Herausgeber: Creative Essentials
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 262

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Two screenwriters once walked into a Hollywood producer's office and said three words 'Jaws in space.' Those three words won them the contract for the blockbuster movie Alien. The ability to pitch well is essential for all writers, directors and producers in cinema and TV. Strong pitching skills will accelerate your career - not only helping you sell your projects, but also developing them in the first place, focusing on what makes a story work, clarifying character and plot, and working more successfully with industry collaborators. This book takes you from the essentials of what makes a good pitch to advanced skills that will help you in all kinds of pitching situations. Charles Harris gives a clear-sighted view of how pitching works in the industry and a series of very practical techniques for developing a gripping and convincing pitch. Drawing on his experience, he examines the problems that can arise with both mainstream and unconventional projects - from a range of different cultures - and explains how to solve them. He also analyses the process of taking a pitch meeting and shows you how to ensure you perform at your best.

Leseprobe

JAWS IN SPACE

Two screenwriters once walked into a Hollywood producer’s office and said three words ‘Jaws in space.’ Those three words won them the contract for the blockbuster movie Alien.

The ability to pitch well is essential for all writers, directors and producers in cinema and TV. Strong pitching skills will accelerate your career – not only helping you sell your projects, but also developing them in the first place, focusing on what makes a story work, clarifying character and plot, and working more successfully with industry collaborators.

This book takes you from the essentials of what makes a good pitch to advanced skills that will help you in all kinds of pitching situations. Charles Harris gives a clear-sighted view of how pitching works in the industry and a series of very practical techniques for developing a gripping and convincing pitch. Drawing on his experience, he examines the problems that can arise with both mainstream and unconventional projects – from a range of different cultures – and explains how to solve them. He also analyses the process of taking a pitch meeting and shows you how to ensure you perform at your best.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Harris is an award-winning writer-director for cinema and TV. With fellow professionals he co-founded the first ever screenwriters’ workshop (now Euroscript) and teaches writers and film-makers from all over the world. He created Pitching Tuesday for the London Screenwriters’ Festival and his book Teach Yourself: Complete Screenwriting Course is recommended reading on MA courses

To everyone I’ve pitched to

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book builds on the chapters on developing your premise and marketing your script in my bookTeach Yourself: Complete Screenwriting Courseand I’m very grateful to Jonathan Shipley and John Murray Learning for their permission to use those parts which overlap.

Many people have contributed to this book as I learned my craft over the years, far more than I can mention here. But I do specifically want to thank Phil O’Shea, Shelley Katz, Anita Lewton, Naz Sadoughi, Paul Mendelson, Eve Richings and Ulrike Kubatta for sharing their experiences. Karol Griffiths for her support. My colleagues at Euroscript and the participants of my pitching workshops around the world, who have helped make this book what it is through their intelligent questioning and professionalism. My gratitude also goes to my agent, Julian Friedmann, his contracts manager, Resham Naqvi, as well as Ion Mills and Hannah Patterson of Kamera Books for asking me to write this in the first place.

Most importantly of all, I must thank my wife, Elaine, for her patience when faced so often by my closed study door over the last months, along with our cats, Chloe and Sasha, who are the only ones who can persuade me to open it.

INTRODUCTION

Once upon a time, the story goes, two writers walked into a producer’s office in Hollywood and sold a script by saying just three words: ‘Jaws in Space.’ That script was to become the blockbuster movieAlien, and that moment has passed into Hollywood mythology as the perfect pitch.

I call pitching the ‘great accelerator’. The ability to pitch well is essential for anyone who wants to speed up their career as a writer, producer or director in cinema or TV anywhere in the world. Indeed, today the pitch is becoming increasingly important for all artists, including novelists, journalists and playwrights.

Pitching will not only help sell your ideas but develop them in the first place. It helps you clarify character and refine plot. It makes it easier to collaborate with others. Every good writer, director and producer I know is excellent at pitching.

However, there are also many myths about pitching. One is that to pitch is to put on an act – to distort the work of the true artist. In fact, good pitching means being true to yourself, your own culture and values. I’ve taught writers, directors and producers from all over the world to pitch successfully while staying true to themselves. In this book, you’ll learn how to pitch powerfully as yourself, whoever you are and wherever you come from.

The content is based on my own experience as an award-winning writer-director and from teaching hundreds of writers and filmmakers over the years. It combines solid content with personal stories from my own career and from fellow industry professionals.

Whatever your goal in film or television (or elsewhere in the arts)Jaws in Spacewill take you through the process of creating a professional pitch from beginning to end. You’ll find a series of practical techniques and exercises, from how to develop a compelling log line to advanced skills that will help you in all kinds of pitching situations. You’ll learn the special requirements for pitching multi-stranded films, TV series and documentaries. Then we’ll follow through the process of taking a pitch meeting and discuss powerful ways of ensuring you perform at your best whether presenting to a single person or a large audience.

It will also give guidance as to how you can continue to develop your skills as your confidence grows.

This book grew out of the segments on developing your premise and marketing your script in my earlier bookTeach Yourself: Complete Screenwriting Course.Jaws in Space, however, also contains material that is not in the first book, with room to dig deeper into important areas that had to be left out before. And when you’ve worked throughJaws in Space, you’ll find thatTeach Yourself: Complete Screenwriting Coursewill take you forward, through the process of writing the treatments you’ll need, developing character and structure, writing a new screenplay or series proposal and editing it to a high standard. Indeed, if you seriously want to become adept at creating scripts, whether as a writer or as someone who works with writers, I suggest the two books will work very well together.

THE ARTOF THE PITCH

Where does pitching come from? People have been pitching to each other for thousands of years – well before the first Stone Age artists talked their friends into helping out with the latest cave painting. Humans have long used spoken language to convince, persuade and avoid nasty consequences.

Literary agent Julian Friedmann believes film pitching as it now exists developed around the mid twentieth century. At that time, the Writers Guild of America was so powerful in Hollywood that no screenwriter would write a proposal for a studio without being paid. So, to save money, a producer might wander down to where the writers were working and ask them to ‘tell’ him a story on the spot. Over time, both writers and producers became skilled at telling and listening to shortened versions of future scripts.

However pitching came about, beware of another myth. This is the scene in the movies where a writer pitches his new script to a studio exec. He describes the opening, in glowing terms. Draws the executive into his world. Widens his hands as he moves into the main story, holds the man spellbound for ten or fifteen minutes as the strands interweave…

This is not the reality.

The good – and bad – news is that nobody has ten or fifteen minutes to weave their pitch. The most important part of your pitch is the first sentence – the first two at the most. It’s what’s known in the business world as the ‘elevator pitch’ – for when you meet your target in a lift and have to pitch in the time available before he steps out at the next floor. In the industry, it’s also known as yourloglineorpremise.

This is good news in that you don’t have to perform at length, but bad news in that you have to be able to express the essence of your script in just a very few words. If this makes your heart sink, let me reassure you. You are not alone. We’ve all been there, many times. However, as we’ll see, creating that one- or two-sentence pitch need not be as complicated as you think. There are very practical and effective techniques you can use to find the very heart of your story.

Having said that, it does take commitment and a desire to settle for only the very best you can produce.

Why just one or two sentences? Isn’t that an unfair restriction on us creative artists? Would Shakespeare have been expected to describeHamletin the Elizabethan equivalent of a lift? Well, possibly, yes. He, too, worked in a competitive and somewhat cut-throat business where those with power had little time for waffle.

The one-sentence pitch exists for a very good reason. Despite the fortunes spent on advertising, PR, star actors, awards and social media, the truth is that there is only one thing that reliably gets people to queue up at the cinema or download the latest must-watch series, and that’s word of mouth. Most viewing decisions are based on a recommendation by a trusted friend.

And when a friend tells you about a good film or TV programme, they don’t have ten to fifteen minutes to describe every detail from openingfade up to closing fade to black. They have a sentence or two, whileyou message each other, chat at the coffee machine or wait for a bus.

Furthermore, today’s market is tougher than it has ever been. Audiences have more and more demands on their time and many alternative ways of entertaining themselves, from YouTube videos, streaming music and the whole spectrum of social media, to online and offline games, books (printed and electronic), live theatre plays, concerts, sports events or simply chilling out at the local bar or restaurant.

Your film, single drama or series has to be so compelling that it can compete with all those and more.

When you pitch to a producer, financier or agent, they are – consciously or unconsciously – imagining these competitors, those conversations. They’re asking themselves whether your idea is strong enough for one friend to convince another that it’s worth buying a ticket or spending money on the box set – or whatever it takes for your project to be a success.

That is the starting point of everything. Call it a pitch, log line or premise, it all grows from that word of mouth.

How do you get to do that? Well, that’s what most of the rest of this book is about. But first, a word of warning. There is a certain magic in creativity. There are matters that can’t be forced into existence. Artists give this magic different names – the Muse, inspiration, luck, genius… Part of becoming adept at any art, whether writing or directing, or indeed producing, is learning when to stand back and watch the magic happen.

When I started in the industry, I pitched non-stop and sold nothing. Clearly, the film industry wasn’t ready to appreciate my genius.

Then, one day, I pitched an idea to a producer and something different occurred. I saw it first in his eyes. I’d struck a nerve. I had stumbled on what screenwriting guru Linda Aronson callsthe spark. The spark is the very essence of a good pitch – it’s that special something that catches fire in the listener. It can’t be legislated for or created by rote. It’s part of the magic. And you find it, more often than not, through sheer good luck. Once I’d seen the spark in that producer’s eyes, I never wanted to pitch an idea without it again.

You can’t demand that the spark appears, but you can entice it in. You do it through sheer hard work and application, using every skill you can draw on, polishing the diamond of your pitch and trying it on people until – sometimes when you least expect it – someone’s eyes light up. The processes in this book will help you find the magic. No techniques can force inspiration to come, but they can lay down the groundwork. As Kevin Costner’s character says inField of Dreams– ‘If you build it, he will come.’Or as golfer Gary Player put it, ‘I’ve been very lucky in my life – and the harder I worked, the luckier I got.’

Some would-be artists worry about techniques and exercises. They become anxious that they will somehow stifle their creativity. However, the reverse is the case. I suggest you think of the techniques as recipes. Recipes aren’t straitjackets; they are processes through which you can express your very special, individual work. The same recipe for, say, lasagne or chocolate cake can be used to make something very ordinary or something exquisite. The difference is the flair and personality you bring to it and the quality and freshness of the ingredients you choose.

As you go through your career, you’ll find yourself pitching to all kinds of people – from producers, development executives and financiers to interns and office juniors, not to mention actors, directors, friends, fellow writers and of course agents. You’ll pitch to them all in more or less the same way. Agents won’t buy your script, but want to know it can be pitched to someone who will. So they will be listening for the same things that any production executive would. The major difference is that an agent is not just interested in whether you have one good idea, but whether you will continue to have good ideas and write good scripts for years to come. They are taking the long view.

For ease of reading, therefore, I’m mostly going to refer to the person being pitched to as a producer or exec, although in most cases what you read will apply equally to agents, script editors, distributors, financiers, co-writers, actors, crew members – in fact just about anyone you can get to listen to your pitch.

Similarly, as the person pitching, you may be a writer or director. Or you may be a producer, pitching to a co-producer, distributor or financier. Or you may be an agent yourself. For most purposes, the issues and techniques are very similar, so most of the time I’m going to refer to the pitcher as a writer.

Finally, this is an equal opportunities book. Sometimes I’ll refer to the person being pitched to assheand sometimes ashe. And occasionally asthey. For variety.

To sum up…

The most important part of your pitch is the first sentence.Most audience decisions come down to word of mouth.To pitch is to imagine a conversation between possible viewers.Work hard and the magic will come.

THE PITCH RELATIONSHIP: YOU

There are two sides to any pitch – you and them – the pitcher and the pitched to. Both have needs and will need to have them fulfilled if the relationship is going to be a productive and happy one.

In this chapter, we’re going to look at you – the pitcher. What is your role in the proceedings?

The first step is to realise that pitching is not about asking for favours. Without you – or someone like you – producers have nothing to produce. You aren’t coming to them to beg for help – you are offering them a chance to collaborate with you on a venture that could be good for both of you. Of course, you need them, but as we’ll see in the next chapter, they need you too.

This doesn’t mean you should put on airs. It means you may need to change your mindset. You may be an artist but you have invested your own time and money in this script. You’ve paid the bills, fed and clothed yourself. You’re as much a business person as the producer you’re pitching to.

However, many beginners go into a pitch with only the vaguest idea of what kind of business relationship they want to get into. They know having a producer is an important part of getting their film or programme made, but haven’t thought through what they really want.

But if you don’t know what you want, how do you know whether the person you are pitching to is able to give it to you? How do you even know if they are the right person – and how do you know what questions to ask?

In the next chapter, we’re going to talk about what the producer wants to hear. Here, we talk about the importance of knowing what you want.

YOUR NEEDS AND VALUES

EXERCISE

Take a moment to write down what you want from this project. Goals such asgetting it made, a screen credit, fame, exposingcorruption, experience, making a difference, making people laugh, making money…Don’t use my words, choose your own – and keep each item short, a bullet point of one, two or three words. Spend some time on this – you’ll discover some important insights into what really drives your work.

When you’ve done that, look over your list and number yourvalues in order of priority from one (the highest priority) downwards.

There is no right or wrong answer to this question – your priorities are your own concern. Only you can decide what your values are – but you’ll need to know what they are.

This exercise is important because different producers will be right for different goals. You may, for example, find that one producer has the track record to get your script onto the screen, but won’t pay you upfront. Another might pay well, but has a weaker track record. A third, on the other hand, may pay well, have the power to get the film made, but suggest changes that distort your original ideas out of shape.

Initially, you’ll probably want to pitch to anyone and everyone and be delighted if anyone even listens, let alone takes you seriously. However, even at this stage you should go into meetings with your eyes open. Research the producer, company or agent. Check their credits and what they’ve said on the record, and find out what they like to make and how they like to make it. Knowing your highest priorities will help guide you. (There’s more on researching your targets in‘The Pitch Relationship: Them’.)

And when you get to pitch to them, your priorities will also help you know what to ask for, where to stick and where to be flexible.

Of course, your priorities will change over time. A first-time writer will probably accept a less than perfect deal in order to get a foothold in the business. Later, with a track record under your belt, you might want to hold out for terms that are closer to your vision.

WHEN TO PITCH?

Time for another reality check. Unless you have a track record, you will not sell a fiction idea purely on the basis of one meeting. However great your pitch, a producer will always want to read the script.

You might be great at pitching and lousy at writing. You might be great at writing, but this particular idea simply doesn’t work when you try to write it. There may be hidden plot holes, waiting like landmines to explode once you expand the idea to its full length. Many a great pitch has given birth to a dire damp squib of a screenplay.

Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett had already written 85 per cent of the script forAlienwhen they delivered their three-word pitch, ‘Jaws in Space’. Furthermore, O’Bannon had already made a successful low-budget sci-fi movie with John Carpenter,Dark Star.

So, in fact, your goal in pitching is not to sell the script on the spot. Your goal is for the producer to say one of two simple phrases:

Tell me more.

Or, better still:

Send me the script.

This leads to one of the most important rules of pitching:

Never pitch a fiction script to a buyer before it’s finished.

Because, if you hook a producer or agent with a great pitch, he’ll want to read it now. Not in a month’s time. Certainly not in six months or a year. If he has to wait, he’ll start to cool down. By the time you deliver the script, he may well have moved on to a new project, allocated those funds to a different film or possibly even changed jobs. Even if he is still in the market for scripts such as yours, the story you pitched to him all those months ago will now sound so last year!

I once worked with a producer who’d developed a great pitch for a movie. She flew to Cannes, raised strong interest and came to a provisional agreement with two financiers. But she didn’t have a script to show them. So she returned home and commissioned a writer, who wrote two drafts. The second draft still needed work, so she brought me on for two further drafts. By now, a year had passed. When she went back to her financiers with a polished screenplay, one had given up waiting and put all his money into a different film. The other had left the film business altogether. She’d lost two golden opportunities, all because she pitched without a script.

You only get one chance with each person you pitch to. Which means you have to make it your best shot. So the script shouldn’t only be finished; it should be as good as possible. That means you absolutely must get at least one professional script report from a reader or company you trust, and allow time to put their recommendations into action.

Personally, I commission at least two full reports on all my screenplays – using different readers. Because telling stories on screen is a collaborative art and nobody, however good, can see all the possible angles or elephant traps in any given script.

So, if you hear the golden wordssend me the scriptyou should be in a position to comply fast. At best, you can probably squeeze out a delay of a week or two by saying you are just putting in some final touches. But it had better not be longer than that.

WHEN TO PITCH (2)?

Actually, I’m going to qualify that immediately. There are times when you absolutely must pitch scripts you haven’t yet written! You will learn enormously from crafting a pitch at the very start and getting a response (or lack of it). It will save you enormous trouble and avoid wasting time on work that will never get produced.

But how do you do this, without blowing your chances of a future sale?

The trick, at this early stage, is to avoid pitching to anyone you actually want to sell the screenplay to. Particularly useful people to try out your early pitches on would be:

Producers who work in different genres.Distributors – they sell finished movies and TV programmes to the cinemas and TV channels in different parts of the world.Sales agents – not to be confused with writers’ agents, sales agents represent producers and sell the finished films and programmes to the distributors. They generally cover the whole world and often get involved with helping raise finance in advance of production.

(We’ll look at how you get to them later, in‘Making the Approach’.)

When I went to Cannes with my co-producers on what would become my debut movie,Paradise Grove, we pitched to everyone we met, including major sales agents and distributors. We learned from everybody. More importantly, one sales agent and one major Hollywood producer became good friends. Each year, when we’re back in Cannes, I make a point of meeting up and having a drink. Neither relationship has resulted directly in work – yet – but the advice and contacts that have come from them have been invaluable.

What if you want to pitch for development money to pay you to write the script in the first place? The harsh fact is that development money is hard to find, particularly if you don’t have a track record. Developing a script is high risk, and brings poor returns. Most screenplays that go into development never get made and therefore never recoup their investment. It’s almost impossible to tell which ideas will lead to a filmable script and which will sink without trace. Furthermore, in the process, conflicts can arise between producers and writers over how the script should progress.

For this reason, even experienced writers will often choose to develop their scripts themselves, ‘on spec’. They prefer the freedom to write the story in the way they want, to allow it to change and evolve without the pressure of a producer waiting for results. And you will generally be paid more for a script that is already written.

After all this, if you do want development funding, there are a very few development funds around – mostly backed by regional or national agencies – such as the BFI, Creative England, The EU’s Media Fund, Medienboard in Berlin and Screen Australia. These are almost invariably set up to support a particular geographical area, so you’ll need to research the agencies that cater for the area where you live or work.

But I’ll repeat, development money is hard to get. Don’t wait for it. Get writing. Keep the day job. Beg, borrow and steal what it takes to pay your bills. And pitch the finished script.

WHEN TO PITCH (3)?

Things are different when it comes to documentary. A documentary script will probably be written in post-production after filming is complete, so you have no choice but to pitch without one. However, you should still plan the project as much as possible and be ready to send a detailed proposal (see‘Visuals and Leave-behinds’). In addition, developing your project in detail will protect you. There is no copyright in ideas but there is copyright protection in the way you develop those ideas and the words with which you write them down.

WHEN TO PITCH (4)?

There is one final time you may find yourself pitching an idea without a finished script. As we’ll see later, you may find a producer passes on your first pitch and asks,‘What else have you got?’

Ideally, you should have some alternative scripts ready to pitch instead. However, if you have a good idea that you haven’t yet developed and the rapport in the room has been good, you may well decide to take the risk.

But I’m moving too deeply into the pitch meeting, which I’ll explore in more detail in‘The Pitch Meeting’.

Because it’s time to look at that person at the other end of the pitch – the pitchee.

To sum up…

Know what your priorities are.Only pitch fiction stories to buyers when you have a polished script ready to send.Before then, test your pitch on people who aren’t your main targets.For documentaries, have a detailed proposal ready to send.Sometimes you may be asked what else you’ve got.

THE PITCH RELATIONSHIP:THEM

Then there’s the person on the other end of the pitch. The one whom you want to impress. Who will you be pitching to, where do you find them and what do they want to hear?

WHO TO PITCH TO

Your main targets will depend on who you are and what stage you’ve reached in your career. However, everyone has one thing in common: we all want to pitch to the person who makes the decisions.

As a writer pitching for cinema, you’ll mostly be pitching to producers. They may be independent producers, working alone or with a partner, or staff producers in larger production companies or one of the studios, which have offices in the US and overseas.

Independent or staff producers will also be important targets for TV scripts, as well as commissioning editors in charge of specific programme strands at the major channels.

However, if you don’t have much of a track record – or, indeed, any track record at all – you may well be talking to people a long way from the decision maker. This could be a development executive, script editor, script reader or even an intern. Or you might find yourself pitching to someone with an impressive title (such as Head of Development), but that doesn’t necessarily mean they can make buying decisions. She may have to pitch in turn to a senior executive, possibly the CEO.

However, anyone and everyone should be pitched to seriously. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you are too important for the 17-year-old unpaid assistant who wasn’t born when all your favourite movies were made. That intern may well have more clout than you think. Every project needs a supporter inside the production company, studio or channel, and you never know who will become that driving force.

Be aware, too, that today’s intern may become tomorrow’s leading producer, Head of Drama at the BBC or studio boss, and if you build a strong relationship now it may stand you in good stead in the future.

Pitching is not just for Christmas. Pitching is about establishing relationships that can last for decades.

DO YOU NEED AN AGENT?

Being taken on by an agent is useful, but not essential. Many successful screenwriters manage without an agent altogether. A good agent will help guide you, suggest ways to develop your career, give feedback on your writing, know the best people to send your scripts to and negotiate the deals when you make a sale. And some production companies will only consider submissions if they come from a recognised agent or a writer with a substantial track record.

However, an agent isn’t your mother. She will have to divide her time between all her clients, so don’t expect a continual flow of guidance and suggestions, or feedback on every draft. Her suggestions for your career may be useful. But she only knows what’s selling at the time.

One writer I know says that if your agent tells you to write sci-fi, make sure the next script you write is anything but. By the time you’ve finished it, everyone will be so swamped with sci-fi scripts that they’ll be desperate to read something different.

Overstated, perhaps, but there is more than a grain of truth in what he says.

Nor is an agent a sure-fire route to the top. You will still need to go out, find producers and pitch. Julian Friedmann, my current agent, has arranged meetings for me here and in Hollywood, sold my scripts, brought me commissions and given me his heartfelt advice. Some of that advice I’ve taken and some I haven’t. Some of my scripts he’s loved and some he’s hated. But I’ve also had to go out and find producers for myself.