#pitching a script

How To Pitch And Sell A Screenplay - Peter Katz

(Watch the video interview on Youtube here)

Can You Sell A Screenplay At A Pitch Fest? - Bruce Logan

Film Courage: Why did you write LOST FARE?

Bruce Logan, Writer/Director/Cinematographer: Well, I co-wrote LOST FARE. I actually found a story on Virtual Pitchfest which I’m a producer/member of that. It’s an online thing where people pitch to me, the producer. They look through the people that they can pitch to and they will kind of pick different people that they like their resumes or they like what they’ve done in the past and they will choose you specifically to pitch their project to. Then you read the one page pitch and if you like it, you go ahead and read the screenplay….(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).

(Watch the video interview on Youtube here)

What It’s Really Like To Shop A Screenplay Around Hollywood - Ryan Harriss

Film Courage: Can you tell us about shopping around one of your first feature films that you and your collaborators wrote (I think it’s called WAITING FOR TOMORROW)?

Ryan Harris, Filmmaker: Yes, WAITING FOR TOMORROW. We wrote this script and worked on it for I think it took about a year to write the full script and get it really polished to where we really wanted it. We worked on that and shopped that thing around for about three years and it was about three years of people going This script is great! But no – nothing on the back end. We did a lot of screenwriting competitions and it was very successful there and we thought maybe that’s enough to sort of get more people. We have friends who are producers and run companies and have more money than we do and they would read it and go Oh, this is great! We would love to do something like this. So a lot of it was getting the script out to a lot of people that we knew liked this type of content. It was about a three year process of getting it out and it wasn’t until the last year that we actually started to get a lot of traction…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).

(Watch the video interview on Youtube here)

Buzzwords Studio Executives Say To Filmmakers by Daniel Stamm via FilmCourage.com.

Film Courage: Did you see THANK YOU FOR SMOKING? So Rob Lowe’s character [Jeff Megall, entertainment executive].

Daniel Stamm, Filmmaker: Do you know that in one minute it doesn’t take long for the first meeting because there are certain buzzwords that executives I guess in their 20-minute story training get told that if someone uses it early on in a conversation we are [BLEEP!].

Film Courage: I’m curious what those buzzwords are?

Daniel: One big thing is elevated genre, we want this to be elevated. Sure? What does that mean? They want smart genre, the want blah, blah, blah, blah. Sure, but that doesn’t help us with the development.

Organic, the characters have to be…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).

(Watch the video interview on Youtube here)

How Does A Screenwriter With No Connections Get A Pitch Meeting? by Scott Kirkpatrick via FilmCourage.com.

“If you’re going into a company and attempting to build that initial ‘let’s see if some of my ideas are going to work well and we can get something going.’  You have to first understand what the company does, what it is they like to work with, what media they’re actually in need of, and then the best way to get a pitch meeting is to poise your kind of introduction as a way of being able to serve their needs to help them accomplish their content goals.”