Saturday, August 06, 2005

Assignment Pitch

Earlier this week a producer called and asked me to put together a pitch (or is it a take?) on a project he's developing.

Up to now I've always started with my own ideas, developed them, then just gone ahead and written the screenplay. So this thing is new on two fronts -- I'm going to tell him what I would do if I were going to write the screenplay; and I'm working off his idea (which is partially a remake, but not wholly).

For my non-screenwirting friends -- this is good training because most films are assignments based on existing properties or ideas of some sort. However, "good training" means I have no idea how to do it yet and I need to learn fast.

I figured I'd start with the normal trying to come up with an interesting twist on the idea then do an outline thing. That's usually a safe bet.

But then I remembered that there's lots of good advice available on the web -- from people with loads of experience at this. So I do a search of various screenwriting websites -- but I'm not very good at this and the best I come up with is this post at Wordplayer. That's definitely good advice for when I get to pitch in a room -- but not quite what I'm looking for.

So I'm hoping that this little public cry for help might result in some other screenbloggers posting their own advice about the assignment pitch.

2 comments:

Grubber said...

Might be a bit late
Steve, but a few articles by Phil at screenwriterbones might be of assistance.


http://screenwriterbones.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_screenwriterbones_archive.html

That is link to the archive, just scroll down you will see some on of his writing on stuff that may or may not help you. Hope it does.
cheers
Dave.

Steve Peterson said...

Thanks for the heads up -- that Meeting at Paramount post is a nice insight into what to expect.

As it is, the producer who asked for the pitch is a tad flaky and so hasn't gotten back to me for me to even try my pitch out. Anyway, I also sent a question on this to John August so maybe he'll post something.