How to make your idea idiot-proof!
What are we going to get from this movie that intrigues the listener?
When they want to know more, they will listen attentively to your pitch.
There are two distinct sides to pitching. If you don’t have a good presence and you can’t get behind your own idea, then you’re screwed. No one will pay attention to you if they don’t really like you already. And if they do, they’ve probably already given you money, yes?
Then again, being the slickest used-car salesman of them all won’t make any difference if your idea is shit. That is, without a compelling concept, you’re just selling snake oil.
This isn’t an article about pitching (and believe it or not, books on the subject do exist), so let’s figure out how to intrigue people with a boiled-down concept.
To be frank: no one is going to read your script all the way to the end just to see if somehow, somewhere along the line, your film finally gets interesting.
You’d be lucky if someone reads more than the first ten pages. Quite often these days production companies ask you to submit only the first ten pages. Common wisdom is to make those first ten “bulletproof.”
Meh—bulletproof story gets you nowhere when the producer’s slightly dim cousin has “figured out the next Scarface,” or some financier’s mistress thinks she’s written the next Legally Blonde.
Those are the films that are going to get made. Not some nobody’s “bulletproof first ten pages.” Sorry.
This “bulletproof first 10” rule of thumb is why the vast majority of modern films have their first major incident or Inciting Incident at page 10—no later—so that it keeps bitter, pissed-off, underpaid Script Readers interested.
We’re talking about roughly the same thing here. Think about how the Inciting Incident hooks the reader and makes her want to read your script.
A solid 25-word pitch gives investors and producers the incentive to listen to the rest of your pitch without giving you the bum’s rush.
The most important thing you can do in any pitching situation is to intrigue the audience.
Just getting past the pitch level is a huge accomplishment; people with money and power listen to pitches because they need ideas.
It doesn’t take much to stand out, because the relative quality of the pitches they’re hearing is pretty terrible. How can we be sure of this? Just look at most of the shit that actually gets made: if that’s the standard of the good pitches they’re hearing, I shudder to think what the bad ones must sound like.
A Particularly Useful Exercise
Take any old, established classic film. You know, something far enough past its sell-by date that history is on its side: take Blade Runner or Silence of the Lambs or Rebel Without a Cause.
Or not: take Crash—either one, actually, but let’s admit that the Haggis one sucks more because it is criminally mediocre.
(For bonus points, argue why a film that isn’t obviously a classic damn well should be: take Forgetting Sarah Marshall).
Think about what the fundamental concept is.
This exercise can actually be surprisingly difficult since these films have often simply become part of the culture. That is, we may have seen bits and pieces of these films on TV, or read things that have been written about them.
There might be absolutely revolutionary things that are done in the films that just seem hackneyed or hokey viewed from our modern perspective. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch this.
Even so, we tend to be left—at most—with some sort of sense impression of the film. We barely remember the structural bones of the story.
In other words, this sort of film just seems totally obvious—that is, until you try to break it down. Perhaps it’s just that our comfort with the film is what most clouds a sober analysis of it.
Asses in Seats
Why is this important?
Simple: it’s one hell of a lot easier to sell a film if it can be classified quickly and easily. Then the people who have the money know that you–the person who came up with the idea that is the very basis of what their money is funding–are able to put asses in seats.
It’s a simple calculation: If your concept won’t get those asses in those seats, the financier won’t make a return.
Remember: film is a business.
I can hear you whining through the page.
Right… as much as writers want to be artists, we must resign ourselves to the fact that as artistically brilliant as our work might be, it’s not useful to the people who have the money—and who therefore expect a return on their investment—if we can’t pry money out of the hands of the Great Unwashed.
Paradoxically, for the first few years of a screenwriter’s career—it’s way too appealing to assume that the Money People don’t like your idea because they’re too stupid to see the brilliance of it.
I’ll give you my honest appraisal of this attitude:
- get over yourself.
Listen, I’m no fan of Money People and I comfortably assert that their reputation for philistinism is well deserved.
Quite honestly—and I hope I’m not the first person to have to break this to you—it’s more likely that your idea is so clearly, identifiably shit that even the Money People–philistines though they may be–can tell.
(Aww… did that piss you off? You can close the browser down now. You probably won’t learn anything from this article anyway).
If you’re nodding your head right now and you’re willing to do what it takes to become a better writer, then listen up:
To fix the problem, you’ll need to learn what makes a Good Concept tick and then spend tons of time writing and pitching Good Concepts.
Luckily for all involved, the skillset for writing and pitching a Good Concept is roughly the same.
That’s exactly why we have to become good at packaging and pitching these silly little things we call Concepts: to show Money People that we will in fact be able to get those seats filled with a sufficient number of asses.