10 years ago a UK film Producer simply known as Arthur asked us how to pitch a movie idea to Hollywood moguls? We told him to keep it short (3 mins), have one big idea, bring it alive and get the moguls on your side. We never did find out whether Arthur succeeded but we recently read an interesting report on pitching in Hollywood and how to succeed. We felt our original advice was not wrong.
The universities of California and Stanford ran a 5 year study into the Hollywood pitch process. They named the opponents as pitchers (writers) v catchers (producers)
The catchers saw positives and negatives in the pitches made to them.
The positives were: Passion, wit and quirkiness
The negatives were: Slickness, trying too hard, offering lots of different ideas.
The most successful pitches occur when the pitcher doesn’t push their idea until they extracted a YES. At that point they invite their counterpart in as a collaborator.
Once the catcher feels like a creative collaborator, the odds of rejection diminish.
This situation tallies with all the experience of successful creative pitches – let the client feel they have joint ownership of the idea so they can project their needs onto it.
If you want to know more about Selling Ideas come on a workshop and be ready to pitch your idea to Hollywood – or even one of your clients go to: Selling Ideas: Advanced 1-Day Workshop
Posted by Barry Graham on Monday, June 19th, 2017 in Features › News ›
Tags: selling, selling ideas