I survived!
“Causes of Pitch Panic range from anxiety that you’ll ruin your pitch, to the idea that your’re pitching to horrible people who won’t grasp your prodigious talents. Either way, it makes you nervous when you’re going to pitch to them.”–Peter Desberg and Jeffrey Davis
Pitching is challenging enough one on one, let alone to a jury of amazing film industry professionals including Tug Phipps, Jemma Titheridge, and Johnny Kirk! My training as a teacher was to connect with everyone in the classroom - or gymnasium - including students, parents, guests, and admin. So I did that, without even thinking, then I’d look to the jury in a panic, worried that I wasn’t giving them my sole attention, that I’d disrespected them. I can be my harshest judge and fault-finder. Such is codependency: mine and Beth’s, the protagonist in Oh, Beth - the short script I was pitching. From the feedback afterward, I nailed the pitch. The Q&A, not so much.
The Q&A was an interesting experience - one I hadn’t fully prepared for…
Tugg suggested fleshing it out as a feature, one Hallmark could easily throw a few million at, and that my short could be a proof of concept. I told him that Oh Beth was adapted from my feature Failure To Commit. It even garnered a 91.12% score with Screenplay Readers.
Jemma wanted Beth to discover her own solution - a codependency support group - rather than have Nobby suggest it. Spot on! I had done that in the feature but, due to page constraints in the short script, I’d used Nobby as a mirror - a composite of people in the feature. It was also part of Nobby’s character arc - speaking out at his own peril. To me, that took courage. I could see her point. All it took to keep both arcs solid was a two sentences edit - a win-win.
Johnny felt I was bang on for the demographic I was writing to, a rom-com with depth, for a middle-aged audience.
The jury provided five jamb-packed minutes of mentorship followed by notes that were a screenwriter’s gold.
All stress aside, it was a privilege to be selected among the top 5 entrants into this year’s CineSpark competition, along with my peers. Far-left James Laird, then Michael Anthony. Far-right Carmen Morgan and John David Hutchenson, then Claire Mulligan. And the winner was… Michael Anthony with his short Fawn! I’m over the moon for him and can’t wait to see his film when it will be released at next year’s CineSpark. It will be a busy year for him not only getting his film made but also being the director of photography for mine. All boats - and scripts - rise with the tide when you row together.
Ultreia! - Forward Together.
