Free Mini-Camp: Pitching About Pitching
Free Mini-Camp: “Pitching About Pitching: Understanding The Game & Your Role In It”
Tues., May 20th, 5pm-6:30pm (LA Time) via zoom
with Founder Jeffrey Gordon (JG)
Zoom RSVPs will be accepted until Noon the day of the event. Once you RSVP, zoom will control your access.
In this post-Covid, post-strike, tariff-mad era of the entertainment industry environment, even with the streamers tightening their belts, there are nuanced opportunities and new platforms for writers, artists, filmmakers, and content creators.
While Self-Promotion is a Form of Storytelling, We’ll Enjoy a Candid Conversation About Certain Fallacies of the Necessity of Pitching
Please join Writers Boot Camp Founder Jeffrey Gordon (JG), who in his inimitable manner will set newer writers on a less anxiety-ridden path. For any writer not driven to be in front of the camera or without a background in performance, we’ll discuss the reality of pitching. It was all JG could do NOT to make the first “P” in pitching a “B”.
While a quick description of your script or manuscript may invite someone to review it, pitching is more of an established writer’s game. You ask, “Why?”. Because without knowing your writing through reading multiple writing samples, there are 15 parts to an idea, many that are far from intuitive. Most scripts by newer writers will naturally miss these ingredients that are crucial to comprise a complete idea, let alone complete story.
And when a producer or executive has learned the arduous task of story development and the requirements of rewriting, moving forward on a curious inclination does not justify the risk of investment of time and resources. Nor does it justify risking one’s job by saying “yes” to your idea.
What Goes Into a Pitch and What Not To Do
During this brief Mini-Camp, JG will go through the recommended steps and exercises when prepping for pitching and taking a meeting. It’s always helpful to be prepared for a meeting to become a spontaneous opportunity to present a few ideas. He’ll also offer notes on a few ideas presented (not full pitches) by alumni in attendance.
So many of Writers Boot Camp’s alumni are successful actors. Their background through the years counts for some credit toward their 10,000 hours of practice applied to writing. The parallel process of studying acting and character lends itself to effective writing. And it doesn’t hurt that experience acting, auditioning, and performing, can help in the smooth elocution and poetic waxing about one’s project.
The importance and relevance of an “elevator pitch” tends to be overstated, similar to the hope of one’s script representing a lottery ticket. Our philosophy is that once you’ve done the writing work, then you belong in a room with fellow industry professionals and can have a true conversation, as opposed to trying to wow or impress with dramatic effect.
Of session, practicing cogent communication can only help. And that’s what the 10 unique, single-sentence exercises (Premise Line, Conceit Statement, Sequence Statements, etc.) at Writers Boot Camp foster; many ways to clarify creative direction and distinction.
Our Pro Members and Basic Training alumni alike will remember the more profound and comprehensive facets of JG’s Premise Line exercise. Ultimately, the realization that loglines are not substantial in that they don’t even live up to a poster line or a line on the DVD box (if they even exist anymore in today’s streaming universe).
That’s the challenge of writing and development. To match the page–the character interactions and moments of action–to the idea. When writing any script or book intended to be adapted to the big or small screen, we’re writing conceptually. Screenplays are not based on the usual form of writing–and ideas and stories for the screen require an iterative process. Your first version will rarely survive the third draft.
Normally reserved for our Professional Members, this is a free topical event to support breakthroughs as you approach the year ahead. If you RSVP, please let us know if you have a last-minute conflict and cannot attend. Feel free to forward to one individual artist who will benefit from what we do.
This short Mini-Camp will help you identify your priority areas of improvement. Whether it’s in your business approach, your planning and process management, or story development, or issues on the page, a few of the many recurring writer problems will naturally resonate.
Writers Boot Camp’s support of countless careers for more than 36 years has encouraged alumni through unique tools and techniques to activate and align through focusing on the work. The strategies of integrating more definitive rewriting techniques, regularly updating Premise Lines and project lists, and owning one’s storytelling approach–within scripts and manuscripts, and also in the arrangement of shared personal experiences and anecdotes–empower and cultivate a sensibility, a creative intention and direction.
While Writers Boot Camp’s tools ritually help writers become more productive and efficient with their time, it’s professionally important to refine your creative point of view and artistic intent.
Career breakthroughs after numerous scripts and struggles are mostly due to a writer’s hard-fought epiphanies from countless critiques by producers, executives, friends in the business and gatekeepers (readers). Undeterred, the integration of the layers of comment can finally foster a writer’s own authority.
A writer’s lack of idea testing, including the failure to compare and distinguish ideas to the lineage of what’s come before, will tend to limit success and creative transcendence. The best writers do not take years and years to get a clearer picture of the process and the profession.
If you have hesitated to go through our 10-Week Basic Training or to become a Pro Member, especially if the obstacle has been primarily financial, then we encourage you to email us to schedule a conversation to stop letting finances be a career obstacle.
For questions, call 310/998-1199 or email jg@writersbootcamp.com.