Lesson 8

[Paul Hallasy]

Paul Hallasy’s Pitch Fest Pitch
Create your entire Pitch Fest Pitch.
1. Tell us your credibility. I’m a stand-up comedian of over 20 years and the author of a book, a blog and a one-man show.
2. Tell us your genre and title. Comedy: All The Bands in the ‘80s
3. What is your one or two sentence hook? How far would you go to see a band before they die?
4. Please give your one or two sentence answer to each of these questions:
• What is the budget range? $20 million
• What actors do you like for the lead roles? Simon Pegg, Paul Giamatti
Give me the acts of the story.
Act 1: Paul is a middle-aged, gay stand-up comedian whose dream is to attend the New Wave festival of ’80s bands in LA. Unfortunately, he gets laid off from his day job and also has to deal with a homophobic neighbor and a health crisis that lands him in the hospital.
Act 2: Although he does eventually make it to the New Wave festival, when he returns to New York he’s still unemployed and being harassed by his neighbor.
• How does it end? (setup / payoff). Paul leaves in the middle of his comedy set for a flight to Los Angeles.
Credibility questions What have you done? I’m a stand-up comedian of over 20 years and the author of a book, a blog and a one-man show.

[Adite Banerjie]

Adite’s Pitch Fest Pitch

What I learned: Pitching a story is all about establishing your credibility and engaging the listener with a pithy version of your story.

1. Tell us your credibility.

I’m an author of six books and a produced screenwriter.

2. Tell us your genre and title.
Genre: Supernatural Thriller
Title: Yogini

3. What is your one or two sentence hook?

As deadly armed poachers run amuck, a forest ranger’s wife confronts a vengeful Yogini. Can the Tantric rituals that killed her mother protect her baby?

4. Please give your one or two sentence answer to each of these questions:

• What is the budget range? 20 million

• What actors do you like for the lead roles? (Xyz, Indian actors)

• Give me the acts of the story.

Act 1: Devyani, a young mother, who is suffering from post-partum depression moves into an eerie decrepit house with her forest ranger husband Jeet and their baby in a remote forest. She is warned by a local villager that she should clear out before the new moon night or face the wrath of the Yogini on whose sacred grounds the house is built. Carcasses of dead animals, blood smeared Tantric symbols and weird goings-on cause Devyani immense trauma and she very nearly throttles her own child.

Act 2: Jeet is having a tough time hunting down poachers. His informer is killed and the villagers refuse to help him, as they believe that the Yogini is behind the informer’s death. Devyani is forced to tap into her own long forgotten Tantric skills even though she fears that her own life and that of her child is at extreme risk and they might end up dead like her mother who was a Tantric priestess.

• How does it end? (setup / payoff)

On the rainy new moon night Jeet has to leave them unprotected to fetch the doctor for their sick child. The poachers close in and the Yogini shows makes her fearsome appearance. Jeet is hurt in the showdown with the poachers and Devyani uses her Tantric skills to appease the Yogini who in turn becomes a saviour of her child and turns her wrath on the poachers.

• Credibility questions What have you done?

I recently sold the rights to one of my books to a production company.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by  Adite Banerjie.

[Susan Arnout Smith]

Lesson 8: Susan Arnout Smith’s Pitch Fest

What I learned: Winnow, winnow, winnow! Bare bones (should they love the initial hook), is under 30 seconds.

The entire pitch (minus projected budget, actor names, more credibility), is just over one minute.

This is a really big moment for me. In the past, the idea of live (or Zoom) pitching has literally made me blanch. But this feels doable and fun.

ASSIGNMENT
Create your entire Pitch Fest Pitch.

1. Hi, I’m Susan Arnout Smith, I’m a produced screenwriter.
2. The genre’s Faith and Family. The title is GOD’S PHOTO ALBUM. It’s adapted from a book and I have the rights.
3. Question: In the war between Light and Dark, which is the worst Angel to send? Answer? The one with a gambling addiction.

Pause and see if they request it.

4. a. Budget: $7-10 million
b. Angel: Jimmy Kimmel would be fun, also Benedict Cumberbatch.

REST OF PITCH:

The Angel’s job? Yank back an embittered teacher who’s switched sides. The Angel talks her into betting her soul in a daring bid to save a town on the brink of collapse.
The bet? Get them to believe in God…when she no longer does.

But the Angel’s got his gambler’s thumb on the scale. If she loses? Zip. Everything’s swept away, as if it never was. Including her family.
She has to figure out a win when the scale’s rigged. There’s only one choice, believe in God again, even when it’s impossible.

More credibility: GOD’S PHOTO ALBUM has won and placed in screenwriting competitions.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by  Susan Arnout Smith.
• This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by  Susan Arnout Smith.

[Gill Kent]

Gill Kent’s Pitch Fest Pitch

Hi, I’m Gill Kent. I’ve used my writing skills in many fields over a long career, and in recent years I’ve been researching the suppressed story of Princess Alice.

My project is a historical limited series called Mrs. Alice Battenberg.

This is the true story of a princess who stares down her Gestapo son-in-law to protect the Jewish family hiding in her home.

PAUSE for script request!

I expect the budget for the nine-episode series would be between $150 and $180 million.

Kate Winslet looks a lot like Alice and would be a perfect choice to play Alice in her middle years.

Alice’s husband, Andrea, would be an interesting role for an actor like Christian Bale.

Act 1 (Ep 1-3): Alice, deaf from birth, grows up in Britain under the watchful eye of Queen Victoria. Alice meets and marries the handsome Greek Prince Andrea and moves to Greece with him, where she throws herself into the duties, as she sees them, of a princess, going to the front lines in war to set up field hospitals, serving in food kitchens, founding orphanages. When Europe explodes into conflict with war and revolution, Alice’s extended family across Europe find themselves on opposite sides, and the Greek royals are exiled.

Act 2 (Ep 4-6): Revolution in Russia devastates Alice’s family as her uncle, Tsar Nicholas, and her mother’s sisters, Tsarina Alix and Grand Duchess Ella, are murdered. World war ends but conflicts continue, the old order is uprooted, and monarchs lose their thrones. Greece invites the royal family back, but an ill-planned war against Turkey ends in disaster. Andrea is scapegoated for the rout and sentenced to death. Alice appeals to King George, her cousin in England, for help, and Andrea, Alice, and their five children escape in a British gunboat. In exile again, Alice and Andrea both unravel in their own ways, Andrea taking up with a louche crowd in the casinos, Alice adopting odd new-age ideas. When she threatens to embarrass the royal establishment, Andrea conspires with her mother to have her drugged and driven across the border to a Swiss sanatorium.

Act 3 (Ep 7-9): While Alice is struggling to escape confinement, Andrea sends their eight-year-old son, Philip, to live with relatives, marries off all four daughters, and settles down in Monte Carlo with his movie-starlet mistress. Some three years later, Alice frees herself and turns her back on the family, living in boarding houses during the rise of the fascist threat. After relatives die in a disastrous air crash, she returns to Greece as war erupts. When Greek Jews face extermination at the hands of Nazi occupiers, Alice risks her own life to hide a Jewish family in her home. She establishes a nursing sisterhood to serve the poor, adopting a nun’s costume herself. Her son Philip marries Princess Elizabeth, heir to the British throne, and Alice leads the consort’s family during Elizabeth’s coronation. A quarter-century after Alice’s death, Philip attends a ceremony in Jerusalem to honor her courage.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by  Gill Kent.

[Brian Bull]

BRIAN BULL – Pitch Fest Pitch

What I learned today is…I feel as though I am really honing in on the essence of my story and how to sell / pitch it.

ASSIGNMENT

Create your entire Pitch Fest Pitch.

Tell us your credibility.

N/A

2. Tell us your genre and title.

SUSPENSE

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY – A Fisherman’s Tale

3. What is your one or two sentence hook?

A fisherman seeks revenge, but instead finds himself on the hook.

4. Please give your one or two sentence answer to each of these questions:

What is the budget range?

LOW BUDGET – $500K – 5M

What actors do you like for the lead roles?

Paul Walter Hauser

Ethan Suplee

Bobby Moynihan

Give me the acts of the story.

Act 1 – A fisherman heads out into the Louisiana Bayous to “the spot” where is younger brother went missing to catch the catfish he blames for his death.

Act 2 – After a series of flashbacks that tell the story of how he got to this point, he switches his bait to the Rotisserie chicken he got at the Trading Post, it just so happens, it is the same chicken he used for bait on that fateful day 25 years ago.

Act 3 – The fisherman hooks the catfish, and after a lengthy battle he manages to bring the catfish right up to the boat, he stares at the size of the catfish and before the catfish engulfs him in 2 bites he realizes, he was THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY!

How does it end? (setup / payoff).

For 25 years, a fisherman has been trying to catch the catfish he blames for his brother’s death, finally he does, but discovers before being engulfed by the massive fish, he was THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY!

Credibility questions What have you done?

N/A

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by  Brian Bull.

[Edward Richards]

Edward Richards – Pitch Fest Pitch

What I learned is to shape my pitch according to a producer’s viewpoint, not mine.

CREDIBILITY: I am a former award-winning copywriter. And Austin Finalist.

GENRE: Romantic Comedy

TITLE: THE HONEYMOON PERIOD

HOOK: Imagine if you could end relationships after the honeymoon period – all gain, no pain. Perfect!

BUDGET: $5-10M

ACTORS: Jacob Elordi & Emma Mackey

ACT 1
A series of disastrous dates spark Wyatt’s unique approach, including an ex who corners him in confined public places and broadcasts her problems with him.

All goes well until Wyatt meets Antoinette, French.

ACT 2
When Wyatt contrives to break with her after the honeymoon period ends, Antoinette pulls out a gun and shoots him. With water!

Terrified, then turned on, the relationship blossoms, until Antoinette ghosts him. Too late, he realises he’s fallen for her.

ACT 3
Months later, he discovers Antoinette is really Isabel, an American actress, paid to give Wyatt a taste of his own medicine.

Secretly, however, “Antoinette” fell for Wyatt too. But, because of his track record, she can’t tell him. Until he proves himself.

THE ENDING:
Just telling Isabel he loves her won’t cut it. Her only long-term boyfriend said that – then dumped her.

So he demonstrates it – by donating the only valuable possession he owns to an auction set up to save Isabel’s theatre company.

[Carly-Ann Giene]

Carly's Pitch Fest Pitch

What I learned. Hooks are everything.

Hello I’m Carly Giene I am a produced screenwriter. Today I have a horror called DREDGE.

Aaron cleans crime scenes for a living so nothing phases him —until the possession of his wife Lilith.

Questions:
What is the budget range? Low Budget. $5-10 Million

What actors do you like for the lead roles? Donald Glover and Emilia Clarke.

Give me the acts of the story.

ACT I
Lilith convinces Aaron to let her join him on the job cleaning the dead Hoarder’s House in Detroit. They may have bitten off more than they can chew.

ACT II

After clearing out decades worth of filth everything they removed from the house is mysteriously put back exactly where it was. Lilith’s sanity comes into question as she starts to see things that are not truly there and her physical health deteriorates. The beginnings of possession.

ACT III

Aaron fights for his life. Lilith is fully possessed by the demon that has been trapped in the house by occult rituals dating back for centuries. The demon reveals Lilith’s horrific secret it was her that is responsible for their son’s death.

How does it end? In a fleeting moment of humanity Lilith frees Aaron from the cursed house. Just as he escapes he is confronted and wrongfully accused of murder. He is horrifically killed by duct tape being wrapped around his entire face.

Lilith is finally free but in demon form ready to unleash her wrath on the world. Setting us up for a lucrative sequel.

Credibility questions What have you done? I have numerous projects in several stages of development. Award winning screenplays and festival screened films.