In the post “The Inside Pitch” I mentioned improving your pitching skills by coming up with loglines and pitches for existing and successful films. (It’s sort of like wanting to be a comedian and doing an old Jerry Sienfeld routine in front of your friends. If they don’t laugh, it’s probably not that the material isn’t funny.)
So today I was flipping through Michael Hauge’s book Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds and found a quote by Christopher Lockhart, WME Story Editor, that gives feet to working on a pitch for a past hit film:
“A good pitch should enable me to see the movie, picture the stars, understand the demographics, know how many screens it will open up on, and even envision the poster. ‘A New York City cop travels to Los Angeles to reconcile with his wife but learns she’s been taken hostage by terrorist in a skyscraper — and he struggles alone to save her. It’s called Die Hard.'”
Stop in tomorrow and see the critique by Lockhart of a query letter I sent him for a script of mine. As a teaser, I did follow Hauge’s advise; “Keep in brief; Query letters are less than one page long. End of discussion.” For Lochkart, one page is more than he wants to read in a query. Read the gory details tomorrow. Cue the Dragnet theme: Dum—de-DUM-DUM.
Related post:
“Juno”—The Logline
“Star Wars”—The Logline
[…] In the post “The Inside Pitch” I mentioned improving your pitching skills by coming up with loglines and pitches for existing films. (It’s sort of like wanting to be a comedian and doing an old Jerry Sienfeld routine in front of your friends. If they don’t laugh, it’s probably not that the material isn’t funny.) So […] Original Source… […]