Ah, the dreaded pitch. I still maintain that the hardest thing to do is to pitch yourself and your ideas, but having had a fair amount of experience of it and exposure to it, it’s no longer a thing to dread. Perhaps the most dramatic pitch experience I had was realising, shortly before 9am and while in the bath, that the pitch I thought was the following day was in fact that day, and somehow getting myself to the airport, to Johannesburg, and in front of the pitch committee by the designated 2pm timeslot – that pressure didn’t really allow for any time to stress about the pitch itself!
So, what makes a good pitch? Well, first of all, is your story good. If your story is excellent, and your characters are compelling, you’ve really got very little to worry about. The key part of a pitch that I think goes wrong for people quite often is forgetting that there are three things a story needs, and one of them is an audience. You need to focus your pitch on the people you’re pitching too, and beyond that to the audience they serve. You need to put yourself in the position of audience member, and be convinced that you’d really want to watch whatever it is you’re pitching.
I don’t think it will ever be simple to pitch ideas, and in so doing, to pitch myself. The way I do it well is by being prepared, being confident, and knowing full well that I’m going to pitch far more often than I’m going to sign on a dotted line (they aren’t really dotted though, are they), so I might as well get as much practice as possible.
A Few Thoughts On Writing. And Theatre. And Stuff. 