As Easy As Pitching A Tent

Gosh, I don't know what I'm talking about; I never even learnt how pitch a tent.

 Before we properly went into production, we were tasked with pitching our film ideas. We were allowed to be as quirky as possible. I looked up pitch ideas in this regard and found nothing but pitches where the film maker simply talked about their idea. Even on the 'how to's written by executives who have to listen to pitches said that they much preferred pitches where the person just speaks. They said that, otherwise, they just think the person is loopy. Er.

 This didn't particularly fuel me with enthusiasm on the matter. You do, of course, want your pitch to be memorable but, at the same time, you do want the person you're pitching it to to know (or at least think) you're sane. That said, like anything in life, it highly depends on the person you're dealing with, the order that you came in, and the time of day I suppose. Mostly the person you're dealing with though and, in this case, it was our tutor.

 I wasn't going to go ahead with a full on marionette show like the one instance described by an executive in a list that I found. I decided just to go with a simple mood board, to help me pinpoint exactly what I was going to talk about at the time.

 It took me about a week working on the mood board, so I certainly found my enthusiasm again from somewhere. A week seems like an awful lot of time to work on a mood board of all things, but I ended up turning it into a bit of an arts and crafts project. It wasn't over the top, but (hopefully) it would certainly make the pitching process a lot more memorable (and it did!).

 Seeing as there was a rubber duck mentioned in my script (don't ask), I thought I'd go ahead and make the mood board in the shape of one, then, just as the script describes (though this aspect was later omitted due to time restraints, unfortunately), I decorated him to look like a private detective. He has a tweed trilby, a blazer and a tie. Oh my God, I had too much fun making him. Except, just before going into the pitch, I was gutted when I realised I had completely forgotten to stick craft buttons on his shirt. Ah well.

 He was very well received and the pitch went very, very well, so it was totally worth it. Caoimhe, my producer, was in with me and spoke about what we had planned production wise, such as what equipment we were going to use, where we were going to shoot, and who was acting for us. I, on the other hand, talked about the mood board itself; how I wrote the character and the inspirations I drew from and the sort of themes I wanted to use, such as colour, for example. I think Caoimhe was very embarrassed by the duck though (sorrynotsorry).