Friday June 3rd 10:30-11:30am
Topic:
Whether to a publisher, a TV network, a studio, or a production company, your work won't sell itself. Pitching is more than just telling the plot or your comic book, graphic novel, television, or movie idea. In an extremely short amount of time you must convey the meesage of your project, get the listener emotionally invested in the story, and explain why your property deserves to be developed instead of the hundereds of others. The panelists will walk you through the six parts of a good pitch, with pratical advice on how to be clear and compelling.
Panelists:
- Douglas Eboch (Screen Writer)
- Joshua Blaylock ( Writer Devil's Due Comics)
- Ken F. Levin (Co-Founder of First Comics)
Discussion:
Though the panel went by faster than hoped this group of professionals in their fields provided a lot of great points for pitching you porject to publishers. The majority of us listeners were there for comic publishing so the focus was centered around pitching a comic property.
Ken F Levin provided most of the information as he has been in the undustry the longest and done everything from pick a creators project turn it into a comic to helping bring the comic "Road to Perdistion" to the big screen. He broke it down into four points. Keep in mind this wasn't how to get started this is for people looking to sell there already made project or nearly finished property. IE: A on going comic series or graphic novel.
- Decide what your project can be.
This means can your comic be adapted to a cartoon or does it warrant an hour long drama. Is it a movie, or videogame.
- What's you dedication?
Decide what you want your porject to be and how dedicated or "married" to that idea you are. Ken says once you sign the papers you give up your vote. So you need to sell the property and make the people looking believe what you believe. This brings us to the next point.
- Test run your pitch./Pitch to the least likely of people.
Once you know what you want from your property or project you need to start learning and practicing how to articulate it to strangers and potential publishers. If you can find friends you that don't already know your story just verbally pitching it to them and see if they get it. This will help focus your idea and make it as clear and simple as possible. The next part of this is find publishers you either think they won't take your idea or you don't want them too. This is a great way to get in the room and have actually companies ask questions about your property, this is a trail and then you will hopefully learn what else needs to be improved on.
- Always have a face to face meeting.
Ken says as someone in the undustry you can believe or trust something or someone is real without a face to face. Face to face can inlcude skype or a face time live chat but what he is trying to explain is that once you put a project out there you can get spammed but "publishers" and to be careful. You have people contacting you which is a sign of value but others might just try to be buying your idea for as cheap as possible.
I wish the panel went more into detail about the earlier stages of publishing but this was vital information regardless.
