CONSTRUCTING AND PRESENTING A PITCH

For a pitch to be considered, each camper must step in front of the other campers and counselors to present their pitch. Presentation style counts; campers are essentially trying to sell their peers and counselors on the idea and get the green light to move forward. And so, being prepared and confident is very important.

Pitches are, at their core, spoken-word presentations, but campers can bring in audiovisual components to support their presentations if they would like. This could be a PowerPoint, video, slides, artwork, etc. We just ask that they submit those materials at least a day before the first day of camp by emailing them to contact@thebacklotmd.com, so we can be sure they can be projected during the pitch.

What’s most important about the content of the pitch is that PITCHES ARE NOT SCRIPTS.

We will be developing our scripts together as groups. But pitches should present the script's core idea and story in a way that makes it very clear to the other campers and counselors. Your job, in many ways, is to spark our imaginations and to get us to want to hear more and see your idea come to life.

The following are the core elements that make up your pitch:

1. 2-Sentence Logline
   
   Think of this like an elevator pitch. You have two sentences, or thirty seconds, to tell us the idea of your movie, get our attention, and make us hungry for more. Tell us who, what, when, where, and how. Who is the main character, why we should care, and the problem they face, with a hint of how they might overcome it. The “how” of the pitch can be the most interesting element; it can suggest a theme, a tone, etc. It’s the extra character that you bring to the story idea. And a good longline can leave us hanging, once we know the setup to the idea or the problem our protagonist is going to face, and ask a question about how it might be resolved. Here are a few good examples:
   
   “A down-on-her-luck New York playwright decides to reinvent herself and salvage her artistic voice the only way she knows how — by becoming a rapper at age 40.”
   
   “A smart, lonely teen is commissioned by the high school running-back to write love letters to the object of his—and her—affection.”
   
   “Two overworked young assistants set up their highly driven—and difficult—bosses in hopes that love might soften them, and in turn make their own lives easier.”
   
   You may be tempted to write a “high concept” pitch, like one that emphasizes a crazy twist or a larger-than-life scenario, but for our 4-6-minute film, these approaches rarely work. So, think smaller than what you might expect from a feature-length film. Something as simple as a character considering which peanut butter brand to buy from the grocery store is likely to be more effective than a murder mystery or twisted ghost story. For example:
   
   “When Sam, a young man whose parents separated early, shops for peanut butter for his son’s sandwich, this simple choice between two brands evokes memories of his parents' different approaches. Will he choose one or forge a new path for his family?”

2. Treatment
   
   In two paragraphs, tell us the beginning, middle, and end of your story. Don’t go into intense detail, that’s for the script phase, but this is a way to tell us what you think your story could look like, extended from your logline. There’s a very good chance that this will fundamentally change with the script is written, but you can use this to tell us broadly about the meat of your story. Here’s a good example:
   
   Title: Sorry, We Missed You
   
   Logline: An expectant young woman must outsmart the mailman who, instead of delivering her package, appears only long enough to leave a “Sorry, we missed you” ticket each morning.

   Treatment: Waiting in the sunroom of her quiet home, an expectant young woman patiently sips her tea and watches the clock. A doorbell sounds, and she stands, approaching the door. Upon discovering the empty porch, she looks back at her red door and finds a freshly taped-up note: “Sorry, we missed you.” For the next few days, the process repeats.
   
   One morning, she waits outside and receives a paper airplane ticket. Next, she carries an enticing treat to try to force contact, but the mailman somehow takes it and leaves just another ticket. Next, she places a sticky mat onto the porch to keep him stuck, but she finds that the mailman abandoned his shoes in the muck and left a ticket anyway. After an escalating series of failures, the woman succeeds at last by allowing the tickets to pile up, forcing his curiosity to approach her back porch, where she lies in wait—the mailman, helplessly trapped on the porch by an enormous net, can only concede; he hands her the long-awaited package. Triumphant, she releases him and waves as he drives out of sight. Returning inside, she opens the package… sliding to the ground in defeat. In her hand, a cleverly packaged ticket reads: “Sorry, we missed you.”

3. Resources
   
   For our purposes, each camper should outline the resources they’ll want to utilize in their films, if their pitch is to be approved. The most important are the actors and locations you’ll ideally want to use. Please use the resources below to outline what you’ll need, because those are the resources that are available to use and will need to be divided up between the various productions. So, ideas that minimize the locations and actors needed will make for easier productions. But, don’t feel limited by those options, we can do a reasonable amount of redecorating and designing of those spaces to fit the story you dream up. Just don’t expect us to transform everyone into zombies or to have people flying through the air on high-wire acts.