Pitchers & Catchers

All producers, writers, and directors have to know how to sell – or pitch – their ideas well. Otherwise, you’re just a researcher. And every industry organization knows this. Hence, no matter what confab you go to, there will inevitably be the dreaded “Art of the Pitch” workshop. Amazingly enough, no matter how much the venues charge for these workshops, they’re always SRO! And you can be sure that there are multiple ‘repeat offenders’ in the audience.

Unfortunately, there are a LOT of wannabe filmmakers out there wasting an awful lot of precious time and resources on these things. Is the industry being served by these pitch seminars? Or are they merely soft-core gimmicks designed to separate desperate dreamers from their hard earned $$$? I’m inclined to go with the latter. There’s more catching going on here than pitching.

Early on in my career, I attended quite a few conferences for my employers, and one or two for myself. From coast to coast, they all had the same workshops. Different industry ‘experts’ sat up front, but more or less the same content was bandied about. It seemed everyone would have an opinion, but they all appeared to be stock responses taken off the supermarket shelf.

After awhile I stopped sitting in on the workshops and just walked the convention center floors in search of new and improved gadgets. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But why do people insist on going back time and time again? Is it insecurity? Procrastination? The need to know that others are as miserable as they are? All of the above?

Please, STOP THE INSANITY! If an industry group can’t come up with something different from what all the others are providing, then please refrain from littering the landscape with yet another event that will only prolong a dreamer’s delusion and put him or her that much closer to the poor house.