Pitching

I quite like pitching and I've only realised why quite recently. At first I thought it was my natural tendency to sell something, I’m usually happy when I am in the space of selling an idea.

But now I realise that it is closer to me than that. Over the course of making a film, many films are made; the films in all our heads as we push a script through development, the films in the financiers and partners heads, the actual film you shoot, the scenes you don't get to shoot, the unused sequences that lie in Final Cuts bin, the rough cuts, the final cuts and the film you get to release into the world. And then when you show it, you realise that, in the end, there's no actual film. There’s just the films we all carry in our heads, no one even sees the same film when it's on screen. That at least explains the reviews I read, or the responses you hear after a screening, the film is more like a trigger to something, a pitch in itself.

So, why do I like pitching? Why is it close to me? Well... for a brief moment, between you and the financier or partner, your film lives, right there in the space between your heads. And when it goes well, the financier has had a good time or at least the desire to see more. And so, why not, let's make a film, floating somewhere above the coffee, as I lean in and say "Well... it's really-"