(calm music)
- Pitching.
Oh my God, everyone wants to know how to pitch.
I was so desperate to know how to pitch.
I Googled, I did everything about,
there's no pitch anywhere online.
I don't think there is.
If there is, I've never seen it.
So I had to do trial and error.
I'm gonna save you that trial and error
'cause I'm gonna give you some pitching tips.
The first thing I would say about pitching
is everyone has a pitching style
and I think it's important for you to sit with yourself
and the type of writer you are
and try to figure out what your pitching style would be.
I feel like my pitching style
and where I think I really shine
is I'm your best friend, we're at lunch
and I'm gonna tell you a really awesome story
that I think is great.
That's my pitching style.
I'm Gloria, I'm gonna tell you a really funny story
and I'm gonna take you on the journey of that story.
Now, for many years,
that's exactly the way I would pitch it, right?
I would pitch it with that vibe, that energy.
Okay, you guys, oh my God, I have a great story,
I'm gonna tell you this whole funny story
then I started to realize
I wanted to paint more of a picture
and by painting more of a picture
now what I do is I bring in a board.
I didn't used to do that.
For years I didn't do that but now I do.
I bring in a pitching board
and what I think is great about the board
is when you're pitching it's about 15 to 20 minutes
where all eyes are on you
and it was kinda nice to have something
that they could look at that wasn't me.
So I would cast it with all the characters.
This can be tricky because if you cast it
and they don't like some of those actors
then you've a little bit shot yourself in the foot
not wholeheartedly
but sometimes that can be a little bit tricky
or you put somebody in there that nobody knows.
It's just the way somebody looks.
So it's a little hit or miss.
I still like to do it.
So I put the pictures of all of the cast there
and then I put a picture of the sets
and what I think they're gonna look like
which is very Pinteresty
and then I put a picture of the city it's set in
and I just try to make a mood with that board.
I know people that come in with iPads.
That's a big thing and they'll scroll through
and create mood and create look
and talk about characters and have six different actors
so that if you don't like one,
there's six on that page when they're talking about Jane.
So all of that can be helpful.
You just have to really sit and think
what is the best way for me to get this idea across?
What would be the best use?
Should I bring in an iPad and do this?
Should I bring in a poster board?
Should I just talk?
Do I wanna act it all out and stand up and walk around?
I mean, everyone has a different way of doing it.
So try to figure out what is the best way for you
to talk about this world, these characters,
where they're gonna go in a concise way
that is entertaining for 20 minutes?
They might stop and start you and ask questions
so be prepared for that
and now we're gonna get into the basics of a pitch.
One thing I get asked a lot is do I pitch the pilot?
It depends.
Sometimes the concept can be so interesting
that the concept and the characters
and episode ideas is all you need.
I tend to pitch the pilot
because I want you to know as a buyer
where I'm gonna start these characters
but I will usually start with something personal.
For example, I sold a pilot last year to CBS
called History of Them and I went in and I said,
my husband and I have been together forever,
since high school and my daughter was noticing,
my daughter who hates all forms of social media,
at least at the time she did,
now she's a little bit more open
to some postings here and there
but at the time she was like I don't like Facebook,
I don't like all of that
but the one thing she liked was On This Day.
On this day 10 years ago you were doing this.
On this day five years ago you were doing that.
She said, mommy, that's like a scrapbook of your life
and I had never really thought of it in terms of that before
and I thought, oh, it is like a scrapbook
and oh my God, my grandkids and my great grandkids,
they're gonna know what I ate for lunch some days.
They're gonna be able to see video of me
talking about where I was and see my outfits
and how my mouth moved and how I talked
and how crazy that we're leaving these digital scrapbooks
for future generations
and then I thought how interesting would it be
for my daughter to have access
'cause nothing exists of my husband and I's relationship
before the internet started about 10 years,
the Facebook and all the social media
got popular about 10 years ago.
Before then, it's just like photos in a photo album
and I said what would it be like
if my daughter was looking back
and could see photos of the night we met,
photos of the first date we went on,
photos of a party where a notorious fight happened
and she's heard about it and that's how I pitched the show.
So the History of Them is a daughter's look back
on her parents as they met and fall in love
all told through social media.
That's how that pitch started.
I sold that pitch and I had pictures of,
all of them were Instagram looking pictures
of people meeting at a party and I thought,
oh, it'd be so fun to have a picture of a party
and then you zoom in
and in the background there's two people fighting
and you're talking about that sometimes
and it just seemed like a great place to start,
a great place to tell a story.
So that's how I would sell it.
What's the reason why this story seems important to me,
why I think this is an interesting way in,
why I was excited to continue telling this story
and then I populated the world
with obviously the character based on me
that was played by Ana Villafañe,
a character based on my husband
that was played by Brett Dier
and then an amalgam of our friend group,
an amalgam of people from our lives.
So anyway, it was a great case
and then I also was like my parents
are also up in my grill 'cause I'm a Latina
so I need to have my parents,
some version of my parents around
so the amazing Lisa Vidal and Felix Solis played my parents,
a version of my parents
and they owned a food truck in Portland
and that's then the sets were the food truck,
the food truck with all the other food trucks
around it in Portland.
So we had the sets and then we had the kitchen
that the family lived in
and then the bachelor pad that the boys lived in
and those were our three main sets
and those were the stories we're gonna unfold
and the pilot begins the day that these two meet
and that's what that is.
In series, it's about the fights that they have,
the things that are happening
but we know at the end of the day
that everything's gonna be okay
and by season five he's gonna propose
and she's gonna say yes and they're gonna get married
and everything's gonna be great
but you're gonna watch the five seasons
of that love story knowing,
like if you watch the Friends pilot and knew at the end
that Monica and Chandler were gonna end up together,
you'd be like really and that's what I was going for.
So that's how I do a pitch.
So the character breakdown becomes really, really important
but I do first talk about the premise and the world, right?
This is why this idea's important to me.
This is why I think it would be super, super cool.
Now I'm gonna get into the characters.
You talk about each of the characters
and why they're important
and how they interact with one another.
That's a big studio note that I got early on
and a network note I've gotten before
that I've taken with me
that I think has been a really, really smart note.
You don't just talk about them.
You talk about what their interactions are
with the other characters.
They get along with this character because of this.
They don't get along with this character because of that
and that's where the conflict
and interesting stories are gonna come from, right?
So try to do that with each of your main characters,
usually, I don't know,
five to seven main characters probably,
maybe there's a couple recurring characters
that might show up.
The food truck vendors.
I thought there would be some funny characters there.
Neighbors, friends.
Maybe you wanna talk about them as well
and then you're gonna talk about the pilot
or what the stories live in,
what are the worlds in which these characters live in,
what are the types of stories that they're gonna be telling
and then you have four to five episode ideas
that you think would be really, really fun
and why those would be really fun and really funny
and then if you're pitching a comedy,
you gotta have some laughs in there.
If your comedy pilot pitch is not funny, that's a problem.
That's worrisome.
So you gotta make sure it's funny
and then you gotta practice it.
I write it down like a script
and I'll go in and I'll hold it
but by the time I've gotten into pitch
I'm very rarely looking at it.
It's only there as kind of a guide.
I might refer to it
but mostly I'm just going like blah, blah, blah, blah
and then I'll kinda be doing this
to make sure that I've gotten everything
but I would say 15 minutes or so where you're talking
and then you answer their questions and that's your pitch
but making sure that you do it for a couple of people.
I mean, when Mike and I did the One Day at a Time pitch,
granted we were pitching a series
but when we were pitching it we would practice.
We would just go over it again and again.
We'd read it again and again.
We would go off topic
and see what kind of things would happen,
what funny things we could kind of infuse it with
that weren't already there.
Oh, that's feeling repetitive, cut that out,
we don't need that and you kind of make it better
and better and better and better as you're pitching.
If you pitch to strangers too, it's great.
Pitch to your mom, pitch to your cousin,
pitch to say is this clear, is it,
do you understand, do you get where I'm going,
what was not clear to you, why wasn't it clear
then you continue to make that pitch really, really solid.
Another thing about pitching is practice, practice, practice
and then also say it as quick as you can.
That is just an exercise 'cause you don't wanna get there
and be talking so fast that you,
if you're really going this fast, it's crazy
and then they can't even follow you
and blah, blah, blah, right, but you wanna be able to see
how quickly you can get through it
and how much energy you can bring to it.
I think a lot of times it's about energy
more than it is about speed
but try to get through it as quickly as you can
to see what is amazing, what is interesting, where do you
'cause there's also, they're gonna interrupt.
They're gonna, hopefully you're gonna have to hold
for laughs sometimes and get back on topic.
So try to get through it as quickly as you can
as concise as you can.
Leave them wanting more but have answers
for whatever questions they ask you after
but that's roughly how you pitch a pilot.
One of the ways.
There is a gazillion but take this as one way
that you can pitch a pilot.
Thank you so much for watching.
It's not over here, you guys.
You can still tweet me @everythinggloria.
I'm on Instagram, I'm on Twitter.
I'm still available to you.
So keep asking those questions, keep doing the work.
Make sure to watch all of the other Hollywood 101 videos
on Pero Like's YouTube channel.
This is Gloria Calderón Kellett.
Good luck.