Film Courage: Why do pitch meetings exist in the first place?
Scott Kirkpatrick, Executive Vice President of Co-Productions & Distribution/Author: Executives
sort of have this issue where they need lots of stuff to make their jobs functional
and it is impossible for all of those ideas to come from one place you can't
just create all of them in the boardroom and they need outside influence they need
people who are much more in a creative mindset to be able to sort of like executives look at
these things as problems it's it's you're walking in saying we need X number of films this year we
need 20 films on our calendar for Q4 and that's all they're thinking about is much more just
like what are we going to slate when and where what are we going to program for this month what
are we going to program for this quarter and they sort of need we need a lot of assistance in terms
of like okay what are we going to fill that with like I'm really good at getting a deal together I
can get the financing together I can create the opportunity of this is the movie we're going to
make a lot of the deals I do we're making we're making movies before the movie exists before
there's a script it's a concept but I've closed many many deals that are just a big contract with
financial numbers attached to it and all the titles are to be determined movie number one
number two number three and it's a package of films that's when we go out to creative outlets
whether it's production companies development executives that we know screenwriters that we
know and it's much more about like look we need some films here what do you have or I set up
a deal or I'm sorry I set up a meeting with a network or a VOD platform and they want to know
what films we have and so I will go out to like writers that we work with a lot and sort of say
I'm meeting with this client what do you have that sort of matches these types of genres
and then I'll just take two or three log lines that they have I'll put them all together and
we'll present them and see what sticks so to speak and it's sort of pitching is much more
about taking the creative aspect of filmmaking or television production or new media in general
and making it a business case or taking the business opportunity and adding that
splash of creativity to it that makes the whole thing stick together that's sort of
the gist of it but it's really about like just fielding information so we can close the deal
well Hollywood always have pitch meetings absolutely I mean it's
it's every industry has pitch meetings dating has pitch meetings it's it's pitching is really about
taking your opportunity as a person and sort of just saying like this is what I can deliver this
is what I can make happen it's you have to sort of look if you just sit around and and wait for the
proverbial phone call like it's never going to come it's you do have to step out there in the
world and sort of create your own opportunities opportunities never come in clean neat packages
they're usually problems and companies have problems all the time and it's it's looking
at those and saying I can find a way in here get my foot in the door so to speak and solve that
problem and I have the talents to do it and here's how and why that's all pitching is it's it's
every industry every scenario in your life involves a deal of pitching if
you're negotiating anything in your life if you're negotiating I don't know with
how you want to decorate your house with your spouse or partner like you're pitching ideas
and you're presenting concepts and bringing that to the table but in terms of Hollywood in terms
of the media business that's the only way that you're going to be able to get your ideas heard
is by sort of expressing what you think a project could be how you think it should be executed and
I think what you should also be adding to that is that you're the most important person to deliver
it because of whatever reasons you want to put in there but that's pitching it's all just what can
you deliver what can you bring to the table how can you solve other companies or other people's
problems and that's how you get results well yeah you always hear about that when let's
say if you've ever watched any entrepreneurial pitches a TV show or live it's always because
someone wanted to solve a problem they had and if they created something for the market but how
does someone know what quote-unquote problems are at a at a production company or a network
that they could be the one to solve that in truth there's always a bit of blindness to it
even on my end where we're meeting with the heads and the presidents of networks all the
time and even we are a little bit in the dark to a degree in terms of like what decisions have
they decided behind closed boardroom doors since the last time we chatted with them
but a great way to look at this is if you most of these companies are like massive publicly traded
companies I'm not an MBA I'm not like some big business guru I just kind of like getting
movies made and I'm sort of more creative on the deal making side not on the story side
that's sort of how I look at it but most of these companies whether it's Netflix AMC
networks Discovery Paramount they're all publicly traded and why that's important is that anybody
can get on their website and there's always going to be some tab in there called investors and if
you get on those and you can look for documents called 10-Ks or 10-Q and these are required by law
that they publish these big documents they're insanely long they're like 300-400 Pages you
don't have to read them all but if you actually skim through the first couple of pages there's
usually like a letter from the CEO there's like a breakdown of the marketplace there's a breakdown
of what they're trying to do in the next year the next quarter and they list it all out there like
they literally tell you like a to B this is what we're trying to do this is what we're trying to
get to these are the problems we have and this is how we're trying to adapt in this marketplace
or be competitive so they list it all out and what's also good about those is they actually
use their own every company has like their own internal language that they use how they like to
talk about problems how they like to speak about projects it's all listed in there so
that's a really good resource if you're trying to sort sort of learn what our company's going
for but truth be told if you're newer to the industry and you're sort of just starting out
opening those major doors isn't the most likely direct first step it's usually going to be
smaller companies that feed into those big ones so it's going to be smaller distribution companies
smaller production companies and they're the ones who are actually producing the core content that
will then be delivered to those bigger players so if you are looking at more of the originals
that are popping up on a lot of these platforms or networks and you go look at the companies that
are consistently delivering to them those are the ones to look at but whatever the big entity
problems are it's also going to ripple down to the smaller players too they're sort of like
I call them like satellites like they're sort of satellite companies and they're always feeding
into those big beasts and so whatever the big beast is having an issue with the smaller
companies will be too but that's a great way to find some interesting opportunities well that's
fascinating I might just do that just to just to try your example just because so go to a publicly
traded company and look for investor info and then kind of it'll be like a PDF or something and see
yeah like the major companies you can download it like in any conceivable format and it's you
can you can usually search through the document so if you're looking for something very specific like
certain titles of movies or TV shows or certain types of platforms that they might work with
like if you looked into Fox Tubi is related to Fox, Pluto is related to Paramount so you can
get in there and actually do a bit of research on the specific platform you're looking at so yeah.