The big pitch - 25 words or less

It is all in the pitch!  At Rebel Business School from day 1 on our course we talk about pitching your idea, your product or service and selling it!  Turns out it is exactly the same in the movie industry!  Before I even got to LA to write my movie I had been asked to "pitch your movie to me!"

Writing the screenplay at The Victorian on Main Street, Santa Monica

Just like you do for any business, I have started to write and refine a pitch for my movie, and I was wondering if you could help?

25 words or less.  GO!

When you are pitching you have a few seconds to capture someone's attention and get them interested enough to want to hear more from you. It turns out in movies and TV the executives learnt pretty early on that if you wanted people to watch your movie you needed to be able to sell it to someone pretty quickly.  But where did 25 words or less come from? In printed TV guides there was only space for 25 words under the title of the movie or TV show; that became the standard length with which you had to pitch your idea.

This morning I have been writing different versions of my pitch and I wondered if you could help me refine it?   Please have a read of the 4 versions below and tell me which one you like the most and why by voting below!

I tell everyone at Rebel that the only way to know if your pitch is any good or not is to test it on real life people.  So this is me swallowing my own advice and testing it on you to see what you think!  Don't be shy, you can't hurt my feelings!  Tell me exactly what you think of my pitches and whether you would watch the movie or not!! 

Version 1

David, a single, chubby twenty something, trapped in a job he hates, living at home and trying to escape corporate purgatory to create a life he actually wants to live and get the girl of his dreams

Version 2

23 year old, chubby, single British man tries to escape a corporate job he hates, start his own business and win the girl of his dreams

Version 3

Trapped in a grey soul sucking corporate job, our young chubby Englishman tries to escape, start his own business and get the girl of his dreams all in one move

Version 4

The greyness of corporate life, the council and banking try to trap our chubby young Englishman in a life he hates.  He struggles and fights to become an entrepreneur build a business and win the girl of his dreams

The only way to learn 

You can read all the books you want, and you can write all you want in your own notebook but the only real way to learn is to get your idea out into the world, pitch it, and get feedback!  

It is nerve-wracking (what if they don't like it?), it is scary (what if I am not good enough?) and it can be fun at the same time seeing your idea released into the world!

If you have an idea in your head then get it out into the world and start pitching and selling it and see what happens!  

Thank you for reading and thank you for helping me and being part of my journey to becoming a screenwriter.  I really appreciate your support and help!

I am excited to share with you this week's update in a few days' time and I have so many lessons and ideas that I have learned along the way that I am excited to share with you as I write more in the future.  

If you want to catch up on the adventure so far here are the main articles:

• The screen writing adventure begins
• The BIG commitment
• Week 1 Screen play update
• Week 2 Update - including word count graphs!

Thanks for your help
Sending you happiness from Los Angeles 

​Alan

previous post: Screen Writing: Week 2 Report

next post: Screen Writing Experiment - Week 3 Report