The Ins & Outs Of A Screenwriting Pitch Meeting by Justin Trevor Winters Video Lecture | Screenwriting: From Beginner to a Pro - Career Development

so in these meetings how much dialogue
is back-and-forth is it mostly you
speaking is it them just kind of
listening and then once they're done
it's okay great thank you very much
we're talking about the meetings when
I'm meeting with like an agent or a
manager right um you know it really what
it is is it's they want to get to know
you they want to know what you have
written what you have to offer what your
goals are what your projections are and
and what you're there to accomplish so a
lot of it really is I'm sure it's a back
and forth it's question and answer but
majority is them becoming familiarized
with your product and who you are as a
person and what you're trying to sell in
the stories that you're trying to tell
so just like I'd mentioned before I will
personally talk about success that I've
had in the sense of selling a screenplay
in a film that's gone into production
and post-production and scheduled to be
in theaters with some you know great
actors that were attached because I'm
trying to make myself as marketable as
possible and show that I can offer
something to the table and and hopefully
in return having them off or something
for me as well so I would say that a
majority of it without trying to
oversell yourself should be talking
about the things that you're excited
about you know I treat meeting with
agents and managers or even producers
you know the same as meeting with
friends and telling them about things
that I am really really excited about
this that you know the projects that I'm
working on the people who are attached
you know which changes on a daily basis
you know the actors that you get
depending on schedules you have great
actors attached to a project one day and
then the next day they're gone but that
day that they're there it's fun to say
it and it's fun to talk about it and
it's the same thing you know with
killing Winston Jones
we had financing set up three times and
it fell through for three times three
different times so there wasn't one of
those times where I didn't tell people
we have financing we're finally going to
make it it's going to happen because I
was excited about it and you know and
finally it did happen we finally found a
production company that was going
make that particular project so I think
meeting with managers and agents I'm
talking about the the projects I'm
excited about telling them you know why
these are projects that can be made and
can be marketable and can be lucrative
and can make everyone money you know
because at the end of the day and this
is something that I mentioned before is
this is a business you know especially
when you're talking about agents and
managers people have livelihoods they
want to make money they want to be
successful so you need to give them a
product that they can be successful with
don't sacrifice the integrity of your
story ever but know that at the end of
the day you have something that you need
to sell and you need to help make money
on how much time should someone be
prepared to go in and speak with someone
let's suppose they want to have their
sort of you know who they are and what
their about speech ready how much time
are they looking at 15 minutes yeah 15
minutes is probably a good amount of
time I mean the thing is you should have
your about me bio honed at that point
too so you know average pitches when you
go in to pitch a pilot to a studio or a
network you know you got about 15
minutes maybe 20 if you're lucky and the
thing is with that being said if they're
interested then they're going to ask you
questions and that meeting will run as
long as it needs to run so give yourself
15 minutes to say everything that you
need to say and hope that they start
asking you questions and it runs you
know longer than it should unless they
have a heart out because they have a
meeting that they have to run off to you
know they'll usually give themselves at
least a half hour you know if in 15
minutes they you know they're done I'm
not saying lose all hope but you know
it's like anything if you want to build
a relationship or you want to build a
friendship there's got to be back and
forth you have to find commonalities you
have to like each other you're going to
ask each other questions in the
beginning so look to you know pique
their interest and make yourself
interesting as a storyteller and and as
you know someone who has a producers hat
on at that moment and in closing how do
you
you what's the closure to the meeting
are you shake hands thank them for their
time so you're going to send a follow-up
email or what how is it what I try and
do personally is I try to make sure that
out of the projects that I pitched them
there's something that pique their
interest so then you leave with
something that you're going to send to
them so you're going to send an email to
follow up and say you know well you were
interested I pitched you four different
projects that I'm working on that I'm
all excited about you seem to be
interested in this one I want you to
read it and look at me this this is a
great writing sample for me and and I'd
love for you to see if this is something
that's in your wheelhouse or you'd like
to represent someone that writes in this
genre so I think that you never want it
to be closed ended you know you want it
to be open-ended so that you can
continue that communication I mean if
you know your felt if your concepts fall
flat and they don't care about any of
them maybe you can find a connection
with someone that you know in the
industry or maybe you can find a
connection with sports or maybe you're
from the same hometown anything that'll
at least keep the dialogue going so that
when you try to reappropriation so you
can utilize those resources in the
future there's no reason not to have the
connections and keep connections with
every single person that you run a call
across especially if they're successful
in the industry so you're following up
with like a car during I don't know if
people sign cards anymore if I wrote an
email yeah I mean emails really I mean
it's all about tangibility so I would
say send them something that they have
of yours because then it opens up the
dialogue if you send a script you know
chances are they're probably not going
to their scripts are going to be this
high on their desk they're going to have
a hundred they need to get to give them
a reason to read yours maybe you have
interest from some actors maybe you have
interest from investors maybe you have
someone who wants to option the project
and then knowing that it's potentially
getting optioned they see that they're
going to be getting five percent of that
or ten percent of that if it's a project
that they want to do as well so give
them something that they have to respond
on and this is another thing
this is an unspoken rule but when you
send a script to a producer or an agent
or anyone give them three weeks at least
three weeks to read the script if they
haven't read in three weeks just send a
small short email saying hey thank you
for taking a look at the script or thank
you for accepting it did you have a
chance to read it I'd love to hear your
thoughts this is what's going on with it
at this moment and look forward to
hearing from you
because three weeks will give them a
decent amount of time chances are they
won't have read it by that point but you
prod them a little bit and they'll
probably read it within the next three
weeks if they don't read it in the next
three weeks send another email just to
follow it you know but you don't want to
be the person who's sending follow-up
after follow-up and saying hey did you
read it it's going to be so good and
pushing the project you know they're
going to ultimately make the decision if
it's good or not they're so busy with
other things give them the time and the
respect to get to the project when they
can get to it
at what time do you stop sending those
emails um that's a good question I think
that you know three or four emails are
usually about the limit for me
personally if I feel like it's a very
good lead and it's someone that actually
might want to represent me or someone
that might want to produce a film that
I've that I've written I might look at
other ways of approaching them so I will
find out if someone else has a
relationship with them and have them
drop a line or you know someone I'll
look for ulterior ways of getting to
that person rather than sending
something directly to them because you
know you can't necessarily write someone
off if you've been emailing them for
months and they haven't responded
because they could just be incredibly
busy you know an example is the project
that Jon Heder and I are writing that
we're adapting fat so we have sent email
after email to Ram Bergman because he's
incredibly busy he's you know huge
successes of producer Don John has taken
up almost all of his time
over the last several weeks and months
you know he's constantly in production
constantly developing projects so you
know we reached out for weeks and then
you know we had John's representation at
Gersh start reaching out because they
had a personal relationship with RAM and
then they started to have a conversation
with them and then slowly but surely you
know we we got to them and now we're
looking to negotiate those those terms
so that we can adapt this and be hired
on as writers so I don't think that you
should necessarily give up hope but find
creative ways to potentially get to them
and you shouldn't be approaching one
person and not a hundred others you know
so it's one of those things where when
it's like if you have one script
every time you send it out and you get a
rejection you're going to be devastated
it just hurts but when you have ten
scripts and you send them out and maybe
there's a little traction on one of them
and maybe someone's actually optioning
another one and you're getting rejected
by the other eight who cares about the
other eight you got one that people care
about and you got one that someone's
optioning like that keeps you going so
be reaching out to a hundred people
because I guarantee you there's not
going to be a hundred people that aren't
responding to you there's going to be a
few that'll it'll have piqued interest
and will you know continue the
conversation and those are the ones that
you want to go after
you