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Session: Pitching
Posted by: David Maxon on November 3, 2007 11:07 AM | Comments (3)
Yesterday, I attended the session on making a pitch. The session was organized by Steve Mencher with producers from Day to Day, This American Life, and Weekend America. Brave pitchers sat in front of a room packed with conference attendees posing their story ideas.
Peter Clowney of Weekend America, in response to pitch about a neighborhood's wild turkeys, said that part of the problem is that he had been pitched ideas about wild animals mingling with civilization so many times. I thought this was an interesting point because, as someone who is trying to come up with a story idea to pitch, it is sort of the natural to be drawn toward ideas that sound like something you would hear on the radio. But in doing that, one might be just making herself blend in with all the other pitchers. On the other hand, you can’t be so far off the character of what you are pitching to that it doesn’t fit – perhaps a difficult balance.
Another interesting thing that came up was the idea something very simple, such as whether you can understand the subject of the story, might be very important. One pitcher wanted to profile an old man who rode the rails. But the man was very difficult to understand. So, some small thing that might be overlooked while preparing the pitch could derail it. It might not be about the idea so much as some technicality.
General points included being able to distill the story down to a couple sentences and thinking about plot points.
A brave soul pitches to Jane Feltes ("This American Life")
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