Personal journey: The 2nd edition of The Hollywood Pitching Bible.
When we wrote the first edition of The Hollywood Pitching Bible, we really didn’t know what to expect. We certainly knew that we were writing about a subject matter that was both incredibly important for Hollywood career longevity but also suffered from an incredible dearth of good information. We also knew from our teaching experiences how students struggled with pitching, and this gave us insight into the most challenging aspects of the pitching process. Still, when a new book is set free upon the world you never know what the reaction will be. The good news is that the book received uniformly positive reviews and the book is now required reading at several film schools around the country.
But nothing is ever perfect and we took the last year or so to listen to feedback in the hopes we’d eventually get it together to write a 2nd edition. We got a few requests to include more examples of pitches, and also some requests that we continue to develop some of our more unique and interesting ideas about the nature of pitching. More on that in a moment.
But first, a little recap:
The first edition of The Hollywood Pitching Bible came about when Ross LaManna (the Chair of the Undergraduate and Graduate Film Departments at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California) asked if we would help create a graduate level class in pitching. Ross, being an established Hollywood screenwriter and a bright guy, was deeply acquainted with the value of learning to pitch. He knew that, while many film classes can teach you how to write a script or operate a camera, understanding how to present your ideas (and present yourself) is where the rubber meets the road in showbiz. He knew that sending a graduate into the working world without knowing how to sell themselves and their projects is leaving them half-armed. In retrospect, Ross’ idea was pretty clever: take a Hollywood screenwriter (Doug) and put him in an arranged marriage with an experienced producer (Ken) to create a pitching curriculum that was able to explain pitching from “both sides of the desk.” Prior to that, Doug and Ken had never met. But it worked, and our first edition was the successful offspring of our combined knowledge.
Back to now:
The new edition of The Hollywood Pitching Bible was released in late August of 2014. We call it the “expanded second edition” because it has more content than the first edition by 50%. As mentioned, we dig even deeper into pitching, with many more specific examples of pitches. Maybe more importantly, we also greatly expanded some of the core components and unique principles we originated in the first edition – especially our ideas regarding how the process of pitching can help uncover and perfect the DNA of an idea. In this regard the book is much more than just a book about the verbal selling of film and TV ideas. We are solidly in the fundamental territory of screenwriting and storytelling. As far as we know, this is a unique aspect of our book.
In addition, we also expanded our coverage of reality programming and added more information about pitching from a director and producer’s perspective. We added many anecdotes from top Hollywood professionals about how they actually pitched and sold their projects that got made. All of these contributors did a stellar job and their stories are really illuminating. You can read some of them on the Hollywood Journal website. It is our sincerest hope that this will help make the 2nd edition of The Hollywood Pitching Bible a definitive and practical resource for years to come.
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Below is an excerpt from our section on creating a good log line. You will see how we use this element of a pitch to access the DNA of an idea. In this excerpt we discuss two of the six elements you need in a stand-alone log line.
Identify Your Protagonist. Who is the protagonist? In other words, through whose point of view is the listener experiencing the events of the story? Try to identify the primary aspects of the protagonist that matters for your log line. Referring to the protagonist merely as a “man” or a “woman” is almost never enough. It is often better to identify the protagonist by what they do. Is he or she a cop, a superhero, a doctor, a mother? But make sure your description is relevant to what comes later in your log line! In other words, if you describe your lead as a cop, and what follows is not a story that involves cop-things, there might be a better way to describe the lead. One other important thing – if your lead is under 18, specify the age exactly. Calling someone a child or kid is vague. There’s a big difference between a 5-year-old and a 12-year-old. But in general you probably won’t specify the character’s age in the log line unless their exact age is important to the story – for example, a story about a character’s first trip to Las Vegas at 21, or forced retirement at 65, etc.
Usually, the earlier you can identify your protagonist in your log line the better. So, “a resourceful scientist fights back when the Earth is attacked by aliens” is better than “after the Earth is attacked by aliens, a resourceful scientist tries to fight back.” Do you see how the first version keeps the primary focus on the lead? (If the aliens are the stars of this film – never mind.) You want your protagonist at the center of your story’s reason to exist.
You don’t need to give your protagonist a name. In fact, you should almost never give your protagonist a name in a short log line, unless they are based on a famous or real-life person – in other words, if your listener will recognize the name when they hear it. If your character’s name is something like Harry Potter, Noah, Santa Claus or Kermit the Frog, by all means let your listener know! This is a marketing decision.
If your story is told from multiple points of view - if it involves a group, or a team, or an ensemble - try to characterize the group. “A team of superheroes,” “a dysfunctional family,” or a “motley band of soldiers,” are all good examples. This usually applies if there are more than two central characters. If you were doing a story with two equal leads, such as a romance or a buddy story, each character would more likely be described individually. For example, “Notting Hill” would probably be described as a romance between a “British bookseller and an American movie star.” A typical exception would be for a comedy like “This is 40,” where the two protagonists might be collectively described as a “middle-aged, married couple.” Of course, some romances and buddy films have more than two leads, such as “Love Actually” or “The Hangover,” respectively. In films like these you will need to summarize the group in some way – “A cross section of Londoners” or “Four groomsmen.”
One last aspect of establishing your protagonist is the use of adjectives to enhance the description of them. In most cases you should choose an adjective that will help the listener zero in on the protagonist’s primary quality: “a lonely housewife,” “a reluctant superhero,” “a dysfunctional family,” and so on.
Adjectives can be a log line’s best friend if done right. Two tips for doing it right:
First, try to choose an adjective that confers a dramatic, dynamic, sympathetic, or admirable quality to your protagonist. You’re describing your lead, after all. This doesn’t mean your choice has to imply heroism or perfection. Flawed characters are okay, but there’s a huge difference between describing them as a “loser” versus “down on their luck.” The latter is much more sympathetic. Remember, the listener does not have the benefit of knowing all the complexity of your character that will appear in the screenplay. They will build their impression entirely on what words you use to describe them here.
Second, your choice of adjective must be relevant to the events or actions that follow in your log line. So, a lonely housewife finds true love, a reluctant superhero rediscovers his courage, and a dysfunctional family learns to live together. Do you see how these character descriptions and actions that follow compliment each other?
One last piece of advice, it is very easy to slip into some bad clichés with adjectives if you’re not artful. Some of the examples above come pretty close, but we chose them just for clarity. Use a thesaurus; find the best words, ones that are both fresh and evocative.
Protagonist’s Goal. Once we identify the protagonist, next we must articulate their main goal for the bulk of the story. What do they really want? So, for example, in the movie “Gravity,” the astronaut’s main goal is to survive a disaster and return to Earth. It’s not to repair the Hubble Telescope, although that is her initial goal. This is a crucial distinction. You must identify what drives the drama for most of your story. If your log line is for a movie, the protagonist’s goal should be the thing that drives the story for perhaps 90 minutes of screen time. If it’s a television series log line, it might have to help drive the stories of 60 episodes, or more! In almost all cases, the protagonist’s goal will be described with a verb – “survive” and “return,” in our “Gravity” example above.
Be careful when selecting the appropriate verb. Make sure it describes something that can be ongoing and sustained. Stay away from verbs that imply very transient things for the protagonist. Verbs like “discovers” or “realizes” or “decides” imply a very brief screen time, unless followed up with another verb that describes the protagonist’s actions after that discovery, realization or decision! It only takes a few minutes of screen time for the astronaut in "Gravity" to discover her space shuttle has been destroyed, but it takes the rest of the film for her to survive and return to Earth, so the latter is an example of what you want to capture in your log line. Also look for external, visual verbs. If you say your character “contemplates” something, the listener might imagine a movie of someone looking out the window pensively. Remember, film is a visual medium.
If you’re having a hard time identifying your protagonist’s goal it is probably a good indication that your story has some fundamental flaw. Once again, this is an example of how pitching can be a tool that helps you uncovers the DNA of your story, and make it better. This is a core principle of this book.
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The Hollywood Pitching Bible is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, for Kindle, Nook, and at bookstores nationwide.
See more excerpts at The Hollywood Journal
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