On the last day of my 4th year in the Screenwriting BFA program, we pitched movies and TV shows to showrunners, producers, network executives, and filmmakers. It was an exciting day to talk about a project we worked on for a year or two! And even more – to talk about them to the people whose shows and movies we love. As a stage fright person, pitching is not my favourite part of the job, but the excitement to talk about stuff I wrote always wins.
As with any presentation, the key is to prepare. Know your show/movie, pitch, practice, practice, practice. We did this in the Writing for TV II course with Professor Meredith Vuchnich multiple times, and it was also one of our graded assignments. We wrote our pitches, polished them, and pitched them to the class multiple times. Luckily, I also had the opportunity to pitch in a Creative Producing class with Professor Ingrid Veninger to an executive from one of the well-known Canadian production companies. I also practiced out of the class, walking for a couple of hours and just practicing- that works for me. The great thing about Writing for TV II class was that we made our pitch decks, premises, and loglines; my whole year was about this particular show I was writing, so I got to know it very well, and thus, it was easy to talk about it.
However, I was developing my pitch for some time – as it was around 3 minutes, I needed to have a lot of it in, but also not too much, nicely structured. And, as my show is a comedy, it needed to be funny. I got my laughs during the pitch and had a good time pitching. Pitch Career Day was, for sure, one of the best parts of the screenwriting program at York University.