NPA Pitch & Connect (1 of 5)

The New Producer's Alliance (NPA) hosted an event as part of the Bird's Eye View Festival which was called "Pitch & Connect". I headed in there with our Mars Movie to get some advice, and had a chance to meet and chat personally with five experienced producers.

The notes are nothing radically new, good to hear from the professionals nevertheles

s.


The first person I met was Theatrical Sales Manager at Universal and used to work for Revolver Entertainment.

I pitched the Mars story and she just listened, but smiled - she seemed to like the idea or at least my enthusiasm. Pity this was my first port of call as I think I warmed up a few more radical questions a bit later, but nevertheless she gave some good advice and was very encouraging.

• "online" is a bit of a buzzword at the moment
• distributors can get P&A support money from soft sources for innovative projects, so they like to have those projects
• marketing is absolutely key, she was very glad that we were already thinking about that
• the film itself has to work for an audience, they have to talk about it
• cover the conventions of the genre but also have a USP
• our movie is popcorn cinema and we should sell it as such
• Revolver Pictures and Vertigo are good targets for our movie
• we have to make sure that before we go in there we are absolutely ready
• they will want to see nerdy stats and they will talk business, actual content is secondary
• for every positive example we have, they will have a casualty example and we should be ready for that
• we should research the patterns of what movies they have picked up when and when they've released them how etc