Pitching “In Country”
by Meghan O'Hara on April 7, 2014 in Uncategorized
By the summer of 2012, we (co-directors Mike Attie and Meghan O’Hara) had been working on our feature documentary, IN COUNTRY – a portrait of a group of men reenacting the Vietnam War in the woods of Oregon – for over two years. We were really excited about the way the film was shaping up but we had yet to show our footage to anyone besides a few close friends. We had been working in a complete vacuum: alone, just the two of us. We knew though that in order to finish the film, and then to find an audience, we were going to need to find help – funding for sure, but also advice and guidance.
So when Sean Flynn, director of Points North Documentary Forum at the Camden International Film Festival, informed us that we had been invited to pitch IN COUNTRY to their panel of industry leaders in September 2012, we jumped at the chance. We would at last have an opportunity to test out our idea in front of a panel of industry experts and a packed theater. There was just one problem: we had never pitched anything before…
After scrounging airline miles from a family member and convincing a friend to let us stay at his lobster-festooned beach cottage a few miles from Camden, we arrived at the forum. The Points North pitch training, run by Judith Helfand and Andrea Meditch, took us from total disaster – we talked over one another and stumbled when our coaches asked the simplest questions – to ultimately winning “Best Pitch.” Not only did that boost our confidence and public awareness, but we came away with great advice: that your passion matters as much as the facts and any pitch is as much about pitching yourself as the project. We had to remember to include (albeit briefly) our own personal journeys of how we came to this film and why we were the right people to make it.
We left Camden with a $1,000 award and our eyes wide open, but this was just the beginning of our story ….
Spring-boarding from the CIFF experience, we went on to become an IFP Lab Fellow, providing us with a whole new set of skills, and to pitch IN COUNTRY dozens and dozens of times, including, most preeminently, at the HotDocs Forum, at IFP’s Film Week, at Dok.Incubator’s showcase at Dok.Leipzig and at Sundance as part of our fellowship with the Sundance Film Institute. Over the course of the last year, we have learned as much about the art of the pitch as about filmmaking and distribution.
First off the downsides: Depending on the location of the particular forum, travel can be expensive – likely you are pitching because you need money. It’s hard to justify spending money that won’t go towards your budget. It can take your attention from finishing the film, as editing a fundraising trailer diverts critical time and resources away from your actual edit. (Fortunately for filmmakers now, from the year after us, CIFF began to cover the travel costs of Points North pitchers!) And finally, it’s stressful! Panelists, potential funders and even audience members are evaluating not only your work, but your ability to perform! And even if your pitch goes exceedingly well, the chance that you will walk away with the money to finish your film is slim to none.
However, the upside more than balances out those challenges – not necessarily immediately, but over the weeks and months that follow, and forging relationships that we expect to span our careers. Daniel Chalfen from Naked Edge Films, who months later came on as our Consulting Producer, was on the panel at that first pitch at Camden. He was the one who ultimately suggested our amazing editor, Lindsay Utz. And the icing on the cake was Modulus, a post-house in Boston, retroactively awarding us a full post-production package (which is now a regular prize at the Forum), where we now just finished the film. What’s more, the press we received after our pitch helped us bring attention to our Kickstarter campaign, which hit its goal just 6 days after we launched it.
Having now pitched IN COUNTRY countless times it still feels daunting. Each pitch needs to be tailored to your audience, whether it’s an individual at a table or a packed auditorium. We really felt like we hit our stride during IFP’s Film Week. We attended as part of the IFP Documentary Lab, a yearlong marketing workshop for first-time feature filmmakers. Our two previous sessions in the lab helped enormously, not only in refining our pitch, but in understanding to whom we might be pitching – i.e. how might you present the film differently to a potential executive producer, a broadcaster or a potential funder. We had over 30 half-hour meetings that week. Some said in that moment that the project wasn’t right for them. Some of the conversations from last September are still in progress. The most fruitful conversation there ultimately resulted in us receiving a post-production grant from the Sundance Documentary Fund. This was huge, and not only financially, but to have such a significant funder’s validation of the project. Now, having them on board makes pitching just a little bit easier.
In spite of knowing these realities from the start, we recognized that in order to succeed with this film (and our own careers) we had to play the long game and see pitching as an investment in the future. We hope IN COUNTRY will be our first film of many. And that leaves us to our final bit of advice: always have the next film ready to pitch. The film you’re working on now may not be the right one for that particular funder or broadcaster, but if you make a good impression they will certainly want to know what other projects are in the works.