What's Going On...

1) The first night of pitching went pretty well. Everyone was assigned eleven different tables--each with a representative from a production, management company or agency. I had requested mainly managers, as I have been told that they will look at your writing and help develop and brand you if you aren't actually quite ready for the marketplace... and that's where I suspect that I, and probably most folks right out of school, fall.

In addition to the eleven, also approached a couple during their break times. I felt my pitches were pretty consistent across the board. I had rehearsed quite a bit, so I never forgot where I was or completely flailed. Although I did crash one table and tried ot make an impromptu pitch for a third script that I really like (invisible teen), and I fear I didn't sell it as strongly as I could have. The overall result for the evening was five requests for what I call my "alien babies" script, and one guy who says to write him when I have a chapter of the novel-version of Zombie Parents...because of course they'd prefer to make it if it were a novel or a graphic novel first! (I wish I could draw!) I think this is a pretty good turnout.

There is much discussion and opinions about whether it is better once you have received a script request, to send it out immediately, while they are excited, even if it is not as perfect as it could be, or whether you should spend more time on it and get it right before you send it, even a a couple weeks go by. I am taking one week to try to incorporate my last round of notes. Then comes the wait to hear back from the companies. Although in the end, I was very happy with my pitch, the flip side to this, is that I worry my script won't quite live up to the pitch... but we'll see how it goes.

2) The second night of pitching--ten minutes to one long table of panelists, went fine too. Pitching to a long table wasn't ideal, but I was fairly happy with my "getting through it." But, maybe because underneath, in a kind of core way, I am a little sad lately, I'm not sure that the funniness of the movie came through. Or it could just be that the tone is something we haven't really totally worked out yet--it falls in that quirky Joss Whedon, Tim Burton, Coraline, Rhoad Dahl arena--and yet none of these examples totally capture it...which is hard for people to get. A twelve year old girl resurrects her dead parents, who then start to devolve into zombies--which is funny. Except then you realize it's a twelve year old girl whose parents have died, and now she has to consider killing them again, and well, it's actually pretty dark. So it's got a twelve year old girl as a protagonist--not exactly a draw for most zombie lovers, yet the dark subject matter makes it not a "family film."

So I get a lot of questions like "What's the demographic for this?" "Who do you see watching it?" I hem and haw and cite the examples above, and finally just say, "Me." I'm the demographic. Me and my seven friends who still watch Buffy as adults. I think in the end, we will have to age her up and make her more of a teen.

3) So with those two occasions out of the way, I finished up my book report for my industry class on Wednesday, and plowed through the 28 pages of forms to fill out for my second internship this summer, and returned to final tasks for our Script List. I have thoughts about internships and life in general, but will save for another post. Today we have family coming over for a meal--my mom, sister and family, and brother, and Paul's mom and dad... so one thing I have NOT done yet this week, is dive into cleaning the house. So I'd best get to that!