Inspired by Brett (Electric Dreamer aka E.D.), I'm creating this thread if anyone's interested pitching. Hope it's alright with Don and the other moderators. Also, hope this is in the correct area to do this.

I would like to know your thoughts about pitching specifically if you prefer pitching for your first time in person or via internet?

They have both pros and cons, but I kind of like the internet approach. Less traveling is a big plus. What's your reasons?  

In addition, I found this site:
http://www.virtualpitchfest.com/

and wanted to know if any of you tried it or do you know of any other pitching sites or pitching fests?

Gabe

P.S. Why I'm doing this? I'm close to finishing up my script and going to pitch the hell out of it. Finding a job in NYC is difficult and I think it's the best time to concentrate on my dream. lol. I'm still looking but...

I usually pitch on the phone before anything... Pitching in person, before any phone or net contact, is a very fortunate position to have.  One I'd pass with flying colors to be sure ... "cough".

I was asked to submit a written pitch. It's WAY harder than pitching in person or via Skype. All your excitement and enthusiasm has to come through on paper, you have to make as convincing a case as possible, and everything you write is basically set in stone forever. It took me two weeks to put the pitch together, turned out good but not something I'd like to do often. I'd rather be in the room with them.

I had to write a pitch recently to be used by the producer to solicit funding, I found some great pitch samples by Googling and just used them as a reference. I needed a pitch of about 4 lines, a 3 paragraph synopsis, and a 1 page synopsis. Plenty of references online to help.

I read an interesting idea yesterday on Carson Reeves blog. The suggestion was about pitch testing your premise before you write. He suggested list your pitch in with a bunch of other pitches from recently sold scripts and have your friends read and rank in order of interest. If your pitch is not consistently selected near the top, it might not be a very marketable idea.

Hey Gabe,

Good on you for starting a thread about this.
Pitching is such a duality. Generating excitement with a total stranger is hard.
So, I try to focus on relaying to them what excited me about writing the script.

For instance, with Zombie Playground, I wanted to create a PG rated zombie film.
Where it's not a story about zombies.
But, how zombies bring together two dysfunctional families.  

Ironically, the pitch is the last thing I work on.
I'll tinker with it, take some notes a couple hours before I go in there, but that's it.
I don't want to work it too much, I'll kill the "freshness" of it if I rehearse a lot.

Though I take notes while I write the script, if a catch phrase strikes me.

For instance, one day while working on Clone Wife, this bit of data hit me.
It's a romantic comedy where the "other woman" isn't another woman.

It's accurate, but also catchy. Not a single person didn't get it.
Distilling excitement and delivering it in a passionate manner is tough.

Find that nugget that got you to dedicate months of your life to the script.
Then refine it until it's that polished rock that will catch a listener's attention.

Once you've got them hooked, then work your magic on them!

Hope this helps.

Regards,
E.D.

A while ago I was converted, through my own experience, to the idea that one should develop their log and pitch before anything else. Obviously, when one starts writing a script they think they have a sound premise, but putting this in pitch form before you start writing has two benefits. One, if it turns out that it's not so easy to make your premise clear in a log and a short pitch, then maybe there's a problem with the premise. Also, when you run this pitch by people, if you don't get a positive reaction, you might reconsider it.

Two, having the pitch front and center will keep your story focused as you develop it. You might, at the end, ultimately adjust your pitch, and that's fine, but the pitch also serves to focus the story.

In my most recent feature, what I thought was a cool premise turned out to be something more problematic. This had a hidden benefit for me, actually. When the problems became more clear to me after people read the first draft, I had a choice: discard the work, or try to fix it. But how do you fix work based on a problematic premise? You can't. But I did something else.

I decided that if I could make the stories of the characters really compelling, then maybe people could still enjoy the script even if they had questions about the premise. So I focused on that.

The benefit for me as a writer was that this was something I should have been doing anyways, something that should be done with all scripts. So it was really worth my while to try to improve on that as a writer.

In future work, what I hope to do is have a more effective premise AND succeed with making the characters compelling. Not saying I have the talent for that, but I think that's the right approach.