ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how to best prepare and present some of the most challenging pitches–those to prospective distributors, production partners and investors. A large responsibility of any one of roles is to pitch to convince others to support film project. As a structured two-way conversation, the independent filmmaker's role during a pitch is more to lead rather than to dominate the discussion. Once essential meeting details have been listed, a team must clearly identify the primary objective of the discussion. The pitch discussion topics, the final agenda, meeting partner's decision-making criteria and the results of practice sessions will determine what presentation materials and leave behinds may need to adequately support their pitch. The project overview page will be used as an important part of various pitches and discussions as well as used as the reverse page of the project one-sheet and sent as an attachment to networking emails. As with pitch meetings, networking success largely depends on adequate research.
