THE PITCH - a Guide to Pitching Stories for Film and TV

This is a pocket book in three acts; Inspiration, Preparation and Delivery. Simple as that. But as we should know by now, making a pitch can never be as simple as it seems, even when it has been reduced to three acts. Help is at hand though, in this little book, a distillation of pitching wisdom from producer Eileen Quinn, filtered and polished through one of her faithful disciples, producer Judy Counihan,

Between them Quinn and Counihan  have amassed forty years of pitching film and TV projects, so you can be pretty confident they are pitch perfect by now. The other quality bench mark is, they practice what they preach. As working producers they not only lecture on the art and the craft of pitching, but they do it for themselves and they hit their targets and win.

The thing is, does this little pocket book really sell the sizzle? Is this slim 100-page book the meat and potatoes of pitching? Well, I will not be going into the heat of kitchen again until I've read it through it once more. No; since preparation is everything - twice more.

This is a very down-to-earth book, following the maxim that simple is good, simpler is even better. But that is only on the surface. There's a great deal more going on underneath just to keep the pitcher afloat. These trade secrets and tips tried and tested by others and by the authors themselves, are the real filling in this book.

What we are taking about here is salesmanship, so by taking the basic principles of selling and blending them with practical ideas from seasoned film campaigners you can craft a pitch that will work for your project - and for you. This book is an arsenal of well-honed weapons you can choose from to ensure you hit that target just where you need to, to score - And in all probability, for less than the cab-fare to your next pitch.

Go get ‘em Tiger, you are on a roll with this one.

The Pitch

by Eileen Quinn and Judy Counihan

Illustrations by Berg and Wyse

A USEFUL Book, Published by Faber & Faber

101pages RRP £9.99

ISBN 0-571-22741-4