I had an email asking my opinion of a new service called My Visual Pitch (myvisualpitch.com), so I thought I would share it here.
The idea of My Visual Pitch is that writers and musicians create a trailer for their screenplay, TV series idea, band, or other creative project they are trying to sell. They upload it onto the site (it costs about $10 a month), where it will be seen by industry executives who (ideally) will buy the project.
There are already sites up like this where scriptwriters can post script summaries, but the hook this time is that you can make your pitch visual and therefore more appealing. I have to say that I found the samples on the site a bit too much like a typical trailer, along the lines of a gravelly voice intoning, "Two men, one woman, and the curse that ties them together for all time..." If I'm a busy producer, I want you to cut to the chase: what's the story? We can figure out the teaser ads later.
But the real flaw with all services like this is that generally they are not used by mainstream show business buyers, for three reasons. One is that by registering with and accessing such sites they may leave themselves open to lawsuits brought by writers who think they have been ripped off; another is that they just don't have time to browse sites like this since they are already inundated with material from established agents. And the third is that, frankly, quite a lot of material on these kinds of sites is not very good. If My Visual Pitch can overcome these problems and demonstrate that legitimate producers and network executives are actually coming to the site, it could be a worthwhile investment--but I'd advise you to get some convincing facts and figures before you get out your credit card.
