At the Edinburgh International Television Festival the
Guardian hosted a “Dragon’s Den” for producers pitching their comedy and
entertainment ideas to commissioners from ITV. BBC3, Sky1, 2 & 3 and MTV.
The one-hour video shows four producers doing their pitches, the judges’
comments, and a finale in which each judge decides whether and how to invest
the £5000 they have been allocated for this session.
This is a great chance to see some real-life pitching and to learn some things to do and not to do. The “not to do” that you’ll see well-illustrated:
- Don’t
punctuate your pitch every fifteen seconds with the word “OK”
- If you
have a joke slide that doesn’t get a reaction, don’t point out that it was
a joke
- If the
budget is important (and it usually is), don’t show up without any concept
of how much your project will cost
- If
you’re talking into a microphone on a stand, stop talking when you bend
down to pick up things on the floor or turn away to point to something
The things that did work:
- Use
visuals to illustrate your points
- Present
with passion
- Use
guerrilla tactics when necessary (a great example is mentioned in the
second pitch)
It’s also instructive to pay attention to the kinds of questions that come up after the pitch—naturally your goal is to anticipate the tough questions and build the answers into your pitch. There is another pitching session video, this one for factual entertainment. I found the video player on this site a bit temperamental, but give it a try here (click on the last dot in the little column of dots to the right of the big screen that comes up and you'll see the two Dragons videos listed.)
