Pitch document draft 1

After a few weeks of phone-calls and reading around the subject I have done my first draft of a pitch email to the BBC. Succinct and to the point is what I’m aiming for. Will eagerly await a response. Watch this space!! I’m very excited.

Beggars Vs. Choosers - Contacting production companies

I have spent my morning contacting some more TV production companies. It’s a necessary but not particularly fruitful task. Back in March of this year (when my enthusiasm was bursting at the seams) I contacted just over 30 television production companies. And do you know how many responses I got? Go on, guess. One. That’s right – one. Thankfully it was from the fantastic Gub Neal at the Artists Studio, who has been keen to share his knowledge and has hopefully got something in return. Well, if my BBC pitch document works out well he will certainly have got his money’s worth! Remember: when I say money’s worth I mean the price of a bottled water at the Century member’s club.

Maybe I’m being a little harsh on the rest of them. I did have meeting with Laurence Bowen at Feelgood Fiction (though no response yet on a recent follow-up email I sent) who was hugely encouraging. I also had a lovely polite decline from a lady called Michelle at Wall to Wall. I received the below one-liner with some rather cryptic acronyms from Noel Gay television:

Hi
We actually stick to synopsis only unless it is a writer I know about
BW
CA

If that’s not a brush off I don’t know what is.

Now for a list of some companies I heard NOTHING from. Not even an automated response thanking me for my interest:

Baby Cow,
Ecosse Films,
Festival Films,
Avalon,
Coastal Productions,
Hat Trick Productions,
HBO,
Mentorn,
Oxford Film & Television,
Red Planet Pictures,
Shine Entertainment (also registered on their website),
SMG/ Ginger Productions,
Slate Films,
Spellbound Productions,
Talkback Thames,
Tiger Aspect Productions,
World Productions
…and so on.

This isn’t just an exercise in naming and shaming, nor is it more wallowing in my own failures (see posts ‘Dejection & rejection’ parts I and II). I want to remind myself of who I contact and their responses. After all, that’s what this blog is for: charting my journey and keeping track of learnings along the way. It seems in this business rejection is something you have to learn very quickly; to be perfected over time.

I am awaiting responses from Kudos films, Mammoth Screen and Left Bank Pictures, who are all three that I would REALLY like to hear back from.

Maybe this is karma after the number of sales calls I bat back on a daily basis during my day job at a media agency. Or maybe the TV production companies can tell they’re just another name on my hit-list, that of course there’s some companies that take preference – for example I’d give my left pinkie fingertip for a job at the BBC, Tiger Aspect, Kudos et al - but that at this stage in my career I’d take pretty much anything.

The Deep

I’m not sure if it’s just because I scan the TV listings for them, but there seems to be more one off dramas and mini-series’ on television then in previous years. And good quality ones, at that.

This week sees the start of The Deep written by Simon Donald*, which stands out due to its unusual setting – almost entirely in a submarine deep under the sea. The whole things feels incredibly sci-fi, even down to the vampire squid (pictured) that the crew watch dance past them. As well as feeling like made up science the story-line is far-fetched to my mind, but no doubt is actually pretty much factually accurate an incredibly well-researched.

There are aspects that seem implausible, such as whether a dead marine biologist’s husband (also a marine biologist) would be involved in the recovery mission for her submarine’s black box. However this is easily forgotten once we delve into the submarine mission.

In the tradition of cabin-fever movies such as The Hole (2001) gradually tempers flare, and we leave the first episode reading the eerie message ‘RAYMOND MURDERED MADDY’. One of the main techniques used to build the claustrophobia was only having limited scenes above the sea. That way the audience feel trapped along with the characters – I know my heart was beating a little faster when the lights on the submarine went out.

There are, of course, some faults with a script like this. Dramatic lines can feel tacky, and explanations of scientific objectives can get wordy and unwieldy. Plus the relationships between the crew members initially seems more distanced than you would expect for people who spend weeks at a time working in a confined submarine together, and the relationship reveal seems a little trite. However I’m just being picky, and at the end of the episode I raised myself up from lolling on the sofa and gazed wide-eyed at the unfolding spectacle. And I can’t ask for any more than that, showing that the script must be doing an awful lot of things right.

*Murphy’s Law, Taggart, Soldier Soldier.