by Neil Landau
If you have a huge canvas of characters for an ensemble series, it can be helpful to prepare a visual aid—such as a chart—to refer to each character. I’ve cut out pictures from magazines and prepared such a chart so they don’t get confused about who’s who. However, I dissuade you from giving them a printout of a Cast of Characters because then they’ll spend the whole pitch looking down at the handout instead of up at you.
A short (three minutes or less) “sizzle reel” can be effective if it’s really provocative and well executed. Beware of anything that looks amateurish and have a contingency for technical snafus.
Props can be a useful selling tool, but don’t use them as a crutch. A gimmick like a bar of FIGHT CLUB soap to sell Fight Club: The Series and coming into the meeting with a black eye and bruises might make for a memorable pitch, but their decision to buy the show will be based on the story and characters, not the marketing gimmick.
Finish the pitch, and don’t buy it back. What this means is, when you’re done with your rehearsed pitch, shut up. This is crucial to (potentially) closing the sale. After you’re done pitching, there’s always that excruciating silence in the room that every fiber in your (insecure, neurotic) being will want to fill with embellishment. Do not give in to this temptation. When you’re done pitching, try to embrace the silence with confidence. Think about having a winning hand in poker. Don’t act all arrogant or jittery. Just sit there and let them make the next move. Anything you say beyond your proposed pitch that’s not elicited by them can and will be used against you, so don’t equivocate. If they have any questions, they’ll ask you. If they’re ready for you to depart, they’ll say thank you. Don’t act desperate and ask them when they’re going to make their decision. Don’t ask them for feedback on the pitch or how you can improve it. Insecurity does not invoke confidence in a buyer.
Hollywood is built on relationships. Obviously, talent plays a significant part, too, but good relationships close the sale. Any time you sell a pitch, the executive who advocates for it is placing a bet on you. If the executive is unsure that you can deliver the product—a kickass pilot script—then he/she is going to hedge their bets and spend their limited discretionary funds on a more confident, tried and true series creator. If you’re a total neophyte, they can always pair you up with an established showrunner should the series go into production. However, for this initial step of ordering the pilot script from you, they need to feel comfortable in their relationship with you and/or place their confidence in your producer to shepherd you through the script development process. Every pitch meeting is a learning opportunity for you, and not the be all, end all of your career—unless you get angry and rude for their not immediately embracing your brilliance and storm out. Be a team player, not a diva. Be magnanimous and flexible even when they take a phone call or answer an email right in the middle of your pitch. Keep your ego and T.V.C. (thinly veiled contempt) in check. It will only hurt you, not them.
Be a professional. Show up on time and be prepared. Never begin a pitch with a disclaimer! If you’re having a terrible day and got a speeding ticket on the way to the meeting, pull yourself together and leave your troubles outside the door.
Don’t discuss finances or price quotes in the pitch meeting. Be the artist and tell them to discuss that stuff with your rep. You’re a storyteller, not a lawyer or a haggler.
I generally recommend that you have three pitches prepared when you’re meeting with a producer. If you strike out with one, move on to the next one. However, when you’re going in to pitch at a TV studio or network, only pitch one project. You need to project an air of being fully committed, passionate, even obsessed with getting this one project on the air, as opposed to a shoe salesman.
Don’t burn any bridges. When you go into a network or studio executive’s office, it’s extremely important to remember that your first priority is not to make the sale. Your first priority is to establish rapport with the exec. They granted you the meeting because they read a sample of your work—and they liked it. Maybe this particular pitch is not for them (for an infinite number of reasons). It’s your job not to be crushed by their lack of enthusiasm and/or rejection and to keep the door open. Never argue. Don’t try to change their minds; you’ll look desperate (the kiss of death in a pitch meeting).
Interview: Kim Moses and Ian Sander
Kim Moses and Ian Sander Credits
Best known for:
Ghost Whisperer (Executive Producers/Ian Sander—Director) 2014
Ghost Whisperer (Executive Producers/Directors) 2005–2010
Ghost Whisperer: The Other Side (Web Series)
(Executive Producers/Producers; Kim Moses—Writer) 2007, 2010
Profiler (Executive Producers/Directors/Writers) 1996–1999
I’ll Fly Away (Ian Sander—Executive Producer/Producer/Director) 1992–1993
Emmy Nominated (Drama Series) 1992–1993
Emmy Nominated (Made for Television Movie) 1992
Equal Justice (Ian Sander—Producer) 1991
NL: We are talking about selling, pitching, and packaging, as well as, what makes a viable series and franchise. I’d also like to hear where you think the TV business is heading—and maybe a little on new media. It might be helpful initially to talk about how Ghost Whisperer came about since it has been so successful. How did you position that and sell it?
IS: We’ve been in the network and cable television business. Let’s talk first about network which, here in the United States, is CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and CW. My father once asked me, “How does your business work?” I thought about it and said, “In drama alone, and you could say the same thing for comedy, every network and/or studio exec, between the months of July and September, is going to hear anywhere from three hundred to five hundred pitches. Of those three hundred to five hundred pitches—and they’re from real people, from Kim and I, David Kelley, John Wells, J. J. Abrams, lawyers, agents, they’re likely to commission anywhere from fifty to seventy-five scripts. Of those fifty to seventy-five scripts, they’re likely to commission ten to twelve pilots. Of those ten to twelve pilots, they will probably pick up three to four. Of those three to four, one, maybe two will be on a second season. When I said that to my father who was at the time eighty-five, he said, “What the hell kind of business is that?” Those are real odds, not to scare, but to challenge. When you go in to pitch, you must find a way to liftyour material above those other three hundred to five hundred pitches because they’re only going to order fifty of them. And, that’s the art of selling for television.
KM: I think the odds that you’ve given are more for network. But the other thing that has become very difficult, and it feels like there’s an insatiable appetite for it, is what they call “loud” as opposed to excellent. The best is that you get both. But “loud” right now is very important because the network model is basically in a different place. It’s not as empowered as it was—particularly because there’s so much competition. First, there were three networks, then there were four, now there are five … plus the DVR. And the DVR is quickly becoming the number one network, believe it or not, because people want to watch their shows when they want to watch them—not when the networks are programming them. And now there’s cable. Cable has become the place where a lot of talent wants to work. There’s the platform of cable, the platform of video games, the platform of online, and all the digital media competition which is giving the networks a run for their money. But because there’s so much money to be made, these platforms are pushing up against the networks and the studios. What is giving the networks a run for their money are networks like Univision which are often beating networks like NBC. And that’s a new phenomenon which is not going to change because the Latino demographic is very young and very fluid. It is a growing culture which is influencing music, fashion, design— pop culture—with an insatiable appetite for content. The other thing that’s happened is that the cable networks have started branding themselves, like Bravo and the Hist
ory Channel, and are beating out the broadcast networks with brave content swings like the Hatfields & McCoys.
IS: If I’m not mistaken, more people saw the History Channel those three nights than watched anything scripted last year on NBC. I think maybe Sunday Night Football and maybe The Voice or a couple other unscripted shows might have higher ratings, but the reality is that no scripted show beat the History Channel which until that night, most people you talk to didn’t know existed.
KM: What’s interesting is the Hatfields & McCoys’ success has empowered Bravo and the History Channel and smaller networks like Ion and other cable outlets. All these cable channels which were solely doing reality programs are now shifting to developing, selling, and programming scripted. That’s more competition for the broadcast networks which is an enormous challenge for them—but more opportunity for content creators.
IS: And, now with digital, you have even more people entering, although there’s some question as to whether they’re successful to begin with. Whether it be YouTube or Hulu—who’s going to be doing original programming? We all know that Netflix is already into original programming—and DirecTV. It’s obviously growing and you have to think that people aren’t jumping into this because it’s a loser. These are businesses, these are big corporations that are looking at the business model and saying, “Maybe there’s an audience we can reach. Maybe there’s a business model there that we could make money on and if there isn’t, let’s see if we can create a new one.” And, therefore, they want to jump in. It’s great. In terms of where television is going from a practical sense, that’s where it’s going.
KM: It’s a really exciting time to be in the TV industry because of all of the evolution. It’s also a challenging time if you’re just being tactical and not strategic—and tactical means creating a great show and just putting it out there. For us as a company, we spend a lot of time talking to futurists and cultural specialists and decoders, networks and studios and chief participant officers of fan groups. But we also go outside of the industry to get lots of points of view. What we’ve learned is that you have to be tactical and strategic. Tactical is creating and developing, selling, and launching a great show, and then making sure that you’re continuing to grow that show, not just the show itself, but also the universe of digital platforms which we’ll talk about in a little bit. You can’t just put a great TV show out there anymore. You also have to be strategic which is having to go out and find that audience, engage with that audience, and create a trust. You do all this before you even launch the show; after the launch, you continue to nurture and grow the relationship with the audience. The biggest mistake I think that Hollywood makes—and it’s all of us—is saying, “Well, I don’t like this. I wouldn’t watch that,” because it’s not about us. The fan world is all about what have you done for me lately. It’s about the people across the country and around the world—the fan bases and the potential viewers. So, when we go into a pitch, that’s what we’re always thinking about: how to focus the content for that fan base.
We have to make sure that we have a process in place that drives the creative, so at the beginning of every development season, we create what we call a “point of view” document, which is about two hundred pages. It’s an analysis of the world for the year: the economy, the culture, how people relate to each other, the interconnectedness … We start very broad and narrow the focus more and more, drilling down into the entertainment industry and what’s going on with features, books, and television. Then, we go to the networks, studios, cable, and digital media. It’s a snapshot of the world at this point in time. We do it through a lot of research, analysis, and relationships with all kinds of experts within and outside of the Entertainment Industry— it’s our “discovery” phase and we love it! We meet with the heads of the networks and discuss their programming needs, then we meet with their programmers, research people and creative execs. Once we put the information together, we use this POV as the lense through which to look at all the material we consider developing that season. We see two different things: there’s the marketplace in the entertainment industry and there’s the global marketplace which is becoming more and more important because of how technology has stitched the world together. Once we have the POV doc in place, we start working with concepts, arenas, pieces of material and writers to match them up—like intricate jigsaw puzzles. Once we feel like we have one plus one equals one thousand, that’s when we start working with the writer to craftthe pitch. We don’t want our material to be residual because that’s the “been there, done that” category equals old new. We don’t want to be dominant because by the time the networks get ready to order pilots, if your material is dominant, it will appear dated. And if it’s emergent, then it may be too early to take the material out and people won’t get it. So the halfway mark between dominant and emergent is where we aim to be in development—that’s our sweet spot. The thing that gives pitching structure is having a process and a strategy—this will protect the creative.
IS: With Ghost Whisperer, Kim and I and John Gray were working on developing another project. We’ve known John for twenty years. I produced his first television movie in 1989 and I met Kim on the same movie. John and we had the same agent. At that point, we had already been in the series business: Profiler, I Fly Away, Equal Justice, New York News, The Beast, and more. We convinced John that we should try to come up with a series which had a paranormal aspect to it. At which point, John Gray gets a call from an executive at CBS, Bela Bajaria who at the time was the Movie of the Week and long form executive. John had recently directed a movie there called, Helter Skelter, which did quite well. Bela said she had done a movie with a guy named James Van Praagh called, Talking to the Dead, which also did well. It was a four-hour, mini-series (Ted Danson played James). She said, “There’s this woman that James introduced me to named Mary Ann Winkowski. She’s a real life ghostbuster. She’ll come to your house and get rid of the ghosts haunting it. She’s amazing! Do you think there’s a series in that?” He said, “To tell you the truth, I don’t know anything about series, but I’m working on something with Kim Moses and Ian Sander, would you mind if I talked to them?” “Well, if they want to do it, that would be great,” she said. And, when John came to us to say, “Do you think this is a series?” We said yes.
KM: We discovered through a Gallup Poll that 70 percent of people between the ages of five and sixty-five believe in ghosts (It starts at age five because of Casper.) And then, we googled Talking to the Dead and got 60 million hits, so we said, “That’s a show with a built-in audience and it has legs.”
IS: So the three of us came up with a pitch for doing a show about a ghost whisperer. Kim and I had a deal at ABC, so we had to pitch it to them first, but sure enough, they passed and we went to CBS. Van Praagh came with us. We had Mary Ann Winkowski on the phone from Ohio while we were in the room, and we said, “Mary Ann’s going to talk about what she does.” In the middle of her talk on speakerphone, she says, “Am I wrong or is there a file cabinet in there with a plant that’s dead on top of it?” We all looked up at the file cabinet and there’s a dead plant on it. I looked at Kim and I whispered, “It’s sold.” And, sure enough, CBS bought the show. It was lots of fun to develop and then John wrote a wonderful script. The pilot then got ordered into production, but it was cast contingent, meaning because it’s a single female lead show we have to find the star that the network will approve before we go forward. The thing is that even if a show is not cast contingent, it’s cast contingent. If you’re doing a single lead show and you don’t find the right actor, they’re not putting you on. Jennifer Love Hewitt happened to also have a development deal at that time down the hall from us at the studio. We had gotten to know her over the past six months and had talked about doing a show together, but she had just shot a sitcom pilot and was waiting to hear if it was being ordered into series. So, in the meantime, we went out and offered the Ghost Whisperer lead to a couple of different actress
es—fortunately they passed—and then Love’s show did not get picked up.
KM: We knew she was the girl—we knew all along.
IS: We gave her name to CBS, and they said maybe because she had never carried her own series. So we put her in a room with Les Moonves and we believed they would charm each other—and they did. Finally, we offer her the show, and she reads it and loves it. So we went into production on the pilot, John directed it and did a beautiful job. CBS said, “We love the pilot, but we have a lot of great pilots,” which I took to be French for “if CBS owned half of it,” we’re in. So we (the Endeavor Agency and I) brokered a deal between ABC Studios and CBS Studios. The show got on the air, but CBS hated the title. We had title contests to try to come up with a new one, but in the end, we got to go back to Ghost Whisperer which we’re so glad we did. The show got picked up for Friday nights at 8:00 p.m. on CBS. We did research and found out that 18 percent of the shows from the previous ten years that had premiered since X-Files on a Friday night went to season 2. Eighty-two percent did not. And we were on CBS which had CSI, CSI: Miami, Without a Trace, Cold Case—all procedurals. And our lead character was a twenty-five-year-old girl who sees ghosts. Now, ever since we did Profiler, which was 1996, we have been creating online assets at the intersection of TV and digital media and we learned that’s where the real magic is. So to launch Ghost Whisperer, we started producing interactive games, newsletters, videos, and lots of other assets which we distributed to Talking to the Dead sites, paranormal sites and Jennifer Love Hewitt fan sites. By the time the show came on the air, we were the most buzzed about show of any show coming on that year according to Trendums. The season before it was Lost. Over the next five years, we continued to do more and more of this for our show. Every week for every episode, we would create new assets and distribute them to our audience, including bloggers, websites, fansites, etc. Through this process (there’s that word again), we built a database which drove the ratings up. Eventually it developed into what we call the “total engagement experience” (TEE). Basically, it’s taking a television show and making it the most important component of a more comprehensive entertainment experience. Including multi-platforms which will ultimately drive viewers from one platform to the other in what we call an “infinity loop” that does a number of things: (1) builds ratings, (2) gets press buzz, and (3) creates revenue sources.