give the perfect pitch even though it’s being satirical.
This is my first post. I’m Brian Morgan I just finished as the Coordinating Producer on Cell. And you may be asking yourself “What is a Coordinating Producer?” Good question made up voice inside my head.
First a coordinating producer is usually a credit given in television and not film. But it’s cousin in film would be a UPM with some producer responsibilities. Which include
* Preparing the budget by breaking down the script into its elements* Bearing the responsibility for most of the financial negotiations, such as for equipment procurement and concerning stage costs
* Preparing a preliminary shooting schedule; the 1stAssistant Director takes over this responsibility while discussing changes with the UPM
* Hiring the crew, except for those hired by the director.
Like in most independent projects, you are usually doing a lot more then the official title suggest. So in my case I will be continuing on and organizing our post schedule with our editors, visual effects, sound mixer, director, marketing, and ninja monkey assassins (secret season 2 stuff, very hush hush)
Since we here at the Austin Film Meet are going to be having a two week meeting on how to pitch, I thought I would show what has been passed on to me as the perfect pitch.
As a wee bit student here at the UT, my screen writing professor Scot Rice pointed out that the perfect pitch can be seen in Robert Altman’s “The Player” Who is Robert Altman you ask?….Actually if you are asking that your life is in serious danger from ninja assassin monkeys. Not that I had anything to do with it, but run to what video rental locations are left (no Red Box doesn’t count) and rent either Nashville, MASH (the movie please, not the TV show) The Player, or one of my favorites “A Prairie Home Companion”…anyways as I was saying before your lack of Altman got me off track.
The Player is a satirical look at Hollywood and one of the best, up there with “Wag the Dog” and “Sunset Boulevard”. Tim Robbins plays a producer in the film and gets a pitch for a movie that he green lights and starts making through out the film. What’s brilliant or ironic, depending on your definitions, about this scene is that while it is satirizing the Hollywood pitch it is basically giving you what the perfect pitch is. Short, Visually descriptive, all the main elements of the story are in place and it leaves you wanting to know more about the story.
And here it is the Perfect Pitch.
