Back in New York after a week at the Rotterdam Lab. That week went fast! Here are a few highlights:

One of our first sessions was Ido Abram's master class in pitching. Ido is the Managing Director of the Binger Filmlab, a prestigious Amsterdam-based feature film and doc development center open to international filmmakers. Binger seems like a Euro version of the various Sundance Labs, only each Binger lab goes on for months at a time, and are located in a city that is pretty much the polar opposite of Utah.

Ido has thought a lot about pitching, and has broken down the principles in a useful way. For this lecture, he tailored his spiel for the audience - producers. The heart of his lecture was about the many layers of a successful pitch, which for a producer should sell more than just the story of the film. A producer must also sell him or herself: as a creative force; as a knowledgeable professional; and as someone who can follow through. And all in 3-4 minutes.

How to accomplish this? Don't ever pitch from need -- pitch from the point of: You have just what they are looking for! Research who you are meeting and tailor your pitch to their needs - how does your project fit into their future slate, expansion strategy, TV output deal etc. Understand the needs of the people you are pitching and know that if they like the project, they will need to pitch someone higher than them -- so give them the tools to succeed.

All of us at the lab certainly had ample opportunities to try these principles out during the five days of speed dating sessions with distributors, financiers, financing brokers, foreign sales agents etc.

More than anything, the lab opened my eyes to the world of European state run co-productions and the relative unimportance of the US market to this established and complicated system of funding. As one UK-based film funder told us: when they work up sales estimates for their films, they assume the US will provide them the same revenue as Indonesia -- that is, zero.

To take full advantage of all these different state funding schemes, European producers must serve a different function than American independent producers. It is more about international diplomacy and mastering the labyrinthian rules and regulations necessary to cobble together deal after deal, funding entire slates over the course of years. One French financier even suggested a film producer should never waste their time being on set or attending a film festival. Their time should be spent setting up deals for future films. I hope he wasn't right!

# posted by Jason Orans @ 2/02/2010 06:06:00 PM

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