The Pitch

I didn't go that well. I took a bit of a wrong angle pitching it and the "panel" (4 people from industry, i'll write their names when I find the bit of paper) decided to really pick up on that and ask a few personal questions which are now, having slept on it, thought about it and in the comfort of my own room, quite easy to answer but on the spot with about 150 looking at you are very difficult to answer and to be honest there were certain things I was trying not to tell 40 of my fellow 3rd years, and most of the 2nd year (the majority of whom I don't know that well).

But I could have pitched it better and maybe avoided those questions. Of course now 24 hours later I have thought of the perfect angle and things to say. As is the way.

In response to what all my tutors were saying in tutorials I spent the preparation for the pitch really focusing on questions for things like, how are you going to make it? Can you make a puppet? What's the sound track? What style is it? What are your influences? And all those kind of ones.

So when they were asked I think I answered them confidently, concisely and well.

They picked up on a contrast of styles when I said I've been influenced by the Brothers Quay and Susie Templeton's "Dog" but it was kinda sewn into a perso

nal question. So i mean, the question wasn't;

I see you've looked at Dog and Street of Crocodiles, please explain how you're using them to make your film.

I can't remember the exact wording but it was much more directed at the story rather than the style with a little bit of a personal jab between the relationship of me and my mother. And like I said, on the spot that's a bit tricky and I completely bombed. It really threw me.

If I had another chance at it I'd explain that Dog and Bothers Quay is purely for visual influence.

I was looking at how Suzie Templeton manages to subtly avoid lip sync with her puppets but you're still able to tell who said what and that I also took the poignancy and slightly dark feel to Dog.

Where as I also like the abstractness of the Brothers Quay, and the weirdness of it, but what I've particularly taken is their use of sound, minimal sound track and real emphasis on foley. (I said this in an answer to a question about sound but didn't say that this was the main thing I took from the Brothers Quay)

And then I would have declined to try answer the more personal stuff.

But the way the question was worded and directed, being infront of the majority of the animation course, it threw me and I fucked it up. Because it was in essence a simple question just asked in a difficult and complicated way. Thats what I thought any wa

y. But I can't blame anybody because I failed to decipher it. A couple of friends said they wished I had earpieces because they knew the right things to say, but it's much easier to think of answers to someone else's questions when you're in the audience.

The only annoying thing is none of them said anything remotely positive about anything I'd done. I'm not going to name names or projects, and I'm

not saying that mine is the best idea or the best concept by any means, but there were some drawings, and some ideas that were a lot weaker than mine that the "panel" had good things to say, and compliments. And I'm not the greatest, I know, but I think at least one of my pictures might have deserved a comment like "that's not bad you know". That's what's got me down about the pitch thing. It was a wholly negative experience.

However this didn't happen to just me, the project Wife Left Home also succumbed to negative questioning and criticism despite the fact that it was a decent idea and probably one of the best drawn projects that was pitched. I gave it a 9 f

or concept and style.

Anyway, rant over.

There's not much point doing any major work on this until I know if I got approved or not. At the end of the day though it comes down to the tutors really and they've all seen the script and been working on it with me and so know more about it than I can tell someone in 3 minutes.

So yeah I can do my dissertation for a bit and catch up on the chronic lack of sleep I've had the last week. I don't mind not getting approved either because the other stop-motion ideas are awesome and I'm more than happy to work on them and other 2D and 3D projects (helps being a jack of all trades sometimes). And I'm also going to work on an promo for the Falmouth Tridents (our uni american football team for which I play a

s a Defensive Back) and use animation to help raise awareness for the NFL in the UK.

you know what? Maybe I should have pitched that whole idea instead.