Helpful Hints for Aspiring Filmmakers

Holy crap. Fellow film students, we need to talk. We need to talk about professionalism. You see, I just had to listen to 19 of you give incredibly amateurish presentations of your ideas. 19 people. Pitching their ideas for five-minute fiction films. And it was all something like this:

"Like, um, my film is, like, about this, like, guy, and, like, he, like, breaks up with his, like, girlfriend, and, um, you know, like, he, like, does all this, like, stuff, and..."

HOLY CRAP! Do you realize how immature and unprofessional it sounds when you do this? If you go to a producer and pitch your idea, and every other word is "like," it's probably not going to get accepted. Haven't you ever taken a public speaking course? It's fine to talk like that in casual conversation, since it's become almost automatic at this point, but when you're in a formal setting and you're trying to convey your idea to someone, you have to sound sure of yourself.

I have a technique for pitches, and I think it works pretty well: Just convince yourself that you have the greatest idea in history. It will make a huge difference. I didn't actually like my last few ideas, but I pretended that they were brilliant so I could sell them better. You don't sit there and go, "Well, like, I thought I could, like, do something like this, and, like, maybe it won't work, and, like, it's kind of dumb..."

If you're selling the idea, you have to make it sound good, and you must be very careful about word choice. I don't even want to think about what's going to happen to these people when they get into the film industry and try to propose ideas in such an immature way.

...What? You weren't expecting political blogging, were you? That's not all I exist for, you ingrates!