Taking on Hollywood

By Dan Lane

Making the winning pitch at Pinewood Studios, by Dan Lane

At the start of 2010, Rob McLellan was a film studies tutor at a sixth form college in the north of England. Today he is in discussions in Hollywood about the possibility of making a feature film.

Such is the success of Bible-based film competition Enter the Pitch, brainchild of Bible Society’s Arts Development Officer Luke Walton. We asked Luke to tell us about it.

What is Enter the Pitch?
 
It’s a competition to win £25,000 production budget and also a load of professional help to make a short film drawing inspiration from the Bible.
 
Where did the idea come from?
 
In 2007, Bible Society was working on a campaign in Manchester to engage young people. We wanted to come up with a film concept and that led to the idea of bringing together a group of people to support and initiate a competition. The connection between the Bible and Hollywood has been very strong, right from the word go, both in creating historical dramas and in terms of shaping the arc and the story line of many different stories. There are lots more cracking stories in there, though, that have never been made into epic films.
 
We wanted to see what people’s ideas were and then raise the game. One of the challenges for anybody who’s trying to progress in filmmaking is finding the funding to really raise their game. What is lacking in the film industry is people with pots of this kind of money. Offering a prize of £25,000 is about substantially raising the game to a industry level for short film making.
 
So where have you been able to get that kind of money from?
 
Our funding is drawn from a number of sources and individuals, I won’t state who the individuals are, but we’re very grateful for their support. The organisations that are currently participating in this are Pinewood Studios, The Grand, Clitheroe which has a solid link across music, theatre and cinematic arts – and crucially Bible Society. We’re increasingly seeing wider interest in participating in our project and we welcome and invite that.
 
It’s not all about the money though, is it, you’ve got some amazing people on board as judges, helping to make the films and giving of their time and expertise to the winners – Nev Pierce, Nick Park, David Suchet, David Oyelowo, Stuart Hazeldene and X-Men producer Ralph Winter to name just a few. How does a guy working for a charity based in Swindon manage to get these people to give such a huge amount of their time?
 
I am really thankful for the way this network has come together. I already knew Nick Park [creator of Wallace and Gromit], and without that, almost certainly getting contact with some of these people would have been very, very tricky indeed. I also owe a huge amount to Mark Blaney and Jackie Sheppard of Footprint Films who have been with me every step of the way as consultants to the project. They have been outstanding and tireless supporters of the project, bringing feature-level business skills to the short film format.  I’m also grateful to Nev Pierce [Editor-at-large of EMPIRE magazine], who was a contact through a former colleague. I’ve gone to these people because I’m interested in their work, and am committed to working professionally and at a proper standard with integrity. We’ve had to work slowly, building the relationships, the contacts, the networks that add up until the point where you have a certain momentum and others are able to join in.
 
For example, the screenwriter Stuart Hazeldene is on the panel this year, he joined us after David Oyelowo, on the panel in 2010, invited him to join us. 
 
In such a relationally-based industry, it has been important that the people who work with us have enjoyed it; they’ve found that it’s been encouraging to them and a positive experience. They’ve seen that we’re serious about what we’re doing; we’re not just trying to get a bit of free polemic or using it for a didactic purpose, but are genuinely interested in the process of creating something excellent, and just happen to have a particular source of inspiration.
 
Christian films tend not to do very well in the UK. Is part of the goal of Enter the Pitch to try to change that?
 
We’re not about making specifically Christian films. In fact our film makers are not necessarily Christians or of any faith disposition, and we welcome, and have welcomed, people of all backgrounds to participate in the competition. We are interested in the genuine dramatic human nature of the stories in scripture, and in drawing people to something which is enduring and universal. I firmly believe that film makers are the very best story tellers and are the very best at identifying those enduring human stories in a way that speaks to a new generation.
 
Can you explain how the process works?
 
We’re looking for a 2-minute pitch for a short film. To pitch you must upload a short film onto the website selling your idea. (The site will open to submissions in summer 2012. Register on the site to hear when dates are announced).
 
A panel will review all the pitches and create a shortlist which will then be uploaded onto the website. The public then have one month to watch a minimum of six pitches and vote for a minimum of three. The reason we do this is to ensure that people vote on the quality of the pitches, not just for their friends.
 
The top twenty pitches are then viewed by the judging panel, who whittle them down to ten. These ten finalists are invited to come to Pinewood Studios for a weekend to present their pitches live to the panel. We’re pretty unique in being a live pitching competition, and for those ten, the prize really is the opportunity to simply put their idea in front of a professional panel in the industry. You can’t buy 20 minutes with people at this level; you have to have shown your merit to get this far, and the experience people have gained from it has been a benefit in and of itself.
 
The judges then select a final three, who are invited to stay on and give a longer pitch the following day. Interestingly, our top three pitchers over the last two years have all gone away the night before and come back with a more thoroughly worked up and developed proposal. They have shown themselves to be adaptable to the critique from the panel. It’s a very creative and consultative process as well as obviously being quite nerve-wracking and testing. It means, though, that those who go through to the second day of the final weekend actually have shown their ability to address the weaknesses that have been uncovered in their pitch and take it to another level. That’s part of the business as well. If you’re going to a studio to pitch an idea anywhere in the industry, those kind of skills need to be developed, and they’re not necessarily skills that people learn in film colleges and places where they are honing their practical film making skills.
 
Wow, that’s an intensive process. It’s no wonder you’re able to come out with such high-quality films. What has happened to Simeon Lumgair and Rob McLellan since they won the 2009 and 2010 competitions?
 
Simeon has got several film festivals coming up, one based in Toronto, one in India and one in China, and he is working on a number of projects he’s got on the slate as well as running his film company, Quirky Motion.
 
Rob is just at the beginning of his year, he’s only just entering Rahab into competitions now, so we will see what the festival circuit looks like for him. He has had one invitation to screen already, so that’s looking very positive. He has also received an invitation to consider directing a feature in America as a result of his trip out there [as part of his prize], and has received a number of other professional approaches. So for Rob it looks a very, very positive year coming, though it’s always difficult to predict exactly how it will fall out. We are currently exploring the development of the Rahab short as a feature, following particular interest from the industry.
 
That’s amazing, so it really can launch someone into a career in films!
 
Yes, I’ve got a video of Rob in Hollywood, after we’d taken him to meet with the people at Industrial Light and Magic, and he’s really excited. He says, “You win the competition and that’s just the start. It changes your life forever!”
 
So for anyone considering entering in 2012, what are your top tips for making a stand-out pitch?
 
My top tip is that story is key. Make sure that your pitch really conveys your story, whether you do that by speaking to the camera or by showing a clip of what you think it’ll feel like or even by doing just story boards, you have to above all be telling us what is your compelling story. If you have not read Save the Cat by Blake Snyder you could do far worse than to start with that excellent book. Snyder would tell you that if you can’t sell your film with the title and the log line then you haven’t got it yet. With only two minutes to pitch, that is advice well worth following.
 
Secondly, think about how you change the context from how the original story was told to a more contemporary context. There are various techniques that people have used to avoid some of the more difficult comparatives, so horror or science-fiction genres enable people to leap to a different context and retell the story in a new way.
 
My third tip is avoid all polemic. It never works, whether you’re trying to make a point about how miserable and horrible this book is, or when it becomes nothing but a sermon on screen. Neither of those things belong in our competition. We’re interested in good human stories that have a enduring relevance.
 
Finally, I really think comedy hasn’t been plundered enough. It’s a natural human reaction to laugh at things we find difficult, and sometimes it’s a good way of exploring what we feel about those things. There is some laughter to be had at all the strange moments in the Bible.
 
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The winner of Enter the Pitch 2011 has just been announced and his project is now in development for a shoot later in the year. Submissions for the 2012 competition will open in summer 2012. Visit the website and register to be kept in touch with the key dates, but don’t wait until then to start finding your story and filming your pitch.
 
Main picture: After the announcement of the winner of The Pitch 2011: Right to Left: Winner Tim Bassford, runner up Jodi De Souza, Judge Nick Park (creator of Wallace and Gromit), Steve Lancaster (representing one of the sponsors: The Grand, Clitheroe), runner up Carolyn Goodyear and Producer for The Pitch Luke Walton.

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