Pitching ideas

welcome back I hope you had fun analyzing and creating your beat sheets another benefit of the beat sheet that you created is that it can help you to explain or pitch your story to others when you pitch you present your story in a way that's fun and engaging and it highlights how your story is unique and what it'd be like to experience it directly by pitching your story you can get feedback on what's working and what isn't being able to pitch effectively though takes some practice when you're coming up with ideas often it may be very clear in your mind which you want to do but you can't do it everything by yourself you need a team of people to do it which means you've got to be able to communicate to others what your idea is really when you think about pitching it's really not about you it's about the idea take the pressure off of yourself because more than likely your idea is enough you know it better than anybody else does so your your job is to communicate that to others so have fun with it really enjoy pitching it's it's not a nervous thing people are going to enjoy pitching because it's your way to communicate the thing that's in your head to get other people excited and jazzed about it I have to find my emotional my emotional connection with the thing and that's something that makes me less nervous is that if I feel that I'm emotionally connected to it then it is something that is going to be compelling for me and if it's compelling for me then it's very likely that it's going to be emotionally compelling to someone else as well and there's all kinds of different ways you can do that I have heard pitches where when you have characters involved the person pitching the story actually acts out the characters so that's really a fun way of doing it but not everybody can do that so there are all kinds of ways to tell stories so what you want to do is look at what your particular strengths are and use them to tell your story sometimes it can be an illustration you can use a number of visuals to tell that story you can use narrative you can use acting you can just draw upon anything in theatre to get that story or cause like with brainstorming it's important for us to learn how to pitch to others at the same time it's also just as important for us to learn how give constructive feedback when someone pitches to us a critical part of the pitching process is is receiving feedback if you're giving the pitch or giving feedback if you're listening to the pitch and I think that's the way we we get better at what we do is is by listening to honest and direct feedback and the point of that criticism is not to tear down the idea but the point of the criticism is to make it the very best that it could possibly be you're gonna get positive things and you're gonna get not necessarily positive things that's okay that's part of the process some good techniques for giving feedback to two people that are pitching is are is to be direct and honest but respectful also the compliment sandwich works well where you say something nice that was a fantastic pitch I really appreciate you coming in to do it today this part was a little rough and we could work on that but you know you're doing a fantastic job and keep it up I really like that idea but have you thought about doing this yes and can you add this and can you add a whole water segment to this ride you really want to add on to the idea rather than try to break things down and I think that's the best way to give critique and to remember that the purpose of that critique is to improve on what you just heard creating and pitching beat sheets and giving and receiving feedback on them are essential parts of our creative process in the next exercise you'll be asked to pitch your beat sheet to a few of your friends if your audience gets confused by parts try to be open to what they're saying because they want to help your story be amazing pitching you're receiving feedback takes practice but believe me it really pays off