The business side of Doc occasionally gets the unfair rap of being a necessary evil.”It sucks to sacrifice the complexity of an idea and context to concision.”

I’m unconvinced.

7 minutes is a very short time in which to make your case. You have to introduce a context, a story, players, visual style, narrative approach, partners and budget, projected delivery dates, etc, in the same amount of time it takes to listen to a song. Ok, a longish song, but even so.

If you flip it though, if you instead interpret the challenge as a way to use all of the bullet points as opportunities to exploit, to the end of saying what each of those points means, then you’re well on the way to crafting a great pitch that convinces them of at least one thing: you know how to tell a story.

Who are your partners? What does having those partners say about you? What is the visual style you chose? Can the description of that style replace part of your description of the story? Can you paint a portrait of your character by describing what they do instead of describing what kind of person they are, to help us understand what we’ll be seeing on the screen? Can you tap into your passion convince us that you are the person to do this film?

The artificiality of making films is inescapable, as are the realities of treating it as a business with money and careers at stake. I view it as another chance to prove myself, to show that I’m capable of not only making a film and decompressing information, but also of running with what’s available and turning it to my advantage.

Just look at Lars Von Trier’s the 5 Obstructions. 5 interpretations of the same idea, 5 conditions to challenge the storytelling, 5 inspired solutions that elevate the films beyond their more obvious beginnings.

Shake your head, curse under your breath and get on with the task of blowing people’s minds.