LSWF 2016 PART 2

FRIDAY 2ND SEPTEMBER

As usual with the festival opening, Chris Jones delivered his high octane, positivity reinforcing, highly motivating speech that had everyone on their feet whooping and hollering, whipping them up into a frenzy without the aid of caffeine or mainlining hard drugs. It was just the wake up I needed after a very long and busy day the day before.

I was totally ready for Pitchfest. Normally I would have prepared the hell out of this day, but because I had been working on a new commissioned feature, had a weeks holiday in Cornwall and spent the Bank Holiday weekend up at my parents, I didn't have any time to prepare. I found it strangely liberating.

I did research the pitch exes who were going to be there and I did decide which projects I was going to pitch to which pitch exes before hand, but I didn't practice my pitches one bit... not even the loglines. In fact, the only real preparation I did for the session was a few quick stretches to warm up and wake up before I entered the room.

Last year I learned all my of loglines off by heart but found when I pitched them they sounded flat and rehearsed. I even got badly tongue tied on one of them and fluffed the pitch magnificently. This year I was calm, relaxed and when I delivered my pitches I delivered them with passion. And I didn't do too bad. Out of the six execs I pitched, I had two positives and one possible and more importantly I had way more fun than last year.


The standout session of the day for me was Getting Commissioned in 2016: What the Broadcasters Want. It's always great to here what broadcasters are looking for and as soon as I got back home after the festival I made sure I followed up on every juicy morsel of information from this session.

And I even got to meet Karl Iglesias, who's book Writing For Emotional Impact I reviewed on my blog back in January 2015. He even signed my copy for me. You can read the blog post here.

Networking drinks. Always fun and a great way to meet many new and exciting people. Cards were swapped, friends made and beers sank. I was hyped at such a good day and could wait for day three.

Happy writing!