What’s Included in a Feature Film Pitch Packet?
Pitch packets or pitch decks represent the outline of your pitch that will be used to curate interest from producers and production companies as well as from investors, in order to get your feature film picked up and ultimately produced for the big screen. Whether you’re putting together a feature film pitch packet to secure a copyright for your idea, or you’re aiming for a pitch packet that will amaze investors enough to encourage their immediate investment into your project, knowing what to include in a feature film pitch packet is important to the success of your pitch.
What is a Pitch Package?
Often referred to as a pitch deck. The pitch packet represents a visual supplement that can be delivered to the investors, producers, studios. Basically anyone that needs to get an idea for what a film should look and feel like.
A properly planned feature film pitch packet can make the difference in whether an outsider can confidently envision your project and walk away feeling excited about the idea, or not.
Structuring
While there’s not necessarily a right or wrong in terms of how to structure a pitch package for a feature film. There are some unique steps that can be taken to ensure that your reader walks away with one major thought in their mind. When can we get started?
If you’re delivering your pitch packet to an investor, this could be the difference in whether you get funding for the production – or not.
You’ve got just a few short pages to pitch your project to the investor or the producer that you’re working with. So you’ve got to make every word, phrase, and element of the pitch packet count!
What to Include in a Feature Film Pitch Packet
Pitching your project is all about producing a clean, easy to review, and organized pitch that represents the key elements of your feature film.
Before you begin, make sure that you have organized all of the important items to include in your pitch as follows:
The heading
Which will be 2-3 lines. It must include the title, length of the film, genre and screenwriter’s name.
The logline
Which is 1-2 sentences and should totally NAIL your pitch! A dull, boring, or otherwise misleading logline is not going to do anyone justice. So if you’re not familiar with writing loglines, check out our post on loglines here.
The overview
Which should be one paragraph and will act as your primary pitch. This should be written in a way that will share the details most important to driving interest in your film.
Help your reader to gain a feel for what makes your film special, unique, and otherwise worthy of investment either of time, money, or both.
The synopsis
Which will represent a one-page or less overview of your film. You need to captivate the interest of your reader here. Make sure you keep them engaged for the entire page. If you even consider whether something might not fit or make sense in this section, omit it!
The character bios
Which represent summarized details of your key characters. It should help the investor or producer envision who is in your film. Each character should be summarized in 2-4 sentences. Which describe their traits, any flaws, or problems that make up each character.
The summary
Should provide a visual of who the character is and how they fit into the film. Your character summary should also outline key relationship data about characters.
The conclusion
Which provides a 3-6 sentence conclusion of the pitch packet that justifies the theme, central idea, reader hook and key elements of your film which are most likely to draw interest.
If the reader makes it this far, they should feel comfortable with the ending. So make sure that you conclude in a way that brings the entire pitch full circle.
Keep it profound. Make a connection that will stick in the mind’s of the investor or producers that you’re pitching to.
What Does a Feature Film Pitch Packet Look Like?
As you can see, there’s a lot to include in a feature film pitch packet. You certainly don’t want your investor or producer or any reader for that matter! To take one look at your pitch as if it’s just a big wall of text.
A wall of text like that can be overwhelming and hard to face. In fact, whenever a producer is handed a pitch packet that appears to be one full page wall of text after another.
They’re almost guaranteed to toss the pages aside and move on. Even an avid reader doesn’t want to look at a wall of text when handed a pitch packet.
Establish a Connection
Your pitch should be styled in some manner that will help to make the connection between the story you’re trying to tell and the graphics on the page.
Details should focus on delivering a visual representation of your film. Which includes key colors, elements, or artistic characteristics. That are bound to help the reader feel more connected and interested in what you’ve got to share.
In addition to the key areas of importance that were listed in what to include in the feature film pitch packet.
You should also be considering the following:
- The colors scheme of your pitch package and the psychology of colors as it applies to your project. Different colors can create different connections and emotions. Think about this before you design your pitch packet.
- Include pages that provide details on the execution of your feature film from script to screen. Consider mood boards, information on lighting and camera movements, location inspiration and other forms of visual representation that can be incorporated into your pitch.
- Use a show, don’t tell mindset in creating your pitch packet. So that you can share the most intricate details of your feature film idea with investors and producers. Communicating the tone of your production will play a key role in how investors feel. Or in how a producer feels about the project. And whether or not they can visualize their own interactions with the project.
In Summary
Creating a mood board or other visual representation of key elements that can be used to evoke a particular artistic style for a feature film pitch packet is important to communicating the personal style that will be used to represent your story.
Although we recommend a less is more approach. Especially when it comes to communicating the vision and direction of a film to those who might have interest in the production. There really is no right or wrong way to produce a pitch packet for a feature film.
Feature film pitch packets should include all of the pertinent details we’ve listed. As well as the representation of visual style, color, and tone that will make your pitch stand out to investors & will captivate the reader. The rest is really up to your imagination!
