Pitch Bibles

As a follow up to my review of David Levy's book Animation Development From Pitch to Production, I'd like to point out a blog that Steve Schnier, creator of Freaky Stories, has assembled from his own pitch bibles. If you are thinking about pitching, you'll see some good examples of the kinds of materials you'll need at Steve's blog.

Steve Schnier at the Toronto International Film Festival

Steve Schnier, caricatured at left by Peter Emslie, has a long history in the animation industry, including creating the series Freaky Stories. Steve is somebody willing to go out on a limb. Where other people dream, Steve hustles.

Steve's latest project is a feature film made from home movies that he bought on Ebay called Pubic Lice: The Motion Picture. The budget? $4,000. You can read all about it and see some clips here.

Steve is not only attending the Toronto International Film Festival searching for a distributor, he's also writing a daily column for Canada's National Post newspaper all week, detailing his experiences. I believe that this is the first article.

To be honest, I'll probably hate this movie. It's just not what I look for in a film. But having said that, I think that Steve was absolutely right to take a chance on this and push it as far as he can. Steve doesn't give his ideas away. He markets them. He's not afraid to get meetings or to pitch at the slightest opportunity. The future is always going to belong to corporations, but we're living in a time where there are ways to publicize your ideas that didn't exist in the past and because of that, the future is also going to belong to people like Steve. If you've got ideas, great! Now think of ways to market them.

Marketing Canadian Movies

Steve Schnier, who usually works in animation but is currently in production on a low budget live action feature, has a couple of blog entries about the never ending problem of marketing Canadian movies.

Guerilla Marketing

Steve Schnier has a blog entry on how he got coverage for his forthcoming movie, Pubic Lice: The Motion Picture, in the Toronto Star.

Marketing is an area that most studio-based animation artists never get near. There are too many layers of management between artists and marketing departments. However, independents are forced to do it all themselves, so if you have plans to create anything independently, Steve's advice is worth reading.

Steve Schnier's Movie

It isn't animated, but it's an example of somebody from the animation business generating their own opportunity. The Toronto Star has an article about the creation and progress of Pubic Lice: The Motion Picture.