Pitchfest Day... First Day!

Day one (3 meetings) down....

Here's the lowdown:

Company: Michael Lewis & Associates (the VIP guide said that he was looking for "features - all genres"... I search Google, but could not find any of his credits)

Time: 4:10pm – 4:15pm

Went really well. Mr. Lewis is a British man. Requested Personal Demons. 

Said he is always looking for horror scripts, so long as they are “not derivative”. 

At first told me to send the script through FadeIn and that they would get it to him, but then he just gave me his email, saying that it was easier. 

He then told me that I needed to give him 4-6 weeks to read it.

Asked me to repeat the film’s title, asked me for the page number count and confirmed the ages of the main characters (mid-to-late teens). 

Meeting lasted 4 minutes.

 

 

Company: Canopy Media Partners – Brandon Bisig (I searched around and I think I saw on Facebook (through I couldn't really tell, as I don't have FB and therefore my access to it is limited) that they represent Sydney Wease, "Rose" from the Creepshow season 1 episode “By the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain”). The VIP guide said that they want “heightened horror”

Time: 4:40pm - 4:45pm

I accidentally “called” them via Skype when I saw their name pop up at the top of my Skype window. It only said that they were “Active now”, I thought it meant they were calling me and that I was answering the call. Turns out I was calling them. Oops!

When the meeting finally happened Brandon Bisig messaged me beforehand, asking if I were ready.

I said I was an apologized for before.

When we got on, he was very kind.

Mr. Bisig’s camera wasn’t working.

I pitched my logline, the story behind the script and some additional info. (such as what its contemporaries are… all of which can be read below).

He said that he’d love to read it, put his email in the chat.

Meeting lasted 3 minutes (4:43pm – 4:46pm).

 

Company: Epicenter (Hayley Chara)

Time: 6:35- 6:40pm

How did it go?:

Hayley got on late (I think she was inundated with meetings).

Gave her my pitch (logline, the story behind the script and some additional info.), plus this time I decided to throw in that Personal Demons had been tearing up the festival circuit. She asked what it had won. I went down my list… She seemed really impressed.

At the end of my pitch she said that she loved my pitch and loved that I incorporated other facets of horror (such as video games and music, which she feels are largely ignored) into the story.

She loved the fact that I am a teacher and could bond with my students over horror.

She asked if I were a metalhead, I told her I was.

She asked if I knew the band Ice Nine Kill.

I told her I did.

(Side note: I actually just recently checked out all their albums from the library to give their discography a good, thorough, diplomatic listening. Plus Mike Hughes (the creepy little kid from Pet Semetery and New Nightmare) was wearing one of their shirts at Days of the Dead Indiana).

She said she had a soft spot in her heart for that band and that, not only was she a fan, but that her boyfriend does voiceover work and is the news reporter on the Ice Nine Kills about American Psycho.

When I mentioned that Personal Demons was “grounded horror… but plays out in a very fun way” I brought up horror cons and all the people cosplaying. She agreed and said (I’m paraphrasing here),

“Yeah, there is a darkness to horror, but the fandom is really fun!”

I mentioned that I was going to a horror con in a week.

She said that she loved m energy (which I had not only because this was my third meeting, after two successful meetings, but because this meeting was with a company that was actively seeking horror films… Epicenter helped make the horror film 1BR, which I recently saw (and which is on Shudder); that movie is amazing! And it disturbed by, and is another win for, one of my favorite distribution companies/studios: Dark Sky Films (who made films I love such as Deathgasm, Stakeland 1 & 2, Dead Night and Await Further Instruction… Dark Sky consistently proves that low budget does not equal low quality).

She said she had so many questions (and not in a negative way, like as if to say that there was so much missing, or wrong with my story), as if she were further intrigued to read my script. I told her that all her questions (some of them were: “where does this demon come from?” and “Are there more of them?”) were answered in the script, that I had an established mythology that develops over the course of the script’s story and that I set the end up for a sequel and have envisioned it as a trilogy. She seemed to like that.  

The only disappointing thing about the meeting was that she had to rush off to her next meeting and she said she would get my script through FadeIn. I asked her what that process looked like (as this is my first Pitchfest with them) and she said that she had a list of the people she was meeting with and that she would report to FadeIn who she wanted to follow up with and that they would send her my screenplay. I really wish she had been one of those people who just gave me their email address (and had it ready to copy & paste into the chat).

Meeting lasted 6 mins. And 39 secs.

 

 

This was what I pitched...

 

Note: I will still not be including my logline, as it contains the plot of my script and I am incredibly guarded about, and paranoid regarding, the theft of my intellectual property and creative output. 

Further Info.

 

I wrote this script a few years ago and it is really a love letter to my favorite 80’s and 90’s horror that I grew up watching, both renting them from the video store and on late nite cable. Movies like MONSTER SQUAD, GHOSTBUSTERS, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS, EVIL DEAD and PUMPKINHEAD.

The unique and brash characters I fashioned mostly after myself and partially after students I have taught during my tenure in education.

 

If they need a comparison

Personal Demons is a bit of grounded horror that, while being visceral and chilling, plays out in a very fun way. After all, the script is about horror loving teens, the demographic who goes to cons and cosplays, so they’re a very fun lot.

If I were to name its contemporaries, I would say they are Duffer Brothers’ STRANGER THINGS on Netflix, the recent adaptations of Stephen King’s IT (2017-19) and the FINAL DESTINATION films.