Chapter 9
Planning and Pitching

You’ve decided on the film you want to make and done enough research to determine that it seems feasible. Now what? This chapter is very broadly called “planning and pitching” to describe a range of activities that includes pitching, outlining, and casting your film.

Pitching

A pitch is the core statement of your film’s story, stated clearly and succinctly. It confirms to you and to others that you not only have a good subject, but you have a good story, one that you can tell in a way that will interest others. You’ll be pitching your film, revising your pitch, and pitching it some more from the moment the idea begins to take shape until you are out in the world with a finished product that needs promotion. The good news is that pitching is the single best way to determine that you actually have a clear, coherent story as discussed in Part I of this book. If you can’t pitch your story concisely—on an elevator, say, after you’ve discovered yourself by sheer luck riding up four floors with the head of acquisitions or a well-connected celebrity— then chances are you’re still muddling through and will be spending time and money on film elements you don’t need. The ability to pitch your story effectively and briefly does not suggest that it’s a simple story or a commercial one; it simply means that you have a handle on it.

On Pitching Well

An ineffective pitch introduces the topic but not the story, as in “This is a film about the ethics of genetic testing and about how some people face hard choices.” An effective pitch does both: “This is a film about genetic testing in which we follow an executive making the tough decision about whether to be tested for the disease that claimed her mother’s life.” The pitch works because it compels the listener to ask follow-up questions: What will she do if the test is positive? Will she let you follow her through the process? What if she doesn’t take the test?

Here’s another example of a weak pitch: “Four years ago, Vietnam veteran Martin Robinson decided he would scale the heights of Mount Whatsit at the age of 63—with one leg. He succeeded, and in the years since has inspired veterans’ groups across America.” Where’s the story here? There was a story (his efforts four years ago), but unless you have some plan for telling it now, what’s holding the film together? A 67-year-old man standing before various groups of veterans. Not coincidentally, the problem with this pitch is that it does not suggest a train (Chapter 4). Your train is the skeleton on which you hang your story and by which you hook and hold your viewer; your pitch articulates the train.

In other words: If you don’t have a grasp on your train, you probably don’t have a grasp on your story—and you won’t be able to make an effective pitch.

With that in mind, a better version of this pitch might be: “Four years ago, Vietnam veteran Martin Robinson became the first amputee to scale the heights of Mount Whatsit. Now, he’s going back—and bringing two Gulf War veterans, amputees who thought their best athletic days were behind them, along with him.” Not a bad pitch, especially if you can follow it up with good access to these people and some information about your own skills as both a filmmaker and a mountaineer (to show you’ll be capable of following them up the mountain). In many cases, the pitch will be even stronger if you show a tape that introduces your main characters, allowing people to see that they’re appealing and will work on camera.

On some projects, producers pitch their stories at in-house development meetings, not once but several times as the film or series take shape. We did this during the planning of I’ll Make Me a World: A Century of African-American Arts. Rather than survey a hundred years’ worth of dance, theater, visual art, literature, and more, the six-hour historical series presented two or three stories per hour arranged in a way that moved forward chronologically. The century’s thematic arc, revealed in our research, helped producers and project advisors decide which stories best exemplified a particular era, and we were careful to include a range of artists and art forms. Here is the pitch for one of three stories, called “Nobody” for the purpose of quick reference (but not titled on screen), that was to be included in the series’ second hour, Without Fear or Shame:

The other two stories in this hour were related thematically. One was about Edward “Kid” Ory and the rise of New Orleans jazz, and the other was about early filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. Each story was conceived of as having its own three-act dramatic structure. In the editing room, they were interrupted at key moments and interwoven with the other two stories, but in the planning stage, they were kept apart in order to see more clearly that they each had a beginning, middle, end, and arc. It’s worth noting that this was also possible because these were historical stories to be built of archival material and interviews, so the structure could be significantly anticipated in advance. Our research, including pre-interviews, had made it clear which emotional moments we were driving toward, so that we knew which elements of an overall biography or history we wanted to emphasize and where we were driving to at the end of each act.

Pitching Out Loud

Giving a pitch in person can be tough. Too often, filmmakers load their pitches with parentheticals about all the information you need to know or they should have mentioned: “Okay, well, it’s about this guy (well, okay, 20 years ago he won this amazing award for scientific research, but then he thinks someone ripped off the idea), so this guy was trying to (actually someone did rip him off, which sort of explains his motivation but I’m going to get into that later in the film), so this guy has been working to . . .” And so on.

The point is, if you’re pitching out loud, it’s a good idea to practice beforehand. Your pitch needs to be clear, focused, brief, and attention-getting.

Outlines

Most filmmakers go well beyond the pitch when planning their films. The next step is an outline which, like the pitch, will continue to be revised and honed over the course of production and editing. The outline is where you begin to flesh out your train, by anticipating and sketching out the sequences and the order in which they’ll appear. If you’re using an act structure, that also will be made apparent.

An outline helps you to see, on paper, the film as you imagine it. It should begin where you think the beginning of the film is, as opposed to the beginning of the underlying chronological story. It drives to key moments that you anticipate driving to, and it ends where you anticipate the film ending up. It should begin to introduce the characters, scenes, and materials you will need to tell your story.

Why Write an Outline?

An outline is both a planning tool and a diagnostic tool. It lets you see clearly what job a sequence is doing in your overall story and what storytelling role your characters are playing. If there is redundancy or if there is a gap, you will likely be able to see it on paper. Be careful to write the outline in a way that mirrors the film as it’s currently envisioned, beginning to end, focusing on the film’s story rather than its subject. Is the story about the expedition leader or about the group of retirees on the expedition? The parents waging a legal battle against commercialism in the public schools or the budget-starved principal actively courting soft-drink contracts?

As mentioned, the key difference between an outline and either a pitch or simply a research report is that an outline breaks your film into sequences. This helps you to clarify, in story terms, why you’re filming one event and not another, one individual and not another. Trust me: It’s worth doing. And frankly, you’ll revise this outline (or sometimes, to get a fresh eye, start over entirely) before, during, and after you shoot and well into editing. As a consultant, one of the first things I do if I get involved with a film while it’s being edited is to write an outline of the film that exists, which I use to help the filmmakers figure out what’s working and what’s not. This works because an outline can clearly show that two or more sequences are doing the same job, or that the first act runs for half the film, or that the film doesn’t really get going until halfway through the second act.

What's a Sequence?

As discussed in Chapters 4 and 7, a sequence in a documentary is akin to a chapter in a book. It should feel somewhat complete by itself, but push you to the next sequence. It should add something unique to the story and the film: this is the sequence about force drift, this is the sequence about shock of capture, this is the sequence about “changing the rules” in the wake of 9/11. This doesn’t mean that “force drift” doesn’t get mentioned elsewhere, but that in one sequence in particular it will be introduced and looked at more closely. The single best way to understand sequences is to watch a number of documentaries and look closely at how filmmakers break stories into distinct chapters. Sometimes these chapters are labeled (“A Few Bad Apples” and “Shock of Capture” are examples of sequence titles in Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side, also discussed in Chapter 15). Even if you don’t identify your sequences on screen—and most filmmakers don’t—it can be useful to give them titles as you work, to summarize the unique job the sequence is doing in your overall film.

In watching films that don’t have sequence titles, you can often identify a sequence through visual and storytelling cues. The film fades to black and then up again, for example; a sequence about getting the children to the beach and back gives way to a sequence about something completely different. A shift in rhythm, a change in music, the loud emergence of sync sound all may signal the start of a new chapter. You should also sense that the previous sequence has reached a natural end, and at the same time, it tips the overall story forward.

You anticipate and sketch out a sequence during the planning of your film by thinking like a storyteller. You “watch” the film in your head and listen to your gut. What feels like it should come next? What questions do you want to have answered now, rather than at some other time? What window does a character suggest opening up?

Those of you who are editors or have worked closely with editors will recognize that this is also how you often work when assembling and shaping footage into an edited film. In fact, outlines come in handy throughout the editing process. It’s much easier to play with alternative structures on paper to quickly see them than it is to recut the whole film, only to find the flaw in the logic of the restructure. Does the fact that it seems to work on paper guarantee that it will work in the editing room? Unfortunately—and emphatically—no. But often, the exercise helps you and your team move toward a solution that will work.

Thinking about Sequences

What follows is a very simple version of an outline for a straightforward documentary, entirely invented for the purpose of illustration. The film is called Zach Gets a Baby Sister. The outline presumes that because this event was very contained, shooting was under way before the outline was written (i.e., the vérité scenes were filmed, but not many of the interviews).

And so on. This is not breathtakingly good filmmaking. But something to notice: Each sequence is a chapter. Each has a beginning, middle, and end. Sequence 2 thematically is about anticipation: We see that Zach has no idea what to expect, and the primary voice in the sequence is Zach’s; we also see his school and his classmates. In terms of plot, the sequence gets him to the hospital, where he’s going to meet his sister.

In contrast, Sequence 3 is about Zach’s parents, how they have tried to prepare him for the baby, how they have concerns. The primary voice in this sequence is theirs, whether or not the interviews are conducted in the hospital room or, more likely, at some other time. The point of view in this sequence is theirs, too, as they watch their son hold his sister for the first time. In terms of plot, this sequence begins with Zach at the hospital, and drives to him meeting his sister. In a 20-minute film, chances are good that this meeting is the film’s midpoint.

Looking at these two sequences, I can anticipate what the next sequence should be. It does not need to do the job of getting Zach home that day, nor do we need to see his parents checking out (with the new baby). We can cut to the next best scene that tells the story we’re telling. And our story is “Zach Gets a Baby Sister”—not “Zach welcomes a new baby home from the hospital.”

So, for example, if the parents are planning a party, I might decide to film that. I can anticipate (and will be flexible if I’m wrong) that Zach will be excited that it’s a party, and perhaps upset to discover that the attention is on his noisy, red-faced sister. This sequence would be about making adjustments, told from Zach’s point of view.

Again, this is just an illustration. Take the time to look at successful documentaries and identify the sequences within them. Watch a range of films and film styles, from historical films to social issue films (compare the use of sequences in Taxi to the Dark Side and The War Tapes, for example) to traditional vérité. Sequences, also known as chapters, are structural devices that enhance, rather than limit, presentation.

How Many Sequences Should a Film Have?

There is no fixed number of sequences. If a film is 20 minutes long and your sequences run between, say, three and six minutes each, that’s maybe five sequences. Also, to make your life a little more complicated, sequences sometimes have sub-sequences. You’re in the midst of a sequence about a World Bank protest and you want to make a brief diversion into backstory, that’s a sub-sequence. Just remember to get back to the main sequence you started, and finish it.

Historical Stories

Some funding agencies and commissioning editors require scripts— or at least detailed outlines/treatments—so that they can get a sense of the film’s approach and focus. Although these are possible for any type of film, they’re easier to create in greater detail for films about events in the past. For example, here is a description of the first sequence in a short, three-act story about the transformation of boxer Cassius Clay into world heavyweight champion and political activist Muhammad Ali. Because this hour-long film had three stories in it— which were not interwoven—the opening sequence (the tease) was thematic, setting up the film overall. This example, then, describes the second sequence, the first in the story of Muhammad Ali. It was written prior to filming.

Notice that people are identified by who they were at the time of the story; this is an excerpt of a sequence from Eyes on the Prize, in which the storytellers were witnesses to and participants in the stories unfolding. In this sequence, basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is speaking from his perspective at the time, as a student. Angelo Dundee was Ali’s trainer in this period.

Present-Day Stories

For films of events that will unfold as you shoot, it’s still possible to draft an outline based on what you anticipate happening. If you intend to follow an eighth grader through a summer at basketball camp, you can do research to find out what the experience is typically like, and what scenes or sequences offer possibilities for meaningful interaction. Do the students board at the camp or go home at night? Do they tend to form close friendships? Are there one-on-one sessions with coaches? Is there much pressure from parents? Knowing these things can help you begin to think about what a sequence will do, as opposed to the specifics of what it is. If research has indicated, for example, that you want a sequence that you’re tentatively calling “The end of innocence”—a sequence that looks at the commercial pressure on young phenoms—then you arrive on location with that focus in mind.

The same is true when considering the people you want to film. As you’re doing the outline, you’ll begin sketching in the names of people you need to tell your story, from those you “have to have” to those you’d ideally like. Sometimes, as you develop present-day or historical films, you won’t know whom you want specifically, in which case they can be described. For example, “We need someone who was at the dance with her,” or “We want to talk to people who keep the physical plant operating.” An outline can help you see if your story or argument is building and if you have enough variety in casting and sequences, or if too much of your film is doing (and saying) the same thing. Over the course of filming, decisions about story and structure are bound to change, but for now you’re taking the first steps in organizing your story into a workable film.

Whether or not your film is historical, present-day, or some combination of the two, this exercise forces you to think about your film’s approach. If you want to follow a production of Wagner’s Ring cycle, for example, will you do it, as Jon Else did, from the perspective of union workers backstage? Or would you see the production from the point of view of its director, or a children’s group trying to make sense of the opera as part of their efforts to stage a condensed version of it on their own in school? Is your point the many months it takes to mount a production, or the tension of running such a grand show over the course of a day? Each approach decision should be carried through in your outline, so that someone from the outside who reads it will have a sense of the film that you are making: its themes, plot, point of view, arc.

Casting

Not all documentary filmmakers would call it “casting,” yet all would agree that the people you see on screen—whether they’re interacting with each other, talking to an off-screen interviewer, or acting as narrator or host—need to be researched, contacted, and brought onto the project with care. Decisions about who will be filmed and what they’re expected to contribute to the storytelling are important. Even the people who appear through archival means, whether in archival footage or through a reading of their letters, diaries, and other artifacts of the past, are important to the overall casting of a story. In fact, how you cast your documentary is so important that some executives want to see footage of your main characters before they’ll approve or commission a project.

When to Cast

In general, you begin thinking about casting even as you’re considering a topic and story to film; it’s part of the conception of a film’s style and approach. If there are specific people whose involvement is critical, you’ll need to cast them (or at least know that they would be available and amenable) prior to your inclusion of them in any pitch. After that, casting takes shape as the outline and treatment do, and you begin to know whom or what type of people you’re looking for and why.

Whom to Cast

For a film that requires experts, it’s wise to cast a range of viewpoints. This means that instead of just shooting “five experts” on a subject, you know how each of the five differs from the others in expertise and outlook, offering a means of adding complexity and balance to the overall film. There are only so many people an audience can follow in a half-hour or an hour, and you don’t want all of those people talking about the same issues from the same perspective.

One way to think about casting is to regard each individual who appears on screen, whether as a character you’re following or as someone you interview (or both), as having a job to do in the overall film. Sometimes they stand in for a particular aspect of an argument; sometimes they represent an element that you could not otherwise film. For example, you could get three people to talk in general about Title IX legislation in the United States, but it might be stronger to find a lawyer who fought for its enforcement, a female athlete who got a college scholarship because of it, and an athletic director who opposed it out of fear that it would limit resources for his school’s football program. They may each know a little bit or even a lot about each other’s areas of expertise, but it muddies the storytelling if they don’t stick to the parts of the story that they best serve.

Along the same lines, if you’re creating a historical film, you might want a biographer to stand in for Martha Washington, for example. He or she would be asked to comment specifically and only on your story as it relates to Martha. Without attention being called to it, the audience will learn this cue. When they see that expert, they’ll know that—in a way—Martha, or at least her proxy, is now on screen.

Do Your Homework

A significant part of casting effectively is doing some research before you start indiscriminately calling around looking for experts or “types.” The less generic the casting is, the stronger the film will be.

Casting Nonexperts

Sometimes you’re not looking for experts but for real people willing to give you access to lives and situations that embody themes and ideas you’ve set out to explore. For their production of the 2005 film Building the Alaska Highway, Tracy Heather Strain, Randall MacLowry, Katy Mostoller, and “an army of interns” set out to locate men who’d helped to build the highway as part of their military service during World War II. Military records about the highway’s construction had been among materials burned in a fire several years earlier, making the job of finding the men more difficult. The producers wrote down any lead they got, whether from program advisors or from names mentioned in books about the highway project, a feat in which more than 10,000 workers, often working in intense cold, constructed 1,500 miles of highway in just eight months.

A stretch of the Alcan Highway, from Building the Alaska Highway. Photo: Library of Congress.

Once they had names, they began poring through telephone directories. The producers gave the interns a sheet of questions to ask, reminding them to address these elderly veterans by their proper names. “They would do a preliminary pre-interview, and then Randy, Katy, or I would follow up with the real pre-interview,” Strain, the film’s producer and director, says. “One of the problems was that people thought we were selling something, so sometimes we got hung up on. We had to come up with a strategy for saying Alaska Highway early.” The storytellers chosen—a diverse group of men whose memories of that long-ago time are clear and poignant—are a strong element in the film. Strain estimates that they ended up filming interviews with perhaps a tenth of the people contacted.

On-the-Fly Casting

A popular device in television advertising these days is to put a group of young people into a car with a camera and portray them as making a documentary, apparently winging it. They pull up in unfamiliar places, shout questions to strangers, and then move on. There are circumstances in which you might want to do this, but in general, this isn’t an effective use of time, unless of course it’s part of a thought-out film design. In Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock effectively conducts a number of these “person-on-the-street” interviews. While not a random sampling, these people seem to represent the average person and his or her knowledge of fast food, nutrition, and in one case, the lyrics to a McDonald’s jingle. This can be fun and effective.

Casting Opposing Voices

How do you get people to participate in a film when it’s likely that the viewpoint they hold is contrary to yours or the audience’s? A primary way is by making it clear that you are open to what they have to say, intend to treat them fairly on screen, and believe that their point of view, while you might disagree with it, is important to the subject at hand and the public’s understanding of it.

Don’t misrepresent yourself or your project just to gain someone’s cooperation. If you want to explore the notion that the 1969 moonwalk was faked, don’t imply that your film is a look at manned space flight. Does this mean that you can’t approach credible experts on subjects that strain credibility? No. It means that you need to bring them with you, not trick them into participating. Give them the option of adding their credibility to the project, and then use their credibility responsibly. (If you are an expert and are approached for a documentary, do some homework before saying yes. A quick web search should tell you a bit about the producer and/or the series that will be airing the interview.)

Casting for Balance

Balancing the point of view of a film does not mean simply presenting opposing sides. In fact, it almost never means that. Two opposing sides talking past each other do not advance anyone’s understanding of an issue. When the opposing sides are actually very uneven, such as when a majority of credible experts takes one position and a small (and often fringe or invested) minority disagrees, then giving these two views equal time and weight creates a false impression that the issues are more uncertain than they actually are. This is not balanced; it’s inaccurate. Instead, you should look for people who can offer shades of gray, complexity, within an issue.

Note that casting for balance also means letting the appropriate people present their own points of view. This doesn’t mean that individuals can’t speak to experiences outside their own; a French historian whose expertise is Native-American education at the turn of the last century, for example, might be well qualified to discuss life on a particular Oklahoma reservation in 1910. It’s more of a stretch to ask a biology major who happens to be protesting foreign sweatshops to tell you what goes on in an overseas sneaker factory, unless you limit your questioning to a frame of reference relevant to that person: “Why am I here? I’m here because I read an article that said. . . .” If your film storytelling requires that you convey conditions in the factory, you’d be better off trying to find someone who has witnessed those conditions firsthand (as a worker or owner, for example, or as someone who toured the facilities on a fact-finding tour) and/or a labor expert who has studied those specific conditions.

As noted, when you hear someone on camera talking about “them”—for example, “The people living in government housing thought we were being unfair to them”—it’s likely you need to find individuals from within that community who can speak for themselves, or experts uniquely qualified to speak on their behalf.

Genuine Casting

During the closing credits of Robert Greenwald’s Iraq for Sale, he and his production team are shown trying to get interviews with representatives of Halliburton, CACI, Blackwater, and other companies. They state that between June 8 and August 4, 2006, they sent out 31 emails and made 38 phone calls. But listen to the phone calls, and see if you think you’d respond. The timeline is indicative: According to the filmmakers, they had not started the film before the end of April 2006, when they raised funds through an email campaign. They were finishing production by August, which leaves little time for research or the kind of relationship building that is sometimes necessary when handling complex and controversial topics.

In addition, the phone calls do not come across as questions, but rather indictments. Greenwald tells one company, “We’ve discovered frankly quite a bit of very troubling material,” and argues, “I thought letting people know that we found something critical would be fairer than just kind of trying to sucker punch them.” In letters, he writes of wanting “their side of the story,” and so on.

Compare the casts of this film and Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight, which was on a comparable topic. Jarecki’s cast is far more diverse in terms of points of view and organizational affiliation. The difference, I think, reflects each filmmaker’s approach and intent. Both films are successful, but they speak in very different ways to different (if at times overlapping) audiences.

Expanding the Perspective

It’s very easy, when casting (and especially when casting quickly), to go after the people at the top, the leaders and figureheads. Often, they are known to be charismatic and articulate. But they rarely represent the whole story or, often, the most interesting part of it. Dig deeper, and ask yourself who else might add perspective to a story. If you’re talking to policy experts for a film on education, you might want to explore what a second-grade teacher would add. If you’re doing a film about corporate scandals, an interesting perspective might come from a real estate agent trying to sell the homes of some former executives who are now in prison.

Be careful, also, to avoid perpetuating misconceptions about gender, ethnicity, or nationality. It would be incomplete and inaccurate in today’s world (or yesterday’s, for that matter) to portray it as less diverse and complex than it truly is (or was). You should reflect that complexity in your casting.

Paying Your Cast

The general rule in journalism is that if you start paying for stories, people will come up with stories for which they want to be paid. Some filmmakers may decide to pay subjects indirectly, whether through buying them groceries or making a contribution to a charity. Scholars and experts who appear on screen (and are not also advisors) are not paid by filmmakers, although this is currently under debate and some new precedents are being set.

Casting Hosts and Narrators

There is a wide range in how and why people use on-camera hosts for documentary films. Sometimes a broadcaster will want the producer to use a celebrity, such as an actor, sports figure, or politician. With celebrities known to be involved in particular political, social, or health issues, for example, this can give the project added credibility. A celebrity’s reputation—as a humorist, for example—can set the tone for a project. Finally, the involvement of a celebrity can help boost a project’s promotion and raise audience interest.

Narrators (heard in voice-over but not seen as hosts) may also be cast for their celebrity, or they may simply be individuals with strong voices that carry, even when placed against music or sync sound. Remember that the narrator’s voice also sets a tone for the film. Will it be male or female, or have an identifiable accent? How old do you want your narrator to sound? How do you want this person to come across to the audience? As an expert or a friend? Sounding humorous, somber, remote, or warm? Even an unseen narrator is part of the overall balance of voices that are heard.

Treatments

Many projects, if not most, progress from an outline to some form of treatment prior to shooting. Information on what these are and how they’re used can be found in Chapter 10.