How I Make Pitch Decks for Film and TV Production Companies
A step by step process with photos on how i make my pitch decks that help production companies, writers and directors sell their idea.
I ADORE making pitch decks. It’s the perfect mix of being able to read really impressive scripts from great writers, directors, production companies then think about them tonally, thematically and find great comps. I also get to here from the creatives about why they all love the story, how to came to be and more.
And when a script is finally SOLD and it’s PUBLIC, it’s very exciting to see because the process can take SO LONG. Here’s one of my more recent pitch decks that turned into a “show sale!” Also working with Maggie Cohn was a dream.
An important PSA - This is a VERY niche job, it’s something I just kind of fell into while doing marketing for a production company. It does not solely pay my bills. That comes from running various social accounts, marketing campaigns, graphic design and more but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find clients or at minimum be able to create the best deck possible for your own projects!
And from the girl who makes them professionally, never pay a professional unless you’ve got a production company behind you or if you’re rich enough that it will cost you more in time for you to figure it on your own that is worth!
Here’s my process!
***I included a link to my pitch doc template below with more explanations about each use case. It’s kind of overwhelming but so important!
Step 1: figure out what type of deck the clients are looking for and who their audience is
TV Pitch Deck - the variations in these are huge.
Email/Leave behind
In-Person (two versions of this)
Film Pitch Deck
Email/Leave behind
In-Person (two versions of this)
Lookbook
Bible
Company Pitch Deck (for investment opps)
Think about your audience
Is this for an investor, an actor, producer, network, streamer? Those will affect if you want:
Investors - budgets, ROI, audience, and market research, distribution plans
Actors - focus on the story and characters
Producers - target audiences, actors who would be interested, and budgets
Networks - story, potential for future seasons and potentially a place in their slate where this fits
Step 2: Read the script and any accompanying documentation.
Get acquainted with the story and see what sticks out to you.
Step 3: Client questions
Ask if they’ve got an idea of the sections they want to focus on and if they have any comp decks they like or decks they’ve used in the past that they love.
If they aren’t sure - i’ll send the client my pitch deck template doc (It outlines what goes in the various types of pitch decks, lookbooks bibles, etc like CHARACTERS, WHY NOW, SYNOPSIS, THEMES, COMPS) You can grab it below.
From there, they’ll usually spend some time working on the copy for each section if that’s applicable. You can also get 25% of shotdeck here with my code.
I also ask for a character list with ideal actors & comp characters, that way I can find them when doing image collection and put in the deck.