Sunday, October 30, 2005
Internet Archive: Naropa Audio Archives
Internet Archive: Naropa Audio Archives: "The mission...is to enhance appreciation and understanding of post-WWII American literacture and its role in social change and cultural criticism."
Sunday, October 23, 2005
You Had Me At Hello: The Art of the Pitch
Notes from the session at
Third Coast International Audio Festival
October 22, 2005
Panel:
Neil Sandel of CBC’s OutFront Canadians telling their own stories.
Chris Turpin of NPR’s All Things Considered
Julie Snyder of This American Life
Jeremy Skeet of American Public Media
Neil asks: What do you NOT want to hear in a pitch?
Chris: “I’ve got a 52 week series...” or any unwieldy, inappropriate material
Julie: “I write like David Sedaris” or “I want to go and see what happens” – i.e., no plan. And -- sorry -- Julie doesn’t want to go and have coffee with you.
Jeremy: “All Things Considered turned this piece down.” Or “She is not alone. There are many like her.”
Neil: “This is perfect for your show.” Or sucking up.
Neil: Understand: this is a marketing exercise. Hardware customers do not buy a drill bit; they buy a hole in something. Customers do not buy things; they buy benefits. What are you buying?
Chris: Possibilities. The possibility of some great radio. A compelling story. We are also buying some relief for our staff; we run around 100 pieces a week and we have a small staff. We need good independents. We are also buying integrity.
Julie: Same for us. We are glad to see signs of competiency at the pitch, but we do make a point of working with the inexperienced who bring access or some other unique value. We will assign a producer and go out and do it with you.
Jeremy: The BBC has 5 to 10 people, all in LA. We are buying you to beour eyes and ears. We need independents.
Neil: What can people do to make their pitches better?
Julie: Send us a good story. From the first sen6tence. Your resume, your clips, are not required. But Story and Characters especially. Interesting, surprising in some way, in conflict. What is surprising storyline, what is surprising to you. In the pitch, you need to get to it quickly or at least foreshadow it quickly.
Chris Turpin: I want to see clear focus. Show us you have a sense of what to do. It helps if the pitch is nicely written – we take that as a sign that you can do it. A muddled idea, on the other hand, is off-putting.
Jeremy: imagine the lead. How does this fit? What would Ira be saying? Put your mind into what we are thinking. Also check to see if it has been on NPR recently. And don’t bury time facts; if it has to run this weekend we need to know that. Tell us that. Use common sense.
Neil: your process?
Jeremy: we’ll have 40 to 50 pitches in a document, and we meet and go over it on Monday.
Julie: If I like your idea, I try to get the pitch you sent me to a the point where I can in turn pitch it to the 7 other people I work with at our Monday morning meeting. If I think it is good, I will email with you probably a few times to get details. I know what the others will ask. I become your advocate in that meeting. So I am trying to shape it up. If they are going to say your character is unlikeable, or she sounds crazy, or in the end, who cares? I am going to press you for details before I go in so I can respond to that.
Neil: That’s probably the biggest thing, isn’t it? “Why should I care” about this character, this story.
Chris Turpin: We are more informal. I pass it around. I hand it off to the person who is most unlike me in their reactions to things. We are an eclectic program, and I don’t think my sensibility should govern.
Jeremy: In our funding agreement, we commit to 40% of our output coming from independents. 3 of us sit and Yes/No. Then there is a bigger meeting on how to do the story. Yes or Maybe. We will have our questions for you then.
Neil: How much detail is necessary in the pitch?
Julie: A lot of detail is helpful, to me. Anecdotal, narrative detail My pitch to the TAL staff will be anecdotal. I want to know the funny, sad -- the emotional moments help. I don’t mind a long pitch.
Chris: Detail? The amount can vary. It might be ten pages, though I have gone with a 1 line pitch – Iowa – politics and faith – great tape. We want great stories from natural story tellers. Some sense that you understand how you are going to tell it. But really: length of pitch should parallel length of piece. The stakes a lower, too, for a shorter piece. You have a much better chance of actually placing it.
Julie: I want to say something about ambition here. Just because YOU feel overwhelmed by it, don’t NOT pitch it. We might send someone with you, or if it really is clearly too much for you, we would pay you a finders fee and send someone else out to do it, and you would act as their producer.
Jeremy: if you’ve got tape anyway, tell us you’ve got tape. Or you know you’ve got something but you don’t know what it is, can you help me.
Chris: So easy to send files now. It shows us your strengths as a collaborator, that you know how to get good sound.
Neil: Stories set entirely in the past? No opportunity to have scenes unfolding?
Julie: Most of ours are that way.
Chris: Doesn’t matter; if it is a good story, and radio-friendly in the telling, ok.
Jeremy: News is previewed overmuch. The story by the time it unfolds is almost anticlimactic. But you have the ending, and now you can read something into it.
Third Coast International Audio Festival
October 22, 2005
Panel:
Neil Sandel of CBC’s OutFront Canadians telling their own stories.
Chris Turpin of NPR’s All Things Considered
Julie Snyder of This American Life
Jeremy Skeet of American Public Media
Neil asks: What do you NOT want to hear in a pitch?
Chris: “I’ve got a 52 week series...” or any unwieldy, inappropriate material
Julie: “I write like David Sedaris” or “I want to go and see what happens” – i.e., no plan. And -- sorry -- Julie doesn’t want to go and have coffee with you.
Jeremy: “All Things Considered turned this piece down.” Or “She is not alone. There are many like her.”
Neil: “This is perfect for your show.” Or sucking up.
Neil: Understand: this is a marketing exercise. Hardware customers do not buy a drill bit; they buy a hole in something. Customers do not buy things; they buy benefits.
Chris: Possibilities. The possibility of some great radio. A compelling story. We are also buying some relief for our staff; we run around 100 pieces a week and we have a small staff. We need good independents. We are also buying integrity.
Julie: Same for us. We are glad to see signs of competiency at the pitch, but we do make a point of working with the inexperienced who bring access or some other unique value. We will assign a producer and go out and do it with you.
Jeremy: The BBC has 5 to 10 people, all in LA. We are buying you to beour eyes and ears. We need independents.
Neil: What can people do to make their pitches better?
Julie: Send us a good story. From the first sen6tence. Your resume, your clips, are not required. But Story and Characters especially. Interesting, surprising in some way, in conflict. What is surprising storyline, what is surprising to you. In the pitch, you need to get to it quickly or at least foreshadow it quickly.
Chris Turpin: I want to see clear focus. Show us you have a sense of what to do. It helps if the pitch is nicely written – we take that as a sign that you can do it. A muddled idea, on the other hand, is off-putting.
Jeremy: imagine the lead. How does this fit? What would Ira be saying? Put your mind into what we are thinking. Also check to see if it has been on NPR recently. And don’t bury time facts; if it has to run this weekend we need to know that. Tell us that. Use common sense.
Neil: your process?
Jeremy: we’ll have 40 to 50 pitches in a document, and we meet and go over it on Monday.
Julie: If I like your idea, I try to get the pitch you sent me to a the point where I can in turn pitch it to the 7 other people I work with at our Monday morning meeting. If I think it is good, I will email with you probably a few times to get details. I know what the others will ask. I become your advocate in that meeting. So I am trying to shape it up. If they are going to say your character is unlikeable, or she sounds crazy, or in the end, who cares? I am going to press you for details before I go in so I can respond to that.
Neil: That’s probably the biggest thing, isn’t it? “Why should I care” about this character, this story.
Chris Turpin: We are more informal. I pass it around. I hand it off to the person who is most unlike me in their reactions to things. We are an eclectic program, and I don’t think my sensibility should govern.
Jeremy: In our funding agreement, we commit to 40% of our output coming from independents. 3 of us sit and Yes/No. Then there is a bigger meeting on how to do the story. Yes or Maybe. We will have our questions for you then.
Neil: How much detail is necessary in the pitch?
Julie: A lot of detail is helpful, to me. Anecdotal, narrative detail My pitch to the TAL staff will be anecdotal. I want to know the funny, sad -- the emotional moments help. I don’t mind a long pitch.
Chris: Detail? The amount can vary. It might be ten pages, though I have gone with a 1 line pitch – Iowa – politics and faith – great tape. We want great stories from natural story tellers. Some sense that you understand how you are going to tell it. But really: length of pitch should parallel length of piece. The stakes a lower, too, for a shorter piece. You have a much better chance of actually placing it.
Julie: I want to say something about ambition here. Just because YOU feel overwhelmed by it, don’t NOT pitch it. We might send someone with you, or if it really is clearly too much for you, we would pay you a finders fee and send someone else out to do it, and you would act as their producer.
Jeremy: if you’ve got tape anyway, tell us you’ve got tape. Or you know you’ve got something but you don’t know what it is, can you help me.
Chris: So easy to send files now. It shows us your strengths as a collaborator, that you know how to get good sound.
Neil: Stories set entirely in the past? No opportunity to have scenes unfolding?
Julie: Most of ours are that way.
Chris: Doesn’t matter; if it is a good story, and radio-friendly in the telling, ok.
Jeremy: News is previewed overmuch. The story by the time it unfolds is almost anticlimactic. But you have the ending, and now you can read something into it.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
TCIAF: End of the conference.
We are introverts, for goodness sakes! We can't take all this interaction! I am spent; it's been two days only, but oddly draining. I know I'm not like the other children, but it is stressful for me to be among so many. My head plays tricks on me. It is as if I have forgotten how normal people act in large, anonymous communities like this one. Everything I do could be wrong. Of course it isn't. But it could be: that's what tuckers me out.
OrZ
Third Coast Audio Festival 1 Ring Zero concert sing along. Bob Edwards is the tall guy in the middle.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Lynx Viewer
Lynx Viewer is a Lynx (text browser) emulator. You can also download a desktop copy of the lynx browser to install on your local machine.
WAI Resources on Introducing Web Accessibility
Introducing Web Accessibility offers strategies, guidelines, resources to make the web accessible to people with disabilities.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Friday, October 14, 2005
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Inventions/Inventors - Imagination - Themepark
Invention at Imagination Theme Park has links and lists of resources.
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