Pair pitch their way to success
By Sarah McNamara
Staff Reporter

After three hours, 47 pitches and a 30 second deliberation, Emily Moss and Red Sanders were announced the winners of the radio-TV-film department’s first ever “Pitching Competition” Monday night.

The sophomore duo wowed Hollywood producers, Jonathan Koch and Robert Kosberg, with their original idea for a film which they described as “The Blair Witch Project” meets “The Ring.”

Moss and Sanders said they came up with the idea late Sunday night when they were driving back from Louisiana and noticed an old, abandoned house down a country road and wondered what was inside.

After filming what they saw inside, the pair developed a unique concept for a movie that involves four college students that find themselves in a recurring murder mystery.

“We were just looking for an adventure when we filmed the house,” Sanders said. “We realized we had a good idea, we just had to develop it more.”

Moss said, “We weren’t planning on winning, but we wanted to do it well.”

Roger Cooper, radio-TV-film professor and coordinator of the event, said the competition provided an opportunity for students to impress the Hollywood judges and a chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip to a national pitching competition, where they will pitch their idea to a panel of studio executives.

Both Koch, a producer for MTV Productions, and Kosberg, based at Paramount Studios, said they know how difficult pitching can be because they do it for a living.

“The reason Emily and Red won was the great way in which they pitched,” Koch said. “They told their idea quickly and succinctly. We got (it) immediately.”

Cooper said each pitch was evaluated in five categories: content, concept, delivery, saleability and structure. Students had two to five minutes to sell their idea, he said.

Kosberg said he was impressed with some of what he saw.

“Most of the pitches are well worked out and well presented,” Kosberg said. “The actual content and originality is where there’s weakness. There were lots of cute stories, but they’re not big enough to make a movie in Hollywood.”

While ideas for reality television series seemed to be the most popular pitch of the evening, plots for romantic comedies to psychological thrillers to historical period pieces weren’t forgotten.

Cooper, who also pitched his own film idea at the competition, said the art of pitching is a difficult concept, but it’s good for students to hear what works and what doesn’t in the professional world of pitching.

“You have to tell enough of your story to get their interest, but not too much to bog them down,” Cooper said. “You have to make every word count.”

Cooper also said he was generally pleased with how the competition went but it’s not likely that the department will host a competition next year.

“It’s definitely been worthwhile,” he said. “We try to bring a variety of perspectives and experiences into the school, so we’ll do something unique, but a little different than this.”

As for Moss and Sanders, they said they aren’t concerned about having a studio buy their film just yet because they plan to film it themselves.

“We want it to be a student film, conceptualized from nothing,” Sanders said. “We can definitely use this as a learning experience.”

Sarah McNamara