Oh thank goodness that's over with! 

This story pitch session with DreamWorks has had me simultaneously stressed out and yet calm and collected over the past week. Which just means that even though there were times when I wasn't sweating about it, it was still prominently in my mind. 

So I counted down the days, marking them off one by one, and also using the time to figure out just how the heck I was gonna scale down the presentation of my combined 100 page story into a presentation of just 2 to 3 minutes.

I managed to find a presentation I was pretty comfortable giving that set up the world the story takes place in, featured the 3 main characters, and told some aspects of the story itself without giving everything away. So I rehearsed it, and rehearsed it, until finally it was Saturday afternoon. I had signed up to do this pitch over Skype so I could see whom I would be pitching to at DreamWorks. Needless to say, the nervousness set back in as the scheduled time came, but I was going to give it my best shot no matter what happened.

So 4:10 PM came around, and no Skype call came. But a certain ringing on my Cell phone started up and I answered nervously, "Hello?"

"Alexander?" a voice on the other end answered.

"YES?!!!" I said back mixed with anxiety and excitement.

And from then on I was basically told that some technical issues were going on and they couldn't connect to Skype. So I'd have to do this pitch on my cell phone. At this point, I knew 1 part of my game plan was shot to hades. With a purely phone based pitch I wouldn't be able to display the awesome poster I've shown you guys time and again. Here it is for reference:

 

But I knew I had to be flexible, so I just went ahead with the story pitch anyway. And something happened that gave me the feeling that I had an attentive listener. I was able to give my 3 minute presentation with absolutely no interruptions from this DreamWorks executive. So that either meant he was completely enthralled by the story, or bored to tears by it, you take your pick, but I was able to say everything I wanted to say with no questions asked until the end.

Then came the words that put me on an extended good mood for the rest of the day:

"Well I'll contact you later with my feedback, but that was a really good pitch. Thank you."

I'll let the video below describe my emotional reaction to hearing those words:

 

So with that said, the whole call lasted only about 7 minutes. A whole week's worth of worry and anxiety all boiled down to a 7 minute call. 

So what's next, you ask? I wait to get feedback from the executive (whose name I don't recall at the moment, sorry) on how well that they liked the pitch. Best case scenario, they request to read my 3 episodic scripts for The Liger and things continue to progress from there. Worst case scenario, I get a "good but not good enough" review and I have to move on elsewhere. I do have a contingency plan in place in case DreamWorks passes on the script, but it would be so sooooooooo nice if I didn't have to make use of my plan B.

Besides waiting for the news, good or bad, I guess this also means I should get back to my projects that don't require anyone else's authorization except my own. And if I don't work on them, then who will?

Thanks as always for reading. See you next time!