Wildscreen Emerging Talent Month: How To Craft The Perfect Pitch Deck

When stepping into the professional world of wildlife filmmaking, approaching potential contributors and funders can be daunting, without pre-established relationships, it’s hard to know how to present your idea in a compelling way that will draw in contributors to want to get on board.

One of the most successful ways of presenting your work to a potential funder is a Pitch Deck, but how can you make sure you’re sharing and asking for the right amount of things and how can you make it stand out from the crowd?

We asked distribution and fundraising expert Keith Ochwat from Show&Tell to share his top tips on creating a successful pitch deck. Here’s what he said…

If you had to sum it up, what do you believe are the top three qualities that make for a perfect pitch deck?

1. Most decks are too damn long. A short and sweet two or three page deck is the perfect length to get the conversation started with any partner or funder. When starting a conversation or relationship, any longer than that is TMI.

2. A perfect pitch deck is a blend of images and words. Some decks have too many images, but not enough information to communicate about the film, its message, and the filmmakers’ needs. Some decks have way too many words and not enough images so they are boring to read… and then they don’t get read!

3. Make clear what you need. What’s your call to action? What do you want someone to do after reviewing your deck? It’s not enough for a deck to articulate the story you’re telling. Your deck should be an invitation for someone to understand enough about your project that they may want to get involved.

Where do you think most emerging filmmakers go wrong when it comes to creating a successful treatment? 

Filmmakers create decks that are too long and are geared towards other filmmakers, or people that went to film school rather than the business people, philanthropists, activists, and advocacy groups our decks usually go to. We filmmakers need to keep our decks short and simple, over complicating things or sharing too much information can be overwhelming to someone who may not have much experience supporting films.

We use terms like ‘log line’ and share detailed treatments and timelines, but often it leads to the people reviewing our deck to be confused or to misunderstand what it would mean to get involved with your film. We submit our decks for funding or promotional support to regular people–non-filmmakers. They are business people. They are philanthropists. They are advocacy organisations. We need to use simple terms that very clearly articulate our story, why it matters, and how it will be shared with audiences.