All movies start out as ideas or concepts. The inspiration behind this idea can come from any source – another work of art, a real life incident, a moment of epiphany. This idea captures the imagination and provides the initial spark for the individual to share this idea with an audience.
Many people are inspired by ideas and moments in their life; writers are the ones who put it down into words. Depending on the working style of the writer, they may bounce their ideas off of other people. This is called “pitching”. Pitching usually progresses in two stages. The first is to get critical feedback on an idea. The second is to present an idea to someone else in the hopes they, too, will be excited by the idea as well and get behind it – preferably a producer. That’s when you know that your concept works. The more savvy and experienced the person, the harder it will be to sell them on the concept.
As mentioned previously, not all concepts should be made into scripts. Pitching your idea to others is an excellent way to determine what the strengths and weaknesses are with your concept. Of course, we all want to hear praise. However, a good writer will want to hear all the problems. When you’re pitching the idea, you haven’t invested the time and energy into developing the idea into a script. You want to hear critical feedback from others. This gives you the opportunity to come away from that conversation with questions you have to answer for yourself about your idea.
The first time you pitch an idea, you may crash and burn. You may crash and burn the first dozen times you pitch an idea. You ought to plan on doing a lot of pitching, and doing it often. You should plan on it not going perfectly, especially in the beginning.
It is easy to get defensive about your ideas when you hear critical feedback. You may choose to ignore that feedback. However, if you pitch your idea to six people and they all have the same comments, chances are you have a problem that you need to solve.
Many novice writers worry about other people stealing their ideas. Ideas don’t really have any value unless they have taken a concrete form. You have no legal protection in the United States of America unless you have created an “original work of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression”. A completed script is fixed in a tangible medium of expression. An idea that you are talking about is not fixed in a tangible medium of expression.