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The Pitch

#7 - Emmy-winning Filmmaker Dustin Morrow

56 min episode · 2 min read
·
Dustin Morrow

Episode

56 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Fundraising & VC, Sales & Revenue, Product & Tech Trends

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Pitching fundamentals: Successful pitches require four core elements: clear structure, confident delivery, demonstrating you're pleasant to work with, and strong writing skills. Oral communication matters as much as written proposals in film industry collaboration.
  • Student pitch training: Force film students to present ideas standing before classmates despite discomfort. Most initially look at ceiling or feet, mumble without structure. Refining elevator pitches builds confidence essential for any film role, including technical positions.
  • Book pitch strategy: When pitching Kathleen Turner collaboration, demonstrated market gap by showing successful actors rarely write acting books. Compared to Jenna Fischer and Michael Caine texts, positioned Turner's celebrity status as unique selling advantage for aspiring actors.
  • Editing workflow discipline: Always allocate three to four times your estimated editing duration. If you think three hours, plan nine minimum. Step away two days after finishing, then watch with another person present—their silent presence reveals flaws you missed.

What It Covers

Emmy-winning filmmaker and Portland State University professor Dustin Morrow discusses pitching strategies, collaboration in film production, teaching students practical communication skills, and his work with actress Kathleen Turner on acting theory.

Key Questions Answered

  • Pitching fundamentals: Successful pitches require four core elements: clear structure, confident delivery, demonstrating you're pleasant to work with, and strong writing skills. Oral communication matters as much as written proposals in film industry collaboration.
  • Student pitch training: Force film students to present ideas standing before classmates despite discomfort. Most initially look at ceiling or feet, mumble without structure. Refining elevator pitches builds confidence essential for any film role, including technical positions.
  • Book pitch strategy: When pitching Kathleen Turner collaboration, demonstrated market gap by showing successful actors rarely write acting books. Compared to Jenna Fischer and Michael Caine texts, positioned Turner's celebrity status as unique selling advantage for aspiring actors.
  • Editing workflow discipline: Always allocate three to four times your estimated editing duration. If you think three hours, plan nine minimum. Step away two days after finishing, then watch with another person present—their silent presence reveals flaws you missed.

Notable Moment

Morrow convinced Kathleen Turner to write an acting theory book despite her anti-theory stance by arguing successful actors rarely share practical knowledge. The collaboration revealed theories she didn't know she had, fundamentally changing how he directs actors after twenty years.

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Episode Transcript

The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it guaranteed or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans, or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com/podcast. Terms apply. You can find and subscribe to the premium episodes of this podcast at pitch.supportingcast.fm. This week's premium episode features Megan Reiss with her pilot script Hot Town, Dustin Meadows with his feature script Fat Slashers, and Andrew Sanford with his feature script Sweet Surrender. Make sure to check that out. Welcome to another episode of Pitch, connecting storytellers with the world. I'm Leah Saint Marie. And I'm Angel. Today, Leah and I have a special guest. Dustin Morrow is an Emmy winning filmmaker, best selling author, and tenured professor in the School of Film at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. He allows the relationship between music and emotion to inform his films. He's collaborated with Kathleen Turner and myself, Leah Saint Marie. On behalf of myself and Leah, I'd like to welcome Dustin Morrow to The Pitch podcast. How you doing, man? Very good. Thanks for having me. It's our pleasure. Our pleasure. Now you and Leah have worked together in some capacity. Do you want to give us a little history on that? Yeah. We did a, narrative, fiction podcast series called Short of Breath, which began as a projected feature film. And I found Leah through, some online portal. I can't remember which one. And the funding that was earmarked for that was grant was dependent on a grant through my university, and that grant went away for a variety of annoying reasons. And so the project got downscaled, And I was I had been interested for a while in trying something in the podcast world in, like, basically what was essentially old school radio drama. Thought thought it would be an interesting challenge for me as a director who likes working with actors to work with actors in that way. And so I was very apologetic to Leah because I had pitched her initially that this was gonna be a film, and I know that she is a filmmaker and a film writer. And, luckily for me, she was, okay with shifting to a different medium. And it actually ended up being a very I thought it was a very successful and very cool project and it got into, a lot of festivals that I would not have had exposure to otherwise. It played in pretty much every major web media and new media festival in The United States. And it got some press coverage and it had a really robust listenership, while it was active. And, I mean, it's still you could …

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