[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: Can you have a good meeting where everything goes right and then the executives reject your pitch?
Executive Vice President of Co-Productions & Distribution/Author Scott Kirkpatrick: Yes, you can and it happens quite a bit actually and those are for reasons that are sometimes totally out of your control. I was mentioning earlier that sometimes even on our side we’re business-to-business, so we’re dealing directly with presidents of networks or heads of channels or VOD platforms and we’re in a meeting and we’re pitching and presenting our slate of projects. Then unbeknownst to us behind closed doors in their boardroom they get a new mandate from the top and all of a sudden metrics come in or there’s some kind of a decision at the channel to pivot in terms of content and we find out about it later. The next time we have a meeting it’s either we get rejected on titles that we were certain were going to happen or we just find out that Oh, that direction you were going all in on is now no longer the case and we are now going over here, even at our level that happens. I think it’s very important for anyone starting out in the industry to remember that you can pitch something in January and nobody wants it and then like July everyone’s looking for that exact same thing. A lot of that is you’re just sort of shooting in the dark to a degree. That’s why it’s important to…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Scott Kirkpatrick is the Executive Vice President of Co-Productions & Distribution for Nicely Entertainment—a Los Angeles-based production and distribution company that produces original TV movies and scripted TV series—where he brokers major content deals and has executive produced a variety of TV movies including “The Art of Christmas”, “Sappy Holiday” and “The Snowball Effect”. Previously, Kirkpatrick served as the Senior Vice President of North American Sales & Business Development for the London-based NENT Studios UK where he oversaw international television distribution deals on a variety of programs including BBC’s “The Cry”, Channel 4’s “Shameless” and ITV’s “Doc Martin”. Prior to this, Kirkpatrick served as Executive Director of Distribution for MarVista Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based production and distribution company that produces original TV movies and has managed international TV deals on major franchises, including “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers”. Before shifting to the distribution side of the industry, Kirkpatrick worked behind the scenes on major studio productions, including “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby”, and has produced and directed TV series and feature films including “Eye for an Eye” and “Roadside Massacre”. He is the author of the books “Writing for the Green Light: How to Make Your Script the One Hollywood Notices” and “Introduction to Media Distribution: Film, Television and New Media”. Kirkpatrick lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.
CONNECT WITH SCOTT KIRKPATRICK
Linkedin.com/in/scottkirkpatrick310
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