Animation Guild

Winter 2018

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WINTER 2018 27 "He said, 'Craig, don't do that — we really love your vision. We don't want you to compromise who you are just because you had a bad focus test.'" The extreme reaction showed he'd hit a nerve with the audience and Lazzo believed that the kids really wanted to like it — only Craig wasn't giving them all the right information but he was on the right track. In the end, Craig realized the short was a little tongue-in-cheek and the humor was a little too sophisticated for kids. He'd also never explained why the girls had super powers, or what their home life was like. So when he did the The Powerpuff Girls series, he decided to "pull out the artsy-fartsy-ness and just do a sincere story about little girls being superheroes." McCracken has been at both sides of the table when it comes to pitching. He was part of Cartoon Network's Cartoonstitute program together with Rob Renzetti — and had people pitching to him. He describes how in that position "you are at the mercy of what the network is looking for at that particular time. You may have someone who has a really great concept and ideas, but it just doesn't happen to line up with what the network is looking for." He encourages anyone pitching to bear in mind that studio agendas morph and that what might not be a good fit at one studio, may be exactly what another is looking for. If your project is rejected, McCracken says, the main thing is not to beat yourself up and to remember that people say no for a variety of reasons. Part of the pitching process is learning to gauge how people respond to material. McCracken remembers that the idea that would become Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends was completely different when he first pitched it. "I just wanted to get regular people and imaginary friends hanging out in the real world," he says. "That was my goal for a show." The original idea centered on young parents with a baby who conjured up imaginary friends for each of his emotions. Craig ran into Linda Simensky, the head of development at Cartoon Network at the time, and pitched her the idea. "She kind of smiled a little bit — but I could see the wheels turning in her head," he says. It hadn't really connected with her. McCracken went home and thought about why it wasn't resonating and what he needed to change. It was then that he realized the show should be about kids giving up their imaginary friends leading to the idea of the foster home for imaginary friends. The new concept worked better as a vehicle for reaching his goal. He pitched Simensky his new version, "and she immediately laughed," says McCracken. What he'd needed was a simpler pitch that demonstrated the show was more kid friendly. McCracken adds: "You've got to read who you're pitching to and get the right response from them." Craig recommends — and it's something he tries to do with each show — trying to distill the essence down into a sentence or seven words. Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends happens to be a perfect example, because the title itself was the pitch. It's invaluable to have a quick way of describing your show, a real hook that instantly tells the audience what it's about. Once they're hooked, he says, details, character development and complexities that you have will serve to enhance the basic idea. If he's been given notes, Craig always asks: Do these notes make it better or different? If the notes actually make it better he'll think about incorporating them. "If it's just making something different I don't implement them because that's just one person's opinion," he says. He believes that if you implement every note you get in the room, you'll be taken so far from the original vision of your project that it loses sincerity. Experience has taught him that "sometimes you have to hear the note within the note." Often, Craig says, the solution offered to the problem might not necessarily be the right solution, so he tries to figure out the bigger issue and address it. Whether it's a little film, a lot of drawings, some animated scenes, or even a comic and some gags, McCracken recommends going into a pitch with something that shows what your intentions are creatively – something that demonstrates your sense of humor or the style of filmmaking you'll be using and gets across the vibe of your show. It's something he tries to do every time he pitches. With The Powerpuff Girls he presented his student film, with Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends he filled a room with artwork, character vignettes and little gags. With Wander Over Yonder, he had half of a graphic novel that he had written and drawn that he could hand to Disney. He would encourage people to invest the time to produce this sample material because if you pitch an idea just verbally, then you run the risk of people misinterpreting your creative intentions. You're then essentially at the mercy of their imagination. He once had the experience where an idea he pitched to a company was greenlit and when he turned his pilot in, the response was, 'Wow we had no idea that's what you intended to do with it. We saw it in a totally different way.' Happily, they loved what he had done with it but it served as a lesson learned. "sometimes you have to hear the note within the note..."

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