You won’t find Pat Ferns on the mound at Yankee Stadium, but he knows more about pitching than Roger Clemens.
When the Victoria-based production industry pioneer reminisces about pitching he isn’t talking baseball, however.
Ferns, 69, is the former chairman, president and CEO of the Banff Television Festival who 30 years ago launched the “pitching platform,” a Canadian invention since embraced worldwide.
The format he introduced at what would become the Banff World Media Festival gave independent producers a public platform to pitch new projects to broadcasters in an intimate setting. Commissioning editors would assess merits, whether development funds might be available and whether a co-production was feasible.
“Here was a chance for us to put broadcasters on the spot,” recalled Ferns. “The first time I tried it I was surprised by how willing broadcasters were to say whether they did or didn’t like a project, and what they’d put in. It turned into something where you could literally finance a program in a room. It became a kind of theatre.”
Its popularity escalated as delegates flocked to colourful debates between U.K. broadcasting executive Patrick Dromgoole and Norman Horowitz, the U.S. international TV distribution executive. His initiative became a form of entertainment, with pitches for other genres added.
“It was almost like a talk show,” Ferns recalled. “People came to see what would get financed, but also for the banter.”
Ferns, whose initial objective was to educate, admits he was surprised by how much it transformed the industry.
This was acknowledged at this year’s Hot Docs festival, where he was recognized as a “documentary innovator” with a special award.
“Everyone says: ‘Why didn’t you patent it? You could have made a fortune,’ but you can’t patent an idea,” he said. “I did this to benefit the industry.”
This was long before TV shows such as Dragon’s Den surfaced, and the plethora of inferior reality-TV knockoffs.
Ironically, the festival he once headed just featured an American production executive’s “copyrighted presentation” — The Ten Commandments of Pitching.
While Ferns remains active internationally, he’s probably better known as a producer. His extensive credits include Billy Bishop Goes to War, Heaven and Earth and The Newcomers, and his two high-end historical docudramas, Captain Cook: Obsession and Discovery, and Darwin’s Brave New World .
His pitching format has been incorporated into most significant industry events, including two of the world’s largest television markets — NATPE (National Association of Television Program Executives) in the U.S. and MIPTV in Cannes. He also hosts public pitches in dozens of cities worldwide, including Adelaide, Beijing, Houston, Glasgow, Rome, Marseilles, Tel Aviv, Prague, London, Los Angeles, Dublin and Singapore.
“One might say my life is a quest for Aeroplan points,” jokes the globe-trotter.
One of his biggest successes is Documart, a beat-the-clock event where pitchers have just three minutes to compete for a share of $100,000 in development funds.
“It built their company,” he said, recalling its first winner — Montreal’s EyeSteelFilm, best known for Up the Yangtze and The Last Train Home.
Ferns returns each year to events including the Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival, which he has guided for 10 years, and to Tel Aviv for CoPro, the showcase for Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers he has hosted for 15 years. Two of the five nominees for the best foreign film Oscar in 2012 originated through the event that inspired Israel’s documentary industry.
“When I started only one of 24 projects found money,” said Ferns. “Now we’ve built careers for both Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers.”
It’s easy to see why his model has proven sustainable, even on a smaller scale, as when he persuaded funders from KCTS Seattle to entertain pitches at the Victoria Film Festival.
“The real value in pitching is the oxygen you give an idea so you can hear whether it’s got legs or not,” he said. “If you changed its perspective, it might have appeal elsewhere. Doing this in public helps you sort out and clarify what your story is.”
One of many things Ferns has learned after hearing thousands of pitches is broadcasters make up their minds “to say no” in 90 seconds.
Brevity, and conveying what’s unique about your project early on, are essential, says Ferns, adding many pitchers now include a short trailer.
“The trick is to give them a couple of scenes with no ending,” Ferns says. “You want to leave broadcasters thinking: ‘Where does this take us?’ Intrigue them.”