TIFF starts in two days but it’s been all about TIFF for a few weeks for The Berliner Complex.

Our script will be ready to shop in a few weeks – which means it’s not quite ready now. But we feel we’re close enough that we can promise it will be ready soon after the festival – and that, we think, puts us in position to meet with international sales agents whom we’ll eventually need to sell our film. Our goal is to meet with four to six sales agents at the festival. My producing partner Daniel Bekerman and I want to introduce our film and ourselves.

Selecting the sales agents

How to choose half a dozen agents from the several dozen who will work TIFF?

For one of our NSI Features First assignments way back in March, we did extensive research on sales agents and distributors. We paid particular attention to companies that had distributed any of our corollary films (we keep returning to Andrea Arnold’s Red Road) and we looked for Canadian connections in their catalogues.

We turned to that research when we began to think about our TIFF meetings.

Daniel, master of the Word table, quickly started plugging in info from our research.

We thought hard about who we knew, if anyone, that could make introductions. That became a column in the table alongside catalogue notes and our corollaries.

Surprisingly, we had several connections. We cast our net wide then winnowed it to six companies which we would approach by email.

A coach

We decided to use some of our NSI Features First funds to hire a coach. Mickey Rogers teaches pitching and, as the program manager for NSI’s Global Marketing program, specializes in preparing producers for markets.

Mickey and I go back some: she was one of the producers of Madison, the first TV series I directed and she felt like a great fit for us.

Dan and I knew we had one shot with our emails to the sales agents and we wanted to get it right.

Mickey guided us in crafting the wording. We wanted to be coached on our pitching. With Mickey, we determined that we needed a party pitch, a quick cold pitch, and a meeting pitch. And we began to practice.

In one session, we’ve begun to identify our respective strengths and to structure our pitch. Pitching is relationship building. If we just breathe and remember that… One more session to go and fingers crossed.

More research

The TIFF meetings, short as they may be, will be about our questions as well as our pitches.

What are our questions?

Mickey told us of one person she knew who attended markets with a full dossier on each person he planned to meet. Daniel and I jumped on that idea and we’ve both spent the weekend doing in depth research on our six chosen companies. Our new best friends – company web sites, IMDb Pro, the TIFF industry site.

ContentFilm, one of the companies on our list, repped Transamerica, a film I’d long meant to see, so that was my Saturday night viewing. Anything we can do to ease the way in these meetings. Our questions will come.

A one sheet

We knew we’d need a one sheet – something to leave behind after our meetings, something to give a taste of our film.

Production designer Jasna Stefanovic, long time friend of Daniel, agreed to help us out.

Jasna and I met once and talked about the feel and look of The Berliner Complex.

Jasna pulled some pictures and began to work up a layout. We also needed a brief, punchy synopsis. After stabbing at that and running what we had by Mickey, we realized we needed help with it too.

Another Daniel connection, Ian MacKenzie, took on the task of copy writing and completing the layout. Back and forth we went, honing the synopsis, trying different layouts with the photo and title, soliciting feedback from all our advisors.

Big thanks to Ian and Jasna.

Last thoughts

Brendon Sawatzky, one of the NSI Features First program managers, had some festival advice:

• See the films being distributed by Canadian distributors with whom we want to work
• Go to any information sessions on offer
• Go to as many parties as we possibly can. Others including my agent, Amy Stulberg, and our executive producer, Jennifer Jonas, have echoed this last bit of advice.

Now that last point’s a tall order for Daniel and me. We like one-on-ones. But we’re going to get that party pitch down pat and head out.

The good news so far? We had positive responses to our first two meeting requests within 24 hours of sending them. The Berliner Complex is coming.

E. Jane Thompson is an alumnus of NSI Features First with her project The Berliner Complex.

NSI on the web