The Pitch

After the distraction of the old computers tucked in the corner of the Library which brought back childhood memories of cramming the big "actually floppy" floppy disks in for hours of black screen and green writing joy, Sean and I managed to focus on the task in hand. Our Pitch. We had both separately researched our project on independent record labels. Both keen to disprove Mike saying that the topic was just too huge, too hard to find a decent angle on for a 5 minute piece. As it turns out he was right, we dug deep and every time we found something that seemed interesting it just became too much. So we conceded defeat and turned to Sean's brilliant idea of an insight into the mind, inspirations and dedication of a songwriter. Quickly we became animated as we felt more in control of the topic and were able to bash out a treatment and a one line hook in no time at all. Sean knows Huwie, the subject of our piece, very well. We feel that this will add much more depth to the programme and allow us to dig deeper into Huwies mindset while writing his songs.

The day came where we had to pitch our ideas to a pannel. Not just any old mucker brought in as they were passing the Gatehouse but three important people from the department. We spent the morning disecting our ideas more, making the show solid and covering areas such as audience.

One of the great things about our idea is that Sean and I are both very interested in the topic so as long as we got the backbone of the show clear in our minds we felt confident that we could field questions from the pannel. This did not stop us feeling a little aprehensive as we entered the room, last of the group and by now the pannel were sure to be keen to escape for a cup of tea and a breath of that Bath Spa air, so we had to deliver. I think it was important for us to approach this not as a project at University, but to imagine this was our little break. Somehow we had managed to wangle a small slot with the Radio 1 exectuives and this was a real pitch not an assignment.

After we outlined the plans we seemed to have a fair amount of interest from the pannel. They were inquisitive and we were encouraged that the questions were not about changing the piece but about how we were actually going to capture what we wanted too. There were concerns that it would be hard to condence into a 5 minute slot. We were able to say with confidence that it contained 3 main sections:

• Interview with Huwie
• A brief look at Commercial Music students who have to write lyrics
• A vox pop "what would you write about" a short section adding a side to the piece that connects it directly with the student audience. Talking to people who wouldn't neccessarily ever write a song.

This would be interlaced with sound bites of music from Huwie's band including the song we are going to probe him on.

If the piece does end up being too much to cram into the time we feel happy to remove the vox pops to allow more time for the details of the project. We want it to be informative and approachable, nothing highbrow. We want to encourage people to listen to lyrics because, like poems, they can be so much more than "words wot rhyme".

It was actually really enjoyable doing this pitch and it made us focus so much harder on the task. Now for the next step and I can't wait.......