A plain explanation

The sizzle.

Everything I know about the thing I make, written for someone who has never commissioned one.

A sizzle is a short film cut from material that already exists. It is not a trailer for a finished movie. It is proof that an unmade one deserves to exist.

Every project in development has the same problem. The thing is real in your head and nowhere else. A script is a hundred pages of asking someone to imagine. A deck is a set of promises with nice fonts. Both ask the reader to do the work.

A sizzle does the work for them. At some point in it, a stranger stops imagining your film and starts remembering it. That shift is the entire product. Everything below is just how it gets built.

How long it runs is set by the room, not by a house style. Several markets will not read an application without roughly three minutes attached, and their exact requirements are in the journal. Outside those gates, it runs as long as it takes and not a second longer.

Definitions

What it is,
and what it isn't.

It is a proof of feeling The job is to make someone feel the finished film. Not to summarise the plot, and not to list what you intend to shoot.

Yes

It is built from what exists Footage you already shot, stills, location scouts, interview audio, archive, sometimes phone video. Occasionally one day of new photography if there is a hole nothing else fills.

Yes

It is aimed at one room A fund, a financier, a festival panel, a board, a piece of talent you are trying to attach. Different rooms need different cuts. I ask who before I ask what.

Yes

It is not a trailer A trailer sells a film that is finished to an audience that can buy a ticket. A sizzle sells a film that does not exist yet to a person who can pay for it to.

It is not a montage with music Clips in a row with a needle drop underneath is the thing people mean when they say sizzles feel cheap. They are right. That is not this.

It is not a substitute for the film If the underlying project has no story, no sizzle rescues it. I will tell you that on the call rather than take the money.

Process

How one gets made.

Three to six weeks, typically. Five steps, in this order, every time.

The brief

Four questions on a call. What is this raising money for. Who exactly has to say yes. What is the emotional core. And what scares you about pitching it. That last one is usually the most useful thing you will tell me.

The dig

I go through everything that exists. All of it, including the material you think is unusable, and especially the material you have already written off. The reason is covered at length in the journal, and it is the part of this job people find hardest to believe until they watch it happen.

The moment

One scene, one image, one line that carries the whole film. Find it and the structure builds itself around it. Miss it and no amount of pace covers the gap.

The cut

Structure, pace, sound design, music, colour. Built with the discipline of a finished trailer, because the room you are walking into has seen a thousand finished trailers and will judge yours against them whether that is fair or not.

The room

Delivered in the formats that room actually needs. A file that plays off a laptop with no wifi. A link that does not ask for a password. A vertical cut if the conversation is going to happen on a phone.

Timing

When you
actually need one.

Usually one of five moments. If you are not in one of them, you probably do not need this yet, and I would rather say so.

A fund or grant application that requires a work sampleMost serious funds ask for moving image. Many will not read a script without one.

A market or festival with a submission deadlineHard date, fixed format, no extensions. This is the most common reason the phone rings.

An investor or financier meetingSomeone with money has agreed to give you twenty minutes. Three of those minutes should not be you talking.

Attaching talentA director, an actor or an executive producer is deciding whether your project is real. Nothing answers that faster.

A board or a room that needs a reasonPeople who are inclined to say yes but need something to point at when they defend the decision.

Money

What it costs.

$5,000

Fixed project fee for a first project, scoped on a call once I know what you are building. No packages. No rate card. No hourly.

Why that number. On a real production budget, the fundraising sample is already a line. Funders have set money aside for it before you ever call anyone. Pricing at that level means releasing the money is an approval, not a fundraise of its own.

Why it is not free. Free work gets no notes and never gets used. A project nobody paid for is a project nobody defends in the room. The fee is what makes it real on both sides.

Why there is no menu. Every project has a different amount of usable material and a different room to walk into. A tiered price list would be a guess dressed up as a policy. I would rather have the call.

Have something
in development?

Tell me what it is and who has to say yes. I will tell you plainly whether a sizzle helps, and whether I am the right person to make it.

Start a project Watch the work

What it is,and what it isn't.