Context is key – How filmmakers orient to the context in a film pitching competition

This practice inspired study will investigate the unfolding of interaction and practices between pitcher and judges in a film pitch setting. Using methods informed by conversation analysis, a form of ethnomethodological inquiry, this thesis sheds light on how to identify the practices in interaction that individuals employed, and how they orient to available institutional resources in various ways. In a practice perspective as conceptualised by Schatzki (2002) among others the social aspect occurs in slices of actions that constitute the practice of our social life. In other words, the microsocial actions and interactions that unfold in our day to day lives are part of and produce the ‘wider structures’ that our social life consists of. In the development of a motion picture production the idea presented as a pitch is a well-established phenomena. This thesis the focus will be on the setting where the ‘pitching session’ as a phenomenon transpires. To study these practices in the context of motion picture production, I have chosen to study a film pitching session through analysing recorded video data. The analysis in this thesis highlights how this activity unfolds, and how the interaction, rules, coordinating discourse, and explicit formulation of general and practical understandings has the effect of governing activity to conform to the contextual model of film pitching, rather than as an exploration of novel and original projects