ur-grue Streaming Platform Pitch
What This Skill Does
Writes a pitch document for a streaming platform commissioning or acquisitions team, covering the project's format, target audience fit, platform-specific positioning, and the case for commissioning or acquiring it.
When To Use This Skill
- You are preparing a submission to a streaming platform's commissioning pipeline
- A platform has expressed interest and asked for a written overview before a formal pitch meeting
- You want to adapt an existing broadcaster pitch for a streaming context
- You are pitching an original project directly to a platform without going through a traditional broadcaster
What You Need To Provide
Required: Project title, format (series, film, documentary, etc.), episode count and runtime (if series), brief description (2–3 sentences), the specific streaming platform you are targeting, your sense of the target audience.
Optional: Comparable titles currently on the platform, talent attached, production stage, international angle or co-production interest, any prior development support or broadcast interest.
How the Assistant Approaches This
- Frames the project explicitly in terms of what it adds to the specific platform's slate — what audience it serves, what need it fills — not just what it is as a standalone project
- Presents the format, logline, and series structure or film concept with enough detail for a commissioning executive to see how it would exist on-screen, including pacing, format, and any distinctive production approach
- Makes the commercial and audience case: why this audience is on the platform, why they will watch this project, and how it positions alongside comparable titles — including, if possible, comparable titles already on that platform's catalogue
- Closes with a "Next Step" note: the ideal first action after completing the pitch document (research the platform's current commissioning pipeline, find the right commissioning contact, or run series-pitch-deck-writer if a visual deck is also required for the meeting)
Output Format
Structured document: Opening Proposition (why this project for this platform), Format Overview, The Concept, Audience and Positioning, Comparable Titles (on the platform and elsewhere), Production Status and Next Steps. Total 600–800 words. Written for a commissioning reader who will evaluate twenty pitches in a sitting — clear, specific, no preamble. Output ends with a "Next Step" note: how to find the right commissioning contact, whether to run series-pitch-deck-writer for a visual deck, and what to prepare before sending or submitting the document.
Quality Criteria
- Opening section is platform-specific: names the platform, names the audience segment, and makes the fit case in two sentences
- Format overview is precise: episode count, runtime, production style
- Comparable titles section includes at least one title already on the target platform
- Audience description is specific (not "broad audience") — demographics, viewing habits, platform behaviour
- Production status section is honest about what exists and what is still needed
- No generic pitch language ("a story that needs to be told," "audiences will love")
- Output includes at least one concrete next action the user can take immediately (identify the commissioning contact, run series-pitch-deck-writer, or submit via the platform's official pipeline)
Example
Input
Platform: MUBI Project title: The Archivist's Garden Format: Feature documentary, 94 minutes Subject: A retired film archivist who spent 40 years restoring silent films in a national archive now tends a garden designed according to the colour palettes of the films he loved most. The documentary interweaves his garden work with the restoration films he saved. Target audience: Cinephile audience, documentary enthusiasts Comparables: Own comparables — Cunningham (2019), The Painter and the Thief, Jia Zhangke's short documentaries
Output
Streaming Platform Pitch — THE ARCHIVIST'S GARDEN / MUBI
Opening Proposition
MUBI's documentary strand has established a distinctive position with character-driven films about art and the act of making it — The Painter and the Thief, Cunningham, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. THE ARCHIVIST'S GARDEN is a film that belongs in that company: a documentary about a man who spent forty years preserving other people's art and who is now, quietly, making his own.
It is a film for the core MUBI subscriber: the viewer who stays for the credits, who already knows silent cinema, and who finds as much meaning in process as in outcome.
Format Overview
Single feature documentary. 94 minutes. Observational, with no presenter and minimal commentary. The film weaves between two registers: the garden (present-day, wide, seasonal) and the archive (restored film material and working footage from restoration sessions across four decades). Aspect ratio shifts between the two worlds. No talking heads.
The Concept
For forty years, Edvard Holm restored silent films in a national archive in northern Europe — colour-correcting frames by hand, rebuilding scores, rescuing films from decomposition. He is now retired. His garden is planted and tended according to the colour palettes of the films he loved most: the blue-grey of a Dreyer interior, the amber of an early Murnau exterior.
THE ARCHIVIST'S GARDEN follows one full growing season. Holm works in the garden. He talks — not to camera, but to himself and to occasional visitors — about the films, the work, the act of caring for things that most people have never seen and never will. The film asks, without asking, what it means to dedicate a life to preserving something.
The restored film material he saved will be woven through the documentary with full archive cooperation. Several of the films he restored are among the rarest surviving examples of early European cinema.
Audience and Positioning
MUBI subscribers index highly for: interest in film history, documentary form, European cinema, and long-format streaming with low-noise volume. This is a film for viewers who self-select into a 94-minute experience about a man tending a garden. That is not a small audience on MUBI — it is the core audience.
The film has no genre competition concern: there is no other documentary about film archiving on the platform. The closest comparable in sensibility is Cunningham — precise craft observation — and in subject matter, The Celluloid Man (2012), which is not currently on MUBI.
Comparable Titles
On MUBI: Cunningham (2019), The Painter and the Thief (2020), Boyhood (for its patience with duration) Beyond MUBI: The Celluloid Man (P.K. Nair, 2012), Agnès Varda's later self-portrait films for the essay register
Production Status and Next Steps
Principal photography is 60% complete. Archive cooperation is confirmed in writing. Delivery expected: March 2026. UK production company attached; seeking platform pre-sale or commissioning support to complete production. Director is available for a call within the next four weeks.
Known Limitations
- Comparable titles section requires the user to have genuine familiarity with the target platform's catalogue. If you cannot name a real title already on the platform, this section will be generic and weaker.
- Streaming platforms update their commissioning priorities frequently. Positioning arguments based on a platform's "current slate" may become outdated quickly.
- This skill is most effective when the project has a clear audience fit with the named platform. If you are pitching a mass-market reality format to an art cinema platform, no amount of pitch writing will fix the mismatch.