Pitch an Interactive Film Without Making the Reader Follow Every Branch
Pitch an Interactive Film Without Making the Reader Follow Every Branch
A branching film pitch has five jobs, and reproducing the tree is not one of them. Say who the viewer is inside the story. Say what their choice can actually change. Walk one route from its situation to a real outcome. Describe the alternative by the one thing it changes. Then say what the routes share, where they part for good, and what happens if the viewer does nothing at all.
That is the contract. Everything else is a diagram or a spreadsheet, and the person reading your pitch has time for neither.
Two failures sit on either side of this. The sprawling pitch hands over a decision tree and asks the reader to simulate it, which no reader will do. The hidden pitch writes a clean linear synopsis, and the reader finishes it without ever learning that the film has a choice in it. Both pitches are accurate. Both are useless. The version in the middle is harder to write, because it requires you to decide what the choice means before you can describe it.
Tell the recipient who chooses and what choice affects
Start with a noun for the viewer. Are they a character inside the story whose actions the film follows? A presence outside the action who decides what gets shown? A witness who can look at things but not do them? Vague language here — "the audience shapes the narrative" — costs you the one thing a pitch needs most, which is a picture.
Second sentence: the scope. A viewer's agency usually falls into one of four kinds, and they are not interchangeable.
- Knowledge. The viewer can find something out, or not. The story's events are fixed; what they understand while watching them is not.
- Order. The viewer sequences material. Three testimonies in any arrangement, a letter read before or after the funeral.
- Action. The viewer does something a character does, and the story responds to it.
- Outcome. The viewer's choice decides which version of events is real in the fiction.
Most pitches confuse the last two. "You decide what happens" is an outcome claim. If the honest description is that the viewer decides what Dani does, and Dani's action has a consequence, say that instead. It is smaller, and it is the thing you can actually deliver.
Now the fictional example that runs through this article. It is invented, and its job is to show what a pitch has to contain — not to prove that its choices work or that any software can run them.
The Gathering is a short memorial film. The viewer is Dani, the person operating the projector at a family screening. Dani can run the family-approved cut, or splice in a recorded memory that contradicts it. Both the approved cut and the recording are already in Dani's hands when the choice arrives.
So: the viewer is a character. The scope is action, with an outcome attached. Notice how much that one paragraph has already ruled out. The viewer is not omniscient, cannot reorder anything, and cannot choose an ending that the film does not offer.
Keep a line between the story's mechanism and the platform. "Whoever runs the projector decides what the room sees" is a narrative mechanism — a statement about the fiction. How a viewer actually makes that choice is a production question: a prompt on screen, a moment where the film waits, a countdown, a button. If that machinery has not been selected or tested, do not describe it in the tense of a feature. Write "the choice is offered before the final sequence," not "viewers tap to decide," unless tapping is real. Anyone who builds these things will ask, and the honest answer costs you nothing.
Follow one route through a meaningful decision
Pick a path that starts with a situation, arrives at a consequential choice, and lands somewhere intelligible. Then say what the viewer knows at the moment of choosing and what follows from the choice.
Here is the route summary for the approved cut — the one The Gathering plays first in the pitch.
Dani sets up the projector in a hall that is filling with family. Dani has the approved cut and the recording. The disagreement the recording carries is not yet public, and the room does not know it exists. At the decision point, Dani can let the approved cut run to the end. The screening finishes the way the family planned it. The contradiction never reaches the room. The film closes on the hall emptying, with Dani's sister still there.
Read that last clause carefully, because it is doing quiet work. Whether the sister's presence at the close is something the pitch should state is a design decision — but once the alternative route makes her absence stick, the approved route needs to say what it holds instead. Otherwise the two routes are not comparable.
On information: at the choice, Dani knows the recording contradicts the approved cut, and knows the hall is full of the family. Dani does not know how the room will react. That is a choice about disclosure, not a puzzle with a correct answer. If your film wants the viewer to be able to predict the consequence, say so, because that changes the choice into a values question. If it does not, say that too. The pitch should tell the reader which one it is offering.
One caution about this route and every route. Call it the representative path, not the likely one. You have not measured which path most viewers take, and neither has the person reading your pitch. If you present one route as typical, you have made an audience claim in the middle of a story document.
Describe the alternative by what changes
Now go back to the decision and change one thing. Do not retell the setup, the hall, or the moment of choosing. The reader already has those.
The alternative: Dani splices in the recorded memory. The contradiction becomes public. Dani's sister leaves the room. The film then returns to the same closing scene — the hall emptying — except the sister is not in it. She has not come back.
That is the whole alternative. Four sentences, one of which is a consequence rather than a scene. The reader can now hold both routes, and neither of them was repeated.
This is also where you separate authored alternatives from drafts you have not finished. Both routes in The Gathering are deliberate parts of the film. They are not two candidate endings the creator might pick between. If you have not decided between two endings, that is not a branch — it is unfinished work, and it does not belong in a pitch to anyone as though the viewer were going to settle it for you.
Some branches change interpretation without changing events. If yours is one of those, describe it in exactly those terms: the same scene plays, and what you know while watching it is different. A hypothetical version of that, elsewhere: the closing scene runs identically, but the viewer already knows what the approved cut left out, and the empty hall reads as a room where something was withheld. That is a real effect. It is also not control over the ending, and a pitch that oversells it as such will produce a disappointed reader later. In The Gathering, the branch is not that kind — events genuinely differ — so the pitch should not hedge as though it were.
Show what rejoins and what persists
This is the section most branching pitches skip, and it is the one that answers the reader's actual question: how much of this do I have to hold?
Name the shared scenes. Both routes play the same setup and land on the same hall-closing scene. Say so plainly. It tells the reader that the film is not two films, and that most of its running time is not in question.
Then say what the shared scene is not shared in. The routes stop having different scenes and start having different rooms. In one, the sister is present at the close. In the other, her absence has already happened and continues happening. Reconvergence is a structural fact about the sequence; it is not a reset. Nothing in the film undoes the departure.
That distinction is the whole reason to include this section. A reader who hears "both routes end the same way" will assume the choice was cosmetic. A reader who hears "both routes end on the same scene, and one of them has an empty chair in it" understands that the film remembers.
A small paper diagram, clarifying the relations and nothing else:
same setup scenes
|
v
decision: which version plays before the final sequence?
| |
keep approved cut insert the recorded memory
| |
| v
| sister leaves and stays gone
| |
+--------------+---------------+
|
v
hall-closing scene
(sister present) (sister absent)
no decision made in time --> approved cut
This is a drawing on paper. It is not a player, it does not show that a route can be traversed, and it says nothing about whether any of it plays back reliably on anything.
Now the default. The Gathering plays the approved cut if the viewer does nothing. Inaction is not a pause and not a failure state; it is the same ending Dani would have reached by choosing the approved cut deliberately, which is what makes silence mean something in this story. A viewer who never touches anything still gets a finished film, and that film has a consequence: the contradiction stays private.
That design has a cost worth stating in the pitch rather than discovering in a review. If doing nothing produces exactly the approved-cut route, then the film cannot tell a passive viewer from a deliberate one, and the two experiences are identical. Whether that is right depends on what the piece is arguing. The Gathering is arguably arguing exactly that — that not acting is a way of choosing the family version. If your film is not making that argument, a default that duplicates an active branch may be the wrong call, and the fix belongs in the story, not in a settings menu.
Also mark what is undecided, in the same paragraph, where the reader will trip over it. How the choice is offered and how long it waits; whether the viewer is told the two options in words or reads them from the fiction; whether the ending can be revisited or replayed; whether the sister's absence carries into any credits or epilogue material. All of that is open. Say that it is open. A pitch with three named unknowns reads as more finished than one that quietly implies everything has been settled.
The contract in one paragraph
Once the sections are drafted, the pitch can be compressed into something a reader can carry away. For the fictional film:
The Gathering is a short memorial film. You are Dani, running the projector. You can show the family-approved cut, or splice in a memory you recorded that contradicts it. Keep the approved cut and the room never hears the contradiction, and your sister is beside you when the hall empties. Insert the memory and she leaves, and she is still gone at the close. Do nothing, and the approved cut plays.
Six sentences: the film in a line, then role, choice, one consequence, the other consequence, default. If you can say it out loud in one breath, the structure is legible.
For your own film, the skeleton is the same:
- You are ___, and you ___.
- You can ___ or ___.
- If you choose the first, ___ happens, and ___ is still true at the end.
- If you choose the second, ___, and ___ persists.
- Both routes return to ___, where ___ is the same and ___ differs.
- If you do nothing, ___.
Give the representative route room to breathe and the alternative a few lines. The space you spend on a branch tells the reader how much of the film lives there. A pitch that gives four branches four equal paragraphs has told the reader the film has no centre.
The pitch is a promise about what the viewer's hand can do to the story. Make it a promise you can state in one breath, mean it exactly, and let the reader ask for the tree.
Frequently asked questions
What five jobs does a branching pitch have?
Say who the viewer is inside the story, what their choice can actually change, walk one route from situation to outcome, describe the alternative by the one thing it changes, and say what the routes share, where they part for good, and what happens if the viewer does nothing. Reproducing the tree is not one of them.
What is the difference between action and outcome in viewer agency?
Action means the viewer does something a character does, and the story responds; outcome means the viewer's choice decides which version of events is real. "You decide what happens" is an outcome claim. If the honest description is that the viewer decides what Dani does, and Dani's action has a consequence, say that smaller thing.
How should I describe the alternative route without retelling the setup?
Change one thing at the decision and do not repeat the setup, hall, or moment of choosing. In the example, splicing in the recorded memory makes the contradiction public, the sister leaves, and the film returns to the same hall-closing scene without her. That is the whole alternative: a few sentences, one of which is a consequence rather than a scene.
How do I explain reconvergence and the default without making the choice seem cosmetic?
Name the shared scenes, then say what is not shared in them. Both routes play the same setup and land on the hall-closing scene, but one has the sister present and the other has her already gone; reconvergence is structural, not a reset, and nothing undoes the departure. The default is the approved cut if the viewer does nothing, which is the same ending as choosing it deliberately. State the cost: the film cannot tell a passive viewer from a deliberate one.
How should the pitch handle the choice mechanism and open production questions?
Keep narrative mechanism separate from platform. "Whoever runs the projector decides what the room sees" is a statement about the fiction; how a viewer makes the choice is a production question. If that machinery has not been selected or tested, do not describe it in the tense of a feature—write "the choice is offered before the final sequence," not "viewers tap to decide" unless tapping is real. Mark undecided items such as how the choice is offered, how long it waits, whether endings can be replayed, and whether the sister's absence carries into credits.