KeynotePro / Keynote Themes / PitchBoards NXT

Make Keynote an indispensable part of your production workflow with PitchBoards NXT: the easiest way to assemble great-looking, professional-grade pitches and story-board presentations.

PitchBoards has long been the go-to solution for film and video artists in need of a professional-grade presentation platform for pitch meetings, story-board presentations, or any presentation where your ideas need to take center stage. PitchBoards NXT – our latest next-generation Keynote theme system – propels the PitchBoards line into the NXT era with a completely reinvented framework that brings unparalleled order to your pitch presentations and delivers all-new options for creating immersive storyboards that put your audience into the center of the action.

Designed with film & video pros in mind, PitchBoards is the essence of a professional Keynote theme. Subtle coloration and shadow bring your imagery - from scanned sketches or digital mockups to full-blown rendered animatics - to the forefront of your presentation with complete consistency and clarity, with a supporting framework designed to make adding narrative or descriptive elements a simple, click-to-type process. The general-purpose slides provide you with the standard-fare presentation layouts as well, giving you the flexibility to create "non-Board" sequences or sections as you need to round out your pitch.

What's New? What's NXT.

The classic PitchBoards architecture was designed for an era when Standard-Definition still ruled the airwaves. With PitchBoards NXT, we've discarded old assumptions and dated formats to completely reinvent the storyboard presentation for a whole new era. We've shed legacy formats and their associated slide-library complexity, refocusing around 4:3, 16:9, and Scope formats for easy Tablet/TV/Screen differentiation. The traditional Single, Multi-Column and Scene slides are joined by new Contextual masters, along with the immersive Embed masters that allow your imagery and media to take center stage. A new Metabar construct tops every slide with a structured, flexible framework that makes it easy to track an even wider range of production details in a single glance, with a selection of pre-built formats for Agency, Episodic and Film work included in the Supplemental slides, ready to customize for each pitch.

The entire PitchBoards framework has been reenginered from the ground up to take advantage of everything the modern Keynote architecture has to offer. A completely redesigned object-placeholder model allows an even wider range of shot & scene-specific information to be included contextually on each slide while allowing greater image dominance for each of your shots. The background and palettes have been evolved for better balance against a wider range of projection and handheld presentation scenarios than prior editions. And the PitchBoards NXT themes are fully optimized for the new Shape, Text and Chart Styles introduced in Keynote 6.x, so you can customize the principal color and type styles used throughout the entire theme to reflect your own style more easily and consistently than ever before.

The Version 1.3 Update brings new Comparison Matrix layouts to the mix, along with under-the-hood updates to descriptive placeholders throughout the theme to make grid enforcement easier & more consistent. Supplemental Materials are now integrated directly into the themes, making it a snap to reference color chips, build a new MetaBar or access all-new Camera Movement Overlay shapes at any time during the authoring process, whether you're on desktop or mobile. And if you're fully up-to-date with Keynote 10, the new Version 1.6 Update builds from there with all-new slide types, plus additional reorganizations to improve & streamline your workflow in Keynote 10+.

*Please Note: Due to the depth and nature of the changes on this generation, PitchBoards NXT themes are not compatible with PitchBoards '08 (or earlier) presentations.

The Slides

The PitchBoards NXT themes now include 54 master slides - "Board" layouts including the most popular aspect ratios for film and video, along with an expanded range of general-purpose text and photo-oriented "Standard" slides. Each included aspect ratio has an associated Single, Multi-Column, Contextual and Scene slide - while the new Photo Embed slides let you take advantage of every inch of your slide with a layered, fully-immersive style. Along with the basic text and photo layouts present in any Keynote 8+ theme, PitchBoards NXT also includes an expanded selection of general content-oriented masters, including Percentage Compare & Contrast, Quotation slides, Numbered Section Header, Multi-Column setups, along with Agenda, Crew and Scene Directory slides. And the accompanying chart fills - including a colorful, broad-spectrum primary palette along with a pair of subtle warm/cool alternate blends - extend the clean, structured feel to your data with an adaptive, professional flair.

The Big Picture.

Widescreen (HD) Themes, available in the PitchBoards NXT Pro Edition, expand the style into widescreen format with aspect-optimized HD versions of the PitchBoards NXT design, so you can take advantage of the clean simplicity of a an iMac, Mac-driven HD Display or Monitor, or HD projection system as target presentation platforms without the pillarboxing associated with running traditional 4:3 presentations on widescreen.  Whether attached to an HD display or projecting to an HD-equipped room, your presentation will take full advantage of every inch, custom-tailored to intelligently adapt the PitchBoards NXT aesthetic to the larger footprint of HD.

The Right Touch.

Can't imagine leaving your favorite portable device out of your work-flow? The PitchBoards NXT themes are fully compatible with Keynote for iOS and iCloud, so you can transfer a presentation using the PitchBoards NXT themes to your iPad, iPhone or iCloud Drive for playback or editing with no updates or special workarounds required. And PitchBoards NXT is also iOS Direct Install enabled, so you can install the PitchBoards NXT themes directly onto your mobile device from your KeynotePro Account to author new presentations on the go. Keynote for iOS is a beautiful way to engage your audience in a tactile way, and the PitchBoards NXT style remains just as stunning at arm's length as it is projected on the big screen.

Add-Ons & Extras

The PitchBoards NXT themes now include Template Extensions to make your presentation building even easier. The Elements: Timeline & Budget Table Template includes multiple styles of Milestone Timelines, Multi-Track Project Timelines, along with "Smart" Film Production Budget Table slides ready to Copy & Paste into your PitchBoards NXT v1.3+ presentation. And the JumpStart: Independent Film Investor Pitch template is designed to streamline the creation of a new Investor Pitch for your film - including a complete, structured presentation of pre-staged slides ready for you to customize to your own production. Tips & recommendations are built into each slide to help guide you during the creation of your pitch, making it easier than ever to roll a new investor-facing PitchBoards NXT v1.3+ deck right out of the gates.

Sketch it Up.

PitchBoards Sketch makes it easy to print storyboarding blanks for 4:3, 16:9, Scope, and Multiscope ratios directly from Pages, so you can start sketching your boards or drafting your pitch before you've started a single slide in Keynote. Select a format, setup a Metabar or any repeating information you'd like to include, and send it to print - you'll have sketch sheets ready to go in minutes, pre-tailored for your production, complete with shot layout styles you'll find in the companion Keynote slides. It's never been so easy to get hands-on with your PitchBoards Pitch. *Just need a blank canvas to get your next big idea flowing? The stand-alone PitchBoards Sketch v1.3 templates are Perfectly Free: see our Free Themes & Templates page for details.

Supplemental Material

The PitchBoards NXT Supplemental Materials file includes the three PitchBoards palettes, pre-linked Button Objects for copy-paste ease in interactive presentations, along with a DIY color change reference that walks you through changing the color scheme for an entire presentation or a single slide. The Supplemental Materials are installed right in your theme directory, ready to reference whenever you're building an District presentation.

Built for Keynote 8.x–10.x.

Thanks to the power of Keynote, PitchBoards are more than your ordinary story-board. Need to change your pitch from a Television Pilot to a Feature Film on the cab ride across town? Simply swap masters: if an element exists on the slide you're switching to, Keynote will handle the scaling, shifting and resizing of the elements on the slide for you in a simple click. Want to add more life to your stills? Drop in some background music to add a little atmosphere, or set simple Title Animatics directly in your presentation using Keynote's own built-in text animations. Keynote makes it a snap, and PitchBoards NXT makes it easier than ever before to bring your pitches and storyboards to life with a professional-grade look that'll get you noticed the first time you take the floor.

All photos shown for demonstration purposes only. iWork, Keynote,Quicktime, Mac, iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and the Apple logo are trademarked properties of Apple Inc.
NXT/Theme and NXT Theme are trademarked properties of Walrus Group LLC.