Audiences want themselves. Audiences want a story for themselves. They don’t care about the thing we care about until we bridge that gap and somehow communicate that “This is yours”
We, as audience members, are grateful when we know just how to react. Give us a reaction shot.
love this soap opera trick of having both characters face the screen
Movies and TV show the person listening more than the person talking. That’s how we make sense of the meaning of the interaction.
When we make online content, it can fall flat because we’re not including emotion, not making it clear what reaction we expect, and not bridging that gap.
This is the power behind David Blaine and Billy on the Street and Candid Camera.
Here are three examples of using audience reaction in live online stuff. Hopefully it will be inspiring.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are super helpful for tracking progress, making progress, and feeling like something is getting done. It’s very hard for solopreneurs and freelancers to keep track and stay accountable to their KPIs. It’s also hard sometimes to feel in control of things like income and set a goal like “I will make $40k this month” because it can feel like it’s not in our hands.
I propose a tangential KPI. If we can connect the thing we want to something that seems more graspable, we can work on the graspable thing.
Let’s say we are making $1000 per week on youtube and that’s somehow related to our view counts on our monetized videos, but not directly. It’s also coming from several different videos at the same time. We could decide that the thing to work on is not getting more money this quarter, and not getting more views, but we try an experiment. The experiment could be:
I am making $1000/wk on youtube
I have 60k subscribers
I’m good at getting subscribers
If I had 120k subscribers would I make twice as much?
My goal is to get 200k subscribers by the end of the quarter
Then, we make all our promotions, all our videos, the majority of all our work focused on getting more subscribers. WE don’t care if our view count goes down, we don’t care if we get terrible comments on our videos. Just are just tracking those subs and seeing:
can we increase our subscriptions at will?
how are our subscriptions directly related to our income?
Since the finances can be an emotional burden, this takes some of the heat off. This also gives us more clear tasks. Instead of just thinking all day “I gotta make more money!” We think, “what video got me the most new subscribers? Can I repeat that? What can I do better for subscribers today?”
“Fifteen casting directors know about me and I’ve gotten in one commercial. If I meet fifteen more, will I get another booking?”
“I made 10 phone calls last week to agents and three of them asked for a headshot. If I make 100 calls next week, will I get to send 30 headshots?”
We don’t need to protect the arts. We don’t need to protect specific arts. We can let things die. We can let go of what’s not working anymore. Arts aren’t one of those things. They’re still serving us. They’re still valued. Don’t worry about it. And, if something’s not serving us, we can let it die. It’s okay.
Live entertainment is not dying in the pandemic. It’s changing and waiting. It’s valid, not because we protect it, but because people still want it.
Usually I’m an advocate for high value services. We find out true solutions that the client / customer needs and we create a package of services with extreme value. Then, we give them a price that’s below the value of the thing. These prices can fluctuate a lot and they’re based on us listening, planning, doing the math, and responding (LPDR).
I don’t do this for everything. Tickets for my shows eg are not sold based on how much someone needs the show and how perfect their exact seat is. They are sold usually for a general admission price. That’s because low value items like a ticket are not worth the LPDR. There are other things that are pretty much the same every time. They’re going to take me the same amount of hours, the same resources, and I know that scope of the all the work will be pretty much the same. In these cases to, reinventing the wheel to come up with a new price isn’t worth it.
We can set the Single fee with grudges
Immediately after we provide the service can be a great time to set our rate for the next one. The goal is to walk away from gigs giggling – not giggling because we ripped someone off, but giggling because we did what we do, we did it well, and everything was taken care of financially to make that happen. That’s a good feeling. If we’re not giggling, we can question why.
Everyone who did something great, something beyond… What they did was wrong. What they did didn’t fit in with what people expected or what people were looking for. It was a failure from many perspectives. Many innovations take a long time to get acceptance because they are so easily seen as failures.
They are failures. Absolutely. They fail by the standards that are set.
With art and entertainment, the existing standards are already outdated.
What perspective are we taking towards what we’re creating?
If we do anything outside of the bounds of what’s normal, even better than what’s normal, it can easily be seen as a failure.
We are also tempted to think fitting-in is a success. Our internal protectors and vultures want us to stay small – to fit in and not make waves. That’s not our job. That’s not our calling. We are demanded to stay innovative.
For an exercise, I think of one of my favorite works of entertainment in the world. Then, think of 5 ways it was a total flop. It’s easy. It’s just as easy for us to get down on our own work.
Entertainment pros like me come from a world of normal people. We connect with, and are possibly raised by people who work at jobs. The whole marvelous universe of freelance / entrepreneur lifestyle has mega challenges that can cause lots of burnout, disappointment, and loss of flow. While everyone else is enjoying their weekend, we’re working. When people are going out to be entertained, we’re the ones entertaining them. Leisure is our work.
Here are some skills that are crucial for our line of work.
#1 Separation of self and service
The purpose behind what we do is a often a big part of who we are, but…
It’s hard to keep track. It’s hard to keep pouring ourselves in to our work without being emulsified in it. It never gets easy to separate ourselves in a healthy way, but we can learn and be very strengthened by this skill. When we lack this skill, the emotional rollercoaster gets exhausting and the fear of being destroyed can become paralyzing.
#2 Separation of boss and worker
In most big businesses, there’s one CEO and a lot of workers. Similarly, in a solo venture, there are high-level decisions to be made, and then there’s the work to do. The CEO can not spend all their time on the factory floor gluing things together, because they have big decisions to make, and the worker is too busy with work to really think clearly about the motivations of headquarters.
We as small biz owners often have more work todo than thinking. Finding a way to delegate tasks to ourselves can be a big relief. Once we separate the labor from the brain work, the labor becomes lighter and the big-picture becomes clearer.
#3 Audience empathy
We are not independent. All of us rely on millions of people every day. In showbiz, our reliance is heavily on people with whom we interact. We need empathy for our collaborators, customers, and fans. Empathy helps us understand our value for ourselves and for our audience. It helps us relate more to our work. It helps us understand the purpose of what we do. It helps us connect more and make more of an impact.
When our empathy is strong…
we don’t wonder why we’re getting paid
we don’t feel like such imposters
we interpret feedback as fuel
we are exhilarated by challenging our audiences
Building more empathy often involves more conversations with our audiences than we are often comfortable having.
There’s a thing that keeps so many creatives going. It’s that excitement about the possibility at the end of a project or a pursuit. This excitement is what can burn us out and threaten our health and stability, but it is also what makes it possible for us to push and excel when things are challenging. I encourage creatives to only use this excitement as a last resort, but to turn their focus to the work.
Reminder: we love doing the work.
We can stay motivated by celebrating the work, not the reward. We remind ourselves we wanted to be actors to act, not to get Tonys. We perform to perform. And we pat ourselves on the back for doing the work.
We don’t need passion to function. This is good news. We are not frauds when we’re working without passion. We don’t have to wait for passion to strike to do great work. We can still celebrate when we don’t even know why we’re doing our stuff.
A top human fear is public speaking. The common thinking is that entertainers are special because they’ve overcome that fear and that’s why they do what they do. Wrong again, common sense!
I don’t have much fear of getting up in front of a crowd. I first noticed this in second grade when another kid couldn’t stomach playing his part in the school play. I stepped in and did his line. I was the cricket and the lady bug!!! Who knows how disturbing it must have been to the audience to see the same actor in both roles! It was definitely less disturbing than leaving out the ladybug’s crucial sentence. The plot did not collapse and I was a hero.
Even though I’m rarely stage frightened, there are tons of pro entertainers who are. It’s hard to identify one link that keeps us all in the business, but rest-assured it’s not some lack of fear.
This concept produces crappy performers
When folks believe that fear of performing is what separates the audience from the showperson, things get skewed. Those folks believe they need to get over the fear, or cope with it. As soon as the fear is at bay, they are an entertainer.
There are celebrity entertainers that puke often before going in front of a crowd.
We don’t need to get rid of stage fright to be entertainers. Once we get stage-brave, we will not have achieved some mark of being good entertainers.
The job is about all the other stuff
The real job is so little about the courage to get on stage, or even the skills demonstrated usually. The majority of the job is showing up uninjured enough to do another show. We spend all day trying to not die so that we can do our 15 minutes on stage. Singers are trying to not get phlegmy, acrobats are trying to not pull muscles, comedians are trying to not get too drunk. We need to know how to travel, how to use our equipment, how to sleep enough, how to whatever to maintain.
There’s a lot of work that goes in to all the life stuff that people just don’t see on stage – and that’s great. I don’t need audiences to know about that. In fact, not sharing that part is a gift to the audience. I do want performers and would-be performers to know that there’s a lot more iceberg.
You’re not doing it wrong if you’re doing a lot of slog.
If it’s not worth it to you to slog for your moment on stage, this isn’t the career for you.
Live entertainment is made of proximity. We need things to be cuddled. People keep asking me when I’m bringing Scot Nery’s Boobietrap back and my answer is “When it’s fun to get together again!”
The best way to experience comedy is packed in, shoulder to shoulder. The front row is arms-length to the performer. The ceiling is low. The seating is dense. We are in it together. When something affects one of us, it affects all of us. We laugh and breathe together.
This is the tribal experience. The most amazing version of it was when I was performing on the street. It would be a complete mix of people from different walks of life who didn’t even plan on being in that spot at that time. They all came together to laugh and clap and celebrate humanity. Nobody was an outsider, there was nothing to protect. It was all “us” and no “them.” Doing what humans have evolved to do.
I’m in a resort now doing stage shows for people, but we’re not there yet. There’s still suspicion. There’s still personal space. There’s still masks and Purell. I don’t want people to stop taking precaution at all, but I do want a little bit to figure out ways to get people into a village together sitting around a fire and knowing that sometimes, we’re all one.
We need to show up. That’s our job as creatives. We need to show up in our power, with our value, and be ready to work.
Our job is not to reject ourselves. That’s the gatekeepers’ job and it’s great. Sometimes we’re tempted to…
Decide that a job isn’t for us
Tell the gatekeeper the reasons they might not want to pick us
This is selfish.
This is us trying to protect ourselves. This is not us serving the gatekeeper or anyone the gatekeeper is trying to serve. Let’s show up as our awesome selves. Let’s see what we can do next from our wheelhouse. Let’s move and bring power. Even if we’re not right for a job, bringing our power is inspirational and a relief to the people around us.
I’m not saying to get out there and do everything all the time. I’m saying do the next step in the process if it’s applicable. Test the limits. Maybe it doesn’t feel like we’re exactly right for something but we end up being more right than anyone else. We have trouble seeing our own value sometimes and it needs to be explored. Our imposter syndrome, or our fear of rejection can keep us from stepping up to the plate when the world needs us.
People ask me how to make it in the business, or how to break into Hollywood, or how to be successful. A lot of folks in showbiz laugh at these questions because they’re ridiculous, but they’re not stupid questions. The question is based on a common belief that there’s a global endpoint or a high-water mark, but the ridiculous part is that there is none. I don’t blame the asker of the question.
The way to answer these questions is by following two paths…
One path is get specific.
What does it mean to break into Hollywood? Does it mean to be set for life financially and have 10% of the US know my name? Does it mean to get hired to direct a commercial for one of the top 7 beer companies? If we figure out the specific meaning of success to us, we can work to achieve it. It has to be very specific, though and can’t have caveats.
The benefit of this is that we have clarity and we’re solving problems to get to a goal. Life is a game.
The downside is we can fail. It’s daunting to commit to a big goal. Also, when we accomplish our thing, it probably won’t feel like we expect. What then? Do we just stop our work?
The other path is to live in success.
If I want to be a screen writer and I sit down with a pen and paper this moment and start writing a screenplay, I’m a success. I’m a screen writer. If I want to be an actor, I can download a script, find someone else online that wants to read the script with me, or walk up to people on the street and ask them if I can act for them, then do it.
SUCCESS!
With this approach of doing, we have the opportunity to fill our time with the thing we care about and get better at it at the same time. That’s living a successful life.
If we want to make it in entertainment, one way is to make it… to make… to make actual stuff and live in the work.
The benefit of this is that if we feel successful where we are, we are more likely to feel successful in a few years when we’ve accomplished more. If we feel unsuccessful now, we are practicing that feeling. We will create more work and we’ll search less for meaning in the work besides the completion of it.
The downside is we can get bummed out not knowing our timeline. We can get distracted and possibly uninspired to keep growing.
Balance it out
We can find balance and flow in a combination of paths. When we get general about success, that’s basically a way for us to dive into distraction or depression. Getting specific can help us evaluate what we’re doing right now.
Celebrating the work instead of the reward gives us daily motivation and takes some of the pressure off. It reminds us why we’re doing it and helps us get straight about what matters as a creative: creating.
There are a bunch of magicians saying that when things open back up again online shows will be dead. Are they right? No cliffhanger here…
THEY ARE WRONG
Magicians were the most successful growing solo variety entertainment category during covid lockdown. They found innovative ways to engage and dazzle at-home fans. Many had their best financial year ever in 2020 due to the hunger of audiences and the popular access telecommuting provided.
Now, as people can start to go to live shows more, is it the end of online entertainment like magic shows? Heck no! Online entertainment didn’t start with someone eating a bat and it’s not going to end now, but this is definitely a time of pruning. Entertainers who wish to do Zoom shows or other video interactive live entertainment (VILE) can’t phone it in. We’re leaving the era of starting a soup kitchen for starving audiences and entering an era where VILE must come from a high end pastry chef. There are way more soup kitchens than pastry chefs and they’re way easier to keep busy.
Twitch, Youtube, Netflix, and the video game industry are all doing tons of real time interactive stuff online, so no, it is not dying.
As we’re making more VILE we need to add more empathy, more user experience expertise, and really exploit the medium for everything it has to offer. More than ever, audiences want unique and bespoke experiences. Automation can help us provide that. Let’s go!
