Category: Uncategorized

Audiences are looking for curation. We have content out the wazoo. There’s plenty of it. We are actively trying to ignore all the content that doesn’t suit us. It’s a relief when someone helps us ignore and feeds us a simplified content stream. When someone steps up and says, “This is all you need. This is what you want.”

In making Scot Nery’s Boobietrap, that was the goal. We didn’t want it to be about the parts of the show. Instead it was about the show being a safe space to come and get the good stuff… like a trusted doctor or news source. We were a trusted place for entertainment.

There are two ways we, as entertainment creators, can serve as a curator.

1. Audience Tastes Based

We can respond to audience taste. This is why people love the algorithms. Algorithms track what we like already and try to bring us more stuff. A live entertainer can change what they’re doing to adjust to their audience in the moment.

2. Curator Tastes Based

If I can find a creator or publisher who I like and trust, I only have to pick them once and they pick all my stuff for me. This is what people got at Boobietrap, or thru a radio host they like, or a small book store.

Focus

Whichever way we do this curation, it will take us focusing on an audience… Not necessarily a demographic or archetype, but a narrow band of people who will align with what we are serving so we can continue to be their trusted source.

Algorithms can focus down on individuals, and will eventually be able to focus down on times of the day and location of those individuals. AI will destroy us all, but until then, humans are better at certain parts of curation…

• dependability
• assumed benevolence
• coolness
• organic interfacing

Going solo

If we want to produce something and not just dish out content, this applies the same way. We are sorting thru the muck to bring our audience the right stuff. A magician can be the trusted source for the best magic tricks, or the best way to do a magic trick, or the funniest a person can be.

I started learning magic tricks when I was seven years old. We went to Disney World and all I wanted to do there was go to the magic shop. My mom bought me some tricks and I showed them to everyone before I practiced. I did my first professional show at age 11. I loved it. No other kids my age were doing it and it was so fascinating to see how the tricks worked and get a reaction.

I grew a fascination with juggling, unicycling, and a bunch of other stuff that gave me the same feeling.

To the outside world, magic and juggling might seem like the same thing but they generally attract different kinds of people. In trying to determine why I liked both of them, I came to think about professional athletes. I’ve been inspired and motivated by professional athletes. I don’t watch a lot of games, but I love highlight reels and biographies, and sports movies.

I love seeing someone great.

Seeing someone achieve amazing things in a specialty is beautiful to me. It’s powerful. It gives me more self-love. In magic, I realize, gave people the feeling that more is possible beyond what they see. In juggling, I gave them the feeling that a normal person could do more with their body. I love gifting hope. That has been my drive in so many of the things that I do. That has been the thing that makes me feel like I’m improving the world.

• I have a restaurant with a windy hallway. When my waiter brings you a salad, a few leaves of spinach will always blow off the plate. I lose the spinach and you don’t gain it.
• You rob my car. You break the window and steal the radio. I lose the radio and the window and I have to clean up the mess.
• I write you three drafts of a letter. I send you one. I lose three pieces of paper. You gain one.

This delta between what I lose and what you gain in a transaction is the transaction cost. It’s a constant question for me… how do I make sure my audiences get the majority of what I’m offering them? My best feeling in life is knowing that I’m serving someone well – that what I’m doing is being received. We don’t want to sing a song through a bad sound system, or tell a bunch of jokes that are mostly not the crowd’s taste, or tell a story that puts people to sleep.

When we’re underpaid for a job, I think this is the real cause of being bummed. We feel like we put a lot into something and nobody gained the results. A lot was lost.

Transaction cost is not bad and it’s not avoidable. Our job is to value engineer what we do to a point of getting the most spinach to stay in the salad. We do this by…

1. getting better at understanding what we do
2. empathizing with our audience
3. remembering what our goals are
4. honestly evaluating our work

I think it’s very tiring to look at a video chat screen when people are not looking at my eyes. When I’m in an online meeting, I want folks to be energized by the interaction. I also want to see their facial expressions so I can communicate well with them.

We don’t want to look up, down, or to the side. We want to connect with the camera.

Teleprompter / Beam Splitter

A teleprompter is a way to have a computer’s output (a monitor) positioned in front of the camera. It uses glass reflection to make sort of a transparent screen that the subject ( me) can see and that the camera can’t see. Usually this is used on TV for the person speaking to be able to read text while looking straight into the lens, but text isn’t the only thing that can be displayed.

We can use a teleprompter to show us the person on the other end of Zoom.

This is pretty great! Now, we’re looking at the person or people or pets directly. And they’re looking at the center of our eyes.

The teleprompter (sometimes called a beam splitter) is also helpful for me when I’m setting up the camera for other videos that include my face. I can see exactly what the picture looks like looking straight into camera.

Big Monitor Behind Camera

An alternative idea is to do the opposite. Instead of putting a virtual monitor in front of the camera, put a big one behind it. You can blow up the zoom window on that big monitor and, although the camera will be in the the middle of your field of view, you can still see most of your victim’s face.

This seems to work for people. It requires space for a big monitor / TV but it won’t require as much hardware to hold up a heavy teleprompter. Another benefit is that you might be able to get more detail on the bigger monitor like if you’re doing a group chat and you need to read everyone’s names off the screen.

Add Eyeballs

I don’t know if this one works at all, but people are doing it. It doesn’t give you an opportunity to see your opponent’s face, but it might help a little bit as a reminder to look at the camera, and it might soften your face a little while doing so.

Put some representation of eyes near the camera lens.

I’ve seen…

• plastic eyeballs
• drawings of eyes
• eyes cut out of magazines
• googly eye stickers

The most appealing lighting does two things.

1. It’s clear what is being depicted
2. The subject is in it’s ultimate state

For a portrait or a zoom call, that means 1?? we can tell what the person’s face looks like and 2?? that person is healthy and attractive.

When a light source is reflected in the eye like a mirror, it shows (clearly) that the person has wet eyes (healthy).

This reflection is called the “catch light.”

Maybe you’re not the type of person who’s ever run into a glass door. I am that type. There was something in front of me that I didn’t see and didn’t know it was there.

1. It surprises me mid stride
2. It might hurt a little bit
3. It stops my progress
4. It makes me question my ability to perceive
5. It makes me feel dumb
6. It must be dealt with (either I need to go around or move it)

One of my favorite things is having a list of things to do in a day and knocking them out one at a time. It is rare that it works out smoothly, but when it does… ah! Bliss!

Almost all projects, no matter how experienced we are, have tasks to achieving them that we don’t see in front of us.

• I go to get my car registered, there’s no line to wait in. I’ll be in and out in 15 minutes… except I find out I have to get my smog test done.
• I’m going to perform a joke about snowmen. It’s gonna kill. I tell my wife the joke thinking she’ll laugh and she tells me it may be offensive to a group of people.
• I want to paint letters on a sign. I plan for it to take 45 min… and I realize that the surface isn’t prepared right and it will just soak up the paint.

We smash into invisible steps in a process = glass tasks

Just like a glass door, it can really break our flow physically, mentally, and emotionally to come across these glass tasks. I feel like labeling them and adding them immediately to our todo lists can help us to get to flow again.

deal with it mentally

1. The glass door always existed there.
2. It was not possible for me to see it until I felt it.
3. It’s something I will take care of.
4. Just because it’s surprising, doesn’t mean it’s a waste of time.

Make it visible

Writing it down on a todo list makes the glass task visible. Not only is this good for future trips through this kind of project, it also helps us remember that we didn’t waste our day doing nothing. We did a task that needed to get done.

I have a guest over. A new friend whom I admire. I want to show him love and give him goodness and share with him who I am. First thing I do is apologize for the house being messy.

My highest intention is generous, but my first action is based on scarcity and fear. I either don’t want him to feel uncomfortable, or (more likely) I don’t want him to think that I think it’s okay that my place isn’t neat, or maybe I just want to be humble about how clean I am in my house. I’m focusing on lack. I’m focusing on problems and triviality instead of on what I can provide. That’s how I lead this visit. Then, it goes to a bunch of other hustling around to do this or that, getting the conversation going with a bunch of complication. Cognitively pointing in every direction except the real direction > love.

This is how many entertainment people think when doing new projects. This is what hangs us up. We’re thinking about how to put out fires. We’re thinking about how to avoid criticism. This leads us to doing a bunch of stuff that’s confusing, off topic, and distracting. That leads us to prioritizing the fire escape instead of the foyer.

It’s complex for our audiences and that’s not what they want. Our audiences want clear, simple, fulfilling leadership.

If instead, we keep focusing on what we want to give, and what we have the most power to give, it becomes very simple. It’s very hard work to stay in a generous and abundant mindset, but it’s very important work.

Passion is great for understanding our mission (the great purpose of our work) but it can be very distracting when we’re setting up goals (achievable milemarkers).

I get emotional about making stuff

The emotions can lead to black and white thinking…

• Sell out the show or it’s a failure
• Everyone needs to know about this thing
• It’s gotta be the best or it’s a waste of time.

The emotions can lead to abstract thinking…

• I am bad at comedy
• We need to make more money
• We need to get more views

Good goals are clear.

Things only become achieveable when they’re failable. We have to set up an expectation for our goals based on something concrete — usually numbers.

An example of this would be “We need 20 more tickets sold in order to break even.” Getting to this clarity takes responsibility and dispassionate math. It’s not as exciting as “Sell out or die” but “Sell out or die” is daunting, high-stakes, and might not be achievable.

If I’ve got a butter factory and I walk to a cow place 100 miles away to get milk, it’s better for my finances to set up a deal with the cow place next door than to hire some talent to go get the milk.

Some projects are built on talent – we need everyone involved to be top level. These are often stressful. The main job of a project like this is making sure that everyone’s on-board and doing their best and nobody will ever quit or slow down for any reason. I’m really into hiring the best people possible and giving them an environment to thrive, but I’m not into the high-stakes realm of keeping a zero-error environment.

If I’ve got a live show where every performer is fit for the crowd and a badass, stand-alone entertainer, I could just put them up on stage for any random amount of time with any kind of context and let them do their thing. It would be good. The problem is, we’re never in this situation. We live in a world of limited resources.

We have to get our milk transport system strong so that when we’re ready to hire, or invest in machines and stuff, we are not wasting time on nonsense.

I don’t know if I’m rambling or clarifying.

Here’s the point. It might be better to make a show where we have someone super dependable doing a simple task, than to have a complex and incredible performer doing something amazing and having to rebook that slot every week.

Punctuation gives us relief. Punctuation gives us confidence. Punctuation points toward a safe structure.

In entertainment we want our audiences to melt into us — to become sheep and let us lead. We want them to be alert sheep, though. We want them in the flow. If we wanted them to be zombies, murky is better. Put them to sleep because of lack of cognition. If we wanted them to be autonomous and stressed, we could keep it confusing. But even when creating a thrilling experience, we need trust.

Punctuation builds trust. Talking about punctuation in a live show, I mean…

• Applause points.
• Transitions.
• Segmentation of bits.
• Pauses in sound.
• Deliberate lighting changes.
• Curtain draws.
• Punch lines.
• Etc.

These are clear, abrupt moments that label the rest of the experience and help the audience block out what is happening. They’re also signals that this is not an endless experience. It’s got chapters, and the creator has a plan to get to the end. The creator is gonna take care of us.

When doing a lot of experimenting in shows, I thought it was avante garde to not give applause points in the show. I thought it was interesting to purposefully walk over my laughs so the audience had to decide when to laugh for themselves. Really it’s just stressful to experience a thing with no punctuation.

I’m seeing people in Zoom shows with a ton of lights and the lights are all spread out and far away. We want large light sources as close to us as possible. When we move a light away we lose a lot of power.

The inverse square rule says that we loose double what we might intuit.

If a light is 1 foot away from my hand, and I move it to 2 feet away. The brightness of my hand is not cut to 50%. It’s cut to 25%. That is much dimmer. Every little bit counts. We’re talking 4 times the brightness every time we move a light halfway in.

When I was talking to a mentor, I was asking him for help with business building. I was telling him my background, where I’m hoping to go, what is fulfilling to me about the work and he interrupted and said, “Your goal with your business is to make more money than you spend.” I thought at first that he wasn’t listening. I thought I had a lot more to tell him before he could give me advice. Then, I paused and said “Thank you.” He was extremely helpful. He cut through the crap to the point. My story was interesting and wonderful, but not when it got in the way of my current challenge.

I believe that every creator has a generous mission. I want them to achieve that mission. As we’re working toward the things we want, we all have piles of mental junk that slow us down, hold us up, or divert us from our intention.

I encourage people to learn about the common cognitive biases so they can see them when they pop up. To me, the trick isn’t to avoid them completely (that’s impossible) and not to always catch them (that’s impossible, too), but to be aware of what they are and give them reverence. We can accept that we’re susceptible and they may be affecting us at crucial moments.

Another thing in the mental junk pile is our own personal cop-outs. To us, it might feel like an interesting personal story “I grew up speaking three languages, so I never got that good at French.” or whatever. We can listen to ourselves talk, or read our diaries. We can find the stories or phrases we use to hold ourselves back.

We don’t have cop-outs because we’re lazy or jerks. We have cop-outs to protect us. They have defended us from heartbreak, failure, and maybe death in the past. Our cop-outs are powerful and benevolent.

We can memorize them. Know their names. Know what they look like. Understand what different forms they can take. Then we can recognize them when they appear unnecessarily. They will appear when we don’t need protection, but we just need to make progress. Often we can find ourselves saying “Why is this difficult?” Instead of “What’s the next step from here?”