DESIGN FOR PRESENTATION: How do you reach your audience?

DESIGN FOR PRESENTATION: How do you reach your audience?

By Francis Glebas, PhD. in Fantasy

HOW DO WE REACH OUR AUDIENCE?

SO THEY'll CARE.

Some people say...

that the audience doesn't hear background

music during a movie

That's why they call it background

music

But if the music is there, Why can't

they hear it?

Let's pretend this rope is the

threshold of our conscious awareness.

Since we can only really pay

full attention to one thing at a

time...

We don't notice anything below the

threshold of conscious awareness, or below

this line.

Let the story

begin...

MUSIC SWELLS

h ee

Howdy. I'm Blue sock.

Hi, Pink Sock. Do you hear

music?

I think it's coming from down

here...

What did you do?

Oh NO! You crossed the threshold!

Pretend I'm not here.

I think I broke the story.

Without looking back at the earlier slides,

How many character's were involved?

Did you see him tie the ends of the rope?

How many clothes pins did you see him put on?

How many colors were used during this story?

Did the sock puppets have noses?

How many slides did it take to tell this story?

How many slides were the puppets in?

Did you ever see the Puppeteer's feet?

DOES THIS QUIZ MATTER?

If you went back over the story, you could find the answer to all of these questions. They were all there in plain sight. But did you pay attention to it to these things…

OR

…were you LOST IN THE STORY, not paying attention to anything below the THRESHOLD OF CONSCIOUS AWARENESS?

This is exactly the case with background music. It's always there, but we don't usually pay attention to it. But we could pay attention to the music at any time. This is true for all of the structuring of any story.

The audience gets LOST IN THE STORY, unless the storyteller does something wrong, like being boring or confusing or breaking the fourth wall, like our Blue sock puppet did.

So what did you learn?

AIM for the heart

BUT...

work at the structure below conscious

awareness

IS YOUR AUDIENCE LOST IN YOUR STORY?

Or are you distracting them,

bumping them out of the story?

This material, as well as other demonstrations on how to direct your audience's attention, perceptions, meanings and EMOTIONS can be found in Directing the Story: Professional storytelling and storyboarding techniqes from Focal Press.

It's also great for instructional designers.

Francis Glebas is a story artist, director, author, teacher, and speaker WPIX (speaker with pictures)Portfolio: francisglebas.weebly.comStorytelling tutorials: francisglebas.blogspot.comArt tutorials: http://www.youtube.com/user/frankiegeniustein

You may also enjoy The Animator's Eye and Iggy's Incredibly Easy Way to Write a Story.