125
W
ow, this is one that if understood, can change MUCH of what is created in the micro show (1-5 member teams) design today. Basically, if you have a budget of $5.00 or a budget of $5,000,000 to accomplish a project / new routine / marketing cam-paign, etc., your audience does not know this informa-tion. So … “Make it Look Like You Did it On Purpose”and work with in your means in a creative way. Here is an easy example:
Suppose you have to decorate your Children’s Show Fundraising Event (your school client / sponsor wants to help fund water wells for kids in another country in this example), where you anticipate having 50 - 100 kids in attendance at your show that only holds 100. You have 3 weeks lead time, a budget of $50 for this additional
“branded” effort (fundraising for the water wells … remember?) event, and only 2 friends (er … volunteers) that have offered any pre-event help. Your theme for the event is “Helping Hands” and you are focusing on the subject of helping your fellow planetary neighbor as our main focus, with a short fundraising “call to ac-tion” planned towards the end.
As you sit down to brainstorm, you remember that you are not much of an artist (and neither are the 2 volun-teers.) As you have a limited budget you really can’t buy many decorations, or you won’t have a budget to cover a few snacks, some flyers to be made, and a gift for those that DO offer to support the cause after your time with them. What are you to do?
“Make it Look Like You Did it On Purpose” is the key.
You quickly take an inventory of your bed sheets at home, and find that there is that older semi-white twin sheet that you hardly ever use for your guest room any-more. (you get permission to use this, or ask forgiveness later, depending on your household practices…grin.) Next you’re off to the garage to see if the spray paint you used to repaint your mailbox bright purple (there is no accounting for taste here) is still around… and guess what, it is. Taking these prizes with you, you hurry on down to the school to raid … er … borrow supplies from one of the sponsors classrooms crafts stash … looking for construction paper, crayons, scissors, tape, etc.
With all your goodies in hand, you and your assistants get cracking at trying to make something out of all this.
Fortunately, you had an idea all along that included tracing your hand, and those of your volunteers on the different colors of construction paper (and depending on how much you … ummm … ”borrowed” you can figure out how much of the room to decorate starting with your focal point (the yet to be decorated sheet) and move out evenly on both sides from there.) Next, you take one of those traced hands, and slowly draw in light pencil an artistic (read: the best that you can do this) large hand on the sheet as large as it can go. (if you have access to an overhead projector, one of the volunteers can hold their hand on the screen, while the other 2 of you TRACE it on the large sheet). Now you draw / trace up the words “Helping Hands” on the sheet and then use the markers / spray paint you found to paint it all.
OK, back to the theory … you can see that with a little bit of searching, and minimal artistic talents, you have created a very nice focal point for the event AND kept it in budget (next to nothing!)
Nuff said on the theory… so how do you apply this to your performing work, you ask? (good and valid question) Simply put, remember that your audiences DOESN’T KNOW about your resource limitations / ex-perience level / trial of a new routine… so (all together now) “… “Make it Look Like You Did it On Purpose”
NOTE: thank you to all of you who offered your own in-sights to our last BIZofSHOW inin-sights … and this is your invite to chime in again at: www.facebook.com/BIZof-SHOW and click on the MESSAGES button! See you next month with more insights into using Show Business to Grow (Your) Business.
MILLY DIOP, BABY!
FR OM
THE
DESK
OF KEITH
FIELDS
Reg-ular readers who have followed my exploits thus far will know that Sunday was an interesting day! If you are a new reader maybe you should download the last two months of Vanish Magazine for parts one and two. You might as well because it is the best free magic magazine in the world.
Sunday has arrived and with it day three of my foray back on the street. The successes and failures of the first two days are behind me, lessons have been learned and my faded memories have been rekindled and I am looking forward to another fun day of busking.
Today is already different as one of our intrepid trio has backed out. It is Jeremy’s daughters birthday, a feeble excuse but we all understand. This means that the old street hierarchy rears it’s head and the various pitches get to be reassigned for the day. Emmett gets in first and decides he is going to work Jeremy’s pitch on the East side. I am quite happy with this as I was watching him yesterday on his pitch and it seemed that every time I looked up he had a huge crowd - his pitch was obviously better than mine. However the best laid plans are often scuppered by the actions of other people, in this case there is a classical guitarist who has beaten Emmett to his spot. And worse... he is using an amplifier!
As I mentioned in my last piece amplifiers are not allowed in Chicago but for some reason the police today do not seem bothered by that infringement. The vol-ume is low but carries across the whole area meaning that the East side pitch is not going to be workable. Emmett, being a man of peace takes the pitch I was working instead, and he is quite happy about it. Unbeknownst to me at the time he had spent the whole of yesterday looking at my pitch and seeing me with big crowds. He was think-ing that my pitch was better than his!
Truth is that I only looked over to see how he was doing when I was struggling to get my next