I love movies. I’ve watched them, directed them, produced them, scripted them. What does this matter when my business is developing, designing and coaching presentations? Because I believe movies are the grandparents of presentation. The first version of powerpoint was released in May, 1990. The first movie was made in the 1890. With a 100 year head start, many ideas were perfected and then borrowed from the movies in the creation of presentations. The horizontal image, transitions, color images, title screens all were first employed in the movies. Other practices like the rehearsing, test audiences, opening night galas have interesting implications for presenters.
There is much that can be learned from the movies. So for the next couple of months, I’ll be exploring what movies get right (and wrong) and see what we can take away and use for our presenting benefit.
The movies are epitomized in Hollywood. The Hollywood studio system began to take shape in the teens and twenties of the last century. Like most industries, the studios were divided into big and small contenders: the majors, the minors and poverty row. Today many of the major of yesterday are still exist in one form or another. They’ve grown through mergers and shuffling and are now: Universal, Warner Brothers, MGM. Poverty Row and its B westerns, mysteries and Saturday matinée serials, no longer exists. Perhaps the name was too insulting. Instead, today we have the Indies, the Independents. These are smaller companies that scramble for money and work on very small budgets and, without studio dictates, can sometimes produce more thoughtful, meaningful material than the bigger studios.
The presentation world is much the same. There are a few giant companies serving clients from around the world with big budgets and big audiences. There are the minors, smaller companies like ours, who serve companies and non-profits in cities and regions across the county. And there are the indies: employees and entrepreneurs who must, for budgetary reasons, go it alone with their presentations.
Stay Tuned to Learn More About Presentation from the Movies
This blog series is for you, the independents. I hope I can find inspiration and ideas from the minds of great directors like Steven Spielberg, QuentinTarantino and Alfred Hitchcock, innovative cinematographers like Gregg Tolman, Nestor Almendros, Roger Deakins and risk-taking actors like Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep and Jack Nichols. I think it’ll be fun and informative.
So let’s begin our journey. I’ll be blogging on this topic every Monday. If you have ideas or questions as we go along, let me know. I’ll be happy to see what I can come up with to satisfy your curiosity.
Susan
