Proof of Concept

Presentation is said to be everything and this is especially true when it comes to entertainment. Before we delve into story, hear the chorus or even see the first visual, we have to prepare the audience for what is to come in order to maximize our impact. This transition between our daily lives and our entertainment is one of the key aspect in immersion.

From events to general entertainment, it is important to build anticipation and help the audience disconnect from their daily thoughts to be fully devoted to whatever medium is being used. If this transition is skipped or muffled, their thoughts and worries will keep interfering and any message or purpose might not be received in the way that it was originally intended. You can then quickly lose your audience when due to poor immersion or worse, never create any connection in the first place.

Setting the Mood

The first step is the creation of the atmosphere to enhance your entertainment value. These are done using mostly ambient mediums such as music, smells, lighting, decors, layout, etc. These help set the tone for what is to come as they tend to prepare the audience for the next step. Proper matching the mood to your entertainment makes immersion much easier, but sometimes huge contrasts can make it easier to vehicle a message (as is often the case in satires). Another thing is that ambience affects people even when they don’t truly notice it. It is used almost everywhere from entertainment venues to office spaces to homes to supermarkets and fast-food restaurants. There are many theories on colors and on the effect of different types of music out there to get a good idea of what to use when and where.

Breaking Thought Patterns

The second step to a proper transition is to capture the mind of your audience. The more receptive the audience is in the first place, the easier this process is. If they have no worries, simply proper use of atmosphere might be enough, but when tackling large crowds, you must consider that there will be a few whom are thinking about a million other things than your presentation.

To grab their attention, you need to grab their attention immediately right when you start. To do this, one can shock their senses and make them take notice. Our senses will often overwrite our thinking process if they are affected by sudden changes, but on the flip side will constantly adapt to its environment if it is a gradual process. There are many senses one can affect from the typical 5 (sight, sound, taste, smell and touch) to the not so obvious (temperature, balance, proximity, etc.). One of the important rules to remember here is the more the audience expects an action, the less effective it will be.

Examples of this rule in effect would be the dimming of lights in cinemas or the loud noise test prior to the movie (not as shocking as when we first saw a movie), a shocking picture on a billboard, a booming voice at the beginning of a concert (and the cheers), etc. Luckily, most of the time people who attend concerts, movies or any other entertainment medium are actually there to enjoy it, but this action can help enhance any performance if properly used.

Building Anticipation

Now that you’ve grabbed your audience’s attention, you want to keep it and try to enhance it some more. Teasing the audience and giving them a small taste creates tension, makes them desire what is to come and makes them much more receptive. Events do it by playing a few notes, their last minute sound checks, books and movies have their posters, covers, previews, trailers and so forth. There are many ways to how to succeed here and it really depends on what your medium and your goal is.

Anticipation is a tricking thing to work with; it often becomes an art in its own right. Too much and you risk over hyping, thus creating an expectation that is impossible to deliver or simply burning out the flame that is your audience’s desire. One thing to notice here is that anticipation can begin much earlier than the actual entertainment, but for the sake of keeping this piece short, I’m only looking at it from just prior to a presentation.

Instilling Imagination

Stimulating your audience’s imagination is something much more important in fantasy and certain Science Fiction settings than in others. If you’ve managed to get them to suspend their disbelief, you must create the new reality in which they will find themselves in or at least make that reality much more believable. If this step is skipped, then your audience will take more time to connect to your story as they must find their bearings first.

The most memorable experience I’ve had in this regard would have to be the reception area for KA, a show from the Cirque du Soleil. Above our head right in the entrance was two acrobats playing a giant harp that spanned across most of the room’s ceiling. It had little to do with the actually presentation that would follow, but wowed the audience as it was totally unexpected and quite impressive. The cirque du soleil uses acrobats and clowns for their premiere events and their parties who perform a few tricks and improvise depending on the audience making any of their events very memorable even without having seen the actual show. Good use of your mediums and various assets captures your audience and help create a solid fan base.

There are quite a number of factors to consider in any of these steps. Culture for one has adapted differently from one end of the world to the next. Purpose is equally important; are you making an entertainment piece or do you have a message you want to transmit? What type of impact do you want to have? What is the emotional state you wish to conjure? Do you want to contrast two different views and procedures? Is it simply a creative piece to use new techniques and new thinking styles? These are some of the questions that don’t even include the basic target audience, project vision, etc.

Techniques

I talked earlier about senses and how to affect them to shock the audience and also referred to them in setting the mood. Proper use of sensorial mediums can really add to any experience and reinforce the impact of any presentation. When looking at fear or suspense, common techniques of lowering lights, temperature and reducing proximity are popular methods of invoking primal fears in our minds. The reverse is often true for dreams and empowerment where the sky is often the limit. But looking at how our minds and bodies easily adapt to gradual changes, we can make an impact even more powerful by making use of our own obliviousness. Fear becomes heighten when what was once familiar becomes foreign, confusion sets in and our brains try to process what has happened. We search for an explanation and if our mind hasn’t moved to a point of pure panic, many of us become more open to listen to what those around us have to say.

Contrasts like these are a very popular technique in the artistic world to make people realize how the world has changed and to help transmit their message. People can often be blind to change until a single event makes them realize all that has happened. Immediately afterwards, their attention to details rise so that they are not tricked once again. Another contrasting technique is mixing associations between memories and senses, purposely confusing the audience so that they pay closer attention and assume nothing. We all have a tendency to jump to conclusion when we are in familiar territory and often can miss important details that would make an experience even more enjoyable. By dissociating certain established thoughts prior to a presentation, you open your audience to rethink everything that will happen and suspend disbelief.

Digital Rabbit Hole

Although I’ve been referring mostly to events, presentations and movies throughout this piece, interactive mediums such as video games must also capture the attention of players every time they wish to play especially in subscription based packages. The big advantage though is that interactive medium are much more compelling when it comes to immersiveness and suspended disbelief, but there are still a few steps that can make the transition even quicker in certain circumstances. For example, knowing what you have accomplished so far and putting you back into the context of your last save game can be interesting in complex stories or a journal showcasing world events and newsletters as you log in to a virtual world accelerates your reintegration into the world or short segment introduction clips to set you back in the pace of the game, etc. These are small things being used more and more in games to help players reacquaint themselves with the world faster every time.

Going through the digital rabbit hole is much more important in subscription based MMO games since you want your audience to be attached to their world. Its easy to make a player feel like a hero in a single player game, but in MMOs, what a thousand players has already done can begin to feel mundane. The transition’s goal in this case is to disconnect those thoughts from players’ minds and make them really enjoy their style of play and their accomplishments. It can also be used as a reminder that they have sometime to accomplish, like a quest they have taken on or goals they have set for themselves (through alliance to factions or others) and push them to want to do just that.

In the end though, whatever the medium, if you’ve managed to capture your audience, there is only one thing left to say: Welcome to Wonderland, and from there, you present your content.