Author: Aurora Piaggesi

Making the difference – The “Zootopia” case

/ Aurora Piaggesi / 1 Comment

This week I would like to take a look at the new Disney film, Zootopia, released in Italy last Thursday under the name of Zootropolis. Not intending to do a review, I am going to use it as an example for this week argument, a.k.a. “how to use your company’s power to make a difference in your audience’s life“.

Zootopia tells the story of Judy Hopps, a female anthropomorphic rabbit willing to be a police officer in a giant metropolis where all mammals live together despite their differences. Even if everyone tries to persuade Judy of her genetic inadequacy, she does more than her best to prove them wrong.

This theme – an outcast trying to overcome a destiny imposed by society and to find their own path – is so popular in Disney films to have become a true trademark for the American film company. Cinderella wanted to be more than just a housemaid, Aladdin had to prove his value beyond his social and economical condition and Mulan had to save China despite her gender and social expectations dictated differently. Several generations of children grew with the strong message that they should not give up their dreams just because everybody tells them to, but to trust their inner self and fight for happiness.

Channeling such powerful messages through engaging stories and characters was the ultimate way for Disney to conquer their audience’s hearts forever.

Growing up, probably some of those children found difficult to fulfill all the expectations young age and Disney movies contributed to create in their minds, and complained. Disney/Pixar’s Monster University (2013) was probably conceived as an answer to those complaints. Yes, you have to keep dreaming, yes, you don’t have to give up, but also you have to know you, who you are and what you can do, and do your best with it. I think it is a great message. It teaches you not only to dream, but also to ask you the right questions for your dreams to become realistic projects.

That’s why Judy Hopps is a great officer not despite her size and nature but because she knows how to apply them to what she wants to achieve. She is modern, brave, funny, like all the characters of this outstanding film. And yet I have to say why this film si different from any Disney movie ever made.

If Disney messages were always directed to individuals, well exploiting Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (see below),

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Zootopia is the first Disney film talking to entire societies regarding subjects concerning today’s world: integration, tolerance and xenophobia.

While western world has to face integration with new unknown populations, many political leaders don’t lose a chance to exploit natural human fear of diversity (given by a genetic tendency toward self-preservation) to raise people’s barriers toward these new citizens, creating tension and separation. In Zootopia live two kinds of mammals: preys and predators. Even if animals gave up their bestial instincts thousands years ago, some preys, deep down, are still afraid of predators, still thinking that their striking nature could prevale on their rationality. This irrational fear creates prejudices leading to social conflicts.

I loved how Disney managed to understand that what is at the bottom of today’s intolerance and xenophobia is not the conviction of a population to be better than an other (like happened for black people or jews in the past) but an irrational fear given by the incapability to understand the many changes our society is living, to accept that the world how we used to know it is not going to be the same. It’s just pure, irrational fear of changes.

Disney was capable to see this fear and, being able to reach millions of people of all ages everywhere in the world, took the right chance to communicate this message: given our diversities, we evolved to live together in peace, we have a brain to use not to give in to our worst instincts. If we don’t remember this, we would get back to when world was divided into preys and predators.

Bring that son of a Pitch on!

/ Aurora Piaggesi / 1 Comment

Pitching is an activity that might sound unknown to those who never had to present a project to a commission, to those who never had to persuade someone else about the quality of their own ideas, to those that are not independent creative workers.

To us pitching represents an inevitable moment in the process of preparing a project. It’s when you have to face your inner fears of being judged and expose your idea to someone whose help you are in need of.

As money and investors lack, pitching has become more and more important. Since the last thing you want is to get to pitch your idea and go there unprepared (nothing is worse than a pitching session full of “ehhhh… mmmmh… ahhhhh….”), you had better to learn the principles of pitching and exercise the hell out of it. There are  several courses out there willing to teach you how to do the perfect pitch. They cost around  two thousand euros.

If you, like me, don’t dispose of that sum, I would suggest the enlightening book by professional script doctor Bobette Buster: Do Story – How to tell your story so the world listens. In this short yet amazing book, Buster shares her experiences in teaching her students how to bring out the perfect story.

In one of my past article we already outlined the importance of knowing what you want to tell and why so, in this section, I would like to skip directly to the format of your story.

Once you developed your story to be the best you could tell, you have to pitch it in order to, as Cormac McCarthy would say, “bring the fire to others“.

Here are the ten principles of narration as seen from Bobette Buster: 

  1. When you tell a story (aka when you pitch your idea), tell it like you were telling it to a friend. It would keep your narration fresh, quick and personal.
  2. You must let your audience know the answer to the following questions: what, where, when, who? 
  3. Use verbs in present time: it would help your audience getting involved in your narration.
  4. Remember that story’s main structure develops around a conflict between a thesis and an antithesis. Let your audience know about this conflict.
  5. Don’t forget to give your speech some “colorful” details, something to hook your audience with. My suggestion is to chance this detail as you change your audience, to find the most suitable every time.
  6. Try to pass to your audience that same sparkle that stroke you the first time that idea came to your mind.
  7. Share your story in the most personal way. Don’t be afraid to show a weak point.
  8. Narrate through the five senses: give your audience several ways to visualize what you are talking about.
  9. Dare yourself, don’t hide. In telling stories truth is the winner.
  10. Be short, you don’t want your audience to get bored.

With this indications in mind, you could prepare a short and engaging pitch, so to thrill your audience with the same excitement that is driving you while you work on your project. Good luck!

 

The eternal struggle of creative procrastinators

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When you decide to finally give in to your inner voice saying that your true vocation is *insert any creative profession*, you initially feel relieved, like if you had finally spoken the truth after a long time of lies. You feel great, charged both by courage and fear, and you start working on your own creative job that, at this point of the story, is quite far from being payed with any kind of retribution.

You think that, as this is YOUR dream, YOUR profession, the one you had so much time and so much trouble to find, of course everything is going to be a piece of cake.

Hell if you are wrong.

You used to think that your parents discouraged you so much because of the competition and the difficulties buried in your profession’s fundaments, but is not the only reason.

They probably knew, as your are learning now, that in creative professions, you are less likely to find yourself inside an already set path. Unlike other professions, where you can image yourself being hired and start a nine-to-five career, in creativity you can’t follow the others, otherwise it would be harder to succeed. You have to figure out and make your own path, and work on it everyday. And, most of the times, you’d be alone with your creativity.

As your brain struggles to find ideas, languages, expressions, as you stare at the blank page and try to follow a schedule even if know one would care if you don’t, that’s when you start what I call “The Serial Procrastination“.

Suddenly everything seems to be more important than your work. Facebook, cat videos, emails (for me chores) seem unable to wait. And that is how you don’t get your shit done.

I asked myself many times why, when I had to prepare for an university exam, I used to have a ten elephant-pack concentration but, if I have to think of a plot, I am distracted as a three weeks old kitten.

I found my answer after speaking with my coach, Sonja. I went back to the day I said my parents I wanted to live with stories. I felt good, yes, but also a little ashamed and guilty, because in my family stories were never considered a job, they were nothing more than a hobby. So, back then, part of me felt like I had chosen a profession that deserved less respect than some others and, unfortunately, this affects me even today.

But if you want to succeed, to make a living out of your passion you have to give it (and, consequently, to give you) the right credit. You have to commit and struggle, as you would do if you were employed in a society.

There are many different ways you can try to find your own way to commit. There are routines, exercises, moments for feedbacks and motivational recaps. Personally I recommend you to read this amazing book “101 Ways of Successful Screenwriters” , even if screenwriting is not what you want to do. It really helps you to find a way to dedicate to a creative profession, despite all the mental arguments you might have with yourself.

And then, as Shia LaBoeuf would say… “Just do it“.

Photo by Giulia Linus

 

Ethical communication: still possible in 2016?

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As predicted by Marshall McLuhan, the Internet gave us the capability to communicate within a worldwide perimeter in a few seconds. This led to what he called “global village“,  a world made smaller and smaller by our constant and immediate communications.

Because of the low-average price of an Internet connection and the easiness of its use, this global village is populated by many different kind of people. There are young, old, boys, girls, professionals, students, spreading within social media to communicate with each other and discuss about any matter existing within the human mind. Most of the times, these exchanges are occasions to create new bonds and groups, where to socialize giving tips and sharing experiences.

Most of the time.

Unfortunately, hidden behind the wall of safety given by the virtuality and the anonymity of their computers, people too scare to express their waste opinions in real life or people simply looking to spread discord (known as “trolls“) are waiting to find their next victim.

They attack using hard, strong and often rude words, spilled through a lexicon portraying their often low culture and intelligence. They write fast, their brain connected to their thumbs as they tap on their phone, and post. Like this, without thinking for a second about the consequences there might be. They don’t care that – if – somewhere out there someone could be crushed by their words.

In our big global village too often we can find examples of this “acting without thinking” attitude. It’s probably something coming from this condition of perennial virtuality we live in, a condition where we don’t have to confront with what we have done on the web.

This attitude is dangerous on two different levels.

One, most extreme, is when we are so unable to reason in an act-conseguence logic that we end up doing in real life something terrible without thinking. Like these two boys shooting a runner because they were bored.  Here I would say that, since we are very very young, something has to be done in our houses and schools to teach to take responsibilities for one’s actions.

More subtle is the second level and that is where we – as social media users – can give our contribute. As we confront with other people on Facebook or Twitter we can act and advance a more ethical communication, starting from the assumption – described by Jeremy Waldron in his The Harm of the Hate Speech  – that words can really hurt.

Sometimes we forget that as we speech we, in fact, act. Through language we address our thoughts physically toward others and, doing so, we modify a preexistent condition and, basically, we change something in the world, even just a little.

Yes, in democratic countries we have the liberty of speech, yes, we can have different opinions. But it is always important to remember that EVERYTHING we say (or do) will have its consequences.

It is important that we calibrate our words as we would calibrate operating a machine because, through them, we can decide what we want to leave of ourselves.

So, if you want to use your words to be an asshole, go ahead. But, please, read them again before posting: there is nothing worse than those commenting their own posts saying “I didn’t mean that!”.

 

 

 

Back to the core

/ Aurora Piaggesi / 1 Comment

These last few weeks have been quite important in my life, both professionally and privately.

As a story editor, screenwriter and storyteller in training, I started working on myself as a freelance. While public relations, contacts, self marketing and promotion are still in the making process, I am glad to find myself already in the position for practicing a bit. I am currently working as a story editor for a private, a professor willing to write down a film treatment. I am helping him to do so, and he’s paying me for this job. After years and years of studying and training I am happy of this goal.

As I was working with this man I immediately realized why his previous attempts in film writing were unsuccessful: there was a total lack of substance and values in his ideas. As many before him, my employer wanted to put a series of images he developed before a story, a structure and values.

Because most of the time the images we develop aren’t original, but coming from other images we might have seen in the course of our lives, I think is really difficult to work on a excellent project if not starting from the very basic question.

“Why am I telling this story?”

Which immediately leads to the following:

“How is my story going to impact on my audience’s life?”

Seems strange to make this kind of consideration nowadays, when our new technologies make us able to communicate our thoughts so quickly that sometimes we tap quicker than we think. There are so many images, videos, words shared everyday on our social media  that there is no wonder we feel our minds full of suggestions and impressions we want to express.

But, If I learned anything in these years, is that none of these “immediate” communications, none of these images born from fading memories would last. Nor in our mind nor in our audience’s mind.

A couple of weeks ago I learned from Seung Ah Kim, a famous storyteller from Korea, the concept of “Dream Society” as theorized by Rolf Jensen. As the scheme below shows, we are in a transition period, from Information to Dream Society, a world where technology and pragmatism are soon to be replaced by a new desire of values, emotions… what I like to call “The Core” of our lives.

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What powerful stories and communications have in common is an evergreen attention to the core, an aim to find an inner value or theme in the image or anecdote one wants to share.

Once you are communicating (maybe through a story, maybe through a video or an image) just something you think is “likable” or “cool” or “funny”, you are probably not sharing something coming from your core. And that’s why it will reach a less part of your audience.

But if you share something because of the message behind it, because you WANT to communicate THAT something, because you feel like what you want to share is part of you, who you are and how you feel, then is when your message or idea come from the core, then is when you will be heard.

Otherwise, is just the noise of a tree falling in a snow-covered woods.

 

 

Storytelling in Commercial Creativity

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These last weeks I have been attending an enlightening course held by the communication company D&AD about Brand Storytelling. Otherwise, how to best communicate to ‘sell’ a product, an idea, a mission or a project.

What was particularly pointed out by the professionals sharing their experiences, was that content is the most important item of a communication. You most know what you want to share with others, what  messages you want to address to your audience. If you can’t say it in one sentence, maybe it’s still not all clear.

Second, is never to forget who you are addressing to. Knowing who your audience (or target) is would inevitably influence your language and the channels through which you would choose to communicate.

Because any effective communication is based essentially on connection,  what you want to communicate, to whom and how are essential questions you have to ask yourself before starting your campaign.

Why storytelling, you would ask. Because storytelling has always been the most powerful way to engage audiences and, consequently, to sell something.

As Andy Orrick said, “The storyteller plays with the audience’s emotions, through the characters’ emotions.” As audience, we would tend to get involved in stories, in characters: is what we do all the time – at the movies, reading a nice book, even eavesdropping some strangers chatting on the bus. We love stories, we need stories, we live for stories.

According to a study conducted by Stanford University, stories are 22 times more memorable than other forms of communication, because of their inner engaging power. So Storytelling is and will always be the best way to communicate a message that would stick in our audience’s heart and, consequently, mind.

I am not saying anything new. Storytelling is being used in commercial creativity for decades. I am sure that you could name at least one commercial or ad you remember even if years had passed. I am also sure that you remember it because the story channelling the message the brand wanted engaged you in some ways. Why else would you think branded web series are so popular nowadays?

So, any fact, message, idea you want to incept in your audience minds – may they be future investors, employers, clients or students – try to turn them into stories. 

To engage your audience your stories must reflect the knowledge and respect you have of them and give them values, enrich them. Don’t be afraid to use archetypes nor – as Bobette Buster says “To show your weak spots and feel vulnerable”. Make it personal!

Stories are universal, the ways they are told are not. Remember to adapt your language to your audience: teens could be reached and touched by media and messages that adults or children may not even know. And, for safety, keep it short. Our brain ability to stay focused is less and less. (Maybe you didn’t even got through the first sentences of this post. If you made it, congrats! )

If you are interested in this subject, here is the link to the online course on FutureLearn website.