Lessons from Misty Flicks

This weekend, I helped out with the Misty Flicks Film Festival. This is the first time the event has been run on this scale: Multi-day, guest speakers, features and short films.

So today, I want to share some of the lessons that I took from the event. I also want to point out that there are lessons everywhere in our day-to-day lives that will improve us as communicators if we take some time and effort to consider them.

1. Good Humour

My first lesson was on Friday night, the opening of our festival, with a screening of NZ music legend Tiki Taane’s self-funded and self-created documentary feature film of his event in the newly opened Christchurch Town Hall alongside the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra (CSO).

Tiki was gracious enough to attend the screening of his film Friday night and Saturday afternoon and do a Q&A after each of these screenings (I conducted the Q&A after the Saturday session).

But Friday night before the screening was my first time meeting Tiki. Misty Flicks was held in Te Awamutu, and on Friday night, the main street was closed off with attractions and food carts everywhere. There was a real festival atmosphere, as only small towns do, and families strolling up and down.

I was doing my part on the footpath, enticing parents to bring the kids into the theatre for free cartoon screenings and free popcorn, courtesy of the Regent Theatre, which was hosting the Misty Flicks Film Festival.

This is where I met Tiki, a very engaging, warm, and cheerful guy. We had a Misty Flicks backdrop screen and red carpet set up outside the theatre with our photographer. I asked Tiki if he would take some photos with the fans, and he was more than happy.

Tiki has been doing this most of his life and is very good at it, and has a real warmth with his interactions, at least half involving children. - and their interesting questions!

I was still working the crowds moving down the street, but now I was inviting them to take a photo with Tiki. One woman with a pushchair saw the red carpet and Tiki and asked me excitedly, “Who is that?” I answered Tiki Taane but barely got the words out of my mouth when her face lit up, and she became incredibly excited.

She was eager to get a photo and joined the crowd, leaving her husband to look after the kids. I think she was the most excited person there. For the record, New Zealanders tend to be a bit laconic about their stars. It isn’t a sign of disrespect, quite the opposite, but showing excess enthusiasm is not generally ‘the done thing’.

I eventually introduced the lady to Tiki, and she gushed that she just loved Star Wars. Tiki and I looked at each other quizzically, but he agreed; he loved Star Wars too. Then she made some other comments that made no sense, but she was excited and gushing.

As she grabbed her baby off the husband for a photo, Tiki leaned into me and whispered, “She has no idea who I am.” But returned for a photo with her and her toddler. That’s when she said, “I think I have watched What We Do in the Shadows a dozen times”. And it clicked.

Tiki was gracious, and after she left, he came over to me laughing and said, “She thinks I am Taika Waititi!” He asked me to hold the crowd for a bit as he needed a minute and whipped out his phone and told the story to his fans on social media.

What did I learn from this?

People can easily jump to their own conclusions or preconceptions. To be fair, she sees someone in front of a film festival promoting their film. Therefore, she would expect to see a filmmaker, not a musician. I suppose in the noise when I said Tiki, it may have sounded like Taika to someone expecting that name.

But I also learned how to roll with that like a pro. You don’t want to make someone feel bad or stupid for an honest mistake. And you can’t take something like this personally. Look on the bright or funny sides, and leverage the story to your benefit.

2. Power of the Right Audience.

On Saturday I spent much of my time in the other venue, the local library has an events room, where I was organising the AV for the workshops and panel discussions. I had come out earlier in the week with my laptop to test it. Everything worked surprisingly well. We were to play some videos with sound, show a PowerPoint, and even have a panellist who couldn’t make the trip zoom in.

I tested all of these things, and they worked fine.

Until the day. Then, very little worked.

For the first session, two members of the New Zealand Film Commission, up from the capital, addressed a packed audience of filmmakers on how to get their film shown. The very slick promo video that was to set the scene, failed to play through the sound system, just the tinny speakers of my laptop. And because I was forced to stream it (I couldn’t download it), it paused a few times with the circle of death rotating. -Not a great start.

Dale, one of the speakers, had his PowerPoint on his laptop, but when I plugged in the HDMI, it wouldn’t come up on the projector. Mine did. There was no problem with the screen, just the sound, but his did nothing. So, while they are introducing themselves, I am scrambling the team to find a USB stick (my fault; I normally have one with me).

We finally got the USB stick, and Dale copied the PowerPoint from his laptop and handed me the drive. I tried for over a minute, sweating bullets, but no matter what I did, the answer was the same -corrupt data.

I shook my head at his quizzical look, and he shrugged and continued, using the slides on his laptop at his feet as his own prompt.

What did I learn?

From my perspective, this was an unmitigated disaster. But the reality was very different. Both of our speakers really knew their stuff and they were here in service of their audience. And it really was their audience. The people in the room were hungry for knowledge and got what they came for.

Several commented on the value of that session and were oblivious to the ‘minor’ hiccups that I felt were monumental. When you get the right message in front of the right audience, it is the most important thing, and many of the things we do to impress or spice things up are actually unnecessary.

3. A Powerful Showcase

For the final lesson, I will return to Tiki Taane. I often extol the virtues of a tightly focused message to a specific audience. This indeed gets results. But this weekend, Tiki reminded me of the value of the opposite, the showcase.

His feature documentary film, Tiki Taane in Session with CSO, is a visual and audio recording of a one-off concert, intercut with behind-the-scenes (BTS) footage from the rehearsals the day before.

Tiki has had a wide and varied career in music. Starting out with an interest in heavy metal, he has had hits with dub, drum ‘n’ bass, reggae/roots, hip hop, acoustic pop, and his interpretation of traditional or cultural Māori music.

It is a wide variety of sounds and styles, which you may think would not all be of interest to any one individual. However, Tiki decided to take this opportunity to put as many different styles into this one event as he could. It took a year to get the orchestral arrangements written to accompany this eclectic combination of songs.

I am sure that this decision was a risk. A risk that Tiki was fully self-funding. -It was the first time I had seen a loop station used in conjunction with a symphony orchestra! But the result was a memorable event. It would have been amazing live, and it was very compelling on the big screen.

What did I learn?

There is power in showcasing your varied talents because it can open doors that would be inaccessible otherwise. Tiki is now using this film as a calling card to get opportunities that he hadn’t previously dreamed of.

So, while a focused message to a targeted audience is valuable, there is also a time and a place to share a wider variety of your abilities with a wider audience in order to uncover new opportunities.

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section where I dive into a famous (or not so famous) quote and explore how this can apply to the Compelling Communicator.

My good friend Sam often says that I get away with a lot when the focus is on me, not because of what I know (or, in many cases, don’t know) but of how I carry myself.

I believe that exuding a high level of confidence, stopping short of arrogance, is one of the most powerful skills you can master. And yes, it is a skill. It is something you can learn and develop. It is not something that you must be born with.

My sense of confidence is rooted in ‘being the adult’ at an early age. Protecting my younger siblings and trying to shield them from our out-of-control parents. Then, I fought in Karate tournaments nationwide as a teen and well into my twenties. You learn to exude confidence as you walk onto the mat for a full-contact fight because the alternative isn’t pretty.

The martial arts experience is a great help when I feel nervous about getting on stage. I often think to myself, “What are you worried about? Nobody’s going to kick me in the head!” Which brings a smile and helps me to relax. I still find it amusing that there was a time that had normalised stepping onto a mat, looking at my opponent, knowing that we would be doing our best to drop the other to the ground.

In terms of communication and leadership, your ability to imbue your message with confidence may be your most important ability. Just because I lean on my martial arts experience to achieve this, doesn’t mean you have to start fighting to be a better communicator.

You want to focus on what you do or know well. You must ground yourself in that area of expertise to bolster your self-belief. You know that you are strong in that area, so focus on that strength and shrug off the niggling doubts or unknowns. There is no benefit in wasting time worrying about things that may not happen. Know that you will handle anything that comes up and move steadily forward.

Your audience will sense your confidence or lack of it. They will respond accordingly, and it won’t matter how good the content is that you share. If you are not confident in its delivery, they will not be confident in accepting it.

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

Lots on as I have some coaching and am hunting up speakers and sponsors to an event I am putting together in the new year.

Recreationally:

Misty Flicks was a blast! I will be basking in that glow and following up with some of the people I met.

What I am reading:

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer

What I am watching:

I finally saw The Creator written and directed by Gareth Edwards amazing film I absolutely love!