Thinking Allowed

Does Exposure Matter?
by Jon Thompson

After a post-Christmas hiatus, we’re back, and with a word guaranteed to strike terror and hatred into the hearts of performers everywhere: exposure.

It’s like dawn’s first rays to a vampire, kryptonite to Superman, or Macclesfield Town Football Club to its unhappy fans. The mind recoils from the horror – possibly from experience too. You don’t have to fear exposure, however. You can do something about it. Today.

What do I mean by that? Well, I certainly don’t mean complaining to YouTube or Wikipedia about exposure. No, it’s too late for that, even if there is a certain satisfaction to be had in venting spleen. What I mean is stripping an effect right down to its components and subtleties, stepping back and studying everything involved, tinkering with the various parts to see what happens, considering different techniques and approaches for each, then building something new with your own, possibly even radically different presentation. It’s the same basic effect, but nothing Mr Clever-clogs has ever seen on YouTube. It might even be far stronger than the original, too.

Pick an effect and begin to decompose it, making detailed notes with plenty of sketches as you go. Begin with the different logical steps involved in the method. List the tools, techniques and subtleties used in each, and describe them to yourself in detail, making lists of all their components in turn, what they all do, and what information they provide.

Do the same with every step of the presentation, relating it back to the relevant parts of the method as you go. When do you say each line, how does it relate to the physical movements you make? What is each piece of verbiage designed to do? What else does it do? What else could it do? Finally, what extra, unused information does the effect hand to you overall?

Keep going, being methodical as you go, and getting into increasingly fine detail. By the end of the exercise, you might have generated several pages of detailed and very valuable information. By now, you may have discovered several new things about the effect itself - things you can use and which you can virtually guarantee no one else has.

Now, play the “what if” game with the basic mechanism. What if you use a different method in a certain step, or tweak a component part of an existing one? If the original uses a billet peek, for instance, what would happen to the effect if you used another method, such as an impression pad, or a pocket writer? What impact would these and any other changes you can think of have on the working of the original effect? Does anything about the way you’ve broken down the effect suggest a better way of doing things? Will you need to design any new outs into the effect? Can you discard any existing ones? Are there any aspects of the effect over which you can safely hand control to the spectator? Ideal candidates are those aspects that do seem to have a noticeable impact as the effect progresses, but ultimately have no bearing on the outcome, or at least a predictable one.

Go through the same exercise with the presentation. Supposing the original effect centred on the idea of you reading the spectator’s thoughts. Would a stronger presentation be to have one spectator read anther’s thoughts instead? What in the method would allow that, or do you need to use a new technique?

Play the “what if” game against the effect as much as possible, and as before, be methodical. Let your imagination run riot. Why not, for instance, combine two separate effects into one new presentation? Build it up piece by piece until it’s a coherent whole, but don’t be afraid to abandon an approach if you have a better idea. Everything is fluid.

But what if you run out of ideas at any point? There’s no need to smack your head against a brick wall because there are techniques that will jog your imagination into life. One is Oblique Strategies. Click on http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/oblique/oblique.html.

Invented by composer Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt, the idea behind Oblique Strategies is that you choose a random one and apply it to the problem to see if it helps your creative juices flow in unexpected directions. The cards all carry cryptic (oblique, in fact) advice. What might “cut a vital connection” mean, for example? You never know until you start applying it to what you now know about the effect. In a similar vein, if you use tarot, why not pick a card at random card and see if it gives you inspiration?

Another popular method of seeing things in a new light is to use the SCAMPER technique, created by Robert Eberle and popularised by Michael Michaelko in his book “Tinkertoys”. SCAMPER stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. Apply each or any of them to an aspect of the effect, questioning what the outcome would be each time.

When you have a new method and presentation worked out for your reconstructed effect, try running through it in your imagination, not as you the performer, but by pretending to be a spectator seeing it for the very first time. Is it logical? Does it flow? Is it strong? Imagine watching yourself perform the effect in as much detail as you can muster. Spend time mentally being the spectator and thinking of ways in which you can break the effect. It’ll help you shore up any weak spots before you test it out before an audience.

All this might seem like a lot of work, but if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of the loud mouth that saw the a tutorial on YouTube and won’t quit with the chin music while you’re trying to work, you’ll understand that you can never put enough effort into this process. Every kid with a broadband connection can post as many tutorials to as they like, but you can guarantee that no one will recognise what you do as what they’ve seen.

Jon Thompson