talkmagic.co.uk

TonyB wrote:

Part-Timer wrote:pretty much everybody watches films, even if they never go to the cinema.

Not true. There are some people (myself being one) who almost never watch films. Two hours is far too long. There are some people who have never watched a sporting event, there are people who never listen to music, or read a book. There are people who can barely distinguish a car from a van.
It is a mistake to assume that everyone does something because a lot of people do it. And unfortunately two movie routines in a set will be enough to turn off a certain small portion of your audience.
That is why we should strive for variety.

And that is why we should strive for reading comprehension skills.

Unless, of course, you understood my post and then deliberately responded to a point of view I did not state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Ignoring that, one could easily take the view that it is better to turn off a small proportion of the audience and "do the stuff that's you", than to needlessly adopt a scattergun approach that, by your own argument, could alienate different sections of the audience in turn.

A whole hour of film-themed tricks might well be too much, and would probably benefit from some variety, but tying together a couple of effects about something that interests a lot of people (note, I am still not saying "everybody") sounds OK to me.

Anyway, how did the performance go Van_der_Belt?

Leaving aside the discussion about themed effects, a little update:

So I arrived for the show (on Friday) and as soon as I entered I was a little concerned about how empty it was.... Then I saw the organiser and without any need of FACS you could see there was bad news imminent! I say 'organiser' with my tongue firmly planted in cheek, I'm concerned he couldn't organise the preverbial alcohol-fuelled social occasion in a brewery.
The final had been moved to the previous night, for some unintelligable reason and he hadn't told almost half the acts involved! To say I was a tad furious would be understating things. Anywho, he was alarmingly apologetic and as it was a Friday night and he had no entertainment booked, I did my set anyway. I performed the two effects planned as well as a few impromptu numbers. All went quite well, I dropped a clanger in volunteer selection for the opening routine, a rather cocky young chav who seemed to want to ruin the effect. He failed. A good experience moment though, I'll always be slightly more vigilant about volunteer selection as a result. Even the judges from the final, who seemed to rather like my act made a trip down to see my performance which was quite flattering.
My main disappointment was the lack of opportunity to perform the bigger gig on Saturday... or so I thought.

Saturday afternoon I got a phone call, Tobias Mead had cancelled the gig and they wanted another act to pad out the billing and I was asked to do just that.

The audience was far from ideal, mostly families who were there to see dancers, child singers and cheerleading troupes but I like to thing I did the best I could in the circumstances.

I managed to get a handful of effects from my 20 min performance on video and as soon as I've chopped them up etc I'll throw them up on the Tube of You.

Massive thanks for the words of support, in particular Lommy and Part-Timer.

That's a real shame about the date of the show but sounds like you did really well, all things considered. Well done!

What a farce! It sounds like you did extremely well in the circumstances.

Glad if I was any help whatsoever.

It might have been a shambles, but it sounds as if you did well. In the long term that is what matters. Well done.