All The World’s A Stage, And All The Men And Women Merely Players…
AKA: Are you serving your audience?
Lee Schneider sounds kind. He looks kind. You get the impression that he’ll follow the old bard’s maxim to, “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
Trust a few? Indeed, just a few. Schneider is a grizzled veteran professional of the creative space.His father was an executive in the heyday of the big TV networks. Schneider came up in that environment, and worked as a journalist and writer-for-TV for some juggernauts like Good Morning America, Dateline NBC, A&E, and The History Channel among others.
He’s got that “consummate professional” feeling about him, and he suffers not fools in his creative work. His creative work is focused squarely in one place: on the audience.
There is something of a large divide in audience-focus between the current generation and the older one. Take Lee’s guidance on “creating a signature moment” in a piece:
“In making documentaries for cable networks, and I’ve done a few of them, we always had to find a “signature image” that would grab the fewer quickly. That was usually the hardest thing.
An example: I was doing a documentary about blowing things up. Literally. Demolition.
We he had hired the rock guy, Alice Cooper, to be the narrator and host. And we realized, how could we not have Alice Cooper break a guitar in his appearance?
That was like a viewer need. If we didn’t smash a guitar, we’d be making a mistake. So we got a guitar, he smashed it for the ending of the piece, and it was used in all the promos. It became the signature image.
(As a side note, he knew so much about the physics of smashing a guitar. He placed the camera, explained where each of the pieces would fly when it broke… I’ve never met anyone so educated about smashing a guitar.)
Every piece needs a signature moment. If it’s a visual piece, you need a visual. In a written piece, there might be a few of them. You need to deliver that signature moment to the reader, listener, or viewer, or you haven’t succeeded.”
This is being audience-focused.
This is realizing that all the world’s a stage, and we’re all merely players… and not being arrogant. You need to think with the audience in mind. Consider:
“Even when you do a long-form documentary for television, there needs to be a “cold open” or “tease” that gets people involved. We were doing a documentary on motorcycles, and the executive said “This is pretty good, but we need a chick on a motorcycle and a cop because we know it’s going to get viewers.” I was a little annoying because we were doing something different, but we did it — and we got more viewers.
You need to respond to people’s immediate needs, even if you’re producing the highest quality materials. You need to connect with people and be aware of what they’re looking for. If they want to see a cop on a motorcycle in a documentary and you’re not going to give it to them, that’s probably a mistake.”
It would be fair to say that this is a very mature attitude, and in lieu of saying “that’s not my art,” you say, “This is what the audience wants.”
Lee continues,
“You have to ask, “Who is watching? Who is reading? Who cares about this?” And the more specific you get, the better.”
Because the world is a stage, and you’re a player on it. Serve the audience and they’ll applaud — and keep buying tickets.
Excerpts are from Sebastian Marshall’s recent interview with Lee Schneider, “How to Build an Audience,” which was done to promote Lee’s “Make Quality Content, Build Community, and Make Money From Your Art” which 100% of the proceeds of go to charity. Check out the full interview and the deal if you’re doing creative work; it could be a huge boon for you.
