Get Your Act Together

In the 1950’s big budget movies started hitting the silver screen.

Singin’ In The Rain, Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments– they were all epic productions.

You can imagine the pressure on the Producers, who promptly passed it on to the Directors and ultimately the Actors.

The term ‘Get your act together!’ came from the Director’s chair following their frustration with actors who fluffed their lines, looked in the wrong direction or were so wooden they were mistaken for set.

I feel for them.

Last week I was in the studio shooting short films to introduce ‘Sizzle Sessions’ for a new client.

Sizzle Sessions begin with a short key message film and are facilitated by staff members who I’ve trained. I’ve recorded hundreds over the years and normally end the day with the moniker of ‘One Take Heppell’.

But not last week.

Even though I had absorbed the content, knew exactly what to say and practised my delivery, my tongue and brain decided not to cooperate with one another.

Then I got the giggles – or ‘corpsing’ as it’s known – which stops being funny for the presenter after about 30 seconds.

Then I had a complete mind blank and missed out a great chunk of content.

Luckily, my Director didn’t shout at me to ‘get my act together’.

My Director called a break. Even when I insisted, ‘I’ll be ok in a minute’, she simply asked the whole crew to stop work and announced we’ll start again in ten minutes.

The thing is, my Director knows me very well. She’s also my business partner and wife.

Christine knows when I’m tired before I do, she can sense my frustration long before I would admit it.  And she knows when to shout, ‘Cut!’

Who’s your Director?

Who do you direct?

Do you know when to say cut?

Have you found yourself wishing you or others would get their act together?

Maybe ten minutes off task will help to get back on task?

Once I did get my act together, I also made a short film promoting my How To Be A Super Speaker Masterclasses taking place in July. You can watch it here (I did it in 2 takes btw).

They’re going to be amazing events. We have a few places left for Leeds (July 5th); however, London (on July 12th) is almost sold out.

All the details and the links to book can be found here.

Be Brilliant!

Michael

And here’s a film of one or two other times when the giggles took over.