As I walked into the movie theatre. The lights go down. Good. Here it comes. Web slinging, quippy kid, the whole friendly neighbourhood circus and good stuff…
Except it doesn’t come. Not yet. First there’s twenty minutes of something else, and I’m sitting there in the dark with an overpriced Pepsi and a growing suspicion that I am being worked on.
I went to watch Spider Man today. Brand New Day. Opening day, sticky floor, the fella two seats over already narrating the trailers to his girlfriend like she’d gone blind, which is hilarious because I’m pretty sure she was gonna break up with him after it all at this rate.
And the film was fine. Holland does the thing, the city gets saved, Aunt May energy all round. (No spoilers I promise)
That’s not what I want to talk to you about.
I want to talk about the before. The pre show. Because somewhere around the third advert I got this cold little worm of a thought wriggling up my spine, and I couldn’t shake it for the whole two and a half hours after.
Every single advert was built to switch my brain off. Not sell me. Not persuade me. Not even lie to me, really, which I could at least respect as an act of effort. Something quieter and creepier than that and it truly felt like I was being lobotomised in real time.
But do yourself a favour when you head to the movies again and you’ll maybe clock the bullshit at work.
Slow, syrupy camera drift. The kind of movement your eye follows without your permission, same as a stage hypnotist swinging his shiny watch. Soft focus everywhere. A voice pitched half an octave too calm which was incredibly errie.
No argument. No reason to buy. Just mood. Just a warm bath of vibe with a logo floating about.
Cut. Cut. Cut. Next product. Cut. Next. Before a thought can finish forming, we’ve moved on, haven’t we, we’ve moved on.
You know that feeling. Course you do. It’s passed 11pm, you meant to read, and instead you’ve been thumbing a glowing rectangle for ninety minutes and you couldn’t name one single thing you looked at. Your eyeballs went for a walk and left the rest of you at home.
The sedation is the point. A wide awake customer asks questions. Asks “do I need this,” asks “who’s this for,” asks “why’s it cost that.” A drowsy one just reaches for the card, soft and blinky and agreeable as a kitten in a sunbeam.
So there I am. Popcorn going cold. Peter Parker having his little crisis up on the screen. And I’m sat in the seat thinking. The actual supervillain played before the certificate card…
You can run this in reverse.
Everything the ad boys use to switch a brain off, you can flip to switch a brain on. The drift becomes a hook. The mood becomes a story. The endless soothing cuts become open loops that itch till they’re scratched. Same tools. You just point them at somebody’s attention instead of their off switch. You wake the reader up and keep them up, leaning in, eyes wide, right through the pitch and out the other side with their wallet already in their hand and, crucially, glad about it.
That’s the entire trick I bottled into the Pulp Fiction Framework. It’s the anti hypnosis. The thing that makes a person read every word you wrote on purpose and remember it in the morning. (I wrote about this very briefly on Facebook a few years ago but it basically just sat in a google doc and died)
Anyway. That’s where my head’s been throughout the film.
So, cheers to the advertising industry, truly, from the bottom of my sedated little heart. I paid fourteen quid for the privilege and well at least the seats were marvellous.
Now I’m going to re-write the little framework and just drop it in an email.
Then I’ll re-write my whole opt-in page that’ll give it away. Mainly cause I often get emails about my whole “process” and to be honest, I didn’t really think I had one until I really sat and thought about it.
So instead of getting my rant-y soap box emails. I’ll give you some good stuff too.
Hopefully you’ll use it or at least read it and see how my brain really works.
Stephen Walker.
P.S. If you haven’t watched the trailer. What is wrong with you?