Thursday, January 24, 2013

Expectations with Bobby McFerrin

I had taken some time off from blogging to enjoy the holidays but just as I was ready to get back into it, I somehow managed to get myself massively over extended over the month of January. Between work, school, screenwriting, and a few extracurricular projects I didn't know how to get back on track. Luckily for me, my school requires that I blog a few times a month and so now the time to blog has come again.

In searching for my next blog topic on Ted.com I stumbled upon a short video that was so sweet and inspiring that I had to share it with you. It is not geared towards Mixed-Race cinema as the rest of my posts are but it is fantastic and needs to be shared.  I stopped at this video because my husband and I have been fans of Bobby McFerrin's classical style music for many years. I was curious what this artist was doing at a science festival. Bobby McFerrin was at the 2009 World Science Festival "playing" an audience like a keyboard. 

 

This 3 minute clip shows how Bobby McFerrin, with very little instruction to the audience, manages to get a whole audience to sing "Baaaaaaa" sounds at different pitches as he steps across the stage. He only shows the audience two notes, but as he moves the audience anticipates what is required of them and they sing higher or lower pitches as he moves. He even begins freestyle singing his own notes over the audiences but they stay on track. Is such a small thing, but for some reason it really touched me. The intent of the exercise was to show how the human brain anticipates expectations and can usually fall in line with very little prompting.

Once he is finished, he explained that it doesn't matter where in the world he attempts this exercise, the audiences always "get it." I am curious to figure out how I might be able to apply this "playing the audience" technique in my own career path in the entertainment industry. Not necessarily jumping around on a stage to the sounds of "baaaaa" from the audience but creating the participation from the audience. At this moment, I am not certain. What I have learned is that it may take going outside of my knowledge base to trigger such a response in an audience. Bobby McFerrin is a musician, who is using his music to teach a science focused audience about how the brain works in such a simple and beautiful way.

2 comments:

  1. Sharmane,

    I really enjoyed reading your blog post this week on Bobby McFerrin. After watching his video I was blown away on how he managed to use the crowd to incorporate his definition on Expectations.I find it amazing on how the human brain works but I believe repitition and emotion plays a huge part in expectations.I admire your “playing the audience” analogy, as simple as it may seem, it may be something that can actually work if you manage to find the propper nitch.Keep up the great work.

    Best regards,

    Carlos G.

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  2. Sharmane,

    This is really exciting to me. As someone interested in producing live theatre, I'm always striving to incite something from an audience. Bobby McFerrin has always been an extremely engaging performer; his version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is still one of my favorites. The idea of playing an audience or engaging them to interact with your media is a good goal to strive for. Whether live or on film, you need the audience to lock in. I've seen movies where it doesn't "draw me in" and it's just not a fun experience. I think this is a great thing to learn from.

    Ashley

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