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Rehearsal Secrets: How to properly prepare

And we're back once again, we hope that you enjoy the fact that we're making these lessons concise and quick because you don't wanna spend a ton of time sitting around watching video and one of the reasons we're able to do that is because we rehearse, so we're not just making it up on the fly we're going to talk about their importance of rehearsal now and we're in this going to give you a protocol, but we're also going to show you some clips of people performing here it creative live during one of our courses it's called heroic public speaking and you'll see how they rehearse you're going to enjoy that very often our idea of rehearsal we see this with people who are doing keynotes or shorter talks that they will say, oh yeah, I rehearsed it I went over it a couple of times in my head before before I delivered it in my hotel room I went over it a couple of times that's not what we mean by rehearsal and and the rehearsal process is a skill of its own uh, I think very often when we rehear...

se, we think oh, well, it has to become perfect quickly and what we're actually saying is no there's a whole process where it may actually feel like it's get it gets messier before it gets cleaned up and that's what can give ah, performance or ah, teaching so much depth and so many layers to it. So we're going to give you a rehearsal process. The first place we start is at a table, which is why we have a table where you would do a table read so you wouldn't be up on your feet right away and sit down with your material, maybe it's a computer, but we actually like to print things out, you know, old school, because then you can see maur of what you're doing at one time, yes, and we're not saying that it should be scripted, right? But you do need to know what you're what the main ideas that you're looking to communicate are in every single segment, every single lesson that you're teaching. Now, if we were working with a script, we'd be introducing something called content mapping, but for your use, what you need to know is okay, what are the things that are the most important ideas for me to communicate in each segment so that you make sure when you first introduced those terms that you may slow down? You may want to make sure that you say those words clearly, or even give a little pause afterwards, we call it a beat, a little pause, so that that idea lands. As important to the students so the first step in the process is the table read where you sit down and you read through all of the material so you get mork comfortable with it because when we when we write it out doesn't mean that it's in her head it's now on the paper so we're just getting more and more comfortable that we start to remember with this section in this section in their session and then step two is that content napping where you start to look for what are the key moments that must be hit? What are where are the transition points to go from? You know this particular piece of content into this story and how do you make that transition? Yes now both of these stages both table reads and content mapping are done out loud we say read it we don't mean sit and read it silently to yourself we mean read it out loud so that not only are you getting familiar with thinking everything in order but your mouth is getting used to saying the words your ears are getting used to hearing the words and so you become that much more immersed in your content and in the structure of it and and practised rehearsed at what you will actually say and then step three is called blocking this term actually comes from the theatre and in the eighteen hundreds when directors we're figuring out where they wanted their actors to go, they had little block ex, miniature little blocks, and they would move them a ziff those actors were the blocks, so we call it blocking and blocking is movement on a stage, and this is a stage, even though we're not raised up, this is our stage, because the cameras are on this side of the room, we're on this side of the room, so we don't have any blocking right now. We're sitting at the table, but I'm going to move. There may be a point where I decide I'm going to get up, and I'm going to move down stage over here to the right, because I want to talk to this part of the audience about something in particular than I know there's, another stage in the process, where I want to move back to the table so I could reconnect with my partner over here, and then I do it, and so that blocking includes not just where you are on the stage, but it may include places where you choose to stand, to compete, to communicate or sit down, or or sit on a table or whatever it may be it's, all ofyour intentional movement, that's, right, and then step for thank you stand for is technically making sure that your props are in order yes so one of the things that will make your controversies of very happy is if they know what to expect where in your presentation because you show up on the day and say oh yeah by the way I brought in this mechanical robot which I'm gonna have moving around the space wait didn't plan for that so if you know what your props you're going to be using if you make sure that all of the technical elements of say your screen sharing is completely organized before you come in then you're content producer knows how to prepare the line producer who then knows how to prepare all of the director the other engineers, camera operators et cetera and so you may find that you have to be prepared quite a bit earlier than you might otherwise it isn't often that you're working and creating right up until show time but because you have so many more people involved talk to your content producer see what your schedule is your production schedule and stick to it it makes everything flow so much more smoothly and joyfully for everybody involved and then step five is improv now not the kind of improv that amy and I just did where I went three and she took my finger and made it into a four we didn't plan on doing that I just sometimes put the wrong fingers up for numbers and an improv when you are rehearsing helps you improve the content and the delivery of that content. So there's improv on the day, if you know, if I knocked my glasses off, I go. Oh, I knocked my glasses off, and then maybe I figure out a way to turn it into a teaching myself. So that's, another element of blocking where I move from the chair down on the floor and picked up my glasses, but you start to put it on its feet when you block, when you start to move it around, and then you start to work on it and you start to play with it, try to find all the different ways that you could possibly deliver this content so there will be a lot of repetition in the rehearsal. Another misconception that I see about rehearsal is that sometimes people think, oh, yeah, well, I'm going to do it out loud, yes, not in my head, but once, twice, right? But what happens with improv is, well, you might repeat the same line again, you might repeat the same line again, trying it slightly differently the way I just did. So you're playing with the language the whole time you're playing with how you use the sounds of your words, you're playing with how you deliver the content and you're in it that's the thing it's not like you do it and then step out and think about it and then come back you can stay in it in this improv ing stage of rehearsal and just keep playing and exploring with it. Additionally, when you read off paper it's generally going to take less time to read your material than it is to perform it so you may think, oh well, this content is going to fit in this ten minute lesson or this hour and a half uh, lesson, but when you put it up on his feet all of a sudden an hour and a half lesson becomes a two hour lesson or a ten minute less and becomes a twenty minute lesson and so it informs your choices and maybe you don't have enough content maybe you put it up on its feet and you thought, well, this is an hour and a half lesson, but it took you only thirty minutes to deliver it and now, you know, you need to go back to the drawing board and produce more content and that's why this improvisational aspect of rehearsal is so important because it will influence how much content is in each lesson that you're teaching it's also just playful, you know, and that's something that audiences so appreciate is that when they can see that we are actually enjoying what we're doing that we're actually here having fun and for you, don't you wantto have fun doing it? Because is giving a creative live or a workshop or a keynote is extraordinarily painful for you? You're not going to want to do it, and it can that's conveyed in someway, to the audience so that element of having fun, we want to bring in right into rehearsals so that it's there, when you get to show time and speaking of fun, we're going to show you a clip from heroic public's being one of the courses that we taught here and this clip, I'm actually not sure what's cute up, but I would like to show the martez clip look at martin, okay, from our tests, cute up, let's go out and play them our test clip just in the second. First I wantto give you ah ah, little little setup. So martez was working on a speech, and he started telling a story that was in the speed. I stopped him and I said, let's, try this a little bit differently, let's, play let's pretend that we're sitting in a bar and we're two guys having conversation. We're a little bit tipsy and I'll sit across from you in a chair and you'll tell me the story and let's see if it changes your delivery now. Doesn't mean they don't necessarily tell the story that way, but it will influence it. So you're going to see this clip from her own public speaking the course here creative live on it'll uh it'll be fun to watch. So go ahead years ago when a person that didn't pay their debt could be thrown in jail a london merchant had the huge misfortune of owing money to a mean money lender he was old he was ugly but he really liked the merchants young, beautiful daughter so he said, ok, I have an idea you give me your daughter's hand in marriage and I'll forgive you of your debt neither the merchant nor the daughter was thrilled about that so they said, well, I have another idea I'll put two pavel's a white pavel and the black pebble in this money bag and your daughter will have an opportunity to choose a pavel if she chooses the white pavel she won't have to marry me and I'll forgive you of your debt however, if she chooses the black pebble okay, get someone get me a chair is a chair, a chair, the chair over there uh on an actual chair all right, let's, take that chair. I'm going to give it to you mark says you sit in this chair right here on your just gonna tell me this story, we're still drinking you were out drinking. We're at we're at home. Whatever you know. Would you have time? We were just drinking. All right, so so I'm talking about I got this problem I got I got you this. You have some solution. You're goingto you got the story that's going to solve all the problems right here. Listen to me, michael trying. And michael no. Listen, here it is. Here it is. Many years ago when when it was illegal, when a person that didn't pay is that could be thrown in jail. Yeah. The london merchant had the huge misfortune of own money toe a mean money low with the ugly. He was old with the way he really here. Really like the merchants. Young, beautiful daughter. She looked like she was beautiful. She was young and beautiful. She was smoking may be too young for the old. Are you mad that you want so great? Okay, so you can see in that clip, martez is delivery shifts radically. Now, as michael said, is he going to perform it like that? Is he going to sit back and do some big thing? I mean, he might he might, but it will add in another layer it will influence, as michael said, what he eventually does with that story and that's part of the rehearsal process is if you start to get stuck into a rut of any kind what can you bring it in? How can you play with it that shakes it up and gives it a little bit more freedom? Yeah, indeed now you might be a home by yourself rehearsing mark has had an audience and he had a coach you know, someone to help him but you could bring people in is another stage of rehearsal it's another step in the process you bring people in to make sure that you can play with them you can improv with them so you're not doing it all alone it's not really fun to do it by yourself. Really? That that's the thing? Usually we play with other people. Yeah, yeah. So it's much more fun to play with other people and when you get nervous or your questioning is I'm not sure about this, you know, you get feedback there, you got people to give you support to encourage you to help you out so let's look at one more clip. We want to look at a clip this time of omar it's from the same heroic public seeking creative lives that we did here and we want you to see again just how bringing this sense of improv comes in playfulness how how powerful that is for the audience it would be kind of fun to see if you could do like a little michael jackson move yeah from one to do way got to see that excitement because as soon as tell me if you notice a soon as his excitement level dropped you so I'm going like this in here you saw him step back you want like that spoon you just step back like this and all of a sudden he's back in his heels and then you came a little bit more forward but you kind of stayed in this position a little bit so we got to get excited I think if you do that dance move from one position to the next just play with it that's rehearsal play with it okay I can't even talk about gorillas throw thrilled yeah there you go. So the end of one whatever the end of one so the second thing that michael did so well is the frenchies okay so it was a little move that he threw in but it started to bring some playfulness in so let's do a quick review of the stages of rehearsal first we're going to start with table reads and content mapping looking at what are the big ideas that we need to express to communicate what it is that we need to teach so number one is table re then content mapping then we're looking at making sure that we've got all the tech elements prepared and are content producer knows exactly what they are and the blocking and then the blocking, of course, right, so we have four we have tape table meets, constant mapping, blocking and of course, the technical elements and then the improv, then the improv that's where you really play on, and then you get to those invited rehearsals and invited run through now, there's one other thing that we'd like to add, which is that in your preparation, while most ofyour preparation is communication with the content producer and it's, the actual rehearsal there's one more thing you can do that will make your experience with creative live and the student's experience with your teaching that much more profound and it's this research the students who will be present in the room. If you're going to have a live audience, find out who they are, get their websites if they have them get to learn a little bit about them, even just to get their names fresh in in your head. And that may be that you're out and about before you begin so that you can shake their hands and say, hi, I'm amy, nice to meet you. Where did you come in from, uh, boise, I just flew in my eyes are tired. So that you can speak to them, you can use their names, you khun say. So. For those of you who are from boise, let me address this. You make it that much more personal, when you know a little bit about them and that's, uh, that's, one of the secrets of preparation. That's. Good. So great job. Thank very much, thank you very much. Our next lesson is on visual media, making sure that the visual media you use eyes killer is remarkable. So thank you for paying attention. Now, can we'll see you again in the next one?