My story is better than your story This is a terrific piece. One of the things that we don't get enough time to talk about at Campfire is the potential of multiple dimensions of...
- Campfiresteve
My story is better than your story Mike, thx 4 the post. Nice little piece of perspective on the early B-Movie scene, i wished i could have seen the movie w/ that audience. I also...
- greg christman
My story is better than your story Daniel, I didn't add emphasis to anyone's words in this post except my own, but I removed them just for you since they didn't really add anything. It's not...
- Mike
My story is better than your story Adding emphasis doesn't make a thesis (or even a good point). If you're a student, I could probably direct you to some interesting work that might...
- Daniel Cliff
My story is better than your story This is a great post! I love the story and how Castle thought about the whole viewing experience, not just the product on the screen. I doubt legal...
In 1959, William Castle produced The Tingler, a B-movie horror film staring Vincent Price. Castle had earned a reputation as a showman with his previous films due to his crazy promotions, such as insuring the audience for $1 million in case of death by fright, and he needed to top himself. In his autobiography, Step Right Up! I’m Gonna Scare the Pants Off America, Castle described pitching The Tingler to Vincent Price:
“The character you play has a theory that the ‘Tingler’ is in everyone’s spine. Usually, people who are frightened scream, and screaming keeps their ‘Tingler’ from growing. Judith Evelyn will play the part of a deaf-mute who runs a silent movie theatre. Experimenting, you scare the hell out of her. Because she can’t utter a sound — is unable to scream — her ‘Tingler’ grows, crushing her to death. You operate, remove the ‘Tingler’ from her spine, and keep it in a glass jar in your laboratory. Then it escapes and gets into the silent movie theatre. We’ll then make believe that the theatre is where the picture is actually playing. The ‘Tingler’ will attack the projectionist and then get onto the screen. It’ll be a movie within a movie. Audiences seeing it will think it’s loose in the theatre they’re in. We’ll put your voice on the sound track and after the lights go out . . . you announce that the ‘Tingler’ is loose in the audience and ask them to scream for their lives…. All hell will break loose.”
“Do you think it’ll work?” Vinnie asked.
“I know it will.”
The movie folding in on itself was an audacious gamble at the time, but Castle took it even further — he had every third seat in the theaters playing The Tingler wired with buzzers to give the audience a shock. He turned the audience into participants. If you went to see The Tingler, you walked in to see William Castle’s story, but you walked out with your own story to tell, because Castle turned you into a (minor) character in the Tingler myth. “The Tingler went into my theater and I felt it in my spine!”
This is a powerful way to think about constructing narratives online. Instead of thinking about how you will tell your story, think about how you can give people a piece of the story to tell.
This requires the storyteller to put the audience at the center, to give them an active role. It’s not something that comes naturally to traditional storytellers, because it requires ceding some control over how the story is told, but when done right it can be very effective on many levels.
“My” is powerful, and my story is better than your story.
This year at Campfire, we’re forgoing our annual company team-building offsite in favor of a bowling outing. BOWLING. That’s high-level BS, I say. We have a wonderful history of corporate retreats here at Campfire. How are we ever going to bond, to grow as a family and unite as a single-minded corporate entity if we don’t drill down into our problems and get on the same page for 2009. What better way to address lingering interpersonal issues than in a public forum in front of your peers? How do you think the founders created the Constitution? (I watched John Adams, so I’m pretty much an expert.)
In the spirit of continuity, I want to show you all a surprisingly funny video from the Worldwide Leader, ESPN, and it’s new episodic series, Mayne Street. Enjoy!
Holiday cards has always been a good way of expressing your corniness and having fun at the same time. And getting that card from the Jones’ sitting in front of a fire with their dog chichi and color coordinated PJs never gets boring. This year at Campfire, we decided to bring out a little holiday corny with illustrations of everyone’s busts and some humor mixed in our holiday cards. So here’s to you chichi- keep those holiday cards coming and keep it (holiday) real.
U.S. Local Business Association’s Award Plaque Honors the Achievement
WASHINGTON D.C., December 9, 2008 — Campfire has been selected for the 2008 New York Award in the Campgrounds category by the U.S. Local Business Association (USLBA).
The USLBA “Best of Local Business” Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, the USLBA identifies companies that they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.
Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2008 USLBA Award Program focused on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the USLBA and data provided by third parties.
About U.S. Local Business Association (USLBA)
U.S. Local Business Association (USLBA) is a Washington D.C. based organization funded by local businesses operating in towns, large and small, across America. The purpose of USLBA is to promote local business through public relations, marketing and advertising.
The USLBA was established to recognize the best of local businesses in their community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations, chambers of commerce and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to be an advocate for small and medium size businesses and business entrepreneurs across America.
In commemoration to her gum drop turkey experience that changed her perception on what thanksgiving could be, Kathleen prepared a lovely gum drop turkey competition in our conference room last friday. Layed out on the conference table were all sorts of different candies and apples with tubes of candy glue. Needless to say, all the creative minds at Campfire dived right in and started butchering the candies to make their renditions of turkeys. Some were nice, some were not, and one particular one had failed open-surgery right there on the table. In the end, the winners shaped up to be:
Winner - Steve Wax
Runner Up - Rob Halstead
Worst - Ryan McGrath
Many thanks to Kathleen for sharing her therapeutic experience with us and good luck at the Rothman’s. Happy Thanksgiving!
MSNBC on True Blood, and HBO & Campfire’s highly successful marketing project:
“Catching the wave of a public fascination with vampires, HBO’s “True Blood” has steadily increased in stature to become the cable network’s most popular series since “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City.”
… The series averages 6.8 million viewers each week. As is typical for HBO, the viewership is scattered around in-demand viewing and reruns aired at different times during the week. But Lombardo [Michael Lombardo, HBO's chief of West Coast operations] said he’s noticed that more people are tuning in for the Sunday episode premieres, a sign of anticipation among fans.
HBO usually spends a big promotion budget to get people to watch the first episode of a new series, and hope enough viewers are satisfied to come back is subsequent weeks. The “True Blood” promotion included some approaches unusual for the network, including setting up fake Web sites and advertising a fake drink called ‘Tru Blood.”"
I don’t think we recognize the profound breadth of startling images that the Internet provides us on a daily basis. These are images that I received via email and text message in just the last 24 hours. What are yours?
– A Polish Cinematography festival which my friend Fred Murphy is attending with the new film he photographed, Anamorph.
– From a pig butchering class image from Sean Ganann, a CD at Campfire. He took this last night.
– the logo for Joy Films, run by my buddy, Mehdi Norowzian.
– a Progetti clock we are thinking of adding to the clock wall at Campfire.
– From a collage my son, Gabriel, created at school for his history class.
– A political piece, called wretchedX$, from my friend Howard Saunders, as part of a new new website he will launch shortly.
A couple weekends ago my 16 year old son Gabriel and I took our old Mustang up to Kerhonkson, NY, for an overnight stay. Saturday night we decided to drive over to New Paltz to see the film “W”. Unfortunately this meant driving in the dark about 20 miles on a small, twisty, mountain highway during a spectacular country thunderstorm. But the draw of Oliver Stone’s take on Dubbaya was enough to risk the trip.
As soon as we left I realized we were in trouble. The Mustang’s 40 year-old pockmarked windshield, outdated, feeble headlights, and crappy wipers provided visibility of about ten feet.
And water was leaking on our feet through a hole somewhere, while the towels we’d stuffed on the floor were interfering with the clutch and gas pedals. Then we realized we could use my iPhone as a Nav device.
So, as we careened blindly through the trees and climbed higher and higher, Gabe fired up the iPhone’s Google map. He zoomed in on highway 55 and followed the blue dot indicating our position and the sudden turns looming ahead.
As we approached the top in the thunder, rain and heavy fog, he shouted warnings over the storm and racket (the Fastback has a three hundred cube V8 with a 4 barrel Holley and Flowmaster exhaust ): “180 degree right coming up fast… turn now!” and I’d turn to the right , glancing to my left to see a 500 foot drop illuminated in the rain by lightening strikes.
Yes, I know I should buy a GPS, but that would violate the authenticity of my 40 year old car muscle car. After all I’ve been searching for months for a real 60’s hot rod tach with the right font and face.
Anyway, finally, totally scared out of our wits, we made it down the mountain to the valley floor, leading into New Paltz.
Now the damn Google maps that had probably saved our lives showed the New Paltz Cinema in the middle of a prairie field next to a river outside of town. We drove back and forth in the heavy rain trying to figure out what was going on, wasting 20 minutes, more water dripping on our feet, wondering why there was no civilization where Google said there was a shopping mall.
Finally, driving into town, I asked at a bar where the New Paltz Cinema was; it was 3 miles to the east of where Google said. What, you can’t trust Google maps? Later, Mike Monello explained to me that Google business locations are crowd sourced, someone had clearly mis-contributed the location of the theater. Perhaps a competitive theater owner?
Anyway we made to “W” in the nick of time, a fascinating piece of Stone storytelling. But it was little hard to concentrate after our harrowing drive. So after buying multiple rolls of paper towels to get us home dry, I took a southern route 40 miles out of my way.
As I pulled into our borrowed house at 2 AM, my precious son, who I’d endangered via our bonding experience, was safely asleep at my side. I was exhausted, but wiser, forty year old car technology had utilized, then outperformed the 21rst Century.
