Studio Note #33: As it was Intended.
Bennie Safdie as Agamemnon is a prime example of how much packaging can make a radical difference in perception.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about seeing The Odyssey and missing the first five minutes because I made the apparently unreasonable assumption that a movie theater would show 25 minutes of commercials and trailers.
Despite that, I really liked the movie. A lot. But I also walked out knowing I hadn't really seen it the way it was intended to be seen.
Today I fixed that and saw The Odyssey in 70mm IMAX. I expected it to be better in that format, but it far exceeded those expectations.
Obviously, seeing a movie on a massive IMAX screen is going to be different than seeing it in a conventional theater, but this wasn't simply a matter of making the picture bigger and the sound louder. The scale mattered. The detail mattered. The sound mattered. Images I already thought were incredible became something else entirely.
It was the same movie I had really liked the first time, but it was a completely different experience.
That got me thinking about how much presentation influences our perception of the thing being presented.
A photograph printed as a 4×6 at a drugstore is technically the same photograph as a beautifully produced 40-inch exhibition print. The information in the image hasn't changed, but our experience of it absolutely has. Put a great meal on a paper plate and it changes how you perceive the food before you ever take a bite. Put a well-made product in terrible packaging and suddenly it feels cheaper.
Businesses do the same thing to themselves all the time.
They can be exceptionally good at what they do. They can have great people, great products, decades of experience and customers who absolutely love them. Then you visit their website, see their truck, pick up their business card or look at the proposal they just emailed you, and none of it feels like the business you were just told about.
The quality is there. The presentation simply isn't communicating it.
We tend to think of branding and design as things added to a business: a nicer logo, a better website, better photography or better packaging. But presentation isn't decoration. It's part of the experience.
It shapes expectations before someone ever works with you, buys from you or walks through your door. In some cases, it determines whether they ever get that far.
The Odyssey was already a great movie when I saw it the first time. Today I got to experience what happens when great work is presented exactly as it was intended.