When you give a demo, you have to milk it. Here’s a simple guide on how to do that.
In horror films, the director doesn’t show you the whole monster straight away. You only see a small part of it and the rest of it is hidden, out of sight. But the idea of the monster gets placed firmly in your head - the idea of what the monster could be. And that monster you construct in your imagination ends up being ten times scarier than what they could have possibly showed on screen. It’s why blair witch project is so scary, and five nights at freddies is not.
Hiding the monster sets you up for some horrific twists. The director leads you down a wrong path - hints you towards a wrong mental model - tricks you into getting a wrong idea. And then…
Then there can be this magical moment of “it’s so much worse than I thought!”
“This is so much bigger!”
I could give you some examples of this effect… but that would completely spoil those films for you!
It also happens in some games, stories, songs, all sorts, and it’s always my favourite style of art.
It’s a wonderful feeling to discover that something is much bigger than you imagined.
That’s what zoom out style is.
Yes, this post isn’t really about milking your demo - it’s about ZOOM OUT STYLE instead.
I use zoom out style in all of my talks, videos, posts, papers and demos.
If I do it wrong, it leaves people feeling bored and confused. But if I do it right, people say that it’s “numinous” and it “changed my life” and so on.
The approach is inspired by twists…
Twists… twists from films, games and all media. It should feel like a magic trick where you don’t fully understand what’s going on - you can’t follow what happens or how we got here or - why it gives you such a pleasantly disorienti- disorientating effect.
Anyway, most people don’t believe me when I tell them that this is how I do these things. It doesn’t matter if they do or don’t - I know it works for me so I’ll keep doing it until it doesn’t.
Yeah so really this wasn’t really the real zoom out style guide. The real zoom out style guide is really here.
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