Watched Interstellar, the movie, on IMAX last weekend and I left thinking, it’s film makers like Christopher Nolan who will keep people coming back to the big screen.
Sure, the IMAX, which is being hailed as the future of cinema, makes the experience even more mind-blowing but what’s a fancy piece of theatre without the story and the story-teller?
Image credit: YouTube
You need someone like Christopher Nolan to shoot on IMAX and create movies such as Interstellar for the medium to live up to its full potential.
It’s an amazing, ambitious piece of work that tackles the subject of time, gravity, faith, hope and love. Beautifully written, brilliantly directed, superbly edited. It’s been a while since I’ve watched a movie that left me quite shaken in the end. It made me feel, and think. (I think Inception was that last movie.)
There are many bits of the science I don’t get but don’t worry, there are plenty of people out there willing to explain. But the over-arching narrative is what you want to hold on to, and what you take away.
There are many people who’ll not opt to watch the movie because they’ve put it in the science fiction bucket. “Oh, I am not a sci-fi person.”
I took along someone who readily admitted that and it was a good thing she didn’t know what it was about when she said yes to the date.
After the movie, visibly shaken, she said, “That’s what a movie should do – take you where your mind would never go. I would never have picked the movie myself.”
We are all guilty of labelling. “Oh I hate animated movies.” Imagine then missing “UP” or “Frozen”.
“I am not into horror.” Imagine then missing “Penny Dreadful”.
“I hate crime.” Imagine then missing “True Detective”.
Give your customers an “Interstellar” moment. (Image credit: sdecoret/iStock)
By so doing, often we block ourselves from allowing surprises into my lives and taking our mind to new, unexpected places.
At the end of the day, it’s not what it is about, it is how it is told. Yet most people will often ask about a movie or a book, “What is it about?”
If you strip everything down to “what is it all about”, it’s kinda missing the point.
Imagine that same conversation applied to travel.
“I am going to Da Nang.” (TripAdvisor’s number one traveller’s choice destination for 2015)
“What’s there (what’s it about)?”
“Beach, good food.”
What’s an airline about? What’s a hotel about?
And after walking out from “Interstellar” – those three hours just flew by as though I was in a wormhole – I was thinking this is what each of us needs to do with our businesses.
We have to keep people coming back to us because we provide them an experience they would never get on their own and never imagined they wanted in the first place.
So whether you’re running a hotel, or an airline, or a conference, or a loyalty business, you must give your customers an “Interstellar” moment that reminds them of why they are giving you their custom and keeps them coming back for more.
