Metro Paranormal Investigations

[MPI-Tech]

Well, it was a late night for everyone involved, but the presentation overall went well. Erin and I spoke to someone in the parking lot as we were leaving that is experiencing severe activity in their home and would like us to come out and investigate, so we've already gotten one lead out of our work. I'm sure we'll get more in the days and weeks to come.

There were a few things about the presentation itself that we probably should change, based on things some audience members mentioned to me during the event, as well as just watching the audience during the presentation.

All in all though, a good night. Good work by everyone.

P.S. I promise no science for the next week. I'm all scienced out anyway.
_________________
Chris "LED" Cloud
MPI Equipment Manager
Keeper of the cables / lord of the lumens
<i>Blinding MPI members since 2006</i>

[MPI - Chris]

I agree it was a total success by everyone chris, this venue was different from any other presentation that we had done. We know that some things need to be streamlined but everyone I talked to had a great time and you know what......you cant please everyone all the time and if they wanted just evidence why did they come to a "presentation" about ghost hunting! Everyone did awesome yesterday and in my eyes any criticism that "may' come from the admin and a few cranky people has nothing to do with our performance!

GREAT JOB EVERYONE.......YOU CAME YOU SAW YOU KICKED IT'S ASS!!!!

P.S. Man it's early......WTF am I doing up??
_________________
Chris Forsythe
President / Founder
Metro Paranormal Investigations

BEHOLD THE ANGRY SPOON OF DEATH!!!

"The only guy capable of losing a video camera 20 seconds after he sets it up"

[MPI-Mikey]

In comedy, we have whats called a PAR score. PAR stands for Positive Audience Reaction. (Reaction is clapping,laughing,cheering etc.....)
Last night, at times we had GREAT PAR scores. During the Scooby Doo video there was lots of laughter. Wayne and Chris have great chemistry on stage, and people never know what to expect out of them.The give-aways kept people guessing. JO,Russ and Cloud are amazingly comfortable on stage as well, and they come across as knowledgeable, kind and credible. (How in the world did we find so many people...Kathy and I included....that are so comfortable with a microphone in their hand?)

At other times, as in any presentation, things were quiet....BUT....sometimes it's quiet because people are listening and trying to learn. If we re-work anything, I just think we should break up the serious stuff with funny stuff in between. That way serious people get what they want, and dorks like me get what they want.

My job as a performer is to "read the audience".Since the first session went a little long,(People nowadays have the attentions span of a goldfish) I KNEW that many would leave at intermission. If we had control of the event (which we really didn't), we could have moved right to CASES without the intermission.

It's a shame many left because people were on the edge of their seats in the second half.

It was a great presentation filled with information, laughs, pixie sticks and giveaways! What a great FREE event!

People DEFINITELY GOT THEIR MONEYS WORTH!.....oh wait....um.....scratch that last statement!

Kudos to everyone....I can't believe I'm lucky enough to be part of this team.

Mikey
P.S....Summer Lovin should GO!...I'm just sayin...
_________________
______________________________

CLUNK!...Sorry... I fell down! ....He likes it...Hey Mikey!
______________________________

[MPI-Dee]

Summer Lovn should stay!!!!!!!!!!!! The PAR standards on that rocked. I heard lots of people laughing!

[MPI-Tech]

Everyone did a great job on the presentation, especially Wayne. He put a lot of time into creating the presentation. I know we're not supposed to do Kudos, but Kudos! Or Kudoos!

We will always have to adjust the presentation to match the audience - obviously the audience at CMU will be much different than the audience we had last night.

My thoughts (again, my thoughts alone) on things we may want to think about changing:

I personally wouldn't have an intermission for a two hour presentation. If people have to get up and use the bathroom, then they get up and use the bathroom - there are no intermissions in movies anymore, and those run way longer than two hours anymore. Generally when I hear that there's an intermission, I assume that the second part is going to be at least as long as the first part. I think that turned folks off, since we hadn't gotten to the evidence yet and they probably assumed that there would be quite a bit more in the program before we would get to the juicy parts.

I'd drop the history bits (or at least reduce them) during the cases and get to the evidence. Remember how we complained about Kat's presentation? Folks are coming to hear spooky voices, not to hear about the engineer that designed Fort Wayne. If we're talking to a museum or historical society group, that's different - those are the folks that are into the details like that. The average person, like last night, generally isn't.

I would drop out some of the cases in the evidence portion, or incorporate some cases into one 'various' section. I'd be happy with dropping Bearinger completely. The cases I'd consider 'keepers' would be Fort Wayne, Locker Room, Rochester, Olivet and Riverside. There's enough EVPs and vids there to fill a good amount of time, although I'd drop some of the videos (Olivet).

EVPs - if they're quiet, amplify them. We have Wavepad; there's absolutely no reason folks should be straining to hear passages on a 5,000 watt speaker system. Explain that we've amplified the section to make it more audible for the audience, and that we normally do not process clips in that way. If the clip has long stretches of dead space, cut out the dead space and shorten the clip up. As we know, folks don't have a long attention span these days.

Mikey is absolutely right about spacing out the videos. We would film new clips that directly relate to each section if we wanted to, so that we don't have just people talking for long stretches.

I think we should try to tighten up the presentation to make it 90 minutes long. That way if we go over, it's not a big deal. When we say it's going to be 2 hours and we end up going 30 minutes over, that's more of a big deal.

Overall the presentations are very good - I don't think any of the groups in the area do things like we do. I'd almost say it would be worth creating two separate presentations, one serious and one comedy, and we would have them ready to go based on the audience. That's a project for next year though if we want to go that far.

I am going to get back into my 3D animation / artwork over the winter. I have the software installed; I'm just waiting to get some free time to be able to rededicate myself to it (I used to be fairly decent with the stuff 10 years ago, but I've completely fallen out of practice since then). With that I can make some spiffy intro and end titles, some animations for the clips (like cartoony slimer-style ghosts) and special effects (proton streams anyone?). Don't be surprised if I am not involved in as many cases next year to split time between MPI and relearning this stuff, as well as the video side of things (video editing, sound creation and editing, etc).
_________________
Chris "LED" Cloud
MPI Equipment Manager
Keeper of the cables / lord of the lumens
<i>Blinding MPI members since 2006</i>

[MPI-Wayne]

I have been talking to Patrick from HIGH (Haunted Ionia Ghost Hunters) He is going to mail me a copy of the paper so we have a hard copy. He also said that a few members from his group were there and said they were blown away by our presentation, and they had an awesome time. He is going to try to make it to Olivet when we go there to check it out. Just thought it was cool of him to mail us a copy of the paper, and that he actually has a copy to mail us. lol
_________________
Wayne Miracle
Co-Founder
Metro Paranormal Investigations