by Jonathan Groubert – Trainer | Journalist | Storyteller | Copywriter | Fixer | Podcaster
Content? No problem! Credibility? Check! An engaging narrative? Whoops!
If you’re reading this, you already know the audio guide for your museum, gallery or institution needs to be more than a glorified book. You’re aware you need to be erudite and enriching. But are you aware that you need to be entertaining? This is why we’ve compiled a list of, let’s not call them rules, but rather inspirational rules of thumb. These are powerful ideas you can tailor to meet your situation and spark creativity. And yes, they are in order of importance.
- You Are Your Guide – Your Guide Is You
Your guide, your choices, your voice, both literally and figuratively, will set the tone for everything that follows. This is way more important than the great coffee in the café and mugs in gift shop. Your audio guide isn’t just associated with you; it IS you!
So how do you treat your guests? I give mine the best place at the table, something to eat and a lovely, welcoming tone of voice. That’s how mother raised me. Your visitors deserve the same. They’ve given you their time, money and energy. Make them feel welcome. Don’t make their visit hard work.
Do this right and they’ll already be thinking about coming again and telling their friends.
- Show Don’t Tell!
I’m a know it all and I love nothing more than to show how erudite I am and to tell people why my taste is so incredibly awesome. I’ve also learned, through painful trial and error and some overly honest friends, how pontification is incredibly off putting. And yet, a great museum, gallery or exhibition is an ideal teachable moment. So how do you circle this square?
Entertain and humanize. Take this video about the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It’s soooo good. What makes it good? Rather than fawning on a towering historical authority, it’s self-deprecating. Nietszche is shown to be a three-dimensional person full of doubts and flaws. Yet he can still credibly wax lyrical about the “ubermensch”. I didn’t have to watch to the end. I wanted to watch to the end because it was interesting and, more importantly, fun.
- Cheap is Expensive Part 1
If you’re just starting out, you’ll have an understandable desire not to overdo it. But don’t make your guests fret getting the equipment to work.
Here are few things you must do. A. Record your audio in a quality studio or using good mics. B. Use professional actors who know how to make a text come alive. C. Use real (royalty free) music. D. Script for the spoken, not written, word.
Here’s a good example from the Prado museum, in which a fictitious “Master Pablo” enlightens us about El Greco’s “A Fable”. Listen to the use of actors, the 17th century(ish) language and great sound effects. They invested time and money and it pays off. The painting comes alive.
- Cheap Is Expensive Part 2
I recently took a walking tour through the Beijing’s Forbidden City and, while the city was fantastic, the audio tour was pretty bad. Here’s a list of what went wrong: everything.
It was supposed to be geographically activated. It was, kind of. The very nice lady doing the narrating tried to be lively and amusing. She was…unintentionally. Her English was from the 1930s. Her script sounded like it had been written during the Cultural Revolution, careful and bloodless. None of that was as bad as the headphone. This was a single elastic ear piece meant to fit snugly to my giant left lobe. Picking it off the floor for the tenth time, now covered in dirt and dust, I had to conclude my earpiece sucked very, very badly. Dix pointes for offering the tour in Esperanto though.
- So…Why Does This Matter Again?
Ever seen the Mona Lisa? We know da Vinci’s masterpiece is important because she’s surrounded by selfie-snatching twenty-somethings jockeying for an angle that gets their faces and her wry smile into frame. But do they know why this painting is so important?
Do they know Margaret Livingstone, a neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School, discovered that da Vinci purposely painted her face so that Mona Lisa’s smile changes depending on where you look, due to peripheral vision? Do they know it wasn’t really all that famous until a British poet literally waxed lyrical about it 1867?
They probably don’t know and they won’t know …until you tell them.
- Lingua Franca, Lingua Schmanca
Hey, I bet you had no idea that fossil Pampatheres are Cingulates that are “xantherians with a shell”? To most of us, that’s a kind of ancient armadillo. Yet this is a real sign at a real museum that shall not be named in this article, but was named here. C’mon go look. I know you want to.
99.999999% of your visitors are not experts, museum curators or even educated amateurs. They are, however, definitely curious and open-minded. Don’t lose their goodwill by keeping them at a linguistic arm’s length.
What’s more, English is a second language for nearly a billion people. Few native speakers will know the difference between a gouache and a watercolor, or an australopithecine and a Neanderthal. This is an opportunity to explain almost anything in a way that’s fun and doesn’t condescend.
Think it can’t be done? Watch adorable British physicist Brian Cox explain Particle Physics to group of interested laymen in terms anyone can understand. His sense of passion and wonder comes through like a gamma ray through uranium.
- Everyone Loves a Mystery
Look around you. Your gallery, museum or exhibit is a potential soap opera filled with intrigue, revenge and mystery. Who influenced/stole from/was married to/had an affair with whom?
Frida Khalo is an international star of the art world, but during her life, her fame paled in comparison to her husband, Diego Rivera. These days we’d be hard pressed to remember his name. How did that happen?
Create a mystery narrative that has your moving from one location to another as they discover hidden truths, deeper meanings and unknown relationships between the pieces. Adults like games just as much as kids.
- Welcome to Short Attention Span Theater
Maybe this is just me, but when I listen to an audio guide, I ruthlessly hit that “next” button the instant I feel a pang of boredom, even if it’s well made. My limit: about three minutes.
Here’s a great guide that combines points one to six AND manages to keep the segments under three minutes. The British Museum created the (partly) fictional tale of King Rædwald as a way illustrating the meaning behind artefacts found at an Anglo-Saxon site at Sutton Hoo in East Anglia.
- Everything Old Is New Again
Guernica! Picasso’s most famous mural was inspired by the bombing of a city during the Spanish Civil War. Well, war has not ended, nor bombings, nor civil wars nor Spanish or European politics. Guernica is as relevant as ever.
Today’s events have an analogue in the past and visa versa. Portraits of powerful noblemen might be the iconic Barack Obama “Hope” picture of their day. A steam engine might have transformed lives in the same way the Tesla and other electric cars are threatening to do today. This is your moment to transform the past into the present.
- Break the Damn Rules!
Throw caution to the wind, toss out the rulebook, along with your sanity, and create special tours not for the faint of heart. Think I’m kidding? The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC has a political scandal tour filled with enough death, destruction, corruption and derring do to raise all your hairs and hackles. Now that sounds like it’s worth the price of admission!
Like I said, the above are not rules, merely suggestions. Use and abuse them to fit your specific situation. Whatever you do, be bold, witty and true to your own spirit. After all, if you have an exhibit, gallery or institute, you’ve got something singular. Your audio guide should be equally unique.
