We recently connected with James Lopez and have shared our conversation below.
Hi James , thanks for joining us today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?
One of the most unexpected problems I have encountered in my creative process is getting audiences to come to my shows.
You would think that this would be easy for someone to do that works in entertainment, but this is the most challenging component of my work. I realized recently that two significant barriers exist to getting people to come to my experiences.
1. I am not reaching a wide enough market to sell my experiences.
With social media, we now live in a vacuum that, on the surface, seems like we are reaching out to bigger potential audiences, but instead, we are just reaching out to direct friends. So it’s misleading because you get a lot of support from friends or feel that you are overposting because they see your social media marketing 3-5 times a day and tell you, but the expected audience they maybe know what you are posting once a week, if at all.
2. I am assuming, “if you build it, they will come.”
For the longest time, I had always assumed that, like in the movie Field of Dreams, all you have to do is build a great show, production, or installation, and people will come to it. What I am learning through a lot of trial and error is that no matter how good I think the piece is, if you aren’t telling people about it, they won’t know it’s happening or why they would be interested in seeing it. People need a solid hook, teaser, or interest in what you are doing; the only way to do that is to market and sell what you created. Telling people why it’s worth their time or money has been hard to articulate and I am learning how to present my work in marketing jargon or material to bring them to the experience.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a magician and Immersive Theater Producer. Over the last few years, I have primarily worked to create smaller, more intimate, magical, theatrical experiences, including a Seance show and a crime noir walking tour through The 5 Points Art District.
Most of my work is designed for smaller, more intimate performances that allow the audience to drive the story forward. Whether participating in a magic trick or directly interacting with the performers, I create what is described as immersive theater. What sets me apart is that I am focused on creating Magical Realism and getting people to hopefully see their world a little differently. I like the idea that a whole world is hidden away from us only because we don’t take the time to notice it. So every piece I make, I want to help people find a chance to be led to a secret they can take with them for forever.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
Right now, I am working on many projects and ideas that are half-formed and not fleshed out into a full-show experience. The traditional 30-60 minute thing you pay for and expect to be entertained by. When I try to share it with people, I am met with many faces expressing confusion, a general malaise, or indifference. People can’t understand what I am trying to create.
If they respond, it usually comes in a way to help make the thing more relatable or more understandable so it can make money. The advice comes from a place of love but can be frustrating for the artist as it is missing the whole point of what you are creating; you don’t want to be limited by real-world conversations of budgets or making something more commercially appealing. You have an idea and want to see it come to fruition that, for most of the process, won’t look like anything commercially viable or sellable. Because you are still trying to convey a feeling more than a product. When people don’t support the vision or don’t understand, it can sometimes detract you from completing an idea.
And this has been a very invaluable lesson. When you work in a visual medium or any art form with an end product, many people won’t understand the process or what is in your head until it is done. Therefore, you need to trust your internal process only to those who can relate to it. Also, people who are non-creatives to understand that time and again. Many things you have seen and enjoyed have all started from this amalgam, so trust the artist’s process and know it will create something at the end instead. Support the chaos.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
All free and low-cost marketing materials are available to creatives to help them reach audiences.
We often hear about audiences regarding social media, but we need a way to convert those passive audiences to active ones. That means we need tools to help us with emails, marketing materials, data collection, etc.
I don’t believe that everyone wants to do art as a business. Still, there have been many times in my journey where I wish to just quickly create a promo flyer for a show I am doing or send out an email to a large number of people without emailing everyone individually and bcc’ing everyone all at once.
Google Drive has many fantastic add-ons that can help you create a mailing list in your email or email templates. Canva is a great way to quickly create marketing materials, and tools like WIX can create a website quickly. There are many other tools, and I have picked them up as I want. Still, it would have significantly helped to find these services earlier to just help me keep organized so when it was time to build a business, I was ready to go instead of trying to put all this together in tandem with the other business tasks.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.jameslopezmagic.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelopezident/
Image Credits
Photos provided by mwirthphotography