Funny Games

You have to know the rules to break the rules - Life Through Movies #2

We're 2 months into the pandemic, peaceful Saturday starting to roll in and a Whatsapp message from a client pops in.
Berating us, she starts demanding we give her money back.
After she used the video we made, didn't give us approval or feedback on the Facebook campaign and asked for a "more abrasive" look on the posts we made, whatever that means.
She woke up on the wrong foot, and wanted everyone to pay for it.

This type of “dream” clients came from my brilliant idea of putting out a Covid Relief Digital Kit.
It included a personalized video, Facebook ad campaign and 5 posts of content for US$65/month, around 30% of what we usually charged.
As many small business owners during the pandemic, my intuition was to lower our prices.
Desperate attempt to keep selling during an extremely complicated time.

Monday comes and seeing this is clearly not working, I decide to take the opposite road: raise our prices.
Not 30% above our usual one, but 3X. If we're going to do it, let's do it all the way.
Anything it takes to avoid this the-less-I-pay-the-more-I-demand type of clients.

Uncertain times make for uncertain feelings. Will anyone buy? Who are we to be doing this during a pandemic?
It's just a story in my head. On one hand, being the sole owner of this small service business I can always change the price again. On the other, nobody really cares.

We close the first client in a week. Three more come in a month.
And not only that, the quality of the clients also improves.

Which makes me wonder, am I charging too little?
Let’s try 5X. Three more clients.
8X? A couple more clients.
I get greedy and try 12X.
Nope, you overstepped my friend, nobody’s buying that.

In the course of 4 months after that peaceful Saturday, we settled in 10X.
Coupled with pivoting to a very specialized offer, this turns out to be the single most important decision on the business, producing exponential growth on all fronts.

Raising prices during an economic downturn would be strongly advised against in any business school. But hey, you have to know the rules in order to break the rules.

Which always makes me think of Michael Haneke's Funny Games.
The amount of film "rules" broken in that movie is almost insulting.
From the anti-formulaic plot, to the way we relate to characters or among themselves, or the villains breaking the fourth wall.
And we only know he's breaking the rules because we've watched movies before and know that is not supposed to happen.

Haneke, a very serious Austrian director, explores an interesting premise: critique violence in the media with a “pointless” film.
It all starts when a clearly bourgeoisie family arrives at their second home. A couple of unexpected guests come in asking for some eggs that keep on uncomfortably breaking.

From there, things go downhill. And it’s a very, very steep hill.
You’re in for a controversial ride like never before, breaking all the rules.
You’ll be the best judge if he overstepped.

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LOOK OUT FOR:

• Those long, static takes. Notice how the camera barely moves. We're a fly on the wall that doesn't shy away from the action. You have a front row seat to everything that happens, and can't look away.

• Which brings me to a big caveat: the movie is violent. Not Tarantino-esque, over-the-top, unbelievable violence, more like uncomfortable, real violence. The first time I watched it I came out with a sense of disgust, of "how could you do this to me?". It's one of the bleakest, most horrifying movies I've seen.

• It's also the movie that has surprised me the most. The rewinding scene will stay with me forever. It made me fall in love with the director by making my head explode with what you can do with a movie.

• Spot the knife in the boat. Red herring¹ or Chekov's gun²?

• Fun(ny) facts:

  • There's a shot-for-shot US remake with Naomi Watts. This rule you have to follow: do not watch it. Watch the original, Austrian version. The remake is also directed by Michael Haneke but feels toned down, like the essence was lost.

  • He calls the protagonists Anna and Georg in most of his films

  • Haneke is one of the only 9 directors to have won the Palme D'Or twice. Think of the Oscar's Best Picture but for more art-oriented movies. The highest prize for any film that prides itself as art

Enjoy!

1. Red herring is a figurative expression in which a clue or piece of information is or is intended to be misleading, or distracting from the actual question.

2. Chekhov's gun is a storytelling technique whereby an apparently irrelevant element is introduced early in the story whose significance becomes clear later in the narrative.