cold open psychology

Happy Monday!

(or whatever passes for "happy" when the clocks just stole an hour of your life and nobody asked 🙃)

Daylight savings can go straight to hell, for the record lol

Anyhow…

I rewatched The Prestige yesterday for the first time in years.

And honestly, I forgot how friggin' good it is.

If you haven't seen it:

It's a Christopher Nolan film about two rival magicians in late 1800s London who become obsessed with destroying each other.

Gripping characters, lots of twists and turns…

One of those movies where you're glued to the screen the entire time.

But what hit me right off the bat was the opening scene:

Christian Bale's character has snuck backstage at his arch nemesis's show...

Because he’s trying to figure out how this guy pulls off his most jaw-dropping trick.

Then he discovers a large tank of water hidden beneath the stage…

And right at that moment...

Hugh Jackman (the rival magician) drops through a trap door above after performing the trick and ends up locked inside it.

Banging the glass and begging to be let out…

Effectively drowning.

That's the FIRST scene of the movie.

You don't know who these people are yet. ..

You don't know their history…

You don't know why they hate each other.

And yet you are completely, utterly hooked.

This storytelling technique is known as “in media res”...

Which is Latin for "into the middle of things."

Instead of easing you in with backstory and context and setup...

You get dropped straight into the highest point of conflict.

And because of that, you can't look away.

You NEED to know how it got to this point.

An attention-grabbing move you can and should borrow for emails and ads too.

That’s all I got for today, though :)

I’m scrambling to put the finishing touches on a brand new funnel and ad campaign I’ve been working on for the past month or so…

Pretty psyched to see how it does.

I’ll share more about it with you next week.

Jim Hamilton

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