The most cinematic month

Last Wednesday, February, 15th, the ToastMaster Barcelona Group held its weekly session. Beatriz Garcia acted as the Sargent of Arms. She started the session sharp as it is expected from a public speaking skills group and called everybody to order.

Barcelona TM president, Sandra Almeida was the first to go on stage, she suggested some improvements on the group dynamics that would help the group to develop strong English speaking skills. The members of the board decided that all the group communications, either live or in digital format should be delivered in English during the week in advance of the English session preparation, Sandra is convinced that it will help us to be bilingual and to provide the best outcome when that “moment of truth” arrives. She was also keen to receive and to provide to the new guests the most accurate information about the group rules and progression.

She asked the audience a heads up for the next session as it will be video recorded. She asked for a volunteer who could help to record the video during the next TM session. She encouraged the new guests to introduce themselves, a group of enthusiasts and diverse people, coming from London, Italy, New Zealand and from all walks of life. Among the reasons why they want to join the group, always, always, stage fright and the objective to develop those reassuring public speaking skills so needed in our daily life.

After Sandra’s introduction, Beatriz took the lead again and unveiled what the session theme was going to be, FILMS. The Oscars, the Goya prizes, the Bafta prizes, all are taking place during this month, so February can be considered the most cinematic month. She proposed “La la Land” as the film she most liked, and although the opinions are always one’s and just one’s, she enjoyed the romance, the music and the dancing.

Let’s pass to introduce Emile Jacquetton who acted as the timekeeper, she selected “Dirty Dancing” as her most favorite film and she proceeded to explain what the timekeeper role is. She also brought her own scissors to remove the bell package while she was wondering why that package was kept for such a long time.

Marc Maurey was appointed as the Grammarian for today’s session, he explained his role to the audience and selected “Captain Fantastic” as his favorite movie.  He enjoyed the feeling of freedom and nature. The film provoked to him the desire to go wild and to leave work. Marc’s responsibilities also implies to select the session word which was “FAD”. “FAD” stands for “short-time trend”. I went to Internet and I found the following description “an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived; a craze”.

Lluis Careras, acting as the Ah-counter explained his role and selected “the Schindler’s list” as his favorite movie.

Then, the section with the prepared speech started. The first to go on stage was Rafaella Bertolli, whose “Voice of street art” speech should meet a clear outline with strong opening and conclusion and supporting material. She started by defining art. Art as creativity, art as a mean to communicate dreams, a mean to spread messages and a mean to change the world.

She focused in how the street art and in particular, her four examples of art intervention had a human impact, thus provoking and generating social integration and climate change awareness.
Her first art intervention example was done in El Cairo, in a very deprived area with environmental degradation, literally called “garbage people”. In that zone, they went through an art recycling system, where these segregated people built a “Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs his eye first”.

The second art intervention was created by Spanish artists in Sao Paulo.  They wanted to bring light into the favelas, by cleaning and painting them into bright colors were able to bring happiness into their lives.

The third example was brought by 60 artists who wanted to create awareness on the effects of the climate change through endangered species. They were even able to call attention of the New York Times.

And to finish the exposition, Rafaella  brought into the room, another intervention to explore global warming effects through the painting over a sheet of artic ice of some colorful images that flows and creates different shapes when breaks down into pieces.

Rafaella is herself a graphic designer who would love to perform an artistic contribution to Barcelona through meaningful social art works. She finished her speech with her own desire “Touch your hearts and spread the word” .

Luca Magnani was second in delivering the prepared speech. Luca’s favorite film is “Arrival”, a wonderful SciFi film just released last year.

The title of his speech was “Believe it or Not” and in order to meet the objectives, he needed to incorporate to his speech, voice volume, rate and quality together with pauses to enhance the message and vocal variety.  His speech topic was about coincidences, about the existence of a destiny “or not…”. He built his speech around three different stories where destiny has played its role.
How someone who loved numbers and who loved to play and to combine them, used a very special anniversary date, July, 7th as an input to one of the series of numbers who helped him to win the lottery. He multiplied its components, what resulted into “48”, but “48” was not right, the expected number would have been 7 x 7 = 49… Destiny?

His niece, a 5 years old girl who loves to watch the movie Dumbo. Dumbo was able to fly with his ears but he couldn’t believe it, he uses a trick of magic feather to boost his confidence.
The third story involved a Luca’s friend. His friend broke up with his girlfriend Maria after a long relationship due to a stupid argument that took place in a bookstore while browsing the book “The catcher on the rye”. It happened just before Christmas. And you can believe it, he received the book as a Christmas present twice more.  After Christmas, he planned to visit Tokyo to recover from the separation after experienced a tough time. While there, he decided to visit the outskirts of Tokyo because he felt homesick. While expecting to engage with the locals there, he entered a café where there were no foreigners but locals and everything was written in Kanji. In a corner, there were a BookCrossing table and believe it or not, among all the books written in Kanji, there were a volume of the book “The Catcher on the Rye”.

In Luca’s words, Destiny? Chaos? Believe it or not? Nothing rules the world but these are all facts that collide as coincidences. “You can believe, it doesn’t hurt, and if you don’t, you can read a book”
The last prepared speech was delivered by Jelena Vetockina whose favorite film was “La vita e bella”. It’s so because it delivers a precious message, even in the most difficult and terrible moments, optimism is a gift.

Her speech was meant to create a sales proposition through people attention, interest, desire and action. She started asking the audience about what is the most important thing that drives our lives, I heard “Happiness” from the audience but she resolved that “Health” was by far the most important aspect in our lives and the tittle of her speech confirmed it “A Healthy lifestyle is a Necessity, Not a Luxury”.

Jelena told us that thinking about health, the first thing that comes to our minds is attending a gym, or following a diet, but she proposed a path to a phenomenal healthy habit,  -Fresh Juices - and she continues, they contains nutrients, they have unlimited capacity, they boost our immune system, they support brain health, reducing Alzheimer's disease by a 66 %. They increase your energy but it costs a fortune, the total annual cost sums up to 1642€.

Thankful, Jelena told us that we have other alternatives, investing in the new generation of juice makers, that with a capacity of up to 1 liter and a half, its compact-size, dishwasher safe, and with removal parts costs us just 80€.

Jelena asked people on the audience to go on the stage to try the juice maker and although they suggested a celery and broccoli juice, Jelena gave them a fresh carrot juice which both testers loved it.

She finished her speech with a slogan “Health is everything, if you want to commit to your health, buy a juice maker”.

Moving forward, Beatriz gave the word to the speech evaluators,

Camilla Brenchley was the responsible to evaluate Rafaella and her “The Voice of Street Art” speech. Camilla’s favorite movies are “cine noir” films. Camilla evaluated Rafaella’s speech with “an above expectations” rate and she again asked the audience “Are you ready to be provoked?”.  She observed a clear outline, an easy to follow speech with the four examples and a conclusion. The supporting material was good and helped to emphasize the message. She suggested to improve the transitions when moving from one example to the next, to go for a stronger and more compact opening and to conclude with an epilog which must not be an invitation to a new provoking matter.

The second turn was for Mariyana Tasheva. She evaluated Luca and his speech “Believe it or Not” . According to Mariyana’s preferences, she likes more musicals than cinema, that’s the reason why she chose “Miss Saigon” as one of her favorites musicals.

She appraised that the vocal variety was almost achieved and that Luca developed a good presence on stage.  On the side of things to improve, she suggested to build a clearer start, an introduction and a conclusion with more distinct voice tones.

To finish with the evaluations section, Paul Conde took care of Jelena ‘s speech  “A Healthy Life is a Necessity, Not a Luxury”. Paul’s favorite film is Rambo.

He praised Jelena’s presence and smile on stage. He encouraged her to make questions that can be answered more straightforward, as an example, he said, with a Yes or a No, thus preventing hesitation.  He also talked about being more focused on the product and not on the service. He emphasized that he experienced neither desire nor he was called to action during Jelena’s speech.  He suggested to break down the annual total cost to be more meaningful to the audience and to avoid laughing during the speech.

Isabel Montero went then to the stage to introduce the table topics. Following with the cinematic theme session, the table topics revolved around the worst films ever screened. Previously, Beatriz told us about Isabel’s favorite film and for the second time “The Schindler’s list” was chosen. Coincidence?

Isabel explained that the table topics exposition allows the improvisers to think quickly, to organize their ideas and to overcome the stage fright.

Dan was the first to be on stage and had to improvise around directing the film Troll 2. Conclusion: “If you eat sandwiches and see trolls, the rest of your life will be awful”.

Maria Luisa talked about imaginary animals made of piranhas and anacondas, “pirhanacondas” or made of sharks and octopus “sharktopus”.   She was after engaging the Cirque du Soleil for this scientific experiment and she even asked us to fund it.

To finish the table topics section, the film selected among the worst films was “Son of the mask”. The improviser left us with this words,  ”I am a genius,  I am a regular guy,  I am a child but I can change his life, put on a mask and you can change from child to dad and from dad to child”.

The session was mostly over.  Marc Majoral acted as the general evaluator. His favorite film is “Groundhog day” and he arouse a question “Is Street Art Faddy?”

Marc Maurey acted as the Grammarian. He concluded that he didn’t observe many grammar mistakes although he admitted that in his first try, he consider the grammarian role quite difficult. Lluis Carreras acted as the Ah-Counter. He didn’t count too many. And Emilie Jacquetton acting as the time-keeper told us that most participants were in time or under time with a few exceptions.

Sandra Almeida, as the president encouraged all of us to go for our new speech that she was looking forward and to find the new FAD in Toastmaster. She welcomed then the Toastmaster area director Juan Carlos Duran who gave Sandra a gift. Paul Conde was praised as a club coach and Toastmaster leader and he received a bottle of wine for his contribution to the Toastmaster community.

And to finish, some testimonials from the new guests:
-Brave
-Humble
-Passion
-Good feedback
-I feel honored to be here