In my companion blog, The Uncoordinated Coordinator, I wrote about the communications struggles of a gregarious extrovert trapped in a mime’s body (sort of). Read all about it HERE.

How did technology play a part in these shenanigans (a murder mystery night set in a 1920’s Chicago Speakeasy)? First I used my iPad to create a slide show.  I found an image of a “Silent Movie Card” and used it as a background for a set of Keynote slides. I carried the iPad around for awhile until all the guests understood that:

The iPad was also used to look up recipes for classic Prohibition Era cocktails, and of course there were phones and digital cameras to take photos and video, some of which I combined in the app Silent Movie to create a very apropos silent movie:

But of course, I always look for that extra bit….  Prior to the event, guests had been given some ideas for pre-party fun.  In my case, I was given the names (and email addresses) of 2 of the party guests.  I was to make specific reference to something special about them (one was about to publish a novel) or give them a clue about my own behaviour (in this case, follow them about the party miming their actions). I had already decided that I was going to spend at least part of the evening in silence (as my character was a silent film star) so I thought about how that could be reflected in an email (and yes, dear reader, I am  aware of how very Back to the Future that all sounds).  Here is what I did.  I wrote a brief message to the appropriate party guests and emailed them off. What they would receive, though, would either be the message, boring but acceptable, or APPEAR to be a blank message (better), OR be a Secret Message that would be revealed only by doing one of two things.

How did I achieve all this mayhem?  By writing my message on the default background (white), highlighting the message, and selecting text colour….. White!!  (or #FFFFF).  The only way the message can be revealed is highlighting the message space, or, possibly, having a different coloured background that force-changes the incoming mail (but I don’t know if that exists, it is a possibility if the receiver hit reply (hopefully to say “Hey your email is blank!!”) The final possibility was that because in the subject line I had mentioned “See you at the party –Silent Film Star….” they may have thought “Oh funny– blank email = silence.”  Here are some screen shots of the Brilliance in Action:

Once the message was composed, I highlighted all the text, and in my formatting tools, I selected Text Colour and White (or #FFFFFF)

Here you can see that an “unrecognized” word is red-underlined in the draft.

Here is the message highlighted…. the blue highlighting reveals the “Silent” text.

In thinking it over now, I should have included quotation marks that were visible.  I still don’t know if it would have been enough of a clue…. but the whole thing was appropriate to a Mystery!

I leave you with this: ” This could replace the old Lemon Juice Ink that dries invisible and appears only if held over a light bulb.  Mind you, incandescent bulbs are also going the way of… the silent film star….”

Love, Marlie