Story Design

Behind the Story – The Making of “Janet Reno: The People’s Lawyer”

Former Attorney General, Eric Holder, speaking about his admiration for Janet Reno. Photo by production team member, Nick Michael. Janet Reno lived her life with one guiding principle – “do the right thing.” It was a mantra passed down from her mother, one of the strongest influences in her life. In all the research, conversations and …

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Behind the Scenes – “Homeplace Under Fire”

We both grew up around farms – Catherine was raised on a small farm in the outskirts of Charlottesville, VA, and Elena grew up in rural Iowa. But not until this project did we truly understand the challenges and hardships that family farmers have faced and continue to face in the U.S. Through the stories of …

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Alex Blumberg quote about storytelling

What We’re Watching /// Alex Blumberg – Creative Live

We’ve been watching this Creative Live course over our lunches recently. I just heard the above quote come out of Alex Blumberg’s mouth, and I love it. Finding the right person to be the subject of your video is one of the most crucial elements in producing a strong video. Often the default is to …

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Montgomery Judge Statue

Behind the Story – The Making of “Skewed Justice”

We’ve been working with the American Constitution Society on a short doc about judicial elections, Citizens United, and the criminal justice system. The video is based on the “Skewed Justice” report, a study produced by independent researchers at Emory University School of Law, led by Joanna Shepherd. When we first learned about this work, we were …

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Workshops /// Video Storytelling for Social Change

By popular demand, we will be teaching a one-day workshop on Video Storytelling for Social Change at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University this spring! Video is everywhere, but effective storytelling is rare. How can people working on social change issues use video stories to connect to a target audience on an emotional level? …

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Huffington Post features Center for American Progress tort reform video

Joanne Doroshow of the Center for Justice and Democracy at New York Law School wrote an article in the Huffington Post that featured the Texas tort reform video we produced for the Center for American Progress. “Ebola-infected Thomas Eric Duncan was misdiagnosed in an emergency room and sent home in Texas, a state where patient safety …

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What We’re Watching /// Fighting Ebola Outbreak Street by Street

Just a quick note about this, since honestly, you should just watch it anyway for an inside look at the outbreak on the ground. But since I’m preparing for coaching at Mountain Workshops next week, I’ve got my educator hat on and wanted to point out something I think this video does really well, that is …

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What We’re Watching /// Extraordinary Human Beings in Slow Motion

This sick video is popping up a lot this week. It’s a 4-minute slow motion piece by Ben Garvin that captures 10 seconds of the Twin Cities marathon using a super fancy Fastec TS3 slow motion camera. I clicked on it thinking it would have that visceral appeal of the ESPN body issue, where the rippling …

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