Alex Bickart- #2: Interview & Storytelling; Goal Setting

Part 1:  For no particular reason I chose to listen to Brian Reed's presentation on "the craft of storytelling," and boy am I glad I did. This video was as enlightening as it was entertaining and engrossing, though I suppose that if a presentation on how to craft a strong and engaging story wasn't entertaining and engrossing, well it wouldn't be doing its job would it? Anyway, Brian brought to life something that has always been in the back of my head when I write a story or read a book, an unformed thought on what made the story so engaging. With clever anecdotes and fascinating stories from his work with My American Life, he described the four aspects of a quality story, Motion, Reflection, Stakes, and Speaking to Something Larger. Two of the aspects, motion and stakes are designed to keep you hooked. "We are hardwired to tune into motion in a story." Motion in a story tells us that there will be a payoff at a later point, a time when this motion leads to a climatic point, and we cannot help but wonder what that is. The same goes for stakes, "stakes drive a story, they keep you invested. In every book or TV show there is a question driving it forward." These are vital in our production, as there is no point in making project with a poignant and meaningful ending if people get bored and leave before it arrives. While the first two components make for an engaging media product, the second give it depth and purpose. The first is reflection, a.k.a  " the moment we get inside the persons head." This makes the subject of the story a real person, it shows their emotions, it gives us something to relate to and gives us an emotional connection to the story. The last important part is that the story speaks to something larger, that that is speaks to something everyone has experienced, a moral of the story as it were. the first two parts keep the viewer engaged, but its the second two that make it matter to them, its the second two that make people want to make a real change. With such a shocking roller-coaster of a project, we should have no issue keeping the audience engaged, what we need to work on is the connection. The issue with this...issue is that it may be hard to truly relate to it unless you have gone through it yourself. It is the type of long term lasting event that is in its own way unique, and because of this, getting the connection to the audience may be more difficult than it seems.

Part 2: After seeing it in every single one of the newest blog posts, it is ever clearer to me that the media kit and filming interviews is an issue, but we have beat that topic to death, and i think it is time to move on. Something that I saw in Marianna's blog sparked something in me. I saw mention of how we still do not have our personal interests/roles in this project fleshed out, and I came up with a harebrained idea that may or may not be good. With five people in our group compared to the three in most groups, I wondered if it was really a good idea to have five people doing interviews. My thought was that it would be good if we had one person (me...maybe) who was more or a researcher, someone who dug into the cold hard facts online, following leads that way. Someone who compared hard data from state to state, someone who would look at how other countries run their foster systems and how some of their ideas may be used here. Regardless of how many interviews we have, we still need data, and in the process of finding this information, the person would be able to come up with specific and in depth questions for interviews and other members could ask them. This would be helpful because it could make it easier to get the media kits around, as one of the far distant members of the team would not need to find a way to get access to them. The person would still be contributing thoughtful questions to the interview process, just not interviewing themselves. Now this idea may be off the deep end but I would love to see everyone else's thoughts!!!

Alex