Category Archives: storytelling theory

Three narratives told on Yoga Day

By Steve | Published: January 23, 2010
The Magician’s story In town only four days, she serendipitously had met the hostess of the Yoga Day USA open house just hours before. Now she stood in the suburban basement, surrounded by strangers sitting cross-legged on mats, and talked about her lineage. She is a descendant of ancient Jewish high priests and of Dakota [...]
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Poet brings vision statement to life

By Steve | Published: December 23, 2009
Tears of pride welled up yesterday as I watched a corporate video. A corporate video! Diane Gage-Lofgren, our national VP of communications and PR, had asked a poet/performance artist  to bring life to our communication team’s new vision statement. A stroke of genius. I will forever have a visual and resonant image to add soul [...]
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Filmmaker’s advice for great business storytelling

By Steve | Published: December 18, 2009
Filmmaker Peter Guber (Rainman, Batman, The Color Purple) once used storytelling to win Fidel Castro’s support for filming in Havana Harbor. The official application form had been torpedoed, but El Presidente enthusiastically endorsed the project once he heard Guber tell of the harbor’s historic significance and Castro’s responsibility to the world to share that piece of [...]
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Can you visualize deforestation?

By Steve | Published: December 16, 2009
90 acres of trees are cut down each minute. A striking statement, but what does it mean to me? This video by Maya Lin (creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial) helped me grasp the enormity of the statistic. The haunting melody by Brian Eno also transfixed me. Others who have blogged/tweeted about this also mention [...]
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Video storytelling is a whole different game

By Steve | Published: December 6, 2009
I’ve been working for a couple of years on my video technical skills. In the past few months, I’ve concentrated more on the storytelling part. I have a long way to go, as my Vimeo portfolio will attest. Kai gives Granny a knitting lesson from Steve Krizman on Vimeo. What I’ve learned so far: Video [...]
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Stories trump facts: The mammography lesson

By Steve | Published: November 21, 2009
The facts are clear: You have to give 1,900 women mammograms before you save one life. Along the way are hundreds of false positives, needless worry and unnecessary procedures. The stories are more compelling: We all know someone whose breast cancer was caught early. That one life is real to us. The hundreds of false-positives [...]
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Why the flame is eternal

By Steve | Published: August 31, 2009
The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass writes that with the death of Teddy Kennedy, perhaps we can now put the Kennedy / Camelot myth to rest. Sorry, Mr. Kass. Myths don’t work that way. Did Jacqueline Kennedy and a fawning press create the myth? Kass makes a pretty good case for that. But no matter how [...]
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Record exec can spin a tale

By Steve | Published: May 11, 2009
Jim Griffin chewed through stories and a New York strip — simultaneously. Over dinner at Elway’s in Denver last week, he snatched stray vignettes from history to put a new spin on the music business in the age of Napster. He reframed the people-vs.-corporations narrative to one that puts artists on one side and willing [...]
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The Goddess’ revenge spells oppprtunity for video

By Steve | Published: April 11, 2009
It looks like the Goddess is making a comeback over the alphabet, and that is good news for my daughter. Leonard Shlain argues that in the mists of time, the masculine / left-brained / inventors of the alphabet staged a coup over the feminine / right-brained / painters of the pictograph. In his book The Alphabet Versus the [...]
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