act3 is a communication strategy and design firm that specializes in telling stories.

This blog is our story laboratory, a way to poke, prod, and take a closer look at the stories we see, the stories we tell, and our own assumptions and knowledge about why stories work (or don't). The goal is to better understand what makes a story connect with people, and how to tell better stories.

Like any blog, it's an evolving concept. We hope you'll follow along.

September 10

A story geek’s dream

I am so geeked.

While doing a bit of procrastinating this morning on ESPN.com, I wandered into the Sports Guy’s World — always a great place to get lost, and a dangerous place to go if you have something you need to get done — and the headline “The Sports Guy on 30 for 30” caught my eye, so I clicked.

30 for 30What I found was the Sports Guy, Bill Simmons, telling the story behind the development of a new series of 30 sports documentaries that will air on ESPN starting October 6th to celebrate the network’s 30 years. It is the story of how an idea that “started out as a one-paragraph email in 2007” evolved into a project that has brought together “the greatest collection of filmmakers ever assembled under the same umbrella.”

In 30 for 30, ESPN picked some of the most interesting stories in sports of the last 30 years — not the biggest stories, not the most obvious stories — and found 30 talented filmmakers to tell them. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. As Simmons explains:

We hoped to land a few respected names early for a “domino effect” of sort and only needed two or three names. Everyone else would get a sniff and want to be involved. That’s what we thought. We all started going out on meet and greets, and that’s when something crazy happened, something we never anticipated: these people had been waiting for us. They had stories to tell. They just never thought they’d have a chance to tell them.

And so, starting next month, ESPN is going to become a conduit for great storytelling. They’re going to let Barry Levinson, director of Diner, Avalon, Good Morning Vietnam, and The Natural, tell the story of the Baltimore Colts Marching Band — which kept marching for 12 years after the Colts left Baltimore.

They’re going to let Albert Maysles, director of Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens, tell the story of Larry Holmes’ 1980 defeat of Muhammad Ali, featuring footage that Maysles shot in the weeks leading up to the fight, but that hasn’t been seen for nearly 30 years because people thought the fight was too depressing.

They’re going to let Mike Tollin, director of Varsity Blues and Coach Carter, tell the story about the rise and fall of the USFL. They’re going to let Peter Berg, the director of Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom, and Hancock, tell the story of the epic 1988 trade that sent Wayne Gretzky to Los Angeles.

And that’s just in the first 4 weeks.

It’s tempting to ghettoize these as sports stories; after all they’re stories about sports. But these aren’t stories about who won or who lost — they’re stories about the people who played the games, about their frailties, tragedies, courage, and pain.

It’s clear from the trailers alone that these are stories that will connect with us on an emotional level, that will make us appreciate what those people did on the field more than any record or scoreboard ever could, and that will give us new lenses with which to think about ourselves and the struggles and opportunities we face.

In short, they will do what all great stories do — they will help us see and understand the world, and ourselves, more clearly, and with more compassion. And they will do it in a way that sticks with us, and that makes us want to pass them on.

I can’t wait for October 6.

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::