March 26, 2011 – The New Litmus Tests of Story

We live in a time of unprecedented and unbridled change that increasingly presents both the media industry and the worlds it seeks to serve with endlessly unforeseen challenges and unimagined possibilities, even as it just as rapidly renders previously reliable ways of seeing and doing things as outdated to irrelevant.

It is a radically changing world that both shapes and is shaped by an ever more global industry that is itself undergoing rapid and radically unprecedented technological transformation and organizational change. The growing challenge is how to create dynamically self-generating ways of seeing and doing that effectively identify and resonantly address the ever shifting wants and needs of potential audiences that simultaneously effectively guide and proactively shape the media industry itself.

This brief but lively presentation / discussion will explore how to best assure creative, commercial, and social success in and for the media industry by providing and actually using:

• A brief overview of where we are as a world, professionals, and industry in change along with equally brief summary of why lives, stories, projects and even entire industries fail A review of several generally unknown or ignored steps and questions that simultaneously help assess and access stories to effectively evaluate and fully define the material at the outset
• Immediate illustrations of how this allows for giving birth to story from the bottom up and characters from the inside out that will resonantly speak to and capture audiences beyond an opening weekend AND addresses the contributions and needs of everyone in the entire creative and commercial process
• Select considerations of how understanding story and how things work are inextricably interlinked allows for individual success along with creating the basis for strategic paradigms and practices for proactively shaping the industry itself for optimal success in our lives, on the page, and on the screen

Attendees will leave with a transformed grasp of their own material and creative process along with an equally transformed ability to work with and actually begin to coach others in the creative and commercial continuum to help clarify and optimize their collaborative contributions and needs.

Patrick A. Horton, Ph.D. is one of the most innovative and immediately empowering teachers and guides for story development, screenwriting, filmmaking, professional speaking, organizational / project marketing & development, executive consulting, social & media advocacy, He routinely shows professional creators, creative professionals, and every day heroes the way to divine, express, and effectively promote visions and material they did not know they had in them, let alone that they could give expression to and promote with such a powerful and moving voice. He is equally able in guiding representation, development, and production professionals in better communicating their needs and drawing out the best in writers, directors, and all allied media professionals. Whether speaking to studio professionals, university students, film festivals, conferences, industry organizations and guilds, or the general public, the collaborative goal is not to simply improve on what is but to discover, divine, and deliver what is possible.

As a writer, producer, cultural anthropologist, and both founder and principal for Wind & Thunder Productions and the story coach / wind & thunder productions Conversations on Contemporary Media Project, his dedicated and profoundly multifaceted mission lies not only in equipping those who seek work in the media industry as it as it is and as it is becoming to succeed beyond their wildest creative and commercial dreams, but to actively influence and proactively shape the media industry itself. Conversely and just as importantly, he is equally dedicated to bringing the transformational power of story, media, and applied social change to the world at large · including youth and families, organizations and communities, social entrepreneurs, and change agents of all kinds.

He is currently working on the book version of his master seminar, “Mastering The Power of Story: The Story Coach – Practical Magic” completing multiple writing-for-hire projects, and developing multiple film, television, and documentary projects as well.

For more information on upcoming workshops and seminars, media projects, and/or social and media advocacy, visit thestorycoach.com and/or windandthunder.com. Articles and blogs can be found at screenplay.com.