What is the Story?

The Missouri Photo Workshop has been an annual gathering devoted to the art and craft of visual storytelling for the last 65 years. Every year the faculty is made up of a highly-talented group of editors, photographers and professors who give their time and expertise to encourage a diverse group of students and professionals to become better visual storytellers. In 2008, I worked on the multimedia crew for MPW and as part of my work, I shot, produced and edited this video. The central principle behind MPW is to become a better visual storyteller and is a constant topic of discussion. If you come to MPW, you already know how to make photographs, but want to learn how to make (better)stories. For the video I interviewed every MPW faculty member and asked them to answer the simple question, “What is the Story?”. My goal was to get diverse perspectives from industry professionals about their philosophies about how to turn a list of facts and observations in to an actual story that can be photographed. My intention was to distill the core lessons of MPW in to a simple video that workshop participants could take home with them and could be shown at the opening of subsequent workshops to give students advice about visual storytelling that they could use in the workshop. To produce the video in a crowded social hall was an exercise in improvisation and I constructed a homemade sound booth to light, shoot and record the interviews.