Science Storytelling and the Contagion of Ideas
What makes a story spread into a shared vision? How do story tellers use those levers to reach and influence? Join us on February 4th as Award Winning Producer/Screenwriter Scott Z Burns and expert storyteller Jamie McIntyre share their insights and experiences on these and many more contagious ideas.
In this second talk hosted by Stanford’s mediaX Program, Scott will go deeper to reveal how he weaves fact with fiction together, and how he renders science information more manageable to appeal to a global audience, based on his vast experience and career as an award-winning Hollywood screenwriter. He will discuss:
*His approach to the story development process
*How he adapts science stories to appeal to a mainstream audience
*Behind-the-scenes insights about the creation of the Hollywood movie Contagion
Jamie McIntyre will share his insights as a Senior Pentagon Correspondent on 9/11. His on-the-scene reporting became a YouTube sensation and formed the basis for some of the earliest conspiracy theories about the September 11th attack. While Jamie was surprised to have been inadvertently swept up in the world of 9/11 “truthers”, he was even more surprised how impossible it became to correct the record. This led him on a decade-long journey to try to better understand the limits of factual information to affect people’s beliefs.
Bishop Auditorium, Lathrop Library 4:15pm (Small Reception) to 7:00pm
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Presenters
Scott Z. Burns, is an Award-winning Producer/Screenwriter & mediaX Distinguished Visiting Scholar. His credits include: writer and producer of An Inconvenient Truth, the Academy Award-winning documentary, for which he received the Humanitas Prize and the Stanley Kramer Award from the Producers Guild of America. The original screenplay for Side Effects, a psychological thriller starring Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Channing Tatum-which received the coveted Golden Tomato for 2013- directed by Steven Soderbergh (produced by Burns, Greg Jacobs and Lorenzo Di Bonaventura), and the original screenplay for Contagion, directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, and Jude Law.
Jamie McIntyre’s journalism career spans four decades, and includes stints in radio, television, blogging, and consulting. After a six-year hiatus, he’s back to covering the Pentagon and national security as an Al Jazeera America correspondent, a beat he covered for 16 years as CNN’s Senior Pentagon and Military Affairs Correspondent from 1992-2008. Prior to joining Al Jazeera America, Jamie could be heard daily delivering newscasts for NPR’s flagship news show “All Things Considered,” listened to by more than 20 million people a week. He also teaches multimedia journalism part-time as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland, where he received his Master of Arts degree in Journalism in 2014. Known for his sense of humor, Jamie was named "D.C.'s Funniest Reporter" in 2010 at a charity stand-up comedy competition at the National Press Club.