Telling The Story

One of the biggest challenges of storytelling -- particularly when dealing with stories of emotion -- is determining what to leave out. As a reporter for a local news station, I will regularly shoot several hours of video for a story that lasts several minutes. I realized early in my career I would never be able to tell someone's full story -- only as much of that story as I could fit into the allotted space. A news director of mine once crystallized the appropriate mentality: it's all about eliminating the "good" in one's story and keeping the "great". Of course, sometimes you don't even get to keep all of the "great". And sometimes, as in the case of filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, you shoot 800 hours of video for a two-hour documentary -- a documentary in which you are two of the main characters. Brewster and Stephenson are the husband-and-wife duo behind American Promise, currently playing in select cities and premiering on PBS in February 2014. The documentary follows two young boys from