5 Principles of "Freakonomics"

I'm reading a book so provocative and amazing that it is challenging many of the "self evident" truths that I've held for quite some time now.

For example, did you ever consider that the late-90s precipitous drop in crime rates in large American cities, including NYC, could very well be a delayed effect of Roe vs. Wade decision? WOW!

Steven Levitt (Univ of Chicago and MIT) is obviously not your typical economist since he asks questions like "what are the similarities between the way sumo wrestlers and school teachers act?"

Here are the 5 tenets on which "Freakonomics" rests:

1) Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life.

2) The conventional wisdom is often wrong.

3) Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle, causes.

4) "Experts" -- from criminologists to real-estate agents -- use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda.

5) Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so.

When we write and design information, isn't that what we all are trying to achieve -- to make a complicated world less so?

Even in sales, you won't sell anything unless you can reduce a list of complicated features into a few solid benefits, correct?

I recommend this book to all my readers who would like to understand not how the modern world SHOULD work, but how it really DOES.

If you like a "tuneup from the neckup" (as Zig Ziglar used to say) you'll enjoy this gem of a book.

The Official Freakonomics Blog

New York Times Magazine Freakonomics Column

Missing Fourth Element in Basic Screenwriting Paradigm

You must have read the following "Basic Screenwriting Paradigm" a few times too many:

1) Get the cat on a tree.
2) Get the cat in trouble.
3) Get the cat down the tree.

This is of course very true. That's your basic bare-bones Aristotelean "3-Act Structure." It has not changed for the last 2,300 years or so.

However, it is not complete.

You also need a Fourth Element: the emotional reaction of your protagonist to the Step #3.

Without that fourth element, a "dramatic" movie rapidly devolves into a video tutorial of how to rescue a cat from a tree.

Don't get me wrong: video tutorials are great. They are fantastic tools of information design. But they are not dramatic stories for which the movie audience spends hard-earned cash.

As a creator, you have to be very clear on whether your are a documentary or a dramatic writer.

So here is the corrected basic paradigm:

1) Get the cat on a tree.
2) Get the cat in trouble.
3) Get the cat down the tree.
4) Get the hero react to the cat's rescue.

Or, for even a deeper dramatic twist:

1) Get the cat on a tree.
2) Get the cat in trouble.
3) Show the cat either getting down or not getting down the tree.
4) Get the hero react to the previous step.

Happy 4th and an E-Card Utility for All Occasions

Happy 4th of July to all my American readers!



Here is an article by Peggy Noonan, one of my most favorite writers, that expresses the sentiments of the day very well:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110010269

In case you're wondering where I got the image from, here is my source (thanks to my client and reader Steve G.) :

Click here for iCards

It is a great utility to send quick, tasteful, and free postcards through e-mail.

Enjoy!

Great Companies Respond Quickly

I always believed that speed is an essential part of many successful projects in life. Sylvester Stallone wrote his classic “Rocky” in four days. Jack Kerouac wrote his unforgettable “On the Road” in three weeks. Friedrich August Kekulé discovered the benzene ring in a dream, over a single night.

Yes, “haste” also leads to “waste” but the kind of “speed” I’m talking about is not haphazard, disoriented, Brownian motion. It is a disciplined, focused, sincere movement forward towards a target with no reservations, no inertia. It’s an arrow flying at mach 2.

Recently two companies impressed me by the speed with which they’ve responded to two postings on this very blog. Given the fact that this is still a relatively new blog with not even 100 postings on it yet, I was delighted with the response. I found myself meditating about the serious care with which these successful companies monitored their brand image.

The companies are FeedBlitz (the RSS and Blog-to-E-Mail company) and Jajah (Internet phone company). They both quickly responded to either a complaint (Jajah) or a piece of inadvertently missing information (FeedBlitz).

Their responses was an inspiration for me in my own line of work to treat my own clients with the same speed and transparency that they all so richly deserve. Jajah and FeedBlitz light the way to our corporate future in this age of instant communications and 60-second news cycle. Kudos to them both!

Joel Siegel (1943-2007)

We have lost film critic Joel Siegel to colon cancer. May he rest in peace.

I have never met Joel Siegel but in a sense I knew him better than a lot of people that I've met in person.

How come? Because we shared a passion for arts and the movies. Because I also loved movies for their own sake, for their own beauty and exhilaration, since I was a little kid.

Just like Joel, I also always enjoyed talking about movies, thinking about movies, and meditating on the art of script writing and movie making on a daily basis. It is not a career choice. Not the result of a cost-benefit analysis. It is love, strictly.

In that sense, I knew Joel Siegel and knew him quiet well. I exactly knew where he was coming from.

I used to watch Joel occasionally on ABC News' "Good Morning America" show where he was the entertainment editor. But I also frequently came across his writings on the Internet and enjoyed his vast knowledge and true passion for the moving images.

Hollywood has lost a kind, good-hearted friend. But Joel lived well. He did what he enjoyed doing most. We should all be just as lucky.

Bad "Information Design" Leads to Medication Errors

Why are there so many medication errors in the nation's hospitals?

The American Nurses Association (ANA) researched that question and came up with interesting answers.

It turns out such "information design" related mistakes like mislabeled medication or poor hand writing contribute to such errors more than we thought.

The survey of 1,039 nurses across America revealed the following factors responsible for injection-related medication errors:

1) Too rushed or busy environment (78 percent).
2) Poor or illegible handwriting (68 percent).
3) Missed or mistaken physician's orders (62 percent).
4) Similar drug names or medication appearance (56 percent).
5) Working with too many medications (60 percent).

Items 2, 3 and 4 can certainly be avoided by a more careful and user-friendly "information design" program.

As I always say: good information design is not a luxury but a vital necessity. Not only poor information design leads to inefficient and unhappy lives, but sometimes people lose their lives altogether because of it.

For more on this study, please click here.

Plot Points - SERAPHIM FALLS (2006) , APOCALYPTO (2006), SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)

SERAPHIM FALLS (2006)

Starring: Liam Neeson (Carver), Pierce Brosnan (Gideon)
Directed by: David Von Ancken
Writer: David Von Ancken & Abby Everett Jaques

PROTAGONIST GIDEON’S DILEMMA: He is trying to leave his old life behind by Carver won’t let him..

PROTAGONIST'S DESIRE: To forget about the past and get on with a new life.

PROTAGONIST'S OBSTACLE: Carver on his tail with a posse of five.

ESTABLISHING SHOT: Snowy mountain peaks. “Ruby Mountains 1868.”

INCITING INCIDENT: He is shot at the shoulder by a sniper.

PLOT POINT 1: Gideon takes out the bullet in his shoulder. We know he will survive.

MID POINT (REVERSAL) EVENT: N/A

PLOT POINT 2: Through a flashback, we learn why Carver is mad at Gideon, who used to be a Union officer during the Civil War.

3rd ACT RESOLUTION: Final confrontation at the desert. The two exhausted men decide to bury the hatchet and go their own separate ways.

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APOCALYPTO (2006)

Starring: Rudy Youngblood (Jaguar Paw), Dalia Hernández (Seven), Jonathan Brewer(Blunted), Morris Birdyellowhead (Flint Sky), Carlos Emilio Báez (Turtles Run)
Directed by: Mel Gibson
Writer: Mel Gibson & Farhad Safinia

PROTAGONIST JAGUAR PAW’S DILEMMA: He is afraid of death but he has to face and overcome his fear to save his wife and son from enemy hands.

PROTAGONIST'S DESIRE: To live the good life with his family.

PROTAGONIST'S OBSTACLE: Slave traders capture him to sell to the Mayan temple..

ESTABLISHING SHOT: A tapir hunt by the local Indians in a South American jungle. Jaguar Paw is the chief’s son.

INCITING INCIDENT: Jaguar Paw and friends meet another tribe in the jungle who are migrating away. Something happened to them and they are scared..

PLOT POINT 1: Jaguar Paw’s village is ambushed by slave traders and all are taken captive.

MID POINT (REVERSAL) EVENT: Jaguar Paw is saved from the religious execution at the temple by the solar eclipse.

PLOT POINT 2: Jaguar Paw defies the odds and runs away from his captors, launching a long chase.

3rd ACT RESOLUTION: Jaguar Paw and family survive the slave traders only to be introduced to a new reality down at the beach – Spanish galleons.

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SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)

Starring: Tom Hanks (Captain John H. Miller), Tom Sizemore (Sergeant Mike Horvath), Edward Burns (Pvt. Richard Reiben), Barry Pepper (Pvt. Daniel Jackson), Adam Goldberg (Pvt. Stanley Mellish), Vin Diesel (Private Adrian Caparzo), Giovanni Ribisi (T-4 Medic Irwin Wade), Jeremy Davies (Cpl. Timothy P. Upham), Matt Damon (Private James Francis Ryan), Ted Danson (Captain Fred Hamill), Paul Giamatti (Sergeant Hill), Dennis Farina (Lieutenant Colonel Anderson)
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Writer: Robert Rodat

PROTAGONIST JOHN MILLER’S DILEMMA: He is a high school English teacher but he has to serve his country at D-Day..

PROTAGONIST'S DESIRE: To find Private Ryan and go back home to his wife.

PROTAGONIST'S OBSTACLE: They don’t know where Ryan is. They have to find him somewhere in France while fighting the Germans.

ESTABLISHING SHOT: A much older James Ryan visits the military cemetery at Normandy, France to flashback to the D-Day.

INCITING INCIDENT: Army Chief Staff Gen. George C. Marshall decides that, since all his three brothers are killed in action, Private Ryan must be found and safely delivered back to his mother in Iowa.

PLOT POINT 1: After gaining a foothold at Omaha Beach, Capt. John Miller is issued his orders to find and take Private Ryan safely back home.

MID POINT (REVERSAL) EVENT: Private Ryan refuses to leave his squad and go back home.

PLOT POINT 2: Germans attack the strategic bridge that Ryan’s squad, together with Miller’s squad defend.

3rd ACT RESOLUTION: Miller, while dying, whispers to Ryan’s ear and asks Ryan to “earn it” so that the death of all those who perished to save Ryan won’t be in vain. Back to our own day, his wife assures Ryan that he is a good man and he indeed lived a good life and “earned it.”