When Local Projects was selected as the media design firm for the 9/11 Memorial Museum, its founder, Jake Barton, knew he had a powerful opportunity—and a tremendous challenge. To truly tell the story of 9/11, Local Projects would have to find a way to capture all the different voices of the tragedy’s countless witnesses and weave them together into a larger narrative. His team collected hundreds of thousands of individual firsthand accounts to create an unprecedented collaborative museum experience. The work makes the ephemeral into something that has lasting, emotional power, and when Melcher Media began to produce a short documentary profiling Barton for the Future of StoryTelling in 2012, we knew our film would have to achieve a similar effect. We juxtaposed a conversation with Barton beside man-on-the-street interviews about the power of storytelling. The narratives don’t explicitly intertwine, but the strangers’ insights are blended into a common story that touchingly illustrates Barton’s philosophy. The final film is a testament to both Barton’s technological innovations and collaborative storytelling’s impact, and it served as the inspiration for his roundtable discussions at the summit.
When Local Projects was selected as the media design firm for the 9/11 Memorial Museum, its founder, Jake Barton, knew he had a powerful opportunity—and a tremendous challenge. To truly tell the story of 9/11, Local Projects would have to find a way to capture all the different voices of the tragedy’s countless witnesses and weave them together into a larger narrative. His team collected hundreds of thousands of individual firsthand accounts to create an unprecedented collaborative museum experience. The work makes the ephemeral into something that has lasting, emotional power, and when Melcher Media began to produce a short documentary profiling Barton for the Future of StoryTelling in 2012, we knew our film would have to achieve a similar effect.
We juxtaposed a conversation with Barton beside man-on-the-street interviews about the power of storytelling. The narratives don’t explicitly intertwine, but the strangers’ insights are blended into a common story that touchingly illustrates Barton’s philosophy. The final film is a testament to both Barton’s technological innovations and collaborative storytelling’s impact, and it served as the inspiration for his roundtable discussions at the summit.
