Hasta La Ideas

The Story of Electronics animated film launched today. This is the latest film in the incredible Story of Stuff series (aka Cliff Notes for the armchair environmentalist), which includes the Story of Cosmetics, the Story of Cap and Trade, and the Story of Bottled Water. I talked to Barbara Kyle, the National Coordinator of the San Francisco-based Electronics TakeBack Coalition, about the project and its key messages.

Can you describe how Electronics bubbled up as the next theme to prioritize in the Story of Stuff series? Why this topic, why now?

The Story of Stuff series is all about consuming—all the stuff we buy—and what the real costs are (even if we aren’t paying these costs). So the team at Story of Stuff (SOS) was interested in the electronics issue from the beginning, since we are purchasing (and disposing of) electronics at an unbelievable rate. Why now? We are about to enter the holiday buying frenzy that starts around Thanksgiving, when a huge amount of the year’s electronics purchases are made.

So the goal is to bring awareness, thereby changing behavior. What is process for creating a piece with that kind of aspiration?

Right. That’s a primary goal with all the Story of Stuff (SOS) films: to make people aware of the invisible impacts, so they’ll think and act differently. We, the Electronics Takeback Coalition (ETBC), sat down with Annie Leonard, SOS, and the Free Range team to talk through core themes and primary messages, and how they fit with the SOS storyline on product lifecycles. (This is where Free Range is such an important partner in this project—they don’t just take a script and animate it. They are part of the development of the whole project.) We brainstormed on some of the key elements, examples, important facts, possible visual images. Really, the hard part is paring it all down to fit in a short film. From there, Annie, her team, and Free Range developed the script, which went through several drafts. Once the script was finalized, and Annie was filmed, the illustration started. To me, this is the magical part—the storytelling is good, but it really comes alive after the animations are added. All the SOS films are viewed online, and there are great resources on the actual site to take action after viewing.

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