Photo credit: Janet Donovan
“The way we got involved in Breakthrough is a great story,” Linda Boff, Executive Director Global Brand Marketing GE, told Hollywood on the Potomac at NatGeo and GE’s advanced screening of “Energy on the Edge” — part five of the six-part Breakthrough series airing on the National Geographic Channel.
“Our vice-chair of Business Innovations Beth Comstock met Brian Grazer in Hollywood nearly four years ago,” she explained, “and Brian does these ‘curiosity conversations.’ They hit it off and they started talking about the marriage of Hollywood and science. GE is always on a quest to tell a story and to find great storytellers, so the germ of the idea began three-and-a-half, four years ago. It was born out of curiosity. It was born out of passion for how to you tell a great story and how to get some Hollywood minds behind some really interesting and important topics. He actually just wrote a book called A Curious Mind.”
Linda Boff and Courteney Monroe, CEO of National Geographic Channel
“We started to muse,” she said. “What could this be? We thought about it as how could we take topics like energy, aging, neurology, water, things that are important to the world and put a human lens on them. The stories are important, but the characters behind them are also quite important. We wanted to be able to tell the story of the scientists and also some of the breakthroughs in their fields. Together, we had the opportunity to approach National Geographic, and once we had them on board, we all came together and said, ‘What are issues that will be important to the National Geographic audience? What are topics that GE thinks are important? What are stories that Brian and Ron Howard want to tell?’ We triangulated them and wound up with six great topics, but there could be 60, there could be 600; these are the six we’re starting with.”
“I think they’re all good………. it’s like your favorite child – that’s so unfair,” Boff replied when asked about her favorite segment. “Here’s what I love: I love the fact that because it’s six different directors, each brings a completely different lens to the story, so the first one that aired last Sunday night was on pandemics. It was raw and at times almost made you flinch. Pandemic is such a tough topic, but it was shot beautifully and Peter Berg did a great job. I’ll contrast that with the one coming up this Sunday, which is a personal favorite that’s called More than Human, Giamatti’s Story about robotics. Paul is very present in the episode; he’s in almost every scene. We like to joke he’s the Anthony Bourdain of Science, and you fall in love a little bit with Paul’s curiosity because he is so genuinely interested. He’s a geek, and as a viewer you follow his curiosity. That’s a personal one that I just love, but they’re all great.”
Ron Howard did the segment on Aging, so of course we wanted to know why he chose that topic. “He does say it’s one he can relate to; I think he’s made that comment,” said Boff. “It’s funny because he was involved so early on. In a sense, he had his pick of the litter when we were talking through topics. I think aging is something that everybody can relate to. Hopefully, not everybody can relate personally to a pandemic, but everybody is going to age. Your parents are aging, your grandparents are aging, so it’s a very accessible topic. I think he loved that. He made a comment to us last week in LA which is that he was the one who directed Cocoon, and it’s funny when you think back to it. Cocoon was fanciful, but it was about a group of people aging. What I love is, he’s put himself in the episode in a very different way that Paul has, but Ron Howard through the years has been aging up from “Opie” on to the present. He was integral to this project. Ron and Brian were really tremendous partners. We really felt like we had the Dream Team. We’re lucky to have them. It’s a treasure trove of storytelling, and, as we talk about Hollywood, about stories, GE’s all about stories. It’s a marketer’s dream to work there.”
Ron Howard Photo credit: NatGeo
“I’m the show runner and Executive Producer of the series,” Kurt Sayenga told us. “I was brought in basically to pull everything together between various production companies and to work with the directors and assemble the production team. A show runner is pretty much you’re in charge of everything. It’s sort of like being the general in charge of the war. It’s a fight, if you look at it that way. Basically you hire a production staff. You’re also head writer. Most show runners write, so I wrote two of these episodes and co-wrote the other two and then blocked out the other two. Basically I have my finger on everything, and you kind of look at the overall quality. Then I was also in the field making a few of them.”
Kurt Sayenga Photo credit: IMDB
We also asked Sayenga to name his favorite segment: “It would be unfair to say, I like them all for different things. I like Fighting Pandemics. I think it is a really important story because of the people and the fact that it shows the effort that these scientists and medical researchers are going through to try to help them and really make a difference in the world. I think all the episodes profile people like that, but in that case it’s something really urgent, and I think it’s helpful to shine a light on their work and let people see that there are people out there actively working to save lives and make a difference. Then I also like the Brain show just because brains are always fascinating. I relate to everybody. They’re different because they’re different kinds of directors. There are visual directors and there are directors who like in the classic case of Angela Basset who’s an actress who also got into directing and is doing more of that now. Angela, because she acts, is more looking for personal stories and that’s what she hones in on. That’s what she responds to the most, and so the material we put together is meant to be reflective of that, whereas somebody like Brett Ratner is much more of a visual guy, so he’s interested in the science part, but really his major thing is the cinematic storytelling aspect.”
“I give input mostly because none of these directors claim to be documentarians or science filmmakers, so that’s really where I come in,” Sayenga added. “I know the science, or people who come in and who know the science. I’ve got a team obviously behind me. That’s my major role, actually assembling the team and getting really smart people to support this endeavor. We know what the science is and what the story is, and then we work with the directors and what they want to contribute to that process, essentially. It’s a meeting of two different worlds because they’re all from scripted, basically. There are many similarities and yet at the same time the scripted world obviously you go in knowing exactly what you’re going to do, and a documentary there’s always a certain variable of what’s going to happen in the field. You’re also trying to do about ten times as much.”
Directed by the Hollywood blockbuster producer Akiva Goldsman and narrated by Jason Bateman, “Energy on the Edge” focuses on the scientific explorers who are discovering breakthrough ways to harness energy. The first episode of the series, “Fighting Pandemics” aired this past Sunday and “Energy on the Edge” will air for the public next month, on December 6.
“This is a dream project,” Sayenga concluded, “and the chance to work on this has just been so fulfilling, so great for me and for everyone I work with because you get a chance to work with immense talents from the Hollywood side, and we’re all putting our efforts into something that we hope will help people and will really expose people to the world of science in a way they haven’t seen before, I think we’re really trying to show the scientists behind it, so if there’s one difference between this and a conventional science documentary, it’s that we’ve locked into characters and we’re trying to show relatively ordinary people, super smart people, but still people, who are working together can change all of these things that are going wrong in the world or seem to be going wrong in the world. They are people who are making a difference, and so we’ve all pooled our efforts to try to get that message out there.”
One of those people out there making a difference is Nick Benz, Chief Executive Officer at Dogfish. He works on a day-to-day basis to make sure things are moving in the right direction.
Benz explained to Hollywood on the Potomac how he used the plant to produce energy and clean things up:
“Science definitely fits my personality because it’s very straightforward and unemotional. I like the fact that you work toward uncovering the facts to get to the straight truth. It’s like doing math in school—there is always going to be a right answer. It might take a lot of creativity to get to that point. It might take a lot of missteps to get to that point. But in the end you’re searching for the truth. And once you figure that out, that helps explain a lot of other different parts. I like the way it all falls together and makes a lot of sense. It brings order to the rest of the chaotic world around me.” Dr. Tammy Ma
Dr. Tammy Ma Photo credit: HEDSA.org
Dr.Tammy Ma is an amazing young scientist who really wants to be an astronaut!
“I have two favorite episodes,” Courteney Monroe told us. “My first favorite episode is Pandemics. I’m fascinated by the issue. It’s cinematic, it’s very intense. We captured really real time breakthroughs taking place. Then I would say another episode that I really like, and I do like them all, is Paul Giamatti’s because he actually is in a lot of the episode. He was really passionate about it. It’s very different in tone. It’s both warm and personal and his passion for the topic really comes through. It is called More Than Human and it’s about all of the cyborg technology advancements: Exoskeletons that can help people who are paralyzed, or people walk again, or people whose jobs involve lifting really heavy equipment and it’s an incredible drain on their muscles and backs so they’re having to take breaks all the time which is a drain on productivity. They build this technology that actually supports the body and enables them to lift really heavy machinery. You see in the episode Paul trying on all of the technology and it’s sort of infectious. His passion and quest for knowledge and excitement about learning about the technology really comes through and it’s quite contagious.”
“There’s connective tissue through all of the episodes,” she explained, “but the connective tissue is really about capturing these real-time scientific breakthroughs that are changing all of our lives for the better in different but critical arenas. Whether it’s pandemics, whether it’s cyborg technology, whether it’s aging, they all tackle important issues of our time, but because they’re all done it through the lens of a different visionary director, they’re all a little bit different in style and tone, but equally fascinating and unique and quite cinematic and high quality. The thing that’s so amazing in so many film productions, television productions, we tend to talk about the talent. When we refer to talent, we talk about directors and producers and actors. The true talent in this series are the scientists. They’re the real heroes. They’re the ones whose imagination and passion and sacrifice and incredible ingenuity actually come through. I think that bringing science to global audiences and really entertaining and engaging in accessible ways is really a key mission of ours at National Geographic. Breakthrough is a series that is a shining example of how we can do that by bringing together the very best story tellers with the very best in scientists.”
