Posts Tagged ‘Trapped Chilean Miners’

Los Mineros, Part Seven: “And…Scene!”

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

The ‘Los Mineros’ scene ended in Chile this week with a worldwide swelling of joy at the safe rescue of all 33 trapped miners.  They survived for a total of 68 days 2,300 feet under the earth’s surface, the longest anyone is known to have been trapped underground and lived to tell about it.ChileanMinerRescue1

We have been analyzing the scene here since shortly after the miners were discovered alive.  One of the most instructive aspects of the ‘Los Mineros’ scene is that it has very little spin.  The cave where they were trapped was truly a no-spin zone.  Events were not manipulated or interpreted to someone’s economic or political advantage.   There were no conspiracy theories.  No, this was as unadulterated as a media narrative can be.

During their 68 days in the darkness, the miners had time to ponder their lives in ‘the normal world,’ as Joseph Campbell would call it.  Many, if not all, seem to have been enlightened by the experience, emerging with a newfound clarity about themselves and the world they are re-entering.  “I have been with God and I have been with the devil.  I seized the hand of God,” said one, Mario Sepulveda.

“I have changed.  I am a different man,” said another, Mario Gomez.

Here is a post-by-post summary of the GameChangers series about  the ‘Los Mineros’ scene:

PART ONE:  THE TRAPPED CHILEAN MINER GAME (August 26)

Lesson: Don’t be defined by your circumstances.  Be defined by how you behave in those circumstances.

PART TWO:  LEVELS OF MEANING (August 31)

Lesson: Narratives communicate on three levels of meaning:  Cosmetic, Emotional and Meta.

PART THREE:  YONNI’S WAITING PARTY (September 2)

Lesson: Rules of the game must be known to all players.

PART FOUR:  ESPERANZA! (September 17)

Lesson: Additions can heighten a scene emotionally.

PART FIVE:  SUPPORT FROM THE WINGS (September 28)

Lesson: Additions are generative.

PART SIX:  ACT THREE BEGINS (October 10)

Lesson: End energetically.

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Los Mineros Part Six: Act Three Begins

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

ONE IN A SERIES…LosMineros1C

One of the ways GameChangers defines a ‘Scene’—no matter what its duration, could be minutes, could be months—is with a classic three-act structure.  We label these acts Connect, Adapt and Deliver.  Continuing with our analysis of ‘Los Mineros,‘ the Trapped Chilean Miners scene, we can clearly see that the scene is entering its third act. The drill boring through the 2,300 feet of solid rock to the hollow where they are trapped has just made it through to them. That’s a clear signal for the heightening of energy and emotion, increasing tempo and sharpening focus that typically indicate the beginning of Act Three of any scene.

Here’s how the three-act structure has defined Los Mineros to date.

Act One:  Connect.  This is where we first heard about this story.  We were introduced to the main characters.  The conditions of their life-threatening predicament were explained to us.  With the news that it was going to take a long time to reach them, a kind of ticking clock was set in motion.  The clock was not life-or-death, but it helped us frame the scene in our minds.  The ‘Game’ —defined by Objective, Environment, Roles and Rules—came into focus.   A lot of the meaning associated with this act was cosmetic—that is, strongly oriented toward data, raw information, clinical analysis.  A mythic theme, one you might call, ‘Trapped in a Cave,’ got defined.   All of this earned the audience’s attention on a global scale.  Clearly, this was going to be a story that many, may people could relate to.

Act Two:  Adapt.  In this act, complications were introduced to the scene, and communication began to turn toward the Emotional level of meaning, as emotions like Urgency, Fear, Jealousy, Camaraderie, Patience, Frustration and Surprise colored the events during this stage.  We began to learn more about the main characters, and new characterss–wives, mistresses, politicians, drillers, NASA scientists and a newborn baby—entered the scene to interact with the main characters and make the scene deeper, richer, more complex.   This is where the scene often takes unexpected turns, hence the need for the characters to adapt.  Three drill bits were tried before one worked.  Original plans were discarded in favor of new ones.  A miner’s wife and mistress both showed up at the rescue site on the same day.  The newborn baby’s name got changed from what its parents originally intended—to Esperanza, the Spanish word for ‘hope.’   In other words, everyone involved rolled with the ever-unfolding reality.  They had to improvise.  There was no script for this.

And now…

Act Three:  Deliver. Typically, the third act is shorter than the first two.  This has the effect of compressing time, as does the increasing tempo of entrances and exits, and the steady release ‘new news’ by the world’s media.  We are building toward a 24-hour news cycle in a couple of days in which Los Mineros will dominate current events. It is during this cycle that the scene will reach its emotional apex, and the audience will feel more pull and lean forward more than it has at any other time in the scene.  There will be a lot of postscripts added after this climactic 24-hour cycle, but in terms of the three-act structure, this scene will have ended, and new scenes (you can think of them as ’sequel’ or ’spin-off’ scenes) will begin.

For business communicators, the three-act structure is a really useful framework.  It gives players and audience alike a sense of where you are in your scene, and helps you organize the many narrative elements that are part of it.   It will give you the ability to put the emphasis where it belongs, when it belongs there.

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Posted in Additions and Edits, Communication, Emotion, Entrances, Environment, Games, Narrative, Objectives, Scenes, Speed, Themes, story | No Comments »

Los Mineros Part Five: Support from the Wings

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

ONE IN A SERIES…

A scene can always gain momentum and depth with support from the wings.  Support can come in almost any form–a walk-on, a tag-in, a sound, a song, a prop–anything that adds context to what’s already happening.  We see this happening with Los Mineros, the 33 Chilean miners trapped 2,300 feet below the surface of the earth in a copper mine.   You could say that the scene has become a kind of flurry of support from the wings.  This is typical of a second (of three) acts in a longform improvisation.  Lots of additions get thrown into the mix.

There were a couple of notable ‘adds’ this week:LosMineros_Capsule1

The first was a prop, the wire mesh one-man capsule that will bring the miners back to daylight one at a time.  This heightens the scene by helping us get a better picture of what the rescue effort will look like.  The capsule gives us an idea of how wide a hole they’re having to drill to reach the miners.  It will be interesting to see what kind of rule Los Mineros add to their game to determine in what order they come to the surface.  In terms of status and media exposure, especially in the first 24/7 news cycle, first guy up is going to be Neil Armstrong to the 32 Buzz Aldrins who follow him. (POST-RESCUE NOTE:  Not quite accurate.  Every miner had his moment, and the last miner was the highest status player in the scene.)LosMineros_Headline1

The second big addition from the wings last week was media training.  According to a story in the Guardian, PR people are coaching Los Mineros on how to comport themselves with the media when the light finally hits them, and, no doubt, how to book themselves on Oprah, get a reality show deal, negotiate endorsements and hire ghostwriters for their books.  This addition to the scene is pure comedy gold.  By the time they reach the surface, Paris Hilton and the Pope will both be there to greet them. (POST-RESCUE NOTE:  It speaks well of everyone involved that the scene, thankfully, never turned into a circus.  Publicity seekers who showed up at the site were promptly sent home.)

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Los Mineros Part Four: Esperanza!

Friday, September 17th, 2010

This just in:

Elizabeth Segovia, the wife of Ariel Ticona, one of Los Minerinos, the 33 miners trapped 2,300 feet underground in a copper mine in Chile, has according to CNN.com, given birth to a baby girl.  The family has named her Esperanza Elizabeth.  ‘Esperanza’ is Spanish for ‘hope.’

Esperanza1This is an example of what is known in improvisation as an ‘addition.’   The effect of an addition to the scene is often to heighten the stakes emotionally.  The birth of a Esperanza is certainly an example of emotional heightening.

Note the difference between the authentic emotional heightening that comes with a baby’s birth  vs. the bogus heightening a lot of news outlets produce, where emotions are amplified artificially through a heavy-duty media ‘lens’ consisting of satellite trucks, reporters, news vans, helicopters, camera crews camping across the street, etc.  Sometimes, the emotions depicted by journalists are pure fabrication, as when a media manipulator like Andrew Breitbart ginned up a racist history for a woman who was in fact quite a model of tolerance.

In the Networked World, media-jacked emotions, hoaxes, and fear-based narratives come at us in furious flurries.  At the same time, our communication channels are flooded with paid media, which, like the bogus narratives, often have very little relation to reality.  And hackers are more clever than ever about luring people into giving up their account information with phony stories.  That fictitious Nigerian Prince of spam email fame has, in the hands of evil narratologists, become one of your Facebook friends who’s “stuck in London without cash or a passport.”  The sheer volume of this nonsensical content makes it imperative for communications professionals–and aren’t we all?– to quickly distinguish between what is real and what is not–and act on what is real.  Otherwise you’ll waste too much time, and miss too much opportunity, chasing chimeras.

The birth of a baby?  That’s as real and honest as it gets.  Congratulations to Elizabeth and Ariel on the addition of Esperanza, and the hope for new life that has themed this beautiful scene from its beginning.

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Los Mineros Part Three: Yonni’s Waiting Party

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

A serial analysis of the quest to rescue 33 miners trapped 2,300 feet underground in a copper mine outside Copiapo, Chile…

LosMinerosGroup1

Predictably, the ‘Los Mineros’ scene heightened emotionally yesterday, and in a dramatic way.  Near the mine entrance, two women spotted each other praying for the safety of the same miner, Yonni Barrios.  One of them is his wife.  The other is his mistress.  Now 32 of the miners are looking forward to getting rescued, one maybe not so much.

Yonni looks a little like Javier Bardem.

Yonni Barrios

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Los Mineros, Part Two

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

A serial analysis of the quest to rescue 33 miners trapped 2,300 feet underground in a copper mine outside Copiapo, Chile…

TCMG2Levels of Meaning

With the eyes of the news media fixed on one very specific location, everything about the Los Mineros narrative is tightly focused and vividly portrayed.  There’s no mystery to it, no hidden agenda (with maybe the exception of a mining company looking to avoid liability, which itself would be no surprise).  With the focus so intense right now on the mine itself and the rescue efforts, almost every element of the narrative is visible even to a distant observer like me, who might check the story every day or two on the webs to see how the miners are doing.

It is extremely clear how the narrative is conveyed on three distinct Levels of Meaning.

All communication happens on three levels:  Cosmetic (data, information, quantification, surface descriptions, neutral language), Emotional (passion, mood, empathy, attitude, ups, downs) and Meta (symbolism, context, iconography, metaphor, perspective, interpretation, the subconscious connections).

Observe, and learn from, how the Los Mineros narrative is conveyed on these three levels:

Cosmetic: Tons of information here. Plans and backup plans described in detail.  The three four-inch pipes that have become their lifeline.  The NASA psychologists who’ve arrived to help.  The number of calories they’re eating every day (2,000), and how much water they’re supposed to drink every day (5 litres).  We know about the ’super drill’ being brought in to bore through the rock.  This early in the story, there’s still a lot of cosmetic meaning to be conveyed, an abundance of factual information.  Expect that, at some point, this level of meaning will begin to lose steam, and that the tellers of the story will begin to place more emphasis on the other two levels.

Emotional: As always, this is where the most meaning resides, where the story is most potent, and touches us most profoundly.  We know that some of Los Mineros have been depressed.  We know that they have been able to communicate with their families.  They have shared their frustration.  We feel their claustrophobia.  They have begun to play roles, and these will rouse emotions, too.  Who will give the pep talks?  Who can get them to smile?  Keeping their emotions positive will be key to their mental health during their ordeal, and so, the longer the ordeal goes on, the more crucial the emotional content of the narrative will become.

Meta: The video feed is an existential lifeline.  “I video, therefore I am.”  For this reason, its very existence is a hopeful symbol.  The handsomer guys are getting more facetime on camera.  Stars of the narrative, those who can best hold our attention, will emerge as the Cosmetic flow slows.  Bringing in the NASA psychologists to deal with the miners’ prolonged isolation is a recognition of the global significance of the narrative, and it ennobles Los Mineros by equating them with astronauts, Los Astronautas, and to the heroic qualities we ascribe them.  This blog post is, itself, meta communication about the rescue effort.

Sometimes uncovering the Meta language requires digging beneath the surface, because beneath the surface is where the Meta meaning works.  For example the number of miners, 33, has deep meta significance in the predominantly Catholic country of Chile, because 33 is commonly believed to be Jesus Christ’s age when he died on the cross.  When Los Mineros finally walk into the light, the date on the calendar will not matter, they’ll be celebrating Easter in Chile.

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