On April 18th, 1987, Catherine Russell first stepped on stage to perform the role of Margaret Thorne Brent in the play, Perfect Crime. Twenty-five years and only four missed performances later, she resides in The Guinness Book of World Records for the most performances by an actor in a single part. Russell estimates that two and a half years of her life have been spent on stage playing this role.

Russell’s dedication to the role rewards her with both professional notoriety and stability. But the impact of performing eight times a week, as well as managing the theater and teaching acting classes, demands great personal sacrifices.

A Hundred Different Ways is a product of the MediaStorm Storytelling Workshop, where participants work alongside MediaStorm staff to create an intimate, character-driven documentary in just one week. Learn more about upcoming MediaStorm workshops and online training at mediastorm.com/train.

Lauren Hermele, Video, Photography, and Editor

The intense passion, dedication and respect for the creative multimedia process at MediaStorm is inspiring and downright contagious! The hierarchy of the steps I’ll follow in my future projects and when re-editing past projects has permanently shifted, it’s been a workflow revolution. Thank you!

After this week, I realized yet again why it's so important to methodically first and foremost create a strong narrative. Without that, things fall apart. Working on our story, I also felt an incredible affirmation and excitement for the fact that everyone has a story, big or small. Sometimes it’s just a matter of patience to get to the nuances of the good stuff, something we all can identify with. I also love the idea of giving back to our subject, and helping to share her voice in a different way.

With the fantastic help of Tim, Rob and Brian I am also getting my mind around how shooting video requires a different thought process than shooting stills. The other day, when I was shooting stills, I realized that my mind was in video mode—that was a first for me…I laughed out loud. During the workshop, I was also reminded how huge and intricate of a task it is to make a strong piece, and how great it is to work and learn as a team, something that I rarely get to do. There’s a lot of the technical tricks I learned, but the subtleties of emotion, beat, rhythm, passion and patience are what have inspired me the most, and left me excited about making new work.

Peter Lundberg, Video and Photography

The people within MediaStorm are all highly motivated and very skilled professionals. Their teaching is very "hands on" but still they get you all the theory behind the choices needed to be made when creating a touching story. Every detail is explained and I have tons of notes with "do and dont's" which I can apply to my own upcomming projects. Brian Storm, Tim McLauglin, Rob Finch and Margaret Cheatham Williams gave me the tools to organize the different parts of a multimedia story and efficienlty work them in to a captiving story. It was a tough week, but within a friendly and warm atmosphere. I would encourage every professional who gets the chance to attend this workshop.

MediaStorm online training videos provide essential tools and techniques proven to enhance production and post-production. Created from years of live training experience, the online training videos provide useful tips no matter what your role.

MediaStorm's award-winning team of producers and cinematographers lead the online training videos with lessons learned from their experience producing films and training groups and organizations around the world.