Having prepared and reviewed media proposals for federal agencies
during her tenure at WNET in New York, JoAnna had a clear idea of
the strengths and weaknesses of educational proposals for IMAX films.
Recognizing her expertise and experience, in 1997 director Bayley
Silleck invited JoAnna to develop and direct the public outreach programming
for Lost Worlds.
Long before the project went into production, JoAnna formulated and
developed the proposal, funded by the NSF, for the movie's educational
materials and outreach. She applied the lessons she learned when she
organized and ran the first national conference on the use of history
in broadcast media to organize a symposium for Lost Worlds
at the American Museum of Natural History. The goals of the Museum
symposium were to develop cooperative and innovative outreach efforts
in communities across the country. A wide range of people were invited
and attended: professionals from the IMAX theater industry; formal
and informal science educators; educational media outreach experts;
exhibition designers and developers; and renowned scholars and researchers
from inside and outside the Museum. JoAnna's role was not just to
direct and coordinate this undertaking, but to decide upon the focus
of the materials.
IMAX films are shown at museums and science centers, venues that bring
in new audiences every hour. JoAnna describes a noon screening, midweek
at the Museum in New York. School buses line the streets and a boisterous
group of impatient kids—middle and high school students—wait
excitedly on line to enter the theater. But as soon as they take their
seats and the lights go down and the film begins, they immediately
become quiet, mesmerized by the IMAX experience.
A long-standing member of the public television community in the United
States, JoAnna considers strong writing skills to be essential to
anyone working in the broadcast community. A cogent and logical piece
of writing, she stresses, reflects the writer's clarity of thought.
Clear writing is the expression of clear ideas. Without the ability
to communicate ideas to people, you can't reach them—a fact that
applies equally to writing scripts for films, educational materials
to accompany them, and the original proposals developed to raise funds
for a project and inspire the best people to work on it.
JoAnna admits that she has been bitten by the IMAX bug herself. In
her current position as Director of the Office of New Ventures at
Partners Healthcare System, based in Boston, she has two new IMAX
films in development: both cover topics in the biological sciences.
Unlike a public television series, in which you have the opportunity
to tell a story in depth and from multiple perspectives, an IMAX movie
is only 35-40 minutes long. How do you tell a compelling story in
such a short space of time? JoAnna has found her next challenge!
