In an age of viral videos and tweets that travel around the world in seconds, I’m still surprised by emails like the one below from a woman who’d purchased one of Nathalie’s paintings to David Engdahl.

Here’s the email:

“In 1972, I purchased an oil painting, ‘In Wildness is the Preservation of the World’ done so beautifully by your mother, Nathalie. It had been part of a display of her work at Lebanon Valley College. I was taking a night course at the time, saw the painting, and had to have it. Oh! How I have cherished its beauty!  At the time, your mother wrote me 3 letters describing her technique, her new farm, Stillmeadow near York, and how nature gave her inspiration to paint.

My husband and I were painting our bedroom a few weeks ago. Since I had taken the painting down from above our bed, I decided it was time to attach those letters to the back of it so our 3 children would know about the artist.

Forty years have passed since I acquired the painting and I commented to my husband that Nathalie had probably died. Then I had an ingenious thought, ‘Why not Google her?’ Days ago I was thrilled to read about your 96-year-old mother and appreciated the video Natalie Halpern created.

I do hope your mother continues in good health and that if possible you could send her my message to you, to somehow thank her for her talent that has so warmed my heart over the years. My particular painting is of woods in Spring and reminds me of a walk we had taken as a family in 1971 in a state park in Maryland. I glimpsed a pileated woodpecker there for the first time in my life. The walk in that woods, on such a perfect day, is always relived when I see your mother’s work.”

Films bridge distances and time, building emotional connections with people we’ve never had the chance to meet or haven’t seen in decades. They bring to the surface feelings and defining moments in our lives.

Having a hand in that is a big source of inspiration.

For three days I listened to the stories of employees whose loved ones had received the compassionate care that enabled them to live their last days with grace or the experiences of families who received so much support and comfort in caring for their children with life-limiting conditions.

Instead of sadness, the commitment of so many people to improve the quality of life for patients and families dealing with advanced illness inspired me.

I not only gained great insight into a subject that most of us shy away from, but I also realized that Hospice is not a place where people go to die but rather one which helps people live with beauty and dignity.

If you’d like to hear how Community Hospice’s compassionate care impacts our community in the words of employees and volunteers who dedicate each and every day to this noble cause, click on the following links.

http://www.communityhospice.com/About-Us/EmployeeTestimonials.aspx

http://www.communityhospice.com/Our-Services/Childrens-Services.aspx

Empathetic

Good listener

Responsive

Trustworthy

Attentive

Knowledgeable

Inquisitive

Engaged

We know this subconsciously, since that’s what we expect when we’re sitting in the customer’s seat. But as with trying to understand where your interview subject is coming from and how difficult it may be to share his or her story, we need to walk in the customer’s shoes to know how to best meet his or her needs.

And to do that—attitude is key. Whether it’s communicating on the customer’s level, being a trusted advisor or being an active listener, wanting to do whatever it takes to build a good and trusting client relationship is the foundation for your business’ success.

Nielsen is widely known for its TV ratings. But it does so much more than measure what people watch. It also tracks what people buy through a variety of new technologies.

Nielsen’s innovative spirit was what the company’s Chief Operating Officer, Mitchell Habib, wanted to capture in a high-energy video for an audience of corporate executives in India.

In collaboration with Harrington Design Company, I filmed interviews with some of Nielsen’s lead inventors and produced four 90-second videos, each highlighting a different innovation.

It was some of the best work we had done for Nielsen and we were excited to show Mitchell the culmination of three weeks of work. So we flew to New York to make the big presentation to Mitchell at Nielsen’s headquarters.

Ten minutes into the meeting, all four videos were killed.

We had 72 hours before he boarded a plane to India to come up with a totally new concept and put it together. After several deep breaths and some reassuring self-talk, we began working on a completely new piece, which weaved together short clips of Nielsen’s innovation stories with a funky beat and animations to match.

Here’s what adrenalin helped create, in addition to a very happy client.

One of the movie industry’s biggest surprises of 2011 is the silent film, “The Artist,” winner of a Golden Globe for Best Picture, Comedy, a Best Actor award at Cannes and a likely contender for this year’s Oscars.

In the film, directed by Michel Hazanavicius, silent movie idol George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) mourns the arrival of talkies. Refusing to adapt to the new genre, Valentin’s career falls apart.

Like Valentin’s career, Jacksonville took off during the heyday of silent films. The site of the country’s first full-length feature film in Technicolor, “The Gulf Between,” Jacksonville almost became Hollywood with more than 30 movie studios operating in the city by 1916, including Metro Pictures which later became known as MGM.

Unfortunately, residents disliked the vulgarity of the films, and local government support for the film industry waned. That in addition to advances in technology, which made indoor filming and studios less dependent on the Florida sunshine prompted the film industry to move to Hollywood.

With its strong connection to our city’s filmic roots, “The Artist” brings back the nostalgia of an era where stars were born on the silver screen and the magic of movies helped people escape their everyday lives.

York Painter Nathalie Engdahl from Natalie Halpern on Vimeo.

When Jacksonville sculptor David Engdahl commissioned a film about his 96-year-old mother who’s been painting for more than 40 years, I jumped at the chance to explore where David and his sister, watercolor artist Ellen’s artistic talents come from.

Nathalie uses a palette knife to give people a glimpse of nature raw and untouched. She paints images of places where the family lived or spent vacations, sometimes combining several into one painting.

During filming one of the main challenges we faced was bringing the paintings to life.  Cinematographer Gareth Paul Cox used a Cineslider, a small dolly that attaches to a special tripod head, to add some movement and guide the viewer through a scene in the woods or a patch of colorful flowers.

Being able to capture Nathalie’s creative spirit, energy and zest for life was incredibly meaningful for me. But even more fulfilling was the opportunity to create a legacy piece that tells the story of the Engdahl’s artistic roots that the family will enjoy for many generations to come.

A big thank you to David and Nathalie Engdahl for giving me this opportunity and allowing me into their lives.

Stop at Nothing, headquartered in Jacksonville Beach, works with companies around the world to increase leadership effectiveness and transform corporate culture. They needed a powerful way to capture their consultants’ passion for unlocking the potential of leaders and teams to collaborate more and innovate.

Its founders decided that would be best accomplished through visual storytelling and ask me to produce three short Web films to tell the “Stop at Nothing” story and highlight the motivation behind the transformative work the company does.

Here’s one the videos I produced.

We learn about ourselves, our families and our history through stories.

Stories are how we are remembered, a record that we were here and made an impact on the world.

My most recent project, a film about 96-year-old painter Nathalie Engdahl, is a tribute to this mother of four children, two of them artists—sculptor David Engdahl and painter Ellen Ehlenbeck.

Nathalie’s passion is painting nature raw and untouched to get people in today’s fast-paced society to appreciate the stillness and beauty that surrounds them.

The film is a celebration of her career as an artist, her creative inspiration and the legacy she is leaving her family and the arts community in her native York, Pennsylvania.

The film is due out later this summer.

I presented at a July 12 half-day program,“The Power of Story,” which I organized for the Jacksonville Chapter of the American Marketing Association. In addition to sharing with marketing professionals why story matters, my talk focused on how more and more companies are using film to communicate with consumers in a deeper, more meaningful way.

One of the main themes was that films engage, inspire and compel us to action. That’s because they affect us emotionally as we identify with characters whose dreams, challenges, and journeys toward goals are very much like our own.

Their story is our story.

Barbara Ponce, Manager of Corporate and Diversity Advertising at Honda shared her experience in conceiving and pitching the “Dream the Impossible” documentary film series to reach audiences in a way that no 30-second spot could.

The eight films which she spearheaded using renowned and Oscar-nominated directors have resulted in a 1000-fold increase in Honda web traffic, generated thousands of comments and taken consumer engagement to a whole new level.

Like Honda many brands and organizations are switching their approach from interruptive marketing—interrupting consumers with advertising messaging—to engagement marketing—offering engaging and relevant content.

Film is the new text. It allow brands to bring to life their core sensibilities.

I’ll be speaking about the Power of Story next at Pecha Kucha on September 21 at 7 p.m. at the Five Points Theatre.

Stories are central to the human experience. Delivering information with emotional impact, they engage and entertain us.

People want to learn, seek inspiration and connect with others through stories.

Companies and brands that connect with audiences by telling compelling stories that matter to them instead of directly promoting their products, are remembered most.

Because video is a very powerful way to tell a story, more and more companies are embracing video storytelling to more deeply engage with consumers and develop stronger relationships with them.

Honda is one such company. Through its “Dream the Impossible” series of documentary films, the company connects viewers with the idea that nothing is impossible if you follow your dreams.

Directed by Oscar-nominated and other prominent filmmakers, the films feature people like professional surfer Laird Hamilton, artist Clive Barker, and Deepak Chopra, as well as with Honda engineers, sharing stories of success, perseverance and failure.

Started in 2009, the campaign has resulted in a tenfold increase in web traffic and significantly improved brand image and recognition.

Honda’s “Dream the Impossible” films, “The Undying Dream” being the most recent, are among many examples of powerful video storytelling which serves as a kind of emotional glue that connects us to each other.

What examples have you come across? Are there any films, videos or anecdotes on the power of story that you’d like to share? Please post them in the comments below and let’s keep this conversation going.