MediaStorm

On April 20, 2010 an explosion tore through the Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig operating in the Gulf of Mexico. The disaster happened as workers were finalizing the drilling of the exploratory Macondo well, forty miles off the coast of Louisiana. It was, by any standard, a catastrophe. To investigate this catastrophe, President Barack Obama established the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling and tasked the commission to produce a report that detailed the commission's findings and recommendations. The Gulf Spill site is an interactive and multimedia presentation of the report that describes the causes of the Deepwater Horizon spill, its immediate aftermath, and long term fallout.

Published: February 18th, 2011

Credits

A film by
Director & Executive Producer
Design & Development
Editor, Producer & Editor
Associate Producer

Recognition

2012 NPPA's Best of Photojournalism (Honorable Mention)

Multimedia Package


The Goal

On April 20, 2010 an explosion tore through the Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig operating in the Gulf of Mexico. The disaster happened as workers were finalizing the drilling of the exploratory Macondo well, forty miles off the coast of Louisiana. It was, by any standard, a catastrophe. To investigate this catastrophe, President Barack Obama established the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling and tasked the commission to produce a report that detailed the commission's findings and recommendations. The Gulf Spill site is an interactive and multimedia presentation of the report that describes the causes of the Deepwater Horizon spill, its immediate aftermath, and long term fallout.


The Challenge

With the commission’s final report being 382 pages in length, the challenge of the site was to present the essentials of the report’s findings in a way that would be accessible to the general public. The site needed to convey the series of events and decisions leading up to the spill and the consequences following after.

The guide contains:

  • a cinematic overview
  • an interactive timeline
  • a detailed timeline leading up to the well blowout
  • a section looking at the effectiveness of the response to the spill
  • a section examining the spill’s impact on the surrounding region and environment
  • a section offering recommendations for the future
  • a resource guide

The site was developed at the same time as the report was written so MediaStorm had to work closely with commission staff to establish the structure and presentation strategies for the site.

For the video portion of the site, MediaStorm was charged with creating a six to ten minute project that described the causes of the Deepwater Horizon spill, its immediate aftermath, and long term fallout.

MediaStorm was also hired to conduct many of the interviews with committee members and their scientific support team.

The MediaStorm team faced several challenges when producing the video overview. Specifically, the Oil Spill Commission required that the project speak to a general, non-scientific audience; yet many of the interview subjects were highly-skilled with specialized knowledge of the incident.

Secondly, with close to a dozen interviews ranging in length from 15 minutes to close to an hour, there was a plethora of material to distill for the final project.

Finally, finding images to illustrate the many complex and abstract ideas presented in the piece proved formidable.


The Solution

Through images, graphics, video and text, the site lets users explore the narrative of the spill, from presenting a broad look at the spill in the overview to detailing the recommendations for the future for the government, the industry, and offshore drilling.

Technically the site is written in HTML5, CSS, and jQuery with Flash only being used for the video player. Except for the video, the site is accessible to users on devices that do not support Flash and there are fall backs for browsers that do not yet support HTML5.

Producing the overview video for a general, non-scientific audience required great specificity when questioning interview subjects. The subjects were routinely asked to describe highly complex technologies in accurate but simplified language. This required both a thorough attention to detail and a conscious knowledge of the targeted viewer.

Creating a story based on 10 interviews demanded rigorous organization and a firm commitment to the MediaStorm ethos: keep the essential, take away the rest. All Interviews were transcribed, logged, and separated in to distinct sections based on specific themes. These ‘themes’ were edited to their essence and then used as building blocks to create the final narrative.

MediaStorm sought image submissions from more than a dozen photographic agencies and photographers. We surveyed close to 3,500 to find the 100 best used in the final piece. For explanations of underwater events, where images would not suffice, animations were created.


The Results

The site and overview video were well received by the Oil Spill Commission. The Executive Director of the commission, Richard Lazarus said:

"Now that the Commission's interactive multimedia website is up, I just wanted to thank you and your wonderful company, MediaStorm, for the terrific job you did in creating the website. It is spectacular. I remember well Pete's and my first meeting with MediaStorm many months ago when you showed us the kind of work you had done and we discussed generally what you might be able to accomplish in support of the work of this Commission. I had high expectations and you surpassed them. I fully expect this resource will be used by the American public in general and by teachers and students in high schools, colleges, and universities across the nation, and internationally as well. This is an enormous public service for which all of us here at the Commission are extremely grateful."


About The Client

President Barack Obama established the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling through Executive Order 13543 on May 21, 2010. The Commission will be examining the relevant facts and circumstances concerning the root causes of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and developing options to guard against, and mitigate the impact of, any oil spills associated with offshore drilling in the future.


MediaStorm Project Showcase

Back from the Brink

Once teetering on the brink of extinction, the Santa Catalina Island Fox made a dramatic recovery. Its resurgence marks one of the greatest conservation success stories in United States history.

Lights in the Shadows

In the shadow of Silicon Valley’s booming technology industry, a growing number of people remain out in the cold. Skyrocketing housing prices in America’s hub of innovation have pushed many onto the streets, straining policymakers to find solutions to a homelessness problem that impacts everyone in the community.

Zora J Murff

This page recognizing Zora J Murff for ICP’s 2023 Infinity Award for Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism features a film about his life, a slideshow of his projects and extra clips of his thoughts about his work and motivation.

Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado says "a good picture, a fantastic picture, you do in a fraction of a second, but to arrive to do this picture, you must put your life in there."

Esther Horvath

Esther Horvath has sent questions to the universe and she has received answers. She found her calling to tell visual stories that show the full research story behind our climate data.

Acacia Johnson

See photographer Acacia Johnson’s growth from her earliest explorations of Alaskan landscapes to a National Geographic cover for a documentary project among indigenous people of the Arctic.

Don McCullin

Sir Don McCullin never intended to become a photographer. He found it hard to believe he’d ever escape the poverty of North London. But a spur of the moment photograph launched McCullin into a career spanning 50 years in photography.

The War Comes Home

As the U.S. prepares for the final drawdown of soldiers from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Soledad O’Brien and MediaStorm take an intimate look at two veterans as they struggle with the transition from war to home.

Zadie Smith

Writer Zadie Smith pays homage to photographer Deana Lawson in the artist’s first Monograph for Aperture.

Fight Hate with Love

As a formerly incarcerated person, Michael struggled for work, and found purpose in being a husband, father, and activist. But 7 years since his release from prison, the cost of Michael’s activism is evident.

The American-Made Benny

Benny is a “certified” garbologist. He collects what others throw away. Benny is also at war with his family. Here is a man sharing a house with his wife but living as a stranger. This is a household on the edge.

Amber Bracken

Photographer Amber Bracken recognized something deeper than a protest was afoot when hundreds of tribes gathered at the Standing Rock reservation in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

A Shadow Remains

How does the death of a child change a parent? How does the death of a parent change a child? How do these moments change us as we develop and grow further away from who we were as children?

Maurice Berger

Maurice Berger–cultural historian, and columnist for the New York Times’ Race Stories–has spent his career studying and teaching racial literacy through visual literacy. 

Japan's Disposable Workers

Japan’s Disposable Workers examines the country’s employment crisis: from suicide caused by overworking, to temporary workers forced by economics to live in internet cafes, and the elderly who wander a town in search of shelter and food.

Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard is the celebrated author of a massive six-volume autobiography. But Knausgaard remains confused by the attention. This is a portrait of a man who has achieved massive success yet still considers himself unworthy.

The Last Move

Michael Thomasson has devoted his life to video games. It’s been his passion and his obsession for more than three decades. He owns over 11,000 unique game titles for more than 100 different systems.

Michael Christopher Brown

A film about Michael Christopher Brown for the 2017 ICP Infinity Awards.

The Long Night

The Long Night, a feature film by Tim Matsui and MediaStorm, gives voice and meaning to the crisis of minors who are forced and coerced into the American sex trade.

Jonathan Harris & Gregor Hochmuth

Jonathan Harris and Greg Hochmuth have a complicated relationship with the internet and have worked together to develop an artwork that explored some of the more difficult consequences of what it means to live with the internet.

Inside Tracks

In 1977, Robyn Davidson walked 1,700 miles across the Australian outback. National Geographic sent Rick Smolan to photograph her perilous journey—a trek that tested and transformed them, forming an immutable bond that continues to this day.

Driftless: Stories from Iowa

Once at the center of the U.S. economy, the family farm now drifts at its edges. In Iowa, old-time farmers try to hang on to their way of life, while their young push out to find their futures elsewhere. Driftless tells their stories.

Common Ground

The American family farm gives way to a subdivision - a critical cultural shift across the U.S. Common Ground is a 27-year document of this transition, through the Cagwins and the Grabenhofers, two families who love the same plot of land.

Remember These Days

For Walter Backerman, seltzer is more than a drink. It’s the embodiment of his family. As a third generation seltzer man, he follows the same route as his grandfather. But after 90 years of business, Walter may be the last seltzer man.

Art: Larry Fink

Larry Fink has spent over 40 years photographing jazz musicians, wealthy manhattanites, his neighbors, fashion models, and the celebrity elite. His archive is a thoughtful collection of American history, and Fink’s experience of it.

LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s body of work “The Notion of Family” examines the impact of the steel industry and the health care system on the community and her family. Collaborating with her mother and grandmother, she uses her family as a lens to view the past, present and future of the town.

Tomas van Houtryve

Tomas Van Houtryve wants there to be a permanent visual record of the dawn of the drone age, the period in American history when America started outsourcing their military to flying robots. In order to create this record, Van Houtryve sent his own drone into American skies.

Evgenia Arbugaeva

Evgenia Arbugaeva was born in the magical town of Tiksi, Russia. This barren, arctic landscape influenced Arbugaeva in almost every aspect of her dreamlike photography.

Surviving the Peace: Laos

Surviving the Peace: Laos takes an intimate look at the impact of unexploded bombs left over from the Vietnam war in Laos and profiles the dangerous, yet life saving work, that MAG has undertaken in the country.

A Thousand More

A family is determined to give their disabled son a whole and vital life. In the midst of a great burden, one small child – with a seemingly endless supply of love – is the blessing that holds a family together.

Lynn Johnson

Inspired by the photographs of the Farm Security Administration growing up, Lynn Johnson has spent nearly 35 years as a photojournalist working for LIFE, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and various foundations.

Resetting The Table

Resetting the Table takes a unique, personal look at the impact Starbucks’ Create Jobs for USA program has had on the American Mug & Stein pottery facility in East Liverpool, Ohio.

Hungry Horse

Hungry Horse captures the spirit of renewal, peace and serenity through stunning landscapes and intimate oral histories.

The Amazing Amy

Using humor and a love of fantasy, "The Amazing Amy" Harlib connects with audiences through performing strenuous yoga-based contortion acts in New York City.

The Bride Price

In many countries, girls as young as eight are forced into marriage by their families, culture and economic situation. This practice destroys their chance at education leading to tragic results.

David Guttenfelder

Surreal and mysterious, North Korea was a black hole to outsiders wanting a glimpse of the country. That all changed in 2012, when AP photographer David Guttenfelder led the opening of the bureau's newest office inside the North Korea.

Take Care

Virginia Gandee's brilliant red hair and dozen tattoos belie the reality of this 22-year-old's life. Inside her family's Staten Island trailer her caregiving goes far beyond the love she has for her daughter.

A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan

Based on 14 trips to Afghanistan between 1994 and 2010, A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan is the work of photojournalist Seamus Murphy. His work chronicles a people caught time and again in political turmoil, struggling to find their way.

Intended Consequences

In Rwanda, in 1994, Hutu militia committed a bloody genocide, murdering one million Tutsis. Many of the Tutsi women were spared, only to be held captive and repeatedly raped. Many became pregnant. Intended Consequences tells their stories.

The Marlboro Marine

To those who serve in the armed forces, what is the aftereffect of war? The Marlboro Marine is photographer Luis Sinco's portrait of Marine Corporal James Blake Miller, whom he met in Iraq. For Miller, coming home has been its own battle.

Ivory Wars

Zakouma National Park is one of the last places on earth where elephants still roam by the thousands. In a land where poachers will slaughter the huge animals for their tusks alone, it takes armed guards to keep them safe.

Kingsley's Crossing

Kingsley's Crossing is the story of one man's dream to leave the poverty of life in Africa for the promised land of Europe. We walk in his shoes, as photojournalist Olivier Jobard accompanies Kingsley on his uncertain and perilous journey.


Collaborate With Us

We collaborate with a wide range of clients to tell their story. Our services include reporting, post production, interactive design and interactive packaging.

The MediaStorm Platform is an advanced video platform that extends the user experience beyond linear video to include the interactive capabilities of the Internet. 

Learn storytelling, filmmaking, video, multimedia production and business skills through MediaStorm’s intensive, hands-on workshops and in-depth online training resources.



The MediaStorm Platform is an advanced video platform that extends the user experience beyond linear video to include the interactive capabilities of the Internet. 


Follow MediaStorm


Copyright 2025 MediaStorm, LLC | Terms & Conditions | Privacy | Contact