KEVIN WHITAKER
Complex Stories Told Simply
SAMPLES

Hello!

Not Only . . .

  • I am a writer with extensive independent and in-house experience in the writing of marketing copy, technical and training materials, Concept and proposal documents, and scripts (video, film, audio, interactive, and live presentations).

  • Clients have included two-person product development teams to America’s premiere not-for-profit health care provider to the biggest entertainment company on Earth (well, the biggest one that's headed by a cartoon mouse).

  • Storytelling has been at the heart of most all my work over the last quarter century . . . with words, illustrations, photographs, Websites, print media, video, audio, film, animation, immersive environments, museum exhibits, virtual reality realms, educational attractions, live performances being the channels for telling those stories.

    • Hello, II!

    . . . But Also . . .

  • Work has run the gamut from creating "B2B" materials used to directly influence the purchase of health care services for nearly 9 million Californians, to an explosive/iconic theme park stunt attraction. What else? Uh, well there is . . .

    • That captured enemy submarine I helped bury in Chicago
    And the strangely formal debut of scary presidential teeth;
    And when I helped bring stale pizza scent to the to virtual reality;
    And the story of an Eerie “almost island;”
    And that 500-foot-tall animated laser-beaver I helped bring to life.

  • But all that's another story . . .

    •  

    Marketing

    Marketing/Copywriting Samples & Concept Development Samples

    Marketing/B2B/Copywriting Samples

    Entertainment/Museum Concept Development Samples

    Creative Development

    Scripts

  • Grand Coulee Dam Animation Script

    • Uesegi Farms Paintball Hay Ride "Radio" Script

     

    Online Section

    Online Samples


    Radio Powerhouse of the Air:

    "Twilight of the Cello, Midnight of the Celli"

    DeScope - A Cranky Journal of Themed Design Development:

    "The Resistible Rise of Mickey Mouse, Swampland Socialist"

    DeScope - A Cranky Journal of Themed Design Development:

    "The Firesign Theater's 'I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus . . ."

    Radio Powerhouse of the Air:

    "Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds!"

    DeScope - A Cranky Journal of Themed Design Development:

    "Theme Park Ballyhoo!"

    DeScope - A Cranky Journal of Themed Design Development:

    "Have you been out to Disneyland, When the moon is shinin' bright?"

    Biography & Resume

    BIOGRAPHY & RESUME

  • The Early Years
    Born, raised, and educated in Southern California. Early love of reading, theater, movies, and history led me to the study of Broadcast Communications at Cal Poly, Pomona. While there I considered changing my major to some branch of education: language arts, media studies, something of that nature. I chose in the end to continue with Communications through to graduation but nevertheless treated myself to many of the history, theater, and literature classes I would have needed had I made the formal change. A wide educational arc toward graduation and more than worth the effort.

    “My Boss is a Cartoon Mouse (Isn't Everybody's?)”
    During a period of astonishing growth in all areas of the Walt Disney Company, I joined Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) in Glendale, CA, as a show writer working on shows and attractions for Disney theme parks in California, Florida, Japan, and France. WDI further reinforced for me the value of creating complete, multisensory environments as a form of storytelling and provided an ideal platform for developing a variety of writing styles: long-form concept proposals, scripts of all sorts, marketing copy, technical documentation, and by way of the careful attention given to the use of storyboards, developing stories via visual scripting. These years were also a crash-course in the conception and development of experiences for a wide variety of audiences, personalities, and “multiple-intelligence learners.”

    After Disney, I continued as a freelance writer and concept designer with several themed entertainment groups and design entities large and small. Post-Disney period provided further opportunities to explore the use of setting and interactive storytelling in entertainment and education with the development and scripting of several CD-ROM-based “edu-taiment” games.

    From CA Theme Parks to MA Museums
    There has long been a parallel between the design and development worlds of themed venues and museum exhibits. While still working in the theme park realm, I started communicating with museum exhibit design firms across the country, particularly those in Massachusetts. I eventually joined a noted Boston design group as part of their exhibit and “educational attraction” development team. Working there allowed me to further expand my concept and media scripting experiences while giving me the chance to work closely with an ever-widening array of subject matter experts who included educational specialists, historians, land-use planners, historic restoration experts, industrial archeologists, and more.

    The Whole Story . . . in 75 Words or Less
    The prevailing wisdom, reinforced time and again in studies of exhibit visitors, is that the maximum word count for major blocks of introductory text, such as the overview a visitor might see at the entrance to a museum exhibit, should be no more than 75 words; expository text used throughout an exhibit shouldn’t be much more than even twice that if possible. In other words, key story points of even the most involved stories needed to be pared down to their bare minimum, a sort of “exhibit haiku.”

    Researching and writing these terse (hopefully) engaging pieces of text to be read and understood by the multiple audiences for different types of exhibits was somewhat akin to the marketing writing I had done in previous years. Working always to achieve writing that was clear, concise, and complete greatly honed my abilities at parsing large quantities of information to select the salient elements of individual parts of larger historic and scientific stories

    • Back to the Southland
    I continued to work as an independent freelance museum exhibit designer and writer for several years after leaving Boston and returning to California.

    While pitching a mobile health education fair proposal to the not-for-profit Kaiser Permanente Health Plan, I found they were seeking writers who specialized in working with multiple health care and health insurance for the purpose of writing—essentially—the sorts of clear, concise, and complete work I had been doing for museums. An interesting challenge that provided the chance to work with an expanding marketing group in the creation of specialized marketing content, develop an editorial style allowing content to be used across multiple platforms, and be a part in the creation of a distinctive marketing “voice” for the Kaiser Permanente marketing used to directly influence the purchase of health care services for nearly 9 million Californians.

    Because February in Malibu Isn’t Cold Enough
    In time, freelance marketing and independent design work brought me back again to Massachusetts where I continue to cast a wide “writing, marketing, and creative development” net.

    Stuff:

    "The primary goal in all lines of business is to always sharpen and extend the brand across all media and in all venues."

    "Everything is about storytelling, making connections that are simple, personal, and memorable."

    "There is nothing worse than boring your audience."

    "Restore, recycle, reuse: it’s never too late to make a great second impression."

    "The only thing better than delighting an audience is doing it in a way they never would have expected."

    My Motto:

    “Peace Through Superior Creativity”

    Resume