What is Cognito’s Story Therapy
For scripted, documentary, series, and organizations.
The problem is rarely structure. It’s a lack of subtext, an oversimplified arc, an unwillingness to allow uncertainty.
A second act stalls because the character wants something the writer has not admitted yet. A documentary goes flat because the subject is protecting something and the filmmaker doesn’t know how to tease that out. A pitch fails because the film is about grief and the deck says it is about a woman struggling with depression. A nonprofit cannot say what it does because saying it plainly would mean admitting the confusion at the core.
Story Therapy is a psychological read on your material. What people are actually doing, as opposed to what the script says they are doing.
How it works
Initial consultation. This is Free. We just listen.
A read and a session. Send the script, the treatment, the comms deck, or the rough cut. We read it properly, then we sit down for two hours and tell you what we found.
Ongoing. Some projects need one conversation. Others need someone in the room from the first idea through lock. We do both.
A workshop. For the lead creative, the team or a cohort.
Led by Leda Maliga, who has spent twenty-five years in production and is a registered associate marriage and family therapist at Echo Park Creative Psychology.
For Organizations
Most organizations have a communications problem that is really a story problem, and a story problem that is really an identity problem
Packages
THE AUDIT. Three weeks. $6,500.
Every channel reviewed, what is actually performing, who is actually watching, brand voice and visual consistency, and written findings in priority order. Then a working session with your team.
THE BUILD. Eight weeks. $16,000.
The audit plus the rebuild. Messaging framework, brand voice guide, a template suite for social, email, print, and fundraising your staff can run without a designer, and a training session so they own it.
THE RUN. $5,500 or $9,500 a month.
Ongoing communications management. Channels and content, the email program, campaign planning, and a monthly read on what actually worked rather than what felt busy. Roughly ten hours a week is $5,500. Roughly twenty is $9,500. Three months to start, then month to month.
Film work is quoted per project.