Digital Storytelling with Leslie

ITEC 800 3/20/08 – Digital Storytelling with Leslie – Notes by Arl

We’re going to learn to put together a multimedia script for our story.
We start with reading scripts. We spend a lot of time on the script, harkens back to the story circle idea. Listening to each other’s stories, learning to listen and give feedback. There’s no distance between the story and the story-teller—unlike a documentary. We tell the story, choose the pictures, and put together the piece. Authenticity to form—we don’t have to make up anything.
How to create a digital story:
1. find the experience you want to talk about. The experiences that matter.
2. tell the story of that story for a multimedia environment. 1st person, simple sentences. A lot more like a conversation—except that you match pictures to it. What happens when the two are parallel? How do you make the whole greater than the sum of the parts—by juxtapositioning them.
3. Creating the piece—the software piece.
4. Publishing and/or distributing the piece. Something becomes more real when its published. To give voice, to bear witness, to put something out in the world, it becomes more real, it has a life—
• re-storying—taking the story and te-telling it. owning yr story. Once you tell it from your pt of view, you own it in yr space.
• Idea behind this is that stories are a great way to instruct. Also for us to create something using these multimedia tools. Meaningful—to experience the power of melding story and technology.
• Think about the power of story – or using games to instruct. At the heart of gaming is the story, the narrative.
• Serious gaming—for training. You can go in and be someone else, a sense of fun, engage people in learning.
• Mobile learning (mLearning)—it’s not about computing power, it’s about mobility, it’s important to focus on small bits delivering to mobile devices. (her advice: learn flash lite)
Software: Moviemaker 2, premiere (from Adobe)—30 day free download.
I’m not going to take notes on people’s writings and the feedback we gave them. As issues come up, I’ll note them.
One of the forms: I was this person and now I’m another person and this is how that happened.
Jump right in, start with your most powerful sentence. Such as “the dramatic” question—starting with it, creates the frame/theme and then funnel down to the specific. Editorials don’t change the way people feel, individual stories change the way people feel. Everything needs to be grounded in specificity.
Compare and contrast with a level of specificity.
Do you have a specific audience in mind? It will help inform the tone. Certain techniques can help you speak to specific people.
The fork in the road—is another standard theme.
Some people talk about these stories as resurrection stories, you have to get hit in the gut and then reemerge…
Visual literacy—literal pictures that illustrate specific people/places/etc and figurative pictures like sunshine or empty playgrounds create metaphorical statements.
Authorial voice is created in this genre. Short sentences, direct addresses… “Leap and the net will appear.” People sense the truth intuitively..
Nothing is prescriptive, but the less distance the better.
Does the language fit? Can it be visually represented?
Do I know what you’re trying to say? Is there a real voice? Is there no distance?
Listen for repetition, written vs. spoken language. Let yr voice create the implied subject instead of repeating the subject.
Storyboard a paragraph—different people will show totally different things.
This is like poetry, a tight format, like a sonnet-very structured—a sonnet for the people.
KQED Digital Story Telling story workshop--Next Thursday and Saturday all day. Introductory session Tuesday 5-7pm. But we don’t need to come.
PC—use Audacity for audio editing. Use beta or new version for VO and music.
10 images. The more images you take away from the story. Small number of images—this form asks for simplicity and elegance. Compelling and authenticity are more aligned with simplicity. This form is grounded in compelling authenticity.
Ease in and ease out is available in moviemaker. There’s no “Ken Burns” effect.
Fading up and down from black, cross dissolving, transitions need to inform the story and come from the story.. important not to get too complicated.
Why are you telling this story now? What do you want to say about the experience? What makes the experience important to you? What’s the take-away? The nugget? The truth?