This is where the digital stories will be made. There needs to be enough space, tables, chairs to accommodate all the equipment and people. Power points along two sides of the room makes safe rigging easier. It’s good if it has natural light and ventilation but’s essential it can be made dark enough for images from the data projector to have impact. E.g. some kind of blinds or curtains for blackout.
If you’re running a workshop - as opposed to one-to-one - set the furniture out classroom style, in rows, facing the screen. Allow adequate space for the data projector to show from the back of the room. There also needs to be sufficient space in the room to accommodate additional equipment (scanners, printer, camera chargers, etc.) and to allow trainers to move comfortably between storytellers.
On different days, this main room may also be used for briefings, image capture and script sessions. If used for storycircle, up to 14 seats arranged in boardroom style seems to work well.
It may need to be locked and alarmed if equipment’s left overnight.
This is the second in a mini-series of four articles on www.aberth.com/blog about the ideal spaces for your digital storytelling workshop.
Katrina Kirkwood has just finished archiving the Rhondda Lives films on one fantastic new website: www.rhonddalives.org.uk. There are 80 stories to view.
The rationale behind the project is explained and there’s a description of how the stories were made.
I’m a member of the Museums 3.0 Ning group and I think that group’s members will really enjoy seeing such an innovative melding of existing public archive with personal storytelling by members of the communities depicted in the archive.
I’m sure all the storytellers will be proud to have their stories displayed on Katrina’s new Rhondda Lives website. If you’d like a suggestion of one to watch first … how about this one: Lilian Hobbs’s story about the two-foot-eight?
“It excites me that I can be part of this new age. Words, pictures and music if anything can lift the sprite and engender enthusiasm” - Joan van Oosterom (87)
More than 70 Digital Stories have been produced since the project started in January 2008 by the Coromandel Community Digital Storytelling Project. It’s an initiative to record, preserve, and share the history and stories of the Coromandel community using Digital Storytelling. It’s all about creating lasting impressions.
Workshop equipment includes:
6 shuttle computers (20×20x30cm)
Adobe Premiere Elements software
Headphones
Cano Scan 8800F scanner (scans slides and negatives as well as photographs and documents)
Printer
Projector & speakers
Sound recording equipment
Discovered via a presentation by Vanessa James.
1. Make sure each digital storyteller in the workshop watches their film from start to finish
2. Make sure there are no mistakes with narration or images: an image duplicated or in the wrong place, a piece of narration clashing with an image
3. Correct any typos in the titles or credits
4. Double-check the spelling of names
When adding titles and end credits to your digital story, use only the middle 80% of the screen. The central area is the TV safe area. If you creep too far out to the edges, there’s a risk letters will get lost if the story’s broadcast on TV. Old cathode-ray tube TVs trim the edges and on newer LCD screens, people often have their zoom set to ‘automatic’, which trims the edges. This TV safe area tip is one I learned from Rob Thompson. He used to be a video editor at BBC Wales but I think he now works with Avid in the Middle East.
Showing landscape-oriented photos and still images in your digital story is straightforward. You just crop, constraining dimensions to 768 x 576 pixels, or whichever dimensions you use. But how do you crop and display portrait-oriented images in your story? If you want full control over the way your portrait-oriented photos are shown in your digital story, here are the steps I use when explaining cropping and showing them.
In Photoshop…
change background colour to Black (usually)
Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool. When you click and drag out, you’ll notice the ‘marching ants’ around your selection
On the top Menu bar: Edit > Copy
Menu: File > New > Background colour (black)
Menu: Edit > Paste
If you need to rotate your photo. Menu: Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary
I learned this back in 2001 from Joe Lambert, Nina Mullen and Daniel Meadows. By the way, while we’re on the subject of images, have a look at these ace photography tips by Carwyn Evans on the Capture Wales site.
Here’s a tip that will make post-production, storing, archiving and finding individual digital stories easier.
When working with workshop participants and individuals, ask them to make a final decision about which name they will use on their digital story.
This seems so simple, but some people find it difficult because:
they have a name like John Smith which makes it hard to identify or make themselves stand out in public
the name by which they’re known is not their given name
they think they may like to keep the option of telling an anonymous story
etc
Having decided on a name. Make one folder called, say, “joe-m-bloggs”. Spelling is important, as is not using spaces in the folder name. On BBC Capture Wales / Cipolwg ar Gymru workshops, inside this folder we always used to make sub-folders for:
projects
scans
sized_images
soundtrack
titles
video
voice-over
This folder is the storyteller Joe M. Bloggs’s special place on the workshop computer. Joe will use these folders to store the pictures and sounds that he is going to use in the making of his film.
This kind of tidy housekeeping is something I learned mainly from Huw Davies when he was in charge of post production at BBC Capture Wales. When you’re working with groups of digital storytellers in workshops, having each person’s assets all within one named folder is essential. It makes it easy to to keep track of everything, give individuals a copy of not just their story but their source materials. Cleaning up the machines ready for the next workshop also becomes easier.
From the Capture Wales guide, here’s an article on editing your digital story by Huw Davies.
A year ago, I pondered about Stories That Work with the Sound Turned Off. Today I saw this four-minute movie: A Thousand Words. The movie’s by Ted Chung; thanks for the link to @ShortFilmFest) It’s a personal story - albeit fiction, maybe - but it’s an utterly engaging ’silent’ movie about a chance encounter. It’s got romance, zing and it leaves you wanting more.
This four minute personal romance is a perfect form for civic screens, noisy pubs, tube escalators, etc.
I love it.
Telling stories of Llanberis slate and Hollywood features, more than a hundred digital storytellers gathered for the annual digital storytelling festival in Aberystwyth. Here’s my illustrated story of the day…
L to R: Annette Mees, Dai Evans (holding the new-technology version of a teaspoon) and Bonnie Shaw.
DS4 - 17 June 2009, Aberystwyth Arts Centre
Huw Davies showed intergenerational stories based around old silent colour footage of farming in north-east Wales. And announced he’s secured £200k funding for a feature film mixing old and new footage, with the new being shot by 150 especially-trained film-makers/digital storytellers in Rhyl.
Annette Mees described how playing Big Ball Bingo and listening to community-members’ stories helped to bring people together in Shoreditch, London.
Cadwyd is Welsh for ‘kept’ or ‘for safekeeping’ and Rhian Cadwaladr and Gwion Llwyd shared stories about a Llanberis Slate Mine, at the foot of Snowdon.
I had lunch with digital Storyteller and photographer Dai Evans and his son Huw. Three generations of Dai’s family have made digital stories.
Bonnie Shaw said she’s invented the Snap-Shot-City photo-challenge format as part of a plan to hatch the best-ever party.
Video Nation’s Melanie Lindsell and Alyson Fielding showed footage from Everest, a WWI Memorial Rap from Newport and a kitchen-sink monologue from Cwm Gwendraeth, as well as inviting contributions to the soon-to-be-launched Video Nation Network website.
This post has been about DS4. Here are links if you’d like to read about 2008’s DS3 or DS2 in 2007. Unfortunately, the website of ‘DS1′ - the first International Conference of Digital Storytelling at BBC Wales 28-30 November 2003 is no longer live.
So, will there be a DS5? That’s a question people were asking in Aberystwyth yesterday. By the evidence of the effervescent digital storytelling scene in Wales on display in DS4, I’d reply with a resounding “I hope so”.
Mrs Smoke is Dyane Smokorowski: a Technology Instructional Coach and Integrationist for the Andover Schools and an Intel US Senior Trainer in Andover, KS, USA. You can follow her on Twitter via http://twitter.com/Mrs_Smoke.
This post is a response to a question asked on Museum 3.0 group about: “the future of digital storytelling in regards to broader social networking tools” by Angelina Russo, an Associate Professor at Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia. As this question’s related to museum of the future, I’ll begin with an editorial approach to applications of digital storytelling in museums, libraries, galleries and other public spaces before addressing technical issues.
The teaching of the activity of digital storytelling in public spaces can form part of a museum’s educational program where:
people learn about history, area, objects, etc.
the learning spans curriculum areas
media literacy is improved
citizens get their voice ‘exhibited’ in their spaces
By the way, making a digial story in a workshop offers the best experience with associated community benefits. Kiosks offer a poorer experience but fewer resources are needed. Here are some themes of digital stories shown in public spaces:
personal reflection by individuals about object(s) owned by museum (rights permitting)
personal reflection about people’s own treasured objects. This is a good way of injecting meaning when museums present iconic objects like gameboys, Etch-a-Sketch and teddy bears
personal stories about an era or past event
stories about ‘now’, which will take on different significance when exhibited in the future
content presented won’t always be especially commissioned, it’ll also be licensed from authors already self-publishing their digital stories and videos on the web
Technical trends include:
mobile phones being used to capture and increasingly to edit and upload stories
video clips as well as still images being used as building blocks of digital stories because individuals’ personal archives consist increasingly of video clips, often on mobile phones.
If you work in a museum, library or archive and you’re looking for digital storytelling inspiration, here are links to three ideas in this blog:
Archive Meets Storytelling - A step-by-step set of instructions on how to run a workshop which delivers short videos mixing considered but unscripted personal reminiscence with existing archive footage.
What a Museum is- Pondering on museum paradigms: “Living-memory sections of museums are more to do with memories than artefacts. So museum managers can feel free to move away from traditional perceptions of what it is they’re doing. That’s when they’ll feel it’s OK to instruct their staff to spend less time on objects and more on helping people to share their own memories with other visitors.”
How can museums resource this: recording and sharing visitors’ interpretations and stories about its artefacts?
One of the challenges around publishing personal stories made by lots of people is keeping on top of the ethical issues around the right to portray others in public. This will be especially true of teachers and also of public organisations like museums, libraries and educational courses. Recording, tracking and demonstrating that there’s proof that individuals are happy for you to show their work is one thing; getting second signoff by a parent/guardian in the case of stories by children, young people and vulnerable people is quite another. From my experience in BBC production, it’s the showing of individuals’ faces that brings on the paperwork.
As pondered on this, I came up with an idea that’s aimed at museums that would like to encourage visitors to tell their own personal stories about its artefacts. A story form which is captured in a kiosk where the artefact is shown but the face of the storyteller isn’t necessarily shown frees up the museum to:
1. open the activity up to many more people, including people who are more shy to show their faces
2. worry less about consents.
The story needs to be expertly facilitated, but technical resources can be reduced by setting up an automatic capture kiosk. Here’s how it works:
1. the visitor chooses an artefact that means something to them
2. they sign their name on a sheet below the video camera’s len, then pick up and hold the artefact whilst telling their story. They carry the object ‘out of frame’ at the end of their story, leaving just their signature in shot.
The end-product is a one-minute video clip which the museum shows alongside the artefact and which is burned onto a DVD for the visitor to take away.
Here’s a rough-and-ready proof of concept so you can see what I mean:
I hope you find this model useful; please feel free to add comments.
Students benefit from maintaining online multimedia portfolios of their work - blogfolios - according to Jason Ohler, author of the book ‘Digital Storytelling in the Classroom’:
“As part of the technology infusion coursework, each student creates a ‘blogfolio’ that serves as both a work repository and reflection venue throughout the year. The work they create includes digital stories, documentaries, slide presentations, diagrams and artwork, podcasts, screen casts, lesson plans, units of instruction and essays. A typical blogfolio entry consists of a reflective text piece, which includes links to media they have created for an assignment that they have posted on the web using services such as YouTube, SlideShare and Google Docs.”
Just announced: DS4’s programme looks great with Huw Davies (BBC Capture Wales), Annette Mees (Coney’s Shoreditch Ball Park), Bonnie Shaw (Snap-Shot-Storytelling) and fascinating breakouts. The new DS4 website is live: http://www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk/DS4/ and you can book online for £14.50.
If you or your organisation would like screen-space to show digital stories - or to have your own stand - at DS4, Sophie Bennett of Aberystwyth Arts Centre can help. Her contact details are sob at aber dot ac dot uk Tel. 01970 622338. DS4
takes place in Aberystwyth on 17th June 2009.
Verdi’s made this concise, useful training video about using consumer camcorders for the citizen journalism end of the video blogging spectrum at Freevlog.
May 16th is the second International Day for Sharing Life Stories - a chance to “celebrate and promote life stories, as a way to encourage critical thinking, cultural democratization and social transformation.”
The organisers are The Museum of the Person International Network and the Center for Digital Storytelling and, if you’d like to organise an activity, you can contact them via http://ausculti.org/
Rural Wrexham Digital Storytelling is running a series of digital storytelling workshops between 27 April - 12 May. The project is being co-ordinated by Northern Marches Cymru with support from staff and students at Yale College.The Brymbo workshops will run on April 27 and 28, May 5, 11 and 2.
There’s a programme about storytelling on BBC TWO Wales in May that sounds interesting. Here’s the advance publicity:
In a unique project Cardiff City FC*, Cardiff Library Services, and the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling, Atrium - each with new homes in the nation’s capital just opened or about to open – tell and teach stories to local primary school children. Cardiff City FC – Kick into Reading. Alfresco/Boomerang 1 x 30 BBC TWO Wales. Prod: Liz Lloyd-Griffiths.
StoryWorks has been established to support public service organisations interested in using people’s stories to improve what they do. It’s based at the University of Glamorgan’s Welsh Institute for Health and Social Care and led by Karen Lewis, former Capture Wales project producer, who says: “Stories offer huge potential to reveal what people really experience from service providers, and what they actually want. First hand accounts, in people’s own words, can be a uniquely powerful way of ‘hearing it like it is’.”
Here are the details of the the workshop from the website:
StoryWorks is running a three-day digital storytelling workshop in Cardiff, Wales, from 6-9 May 2009. This is a great opportunity to learn the techniques of digital storytelling with experienced facilitators from the former BBC award-winning Digital Storytelling team. In a small group of participants, you will work with the facilitators to prepare a script, record your voice and work with your own photographs/images to create a short multi-media piece (a digital story), using computer technology.
You will produce your digital story on a subject of your choice and will receive a copy of your story on DVD following the workshop. This is a chance to learn new skills and create a multi-media piece that could be very valuable to you as an individual and/or your organisation. The cost is £475 for the three days, lunch and refreshments are included. Places are limited and payment must be received prior to attendance on the workshop.
I worked closely with Karen, Carwyn and Lisa with Capture Wales and they’re all fantastically skilled and experienced digital storytelling practitioners. Attending this workshop is a not-to-be-missed opportunity.
Here are the latest details about the fourth annual festival of digital storytelling in Aberystwyth, Wales, on Wednesday 17 June 2009, from a press release from Aberystwyth Arts Centre:
Following on from the success of DS3 the fourth festival of Digital Storytelling DS4 aims to inspire and encourage and show the exciting possibilities of Digital Storytelling and brings you up to date with what is happening in the world of Digital Storytelling.
Whether you work in education, the community or as an artist, it is your opportunity to share experiences, explore new creative ideas, see the latest technological developments, look at examples of best practice in the U.K. and worldwide and celebrate the growing significance of Digital Storytelling
The Digital Storytelling movement is based on the belief that everyone has a story to tell and that new technology has opened up many opportunities to tell those stories on websites, DVD screens and terrestrial TV. Digital Storytelling has been pioneered in Wales through the BBC Capture Wales project.
- Inspirational speakers
- Breakout sessions with key organisations
- Workshops
- Trade stands
– Projects/Funding Opportunities/Technology/Networks
- Digital storytelling Showcase, showing stories from Wales and the UK
Festival Ticket costs £14.50, including tea/coffee and buffet lunch.
Accommodation is available on the university Campus 01970 622772 or town accommodation.
Papurau Bro are Welsh-language local newspapers written by, edited by, folded & stapled and distributed by community members. They’ve thrived for three decades or more and I’d say that digital storytelling in Wales has drawn inspiration from the spirit of Papurau Bro.
Before the interview began we discussed our shared admiration of the way Papurau Bro are made in concert by the people featured in the stories and wondered what might happen if this grassroots news movement took up video and its online publication as a way of brining the coverage up to date. I later refered to this in the interview (Welsh article, hover mouse over words in this version to get sense). And one reader’s comments seemed to endorse this, suggesting workshops be organised for Papurau Bro volunteers.
I wonder what local Welsh You Tube channels would look like. Local news, heritage pieces, personal stories, etc. Next step would seem to be for Papurau Bro activists to get together with Wales’s established digital storytelling practitioners to make a pilot.
“While we have most of the speakers arranged, we have created a 1 hour 15 minute session on Saturday afternoon for participants to sign up to briefly present projects, known as Five Minutes of Fame. If you want to briefly bring your work in DS to the larger group, this will be the place.” - Joe Lambert
Fantastic screening at Penyrenglyn Primary School yesterday afternoon. This was the final screening of the Rhondda Lives! project and it’s amazing what a legacy of digital stories remains after Katrina Kirkwood’s time leading this project for Valleys Kids. More than 75 have been made in 2007-9.
One of the films, ‘Libraries in the Miners’ Lives’ by Margaret Thomas shows how these stories can give a fresh perspective and challenge assumptions. Margaret says it’s wrong to heap praise on mineowners by giving them labels as ‘philanthropists’. Mineowner David Davies may have helped fund Aberystwyth University but he sat back and watched his workers having to fund their own education by contributing their own hard-to-spare pennies every month to add books to the miners’ library. It’s this personal take on history that adds to the factors that makes digital storytelling such important documents or documentaries.
Joe Lambert of the Center for Digital Storytelling has written with advance notice of a one-day International Conference on Digital Storytelling in Obidos, Portugal on Saturday, June 27. Details will be announced soon on storycenter.org
‘A lad in me brother’s year said to me: “Either shave your legs or get a sex change.” I went home and told me mum and she stood me on a coffee table and shaved me legs with me dad’s razor.’ - overheard on a train near Chirk, 20:45, 26 February 2009.
1. move away from the ‘once in a lifetime experience’ approach. Make it feel like a process that can become more of a ‘routine’ than a ‘treat’ event.
2. get people making stories using accessible tools. E.g. free web-based editing tools they’ll be able to continue using after you’ve moved on.
3.reduce the resources participants need to take part. If people don’t have an archive of their own photos, help them take bespoke contemporary ones; if people don’t have much time, offer a form they can create in less time; meet people where they already gather; etc.
4. scale up activities. E.g. hold training the trainers workshops so you get a snowball effect as skills are transferred.
5. foster connections with other digital storytelling operations.
This is my summary of five suggestions made by Susie Pratt of University of Glamorgan at a presentation of BBC AHRC Knowledge Exchange Partnerships in Cardiff on 4 November. Here’s a link to the AHRC’s Funding Opportunity page. Susie is from the Digital and Social Engagement partnership research project at University of Glamorgan and the sustainability element of her and her colleagues’ research is only part of a thorough and useful study. During her presentation, Susie showed a digital story made by a young carer. Sometimes a line from a story stays with you long after you see the story; the storyteller showed a photo of here baby sister who’d died and said “we sprinkled her in a beautiful place nearby.”
Here’s an outline of the University of Glamorgan rationale, quoted from source: "A Public Voice – access, digital story and interactive narrative digital storytelling is a new creative form. It amalgamates new technology, filmmaking, photography, music, story and social purpose. These activities cut across boundaries in the arts, democratising the process of media making and establishing an anti heroic position for the artist/storyteller. The concept that is being developed is one of an interactive and conversational media that represents digital stories as an extension of the quotidian storytelling of everyday life. The project will develop new understandings of how digital storytelling has developed to this point and ways it could progress in future. The BBC Capture Wales project and the community applications that have grown from it will provide a focus for the work. The research will explore new modes of expression through developing multi media applications especially mobile phone technology. "
Stories are as much about the place where they’re shared as anything else. The walls of the old Vulcan Hotel in Cardiff have heard some gems over the years.
My favourite Cardiff writer is John Williams who, I believe, is a regular drinker here, along with other Anglo-Welsh writers like Des Barry (who himself is a fan of digital storytelling). The pub’s been marked for demolition to make room for car parking in January 2009. There’s objection here to the removal of an important Cardiff landmark. There’s been talk of re-building it brick by brick at St Ffagan, the Welsh Folk Musem.
The Vulcan was packed to the gunnels just before last night’s Wales v New Zealand rugby game. The stories and tall tales were flying there last night. We need to hold on to the spaces where we share stories and I hope the Vulcan can survive the developers’ JCBs.
Dec 1 is the deadline for submission for the Focal International Awards 2009 for best use of archive footage in all kinds of productions, including short films like digital stories. According to the rules:
1. they’ll only consider entries containing moving-image archive, not stills
2. there’s a £57.50 submission fee per entry.
David Puttnam will present the awards to the winners in London on 5 May 2009.
Here are two stories made especially to mark the fact that 90 years have passed since the end of World War I:
Rappel - this is a music collaboration between Newport’s MC Gareth Leaman (Versatile) and DJ Jamie Winchester, Pentalk Lab, at the Riverfront in Newport. I’ve always been drawn to the storytelling aspect of rap and I think the mixing of rap with images of WWI by these two musicians gives a respectful contemporary reflection on the horrors of the Great War.
My River - children from Llandogo Primary School in Monmouth remember their relatives who fought in WWl. The device of children holding their old family photos up for the video camera is especially effective.
These were both produced by those people in the films together with BBC Wales’s Melanie Lindsell as part of Ninety Years of Remembrance. The River will be transmitted at five to midnight on BBC 1 TV on Tuesday 11 November.
Communities@One has been nominated for a European inclusion award. I’m delighted about this because it’s largely thanks to C@1 funding and direct broker support that digital storytelling is thriving in Wales. Congratulations to Alun Burge and the team.
I was asked earlier today for links to reports outlining benefits of digital storytelling to communities by someone drafting a funding bid. I thought it might be useful to share these links with you. Many of these link to PowerPoint and PDF files:
Kani is well known for its car manufacturing. One of the leaders of Media Conté is Akiko Ogawa, who’s made two trips to Wales to study digital storytelling. She told me earlier this year there were many Japanese descendants from Brasil and other countries who had come to work in Kani’s factories. She told me she wanted to find a way of bringing these people together to share their experiences and to try and find a way of making sure these stories were more widely heard throughout Japan.
The beauty of digital stories is that the process of making one brings community members together and the end-product has a surprisingly moving quality which can catch you by surprise. The story that’s built is perfect for exhibition on TV. Greater individual expression on TV is one of media exprimo’s aims and one of the things that impressed me at Mell Expo 2008 in Tokyo was that the Japanese mass media was so open to change. They listened positively to pleas for increased reflection of different areas of Japan on national TV. Of course, centralisation isn’t an issue that affects Japan alone…
Congratulations to Akiko Ogawa and her colleagues and fellow members at Aichi Shukutoku University and media exprimo because the good news is that these stories are going to be broadcast on CATV in Kani this very weekend. Every picture tells a story.
Museums used to be buildings that housed artefacts. The experts contextualised these objects by writing historically-accurate interpretations of their meaning. Visitors used to enter museums to absorb this.
How often have you looked at objects in museums and thought that the meaning an object has to you is different to the one conveyed by the museum’s card, plaque, kiosk, etc.? New technology and ways of working mean that can change.
Some museum managers are excited about the possibilities opened up by enabling visitors to share their own interpretations and are asking their staff to work in new ways. I did once hear one museum worker say “But that isn’t what we do” though.
Living-memory sections of museums are more to do with memories than artefacts. So museum managers can feel free to move away from traditional perceptions of what it is they’re doing. That’s when they’ll feel it’s OK to instruct their staff to spend less time on objects and more on helping people to share their own memories with other visitors.
“To celebrate National Older People’s Day and to change some outdated stereotypes on ageing, a collection of short stories written, recorded, edited and produced by people living in Wales.”
This is a link for people reading this in the UK only, sorry, because iPlayer only works in the UK.
Anyone who filmed home video from the 1980s -90s will is likely to have that footage in the VHS tape medium. I’ve just seen an item on a TV programme called Sunday Life which warned that fungus is attacking these old tapes. So now may be a good time to digitise these old recordings.
The way I’ll probably do this is to make real-time recordings from VHS to miniDV and then use Firewire to ingest that footage onto my hard disk where I can import it into an editing package and then render it out as a DV PAL file. I should probably use an open standard like DIV-X in an AVI container, because .mov is tied to the Apple Quicktime backward-compatability blind spot.
What should I do next: burn that file as data on a DVD? Well that’ll give me up to another 25 years of not worrying. Until a story comes out warning about the flaking of DVD coatings after 25 years.
And then I’ll start all over again…
I asked an experienced editor once: “What’s the most future-proof medium for archiving digital stories”.
Publishing on YouTube is cheap, quick, easy and not without its dangers. So here’s how to avoid the pain.
If it’s your own content you’re publishing and this is what you want to do, go for it. If you’re part of a digital storytelling project that helps others to make stories and you’re looking for a way of getting their stories out there, just be aware the embed code that’s on offer enables anyone to embed that video into a completely different website. Usually that will be someone’s on-topic blog; sometime though, the final destination is something much less desirable. It’s all about context, isn’t it?
Benefits of YouTube publication
Cheap. They pay for hosting and bandwidth, not you
Accessible. Your content has the potential to be seen by the huge YouTube viewing community and, because Google owns YouTube, it’s going to be findable via search.
Drawbacks of YouTube publication
You’re at YouTube’s mercy. It’s their terms and conditions that apply, not yours, and you may sometime find adverts before and after, as well as around your video.
You’re at others’ mercy. You’re not in control of the way your content is contextualised. A digital story about, say, mental illness, may be embedded unscrupulously by someone (not YouTube of course) into say a ‘Saddo of the Week’ site.
So my advice is: if it’s your story and you’re happy, go for it; if it’s someone else’s story you’re publishing, have a chat with them, discuss your concerns together, and take a decision after that.
Other highlights of the night included an update about NIACE Cymru’s work by Essex Harvard; an insight into user testing and user participation in the Welsh youth TV programme Mosgito by its web executive producer Nia M. Davies and examples of clay animation and Welsh web terms standardisation.
This is your story, so try to use your own images, story, words, original sentiments, music, style, philosophy, etc. as far as you can.
The promotion of royalty-free content advocated by some digital storytelling trainers means that opportunities may be missed. Of course, sometimes you’ll find yourself working with people who have no access to their own materials. And teachers in class with young children may also find it easier to use images from the internet. If you do use your own personal materials though, you’ll not only avoid issues around intellectual property, but your story will also truly be your own.
“How can people participate without necessarily having to be centre stage?” That’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since discussing digital storytelling with a colleague, Grahame Davies, last year.
My experience of Digital Stories is that they’re usually personal. This aspect of ‘talking about myself’ raises a barrier in some people and cultures. This was an issue raised by some people I met in Japan earlier this year.
Last night, on TV, I saw a piece of video that stands as a good example of a ‘tribute form’. Look at the first 55 seconds of the video clip on this page. It’s in Welsh. It features people who live in Bala, north Wales. They’re all praising Mair Penri Jones - a woman who’s been active and helped many people in that community.
As well as being a form of storytelling about others, rather than the self, this form lends itself well to a project where equipment is in short supply and people need to work together to make a film.
This is a new term I just had to invent. We launched a new Welsh-language mobile website yesterday (info). It was fast as anything when I browsed it alone, yet when I needed to show it to Siwan from the press office, it loaded ever so slowly. Why did this happen? Because of pink fingertip syndrome - I pressed the buttons differently when I was demonstrating and the server ‘knew’.
It’s the week of the National Eisteddfod which is back here in Cardiff for the first time in 30 years. Lots of buzz on the Maes. I met Gwion Llwyd of Sbarc! yesterday while watching Mr Huw play live. Sbarc! is a successful Digital Storytelling project based in Caernarfon, run by Rhian Cadwaladr. Gwion said they’re experimenting with some interesting new story forms and he’s also part of Rhyfeddod.com - a performing art group which is planning an autumn show where projected couplets written by different poets are triggered depending on where on a stage a person stands. They’re also working on a newly-funded slate-mining heritage project. Gwion’s fascinated by this enigma: so many people died in the Dorothea north Wales slate quarry in Llanberis when it was active in the C19-early20; after it closed, it was flooded to make a deep lake in which people today go diving; many of these divers die today in that flooded quarry…
Tomorrow, I’m attending the Wales Media Literacy Network event at the S4C stall. Nia M Davies of BBC Cymru’s Mosgito is speaking about the work that TV programme has done in giving access to the airwaves with live webcam linkups. Mosgito has been working alongside BBC Ffeil with Eisteddfod-goers to make films with young people this week.
On a personal note, I’ve been working with the BBC website team this year. Nice to see so much publicity for our Eisteddfod promo, all because it starred Ioan Gruffudd, Matthew Rhys and Gethin Jones…
Of the stories I’ve seen which use poems I can remember only one or two as being the best possible way of telling that person’s story. This is just my personal opinion.
E.g. the question mark. If you’ve got a line in your story like: “why did he do this?”, don’t put a great big image of a question mark on the timeline/screen.
Get your voice-recording done with a high-quality unit in a quiet room with natural acousics (neither boxy nor echoey), unless there’s an overriding reason to the contrary (e.g. you’re working with an archive recording or in an inescapably noisy environment). As I’ve said here before, the best digital stories can work as radio pieces, so aim for top radio quality when you record.
Simon Collinge has been a pioneer and a champion of Digital Storytelling in Wales for the past seven years and he’s leaving Yale College Wrexham this week to go freelance.
Sometimes, when you’re setting something new up, you need someone high up who ‘gets’ it, who says ‘yes’ and covers your back when change threatens your very existence. That’s what Simon’s been so good at doing in Wrexham. He’s recruited some top Digital Storytelling facilitators and supported their growth and the growth of their project to the impressive point where the Yale Centre for Digital Storytelling is today.
I can’t make it to the farewell party tomorrow but I know it’ll be a good one. He tells me he intends to play an even more active part in Digital Storytelling in Wales now he’s leaving this post. So I’ll lift a glass here in Cardiff to toast Simon Collinge’s freelance future.
E.g. it’s tempting to tell the story of a trip chronologically thus weaker: “We started in Rome, took the train to Florence where we saw Ponte Vecchio, then we headed to the coast towards Pisa….” stronger: look at how well Simon Griffiths uses the device of how he funded his south American trip to make a great story even better.
Joe Lambert of the Center for Digital Storytelling has written with news of workshops he’s holding in Copenhagen this summer and of exciting plans to establish a European Center for Digital in conjunction with Copehagen Business School.
Next: knife crime is a problem in some British cities. I think community leaders may take inspiration from Mervin Jarman’s story. He’s just been awarded the Stockholm Challenge Trophy. He’s set up a digilab where people can come to make digital stories inside a 40-foot converted shipping container in Palmers Cross, Jamaica. “The primary target group is what I refer to now as the hardest to reach. This is what we call the bad boys. Di ones who nuh have no value; the ones dem that fit for dumping. And that’s probably because that’s what I was characterised as,” Jarman says. Story from the Jamaica Gleaner.
Finally, I was delighted to hear that the Yale Centre for Digital Storytelling in Wrexham, north-east Wales is one of the 28 beneficiaries of a grant totalling £5.2million for rural development. The Yale team will work with people to reflect rural stories. Congratulations to the team at Yale; it’s great to hear such good news. Story from the Daily Post.
Which personal storytelling forms work well with the volume turned down?
This question’s inspired by opportunities presented by ‘A Wall is a Screen‘, kiosks in public places and public shopping-street screens like the one in Cardiff city centre, pictured by Mooganic.
If you know of ’silent’ short-form’ visual personal storytelling forms that passers-by find engaging enough to stop and watch, please let me know in the comments or by emailing melynmelyn at gmail dot com. I’ll share them in a future post. Thanks.
By the way, using the RSS button, you can subscribe to the posts in this blog and read them in your newsreader/feedreader.
Hyperaction launches Storywalks tomorrow morning with a walk and picnic in Torfaen, south Wales. On their website you can download a printable PDF routemap (here’s an example) and free mp3 podcasts of the stories to listen to along your way.
Loading up your portable device with stories and heading off to the countryside clutching a map is a great idea and Hyperaction’s experience in such community-led projects shines through and is sure to contribute to the success and hopefully the future expansion of the network of Storywalks around Wales.
I’ve always been puzzled this paradox: people get so many new skills by making their first digital story …. yet most people only ever produce one digital story. It was Jenny Kidd, whose PhD subject was Digital Storytelling at the BBC, who drew my attention to this.
The team at University of Glamorgan has been exploring lowering some of the barriers to continuation by devising forms that use widely-available online
production tools and social media tools.
At DS3, I saw a dozen people all huddled around a massive poster print of Aberystwyth prom, scribbling on PostIts. The mix of the photo and different people’s reactions to it is really nice.
Tools like voicethread, photobucket remix, flickr, etc. are great levellers because all you
need is access to a broadband-connected web browser and a simple capture device. Of course, there are factors other than technology influencing continued media expression, but I believe using re-accessible technology will reduce one of the barriers to continued authorship. Also, the social networking capacity surrounding these Web 2.0 tools can engender a continued sense of community beyond the kick-off face-to-face workshop(s).
I think Making Space is a fascinating project and, already, the participants’ testimony at DS3 convinced me it’s a worthwhile direction in which to head.
By the way, the team is also exploring other areas via ventures such as:
http://www.makingspace.org.uk/ventures/digitaldresser.html
and
http://www.makingspace.org.uk/ventures/desertislandpics.html
Dear friend of [murmur],
Shawn Micallef sent me an email this morning saying that [murmur] is looking to hire an executive director to help move the project forward. He asked recipients of the mail to pass it on, so here it is:
“[murmur] is looking for an inspirational leader. We’re seeking someone passionate about community, cities, and storytelling to guide and grow [murmur]’s collaborations and projects.
The director will be responsible for managing and producing [murmur], and leading its expansion through writing grant applications, securing commissions, and cultivating relationships with potential funders.
On the “producing” side, this means taking care of stuff like:
- Recording & editing stories
- Installing signs
- Giving workshops
- Managing volunteers and interns
- Responding to lots of email inquiries
- Coordinating with suppliers
- Writing & sending out occasional newsletters
- Attending conferences and festivals; sometimes presenting
- Organizing events
- Writing grant applications and project proposals
- Managing budgets and books
On the “cultivating relationships” side, this means (among other things):
- Establish new contacts and projects in Toronto, nationally and internationally;
- Develop strategies to raise funds to expand the project;
- Seek out potential sponsors and donors, and tapping into networks;
- Conduct ongoing research for new fiscal strategies and opportunities.
QUALIFICATIONS:
Please get in touch if you:
- Know the project, like it, and (personally) are excited to help in its expansion;
- Have experience being in charge of stuff;
- Are personable and a great writer;
- Are motivated and self-directed, a decision-maker and problem-solver;
- Want a flexible schedule (meaning generally you can decide your own hours, but sometimes there’s stuff that needs doing on weekends);
- Are organized and good with deadlines;
- Are very comfortable with the web, and technology in general;
- Are in Toronto but available for occasional travel;
- Are okay with the idea that your salary is dependent on your fundraising abilities.
The ideal candidate probably also reads a bunch of blogs, lives downtown, rides a bike and/or TTC, and has a cellphone.
ENVIRONMENT:
Our director will be working from the Centre for Social Innovation, on Spadina Avenue near Queen Street.
COMPENSATION:
This is a part-time contract position for now, probably 3-4 days/week and $18-20/hour to start depending on your experience, increasing with your fundraising success.
I’ve just returned from the DS3 Festival of Digital Storytelling at Aberystwyth Arts Centre. It was another successful festival, following on from and expanding on last year’s DS2. People had travelled from all over Wales and Britain. I met delegates from Belfast, USA and there was someone who’d come from New Zealand too.
Day1 - Thursday 5 June 2008
A Public Voice - Digital storytelling, narrative and pedagogy. By Prof. Hamish Fyfe & Susie Pratt, University of Glamorgan; Karen Lewis, Lisa Heledd, BBC Cymru Wales
Karen Lewis set the context of the research that’s being done with AHRC support. Hamish Fyfe gave a description of storytelling across the ages and said Digital Storytelling lets people explore their “possible self”. Doing this and learning new skills means “the process of DS making often leaves people feeling more positive” and he argued in favour of a link between DS + community regeneration. Suzy Pratt shared research she’s conducting and showed the importance of “connecting” in ensuring sustainability of Digital Storytelling. She’s working with Lisa Heledd and Carwyn Evans on storytelling linked with social media via an exciting new website called Making Space. The Aberystwyth pilot is worth looking at.
Because of a meeting I needed to go to with the National Screen and Sound Archvie, I unfortunately missed some of ‘The Play Ethic - Pat Kane’ and ‘Narrative Forms - Case studies with Steve Bellis & Tony Pugh, Yale College Wrexham’.
There was a great Open Mic and Mac cabaret session at the bar that night. The mix of personal storytelling and watching Digital Stories worked really well. It was a kind of ‘Frey Cafe with films’ evening.
Day 2 - Friday 6 June 2008
Gilly Adams (freelance Story Circle specialist) - Telling Stories.
I enjoyed Gilly’s presentation more than any other in DS3. She spoke of the Gift Culture of Digital Storytelling where no money changes hands but the currency is the generosity of grace in sharing stories. The person who hears the story gains two benefits:
1. they get a unique glimpse into the heart of the teller
2. they can often say: “hey, that’s about me!” and they get to reflect on that revelation.
An example of generosity Gilly gave was that of someone who comes to a DS workshop with a story in mind but, having heard the stores other people tell, they sometimes change their mind and say: “Actually, I want to tell you this….”
Jason Ohler (University of Alaska) - Digital Storytelling in the classroom.
I’d been particularly eager for DS Cymru to invite Jason Ohler to speak at this year’s Festival and, having heard him speak, I was glad he’d come. He shared his experiences of working in classrooms throughout Alaska and his insistence that _story_ be at the heart of everything that’s done. A digital storytelling friend of mine, Barrie Stephenson, says he’s been using Story Maps - one of Jason’s story-generating systems - after hearing him speak at Sedona some years ago. That’s something about Jason’s style: he shares all kinds of practical tips that can be re-used in workshops.
Hanne Jones & Christer Fasmer (Digitale Fortellinger project, Norway) - Digital Storytelling In Norway. These were some of the most powerful digital stories I’ve ever seen. Hanne, Chris and Eli have worked with over 200 people in Norway. Their work is screened on TV, in museums and in cinemas. Two stories they showed made a deep impression: one by a young woman with Downs Syndrome talking about her life and plans with her boyfriend and another by a 101 year old woman remembering hiding because she was afraid of reading in front of a group of people when she was six years old (in 1913).
I met Culturenet Cymru’s Sioned Rhys Jones and Hawys Tomos at Eisteddfod yr Urdd, Conwy, last week. As part of the National Library of Wales and funded by Heritage Lottery and Welsh Assembly Government, Culturenet Cymru is working on a project based in Aberystwyth called ‘From Warfare to Welfare’. There’re doing three things:
1. helping people to make digital stories. Young people work with older people to make a digital story of 1939-1959 recollections
2. staging multimedia conferences
3. digitising photos by Geoff Charles
I nearly fell off my chair when they told me about the Geoff Charles element. Geoff was a prolific Welsh documentary photographer. He took a photo of my brother and I around 38 years ago. There are more than 20,000 of Geoff’s photos held for safe-keeping at the National Library of Wales. You can see some of these at http://geoffcharles.llgc.org.uk/
Here’s the digital storytelling connection…
When the Nokia N93 first came out around two years ago, BBC Wales was interested in its potential as a tool for people to tell broadcastable personal stories. All the members of the Capture Wales team experimented with many forms. Some of these forms went on to be adapted for public workshops. One of the experimental digital stories I made wasn’t made for publication; it was intended to explore the phone’s still image and voice recording capacity in a digital storytelling context. The voice recording quality was OK but, as you can see, there’s some distortion of the images because I needed to take photos up-close. I haven’t made the story public until now. But because of this bit of Geoff Charles Culturenet Cymru synchronicity, I wanted to share this mobile phone story with you now:
I’ve been corresponding recently with Wim Kievits who’s had an interest in Digital Storytelling for some time. He recently contacted me regarding a presentation he’s making in the Netherlands later this week. He asked what triggered BBC Wales’s interest in starting Capture Wales and asked: “Can you tell me or point out to me how the whole initiative started? What were the initial challenges (or signals from society) you encountered that made you decide to start this initiative?”
Well I can’t speak on behalf of BBC Wales but I can remember a time when it used to cost £30,000 to buy a machine to edit video. So it was expensive/exclusive to access the tool to tell stories via video. 2001 was about the time when it became affordable to edit your own video on home computers. This opened up the door to enabling anyone to be able to tell their own story using video. For publicly-funded organisations like ours, this was an important moment. Digital Storytelling is a form that lends itself to personal storytelling because:
1. everyone has a photo archive
2. everyone has a story/stories to tell
But this isn’t a case of pure technical determinism. Because, in addition to new technology, some other elements were needed. E.g.
1. an attainable ‘form’. I.e. Digital Storytelling
2. careful facilitation so that the skills of constructing such a story can be shared with groups of people.
3. mass media willing to give completed stories a platform so the stories can be enjoyed by everyone who sees them
And those are some of the magic ingredients that led to the BBC Capture Wales project.
There’s one other catalyst I mustn’t forget: someone persuasive, a convincer and an evangelist. In our case, that was Daniel Meadows, from Cardiff University.
Yes, DS3 has expanded to two days this year and, as it says on the website: “Whether you work in education, the community or as an artist, it is your opportunity to share experiences, explore new creative ideas, see the latest technological developments, look at examples of best practise in the U.K. and worldwide and celebrate the growing significance of Digital Storytelling”
I’m really looking forward to this year’s Festival, not least because the speakers who’ve agreed to take part are so good.
Jason Ohler, from Alaska, will be a familiar name to anyone who’s interested in Digital Storytelling in schools. He’ the author of ‘Digital Storytelling in the Classroom’. It should be interesting to see what the educationalists in the audience make of his evangelism for Digital Storytelling in the classroom, especially as Wales has the power to determine its own curriculum for schools. Might we see schools in Wales allocating sufficient resources and embedding the activity of Digital Storytelling in our classrooms in a revolutionary way? I personally hope so. Just imagine how that would impact on young Welsh people’s digital expression and storytelling skills and how much fun that would make school!
Gilly Adams is one of the most magnetic characters I’ve ever met. I sat in awe listening to her talk about how to help someone with their story as she addressed a group of 40 in Merthyr Tydfil in March. She was sharing decades of experience garnered from not only dozens of Digital Storytelling workshops but also her background in theatre, community radio plays and celebratory ritual performance. I guarantee that, if you want to learn something new about storytelling, you will if you come to listen to Gilly.
Two Digital Storytellers who have an historic connection with BBC Capture Wales are making the trip from Norway to Aberystwyth to share their experiences of setting up Digitale Fortellinger. Eli Lea and Hanne Jones set up their project with the aim of helping individuals to share their personal story on TV in Nordic countries. They’ve also done some interesting, pioneering work with museums. By the way, Hanne’s own Digital Story is one of my all-time favourites.
Pat Kane - half of Hue and Cry - wrote ‘The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living’ which “proposes the ‘player’ as a new identity for a productive, creative and meaningful life”. He’s coming from Scotland to Aberystwyth.
Also speaking or holding workshops or breakout sessions are Breaking Barriers; Canllaw Online; Cardiff University; Coleg Sir Gar, Llanelli; Culturenet Cymru; DS Cymru; Huw Davies; Monmouthshire County Council; University of Glamorgan George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling; Yale College, Wrexham; etc. as well as BBC Cymru Wales.
Between the keynotes there are sessions about where to go to get money to fund your grassroots project from people who’ve been very succesful in doing just that, creating ‘a digital story in ten clicks’, being young and telling stories, pedagogy, sustainability, new forms and social software, best ways of facilitating stories, an open mic story session, building digital communities, etc
So it’s a fantastic line-up and I hope you can come. You’ll be most welcome.
I watched a recording of On Top of the World this lunchtime. This is the half-hour programme by Tori James, the first Welsh woman and youngest British woman ever to climb Everest. It was shot almost entirely using the kinds of devices anyone can buy in the High St. It’s a gripping, endearing piece of TV. Goes to show what can be done in the longer form, using attainable technology, when the storytelling’s done well. Full credit to producer Melanie Lindsell who worked closely with Tori on the storytelling, editing and post production.
If you live in the UK, for the next six days you can watch this programme on BBC iPlayer here:
I’ve observed that working on stories in a group usually helps individuals to improve their story and I love watching how stories are improved, thanks to the group dynamics. That’s one of the reasons digital storytelling works so well as a group workshop activity.
One University of Tokyo project, called Unknown Shonan, is the first I’ve heard of that compares narratives arrived at individually with those arrived at by working in a group.
Shonan is Japan’s Brighton. It’s a bohemian seaside city about an hour by train from Tokyo. Universtiy of Tokyo researchers worked with participants, mixing historic photos with participant-taken ones where individuals are asked to make five-photo captioned narratives first individually and then in groups. They’ve already reached Phase II of the project and they’re comparing outputs at the moment. It’ll be interesting to hear the outcome and perhaps to start understanding what really improves stories when we share and discuss our stories collaboratively.
Tokyo and Mell Expo 2008 were absolutely mindblowing. A more considered summary of Mell Expo 2008 will follow. For now, with music by B’z, is a montage of (Ricoh) images and (Nokia N93) video clips that capture the flavour of the event and the trip. Hope you enjoy it:
There’s an enigma around technology, isn’t there? Take the mobile phone for example. We used to use just it to make phonecalls; now phones have near-broadcast-quality video cameras on board too. If only there was a way of releasing some more of the potential of technology for the benefit of society…
Let me start with some questions about this:
1. What motivation and opportunities could be given to people in Japan to make more use of the creative capacity of their mobile devices and computers? 2. Which ‘forms’ of Digital Storytelling would be most attractive in this country to both author & audience of the content?3. And how could this content be shared with mass audiences?
My name is Gareth Morlais and I work for BBC Wales in the UK as a producer.
Everyone has a story to tell - that’s been central to our ethos at the BBC Capture Wales Digital Storytelling project and that’s what’s led to hundreds of people in Wales learning the skills they need to make their own Digital Story which is shown on BBC platforms - web, radio, TV and interactive.
A digital story is a two-minute broadcast-quality personal story made by the storyteller themself, using their own photos, words and voice.
Making a Digital Story for the first time often means learning at least two kinds of skills that may be new to the individual:
1. Technical - this is the new skill which is most often cited in connection with media literacy, digital exclusion and skilling for the knowledge economy in Wales.
2. Narrative - this is usually sadly underrated.
I feel that the skills of organising and relating experience in the form of a story can be as important in the knowledge economy as the technical skills. These skills of storytelling are harder to learn than technical. Learning in a group - workshop of ten people - is what we’ve found works best.
Here’s why I feel this is important, from the point of view of the individual citizen, the audience and the mass media, especially a public service broadcaster like the BBC. This is based on our experience in Wales, but I hope some of this may resonate with the experience you have in Japan.
BENEFITS
1. To the mass audience.
- A feeling of being reflected on the mass media.
- Fresh, surprising, diverse content.
2. To the broadcaster / publisher.
- Promotes media literacy in Wales.
- It’s a self-authored voice for all kinds of people on BBC Wales’s web, radio and TV platforms.
- Helps to spread the skills of storytelling.
- A good way of getting to know the audience and to work alongside them and with grass-roots organisations in the community. These partnerships can lead to other things too…
3. To the individual author.
- New skills.
- People report a feeling of having exceeded expectations and surprising themselves.
- A truer voice on the mass media, compared with other content made by publisher.
Here’s an example of what I mean by ‘truer voice’. Compare two approaches to a news story to show how much more empowering Digital Storytelling is, because of where the ownership of the story rests:
Case 1 - A traditional TV news story about cancer. Scientists in white coats, mother of a boy who died of cancer being filmed on the family sofa, reacting tointerview questions, leafing through family photograph album …
Case 2 - Gaynor Clifford - Castle on a Cloud - a 2002 Digital Story by the mother of a boy who died of cancer. She based her story on questions her son asked her when he was thinking about his future.
STEP-BY-STEP
Here’s the process we’ve used to help a group of ten people to make their stories over three or four days. Finished stories are 250 words, around 12 images, two minutes long. This model has come to be know as the ‘classic Digital Story’.
1. Recruitment. Always the most difficult part. Showing existing Digital Stories in a community setting is most effective. We apply principles of diversity in selecting Digital Storytelling workshop participants.
2. Briefing. Letting storytellers know what to expect in a reassuring way.
3. Storycircle. A whole day in a group working on and offering help with everyone’s story. No computers today.
4. Everyone records their story.
5. Introduction to the computers and equipment.
6. Taking digital photos and scanning images from own personal collection.
7. Editing. Learning to use video editing software to synchronise images with the audio recording of their story.
8. Sharing the stories at an end-of-workshop group screening, via a personal DVD copy and by publishing on web and TV.
OTHER FORMS
‘Classic Digital Storytelling’ is evolving and new forms have emerged from it. We still consider them to be Digital Stories if they meet these criteria by Lisa Heledd and Mandy Rose:
1. A strong story; a clear narrative the audience will engage with.
2. Transferral of skills.
3. Ownership rests with author.
(source)
Here are some examples:
FORM 1 - Shoebox story
Can be made in one or two days. Shorter, based on objects brought to the workshop in a shoebox.
E.g. Alan Jeffreys - A Dog’s Life
FORM 2 - In the Frame
Images from disposable film cameras. Storytellers react (unscripted) to photos they took. A powerful tool for citizenship.
E.g. Mel’s campaigning piece about her school
Selma Chalabi facilitated this story as part of ‘If I Were and AM’ - an AM is a Welsh politician.
FORM 3 - Archive
In the Rhondda Lives! project, BBC Wales partnered with Valleys Kids charity and National Screen and Sound Archive to mix personal storytelling with archive film of the Rhondda Valley. This is an attractive way of releasing new value and exposing archive footage, artifacts, etc. Attractive to museums as well as TV companies.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rhonddalives/
E.g. Gillian Thomas - Hiraeth
FORM 4 - Mobile Story
Outline history of and show examples of experiments with mobile phone forms. These Welsh-language ones are from a February 2008 workshop for a youth programme called Mosgito:
Abi - Bywyd ar y fferm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cymru/cipolwgargymru/stori/abi.shtml - about living on a farm
and
RhysW - Grefi yn y Coffi
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cymru/cipolwgargymru/stori/rhys-w.shtml - about someone who plays jokes on people
FORM 5 - Sensecam
BBC Wales worked with Microsoft Research Centre to test how a wearable camera might be used. Here’s a film called Day2 I made about my own experience of wearing the Sensecam. It’s intended as a reflective film rather than a narrative story.
We can speculate about some features of future forms. I think we’re likely to see device shrinkage, with better on-board editing functionality and more explicit linkage to location and the continuing shift to online editing and storage. The real challenges though are around motivating people to unleash the potential of what they hold in their hand and ensuring that access to the skills needed to do this are as universally available as possible.
I’d like to share some observations distilled from the last seven years…
LOOKING IN MY REAR-VIEW MIRROR
1. Build in sustainability.
- Court and involve prospects in workshops.
- Run training the trainers sessions.
- Urge new trainers to make another story alone before beginning to train others.
- Form partnerships and offer to publish their work non-exclusively.
- Capitalise on the snowflake-effect of building partnerships.
2. Agree on your ethos, as a team.
- Ways of working with people.
- Ownership of content.
- Etc.
3. Choose performance indicators wisely.
- Acknowledge value issues around working face-to-face.
- Compare ‘cost per story’ with ‘cost per hour of TV’.
- Case studies can be powerful justifiers of spending.
- Emphasise what you do which YouTube doesn’t.
4. Recruiting participants is the hardest part.
- Showing stories in the community is the best way to recruit.
5. Story is key.
- It’s the specific, sensory-driven stuff that we connect with.
- Even if you teach the technology one-to-one, the storytelling bits work best in a group.
- You know it’s a good story if you can enjoy it with your eyes closed.
6. There needs to be a skills exchange (media literacy), so try to teach people to use something they’ll be able to go home and use again later.
- Their own mobile phone as a capture device.
- Web-based tools to edit, store and publish.
7. Have a clear plan and stick to it.
- Let participants know which media form you’re asking them to make.
- Know and state your editorial proposition E.g personal, 1st person (I, my, we…), fact not fiction, etc.
- Work as a group where possible, ensuring everyone’s devices are set up to look and perform exactly the same, as far as possible.
8. Lower barriers to entry by adapting your plan to offer a choice of forms.
- Have a toolkit of forms. E.g. story in one weekend, story in an hour a week over six weeks, etc.
9. Ask people to use their own stuff in their story.
- This makes it personal and avoids rights problems.
10. Diversity really works.
- In the make-up of the people in the group (age, background, etc.)
- In the range of story subjects
- Avoid themed workshops, e.g. for ‘people with depression’.
11. Document, refine and share your ways of working.
- E.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/audiovideo/sites/yourvideo/pdf/aguidetodigitalstorytelling-bbc.pdf
12. Finally, once again, story is key.
WHAT ALL THIS COULD MEAN IN JAPAN
When technology meets storytelling via skillful facilitation in a group setting with mass media hungry to show the results - heaven!
I’ll end by addressing the three challenges I set out at the beginning of my presentation:1. What motivation and opportunities could be given to people in Japan to make more use of the creative capacity of their mobile devices and computers? This is an appeal to the representatives of grass-roots community organisations of Japan who are in the audience today. I’ve shown examples of Digital Stories and how making one can have a powerful effect on the individual author. Can you see ways in which Digital Storytelling might be able to help you achieve your organisation’s aims? Can you find ways of linking up with other organisations, trainers and broadcasters to set up a project of your own?2. Which ‘forms’ of Digital Storytelling would be most attractive in this country to both author & audience? Well I’m not the best person to answer to this question, because Japanese culture and values are new to me. But what I’ve just done is to show you examples that have worked in Wales and on BBC Wales. And I hope that’s triggered some new ideas of what might work here in Japan and other Asian countries.3. How could this content be shared with mass audiences? This is a challenge to the broadcasters and mass media companies in the audience. One thing I can say about Digital Stories is that showing them to your audiences is a great way of demonstrating greater relevance in this fast-changing landscape.Whether or not you decide to get involved in this, these are exciting times. The fact that organisations like Media Exprimo, Mell Expo, MoDe, Japanese Universities and grass-roots organisations and broadcasters have come here to Mell Expo 2008 to investigate how the technology of Japan can be harnessed for the good of the people is a great thing. And I wish you every good wish on this exciting journey.
———————————————————————
BACKGROUND
My background is in radio social action broadcasting, in public service broadcasting at the BBC and with commercial broadcasters in Wales (Coast FM) and in Sri Lanka (TNL Radio)
Before Digital Stories, there was BBC Video Nation (1993) which pioneered self-authored, personal storytelling in the form of video diaries. I didn’t work on this but I remember the good impression this made on me at the time.
In 2001, I heard Daniel Meadows of Cardiff University speak at the BBC. He showed his digital story Polyphoto. This is the point at which I decided I wanted to be part of this project because it was the first time I’d seen a format for personal storytelling where the author chose the story, visuals and actually edited it themself.
Daniel Meadows had made Polyphoto at the Center for Digital Storytelling in California, in a workshop run by Joe Lambert. This was at a time one of the pioneers and founders of digital stories passed away: Dana Atchley. Dana’s digital story Home Movies is one of my favourites.
Daniel came on secondment to the BBC as part of a partnership between BBC Wales and Cardiff University. BBC Capture Wales was born, edited by Mandy Rose - one of BBC Video Nation’s founders. Joe Lambert and Nina Mullen were invited to come to Wales to run training the trainers sessions. That’s when I made my first story and joined the new Capture Wales team as a trainer and as producer of the website bbc.co.uk/capturewales. In 2005, I became the project producer and started a personal blog called Aberth Digital Storytelling - www.aberth.com/blog.
Our strategy has always been to try make Digital Storytelling a sustainable proposition in Wales. We always planned to run fewer and fewer workshops ourselves as more and more community organisations began offering Digital Storytelling opportunities. Examples of Digital Storytelling projects in Wales include Breaking Barriers, Yale Centre for Digital Storytelling, Coleg Sir Gar and Canllaw Online.
BBC Wales planned to stop running monthly workshops one day and that day came at the beginnin of April 2008. Two of our team have moved on assignment to the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at the University of Glamorgan, where the production activity and innovation continues with the aim of setting up a Centre for Excellence in Digital Storytelling there. Back at the BBC, the focus will be on offering to publish the stories that are being produced around Wales.
In 2001, only Capture Wales was helping people to make Digital Stories in Wales; now, there are over 70 organisations in Wales that are doing it or have been funded for a project that involves an element of Digital Storytelling. Almost 700 people have made their Digital Story with BBC Wales and, if you look at all projects around Wales, the figure’s well over 2,000. I think this kind of planned sustainability with inbuilt self-redundancy is a remarkable model for a broadcaster, and I’d personally like to see more of it.
Gareth Morlais, Cardiff, Wales, April 2008
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ANECDOTES
“0.16% of YouTube users upload to YouTube” (Heard in a presentation about media literacy by Ewan McIntosh. From the Guardian, May 2007)
“Watching a digital story is a little like taking a walk on a dark night past a house where the owner has left the curtains open and the lights on - you get a special glimpse of life inside.” - Gilly Adams, Capture Wales, at a meeting with Digital Storytellers in Cardiff, March 2008
“Right now there are more than 300 million people around the world watching video content online. It’s a fundamental shift that completely democratises our business.” Peter Chernin, News Corp. (Heard in a presentation by Jon Gisby. From http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/sep/15/citynews.musicnews )
UK media regulator OFCOM defines media literacy as: “the ability to access, understand and CREATE communications in a variety of contexts”. I think it’s great that the word ‘create’ appears.
University of Tokyo’s Shin Mizukoshi’s definition is even better, because it speaks of individual authors, and is explicit about the fact that one needs both the equipment and the skills to create: “Activities for independent communication via media in an information society, and the technologies and knowledge that support these activities” - http://www.mode-prj.org/document/HongKong2005_1ppt.pdf .
Significant developments since 2000 - broadcasters welcoming content from audiences, social media like YouTube, online applications, increase of capture resolution of small devices (Nokia N93, Zoom H2, etc.), embedding content in many places, etc.
When you’re working on storytelling with a group of people in a situation like the Digital Storytelling Storycircle, there’s one game that often really helps people to come up with ‘their story’. It’s the Match Game and it’s Gilly Adams who pioneered its use in Digital Storytelling. Gilly wrote instructions for this game to be inserted into give-away boxes of the long-handled cooks matches you need to play this game when we went on the Digital Storytelling Gathering tour around Wales last month. In the interests of sharing these instructions with people I’ll meet in Japan, I’m reproducing Gilly’s instructions here:
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Alan Thomas plays the match game at BBC Capture Wales Haverfordwest workshop. Photo: Huw Davies.
THE MATCH GAME
1. Ask everyone to think of something about which they feel passionate.
2. The first person strikes a match and talks for as long as the match burns.
3. If the flame goes out, even in the middle of a sentence, the speaker has to stop and passs the box to someone else.
4. The game goes on until everyone has had a turn.
5. Notice how much can be said in a very short time and what stays in your mind afterwards.
DS3 is a must-attend for anyone interested in Digital Storytelling. It’s in its third year now and has now grown to two days. It’s a truly international event with people attending from around the world and Alan Hewson and his team do a fantastic job of organising this.
Jason Ohler is coming from Alaska this year to talk about Digital Storytelling in the Classroom. Because Wales -as a country - sets its own educational agenda, I’m really hope Welsh educationalists join us to hear how Wales could really set itself apart as a nation where all children get a chance to learn by making their own Digital Story at school.
P.S. There’s a bit of a flurry of posts this week as this is all info I want to make accessible before heading to Japan tomorrow.
That’s the title for a 30-minute documentary TV programme my colleague Melanie Lindsell has made with young Welsh climber Tori James about her attempt to climb Everest. The programme goes out on BBC Wales on 6 May (see below)
Melanie’s an experienced Video Nation producer and she’s also had success with longer-form documentaries using the self-authored ethos of Video Nation. Because I knew the kit would need to be lightweight, durable and able to work under harsh conditions, I asked Mel about the cameras and batteries she gave Tori. Here’s Mel’s reply:
BBC Mini DV Camera: Panasonic NV-GS150
· Weighs 400grams – they were able to hang it on a karabiner on a rucksack strap for easy access when climbing
· Lithium batteries – lasted 2-3 days in sub zero conditions. They kept spare batteries next to their skin to keep them warm and maintain charge
· Recharged batteries using solar panels
BBC Nokia N93
· Weight: 180 grams. attached another, smaller karabiner so that she could attach to a rucksack strap
· Battery lasted 1-2days, had to recharge using normal phone charge connected to the solar panels
Had access to car batteries at base camp from which to charge all electrical equipment. If away for 2 or 3 weeks without any charging facilities recommend taking something that uses Lithium batteries. Lithium retains its charge the longest in cold conditions.
Also took a modified mountain helmet cam.
***
Transmission details : You can watch Tori’s expedition in ‘On Top of the World’, Tuesday, May 6, BBC 2W at 7pm. Or on Friday, May 9, BBC2W at 10pm. The programme will also be available on BBC iPlayer in the UK for seven days from May 6 BBC iPlayer website. BBC 2W is on digital satellite channel 991 outside Wales and 102 within Wales.
Back in 2003, BBC Wales organised an International Digital Storytelling Conference. Two of the many attendees travelled to Cardiff all the way from Japan to be with us:
1. Akiko Ogawa, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Studies on Contemporary Society at Aichi Shukutoko University and
2. Aske Dam a Norwegian participatory media specialist who has worked extensively in the Far East on developments in mobile technology.
This wasn’t the last time I met Akiko and Aske. They’ve both maintained a lively interest in Digital Storytelling developments in Wales. In fact, Akiko has returned to Wales twice: she came to a Digital Storytelling workshop we ran in Cardiff and she returned last year with a group of six or more other Japanese academics, engineers and broadcasters who are part of a group called Media Exprimo (http://www.mediaexprimo.jp/english/).
The members of Media Exprimo who came to the BBC with Akiko were:
Ryuko Furukawa of TV Asahi
Hajime Hasegawa of Meiji Gakuin University
Takuichi Nishimura of National Institute of Advanced Industrial Scence & Technology
Tomoyuki Shigeta of Tama Art University
Tomiokiyo Sunaga of Tama Art University
Matsui Takako of University of Tokyo
As well as Capture Wales, the group also visited Cardiff University, Breaking Barriers and projects in Denmark.
In a few days time, I’m making a trip to Tokyo to take part in Mell Expo 2008 (http://www.mellplatz.com/info/info2008.html) and it’ll be great to meet these people once again.
Another member of Media Exprimo I’m very much looking forward to meeting for the first time is Shin Mizukoshi. He’s written some insightful pieces about populating the space between personal and commercial uses of communicative media with a new lively public space. In 2005, he defined media literacy thus:
“Activities for independent communication via media in an information society, and the technologies and knowledge that support these activities” - http://www.mode-prj.org/document/HongKong2005_1ppt.pdf .
Some of his work has been written jointly with Aske Dam as part of the MoDe project.
I love it when senior academics ask the kind of ‘what if’ questions about the significance of the fact that we can now carry around a really powerful all-in one broadcasting device in our hands. And not just the ‘what can we do with this?’ questions, but also the ‘what could we do to extend the device?’ and ‘what kinds of motivations might persuade individuals to exploit the full power of what they hold in their hand?’ kinds of questions.
At Mell Expo 2008 next weekend, I’m looking forward to showing the work the BBC Capture Wales did using computers, mobile phones and other devices. Most of all, I’m looking forward to finding out from Akiko, Media Exprimo, MoDe, etc. about the exciting work that’s going on in Japan in the field of media literacy, digital storytelling and ensuring people have access to a voice on the mass media.
I’ll post updates on this blog over the coming days.
It’s by the BBC Capture Wales team and we wrote it to coincide with the Digital Storytelling Gathering tour around Wales last month. It’s on the BBC Wales Digital Storytelling website. Hope you find it useful.
Here’s a link to the html menu page on the BBC website. And here’s a link to the pdf download which has a bonus section by Lisa Heledd outlining various new forms of digital storytelling, together with instructions - DS Recipe Cards, kind of. The pdf currently lacks Simon Turner’s fantastic article about recording people’s voices.
Table of Contents: Introduction
The ideal venue
Briefing participants
Find the story
Getting the story down on paper
Refining the story
Things to look out for when making a story
Equipment checklist
Computer basics
Taking digital photos
Voice recording
Editing your Digital Story
Sharing your Digital Story
(Bonus section in PDF download only)
Digital Storytelling forms with introduction
1. Four-day Digital Storytelling workshop
2. Shoebox Stories workshop
3. In the Frame
4. In a Flash
5. This is Where
6. Story Walks
Useful Links
Written by:
Gilly Adams: storycircle director Capture Wales.
Huw Davies: trainer and post producer Capture Wales.
Carwyn Evans: assistant producer Capture Wales.
Lisa Heledd: assistant producer Capture Wales.
Lisa Jones: project co-ordinator Capture Wales.
Karen Lewis, partnerships manager BBC Wales, former project
producer Capture Wales.
Daniel Meadows: Cardiff University, former creative director of BBC Capture Wales.
Gareth Morlais: project producer Capture Wales.
Simon Turner: Gloucester University, freelance sound recordist
with Capture Wales.
Photos by Carwyn Evans and Lisa Heledd.
The Capture Wales team has been holding a series of five Digital Storytelling Gatherings around Wales. We’ve held them in Caernarfon, Aberystwyth, Swansea, Merthyr Tydfil and Cardiff. The final one - in Cardiff - was held today and it was fantastic!
More than 100 individuals who are actively involved in or interested in facilitating digital storytelling activities in Wales have attended these days. Each day has been a chance for people who are involved in this work to meet others in their area, to enjoy watching stories together, learn a little about the history of digital storytelling, hear about recruiting participants (by Carwyn Evans), thinking about issues around ownership of story constituents (by Lisa Jones), technical challenges, sharing completed stories (me:), etc.
Daniel Meadows joined us at lunchtime. Daniel conducted the research into the proliferation of digital storytelling projects in Wales and it’s thanks to him that we had a starting point when inviting people to attend these events. Earlier in the day we’d watched Daniel’s digital story Polyphoto - one of the first digital stories I ever saw and one that left a lasting impression on me.
Something Capture Wales team member Gilly Adams said today in her story section really caught my attention. She said that watching a digital story is a little like taking a walk on a dark night past a house where the owner has left the curtains open and the lights on - you get a special glimpse of life inside. Gilly also used a stepping-stones analogy, saying that telling a story like this is like crossing a river using stepping stones. You take a series of steps and yet when you reach the other side, you can still see the riverbank you set out from.
Capture Wales team member Lisa Heledd has been studying digital storytelling forms in detail for the past two years. This afternoon, she outlined several different forms of digital storytelling, saying that different forms unlock different types of story. As well as showing examples of stories she, Carwyn Evans and Huw Davies of the Capture Wales team have helped people to make using disposable cameras (In the Frame) and mobile phones, she showed examples of digital stories from Murmur Toronto, Postcard Secrets, Story Corps, etc. I’m looking forward to a presentation Lisa’s making tomorrow jointly with Susy Pratt at University of Glamorgan’s George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling Annual Lecture and Symposium 2008 - Storytelling and Authenticity.
At the end of the afternoon, we gave attendees two things to take home with them:
1. a box of long-handled cooks matches with instructions for the storycircle ‘match game’.
2. a booklet called ‘A Guide to Digital Storytelling by the Capture Wales team’. We’ll be publishing this guide on the Capture Wales website soon.
Happy St David’s Day
Here’s a short clip of a song sung by children at a school in south Wales to celebrate the national day of the patron saint of Wales, sung at Cardiff Castle on 1 March 2008. I’ve obscured the images of the children on purpose. Diolch i chi blant am godi calonnau pawb a gwneud i ni deimlo’n falch i fod yn Gymry.
In the summer of 2007, my BBC Wales colleagues Carwyn Evans, Lisa Heledd, Robin Moore and I worked with Microsoft Research Centre via Participate in the testing of a prototype wearable camera called Sensecam.
Carwyn and Lisa gave Sensecam cameras and laptops to six people from south Wales from different backgrounds and with varying experience of digital media. They worked with Dave Randall and the teams at Microsoft Research, Participate and BBC Research & Innovation on a series of suggested tasks to test what it feels like to walk around all day with a device around your neck that captures automatic pictures every minute or less - and more often when you move or the light changes.
Before devising tasks we needed to work out for ourselves what the camera could do. Here’s a piece of reflective video I made myself using the Sensecam and the supplied software to make the visuals. I recorded the audio using a Nokia N93, edited the Sensecam image sequences into an .avi file using the supplied software and then edited the whole thing in iMovie.
I’m publishing this clip now that the findings of the experiment have been written up and published in the form of Harper, R., Randall, D., Smyth, N., Evans, C., Heledd. L. and Moore. R. Thanks for the Memory. HCI 2007. (Best paper award.)
Between Christmas and New Year, we stayed with my brother in law Dylan’s family. Dylan’s wife had given him a camcorder for Christmas and he’d filmed his family opening and playing with their presents on Christmas morning. He played the disk back and it was interesting to watch how people construct home videos. What Dylan had shot was a documentary-style piece showing other people - but not Dylan himself - opening their presents. We did hear Dylan’s disconnected voice from behind the lens, giving a running commentary and asking questions to his subjects.
Watching this home video set me wondering about what Dylan might need to do to get what he’d shot at home out on TV.
Our team here at BBC Wales is part of the Video Nation project. Under Melanie Lindsell’s leadership we’ve helped around 80 people to get video they’ve shot themselves onto the web and/or BBC TV. One of the defining features of Video Nation shorts is that there’s a strong authorial voice. These are personal stories; you know whose story it is and you know they are holding the camera and - if they’re not holding it themself for a shot or two - you know who they’ve given it to hold or that they’ve propped it up to record a piece-to-camera.
Going back to Dylan’s video, all he’d need to do to have all the shots he needs to edit a Video Nation-style short is to stand his camcorder on a bookshelf, look into the lens and say something that sums up what he feels about what’s been unfolding in front of his camera. This will give meaning to the footage, will make this a truly personal story and turn his home video into a more engaging piece of viewing.
Yes, if that’s what he wants, by taking on the look and feel of the Video Nation genre Dylan has the potential to get his home video broadcast on TV. All we need now is a TV climate where such content is made more welcome. And I’m hoping that moment is just around the corner…
I’m hoping this is useful to people working in museums or with film archives….
I’ve written about Rhondda Lives! here before. This is a Valleys Kids Project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, BBC Wales and the National Sound and Screen Archive of Wales.
I led a workshop held at Valleys Kids’ Soar Chapel at the end of November. This was a novel kind of digital storytelling experience because it fits edited, considered but unscripted personal reminiscence with existing archive footage shot in the Rhondda Valley between 1926-1986 or so. I’ll post a link to the stories from Aberth when they’re live.
Step 1 - attend public screening at Valley’s Kids (2hours)
Step 2 - Katrina Kirkwood of Valley’s Kids followed leads - people who wanted to tell a story in the workshop by visiting them in their home for research and to take a photo (1 hour)
Step 3 - morning storycircle led by BBC’s Lisa Heledd; afternoon story audio recording (unscripted) by BBC’s Carwyn Evans I (8 hours). The storycircle came about from a suggestion by Carwyn Evans who’d seen an early pilot I’d made where people spontaneously reacted to particular clips. Carwyn felt the reflection time of both the visits made by Katrina and the time together in the storycircle would not only result in more engaging stories but would also help to build a sense of community, comeradeship and fun between the participants. He was right on all counts.
Step 4 - directing BBC video editor Carwyn Jones as he fits archive footage to edited story audio recording (2 hours)
Step 5 - public end-of-workshop screening (1 hour)
The total time commitment we ended up asking the storytellers to make was around 14 hours, over five different days, across two months.
I’m publishing this workshop model in case it’s of interest to others in the digital storytelling community.
Special thanks to the storytellers; to Carwyn Evans, Lisa Heledd, Carwyn Jones, Katrina Kirkwood and Lona Wharton who made up the workshop week team; and to others involved in the project, including: Leighton Andrews, Cath Allen, Aled Eurig, Liz Girling, Edith Hughes, Margaret Jervis, Lisa Jones, Karen Lewis, Denise Lord, Robin Moore, Richard Morgan, Gareth Morris, Tim Neale, Dewi Vaughan Owen, Dafydd Pritchard, Gwenda Richards, Andy Roberts and Iain Tweedale.
The end-of-workshops screening - along with the storycircle - is everyone’s favourite part of the workshop. This afternoon at two at Valleys Kids, Soar Chapel, Penygraig, Rhondda, we’re holding the Rhondda Lives! screening and I’m really looking forward to it.
This week has been a fantastic one with ten people making a personal film with Valleys Kids using archive footage from BBC Wales and the National Screen and Sound Archive in a project funded by Heritage Lottery money. This project has been a lot of hard work for a lot of people and - seeing the stories that people have made - makes me realise it’s worth all the hard work. The stories they’ve told are fantastic!
I’ll reflect more about Rhondda Lives! in a future post and about different ways of facilitating storytelling using archive footage. For now, I just want to enjoy the anticipation of that final screening today.
Early on Monday morning, I’m taking a trip to Scotland organised by Susie Pratt of the George Ewart Evans Storytelling Centre at the University of Glamorgan. I’m looking forward to this, not least because it’ll be the first time I’ve ever been to Scotland. I’ll write about this trip next week.
Hamish Fyfe: ‘I remember being in a classroom in Northern Ireland where the children were drawing. I noticed one little girl of about seven and asked her what she was drawing. “I’m doing a drawing of God” she said. I said I thought that was interesting since a lot of people didn’t really know what God looked like. “Oh”, she said, “that’s alright, they will in a minute”.’
That’s a story Prof. Fyfe told at University of Glamorgan last night as he set out his vision for society where there are exciting new spaces set out for the arts. He show digital stories and compared today’s You Tube age with the moment when Eastman invented the one dollar box Brownie Camera and vernacular photography was invented. He warned that changes need to be made in the way arts are integrated into society. Here’s a summary of my understanding of his manifesto for new social and creative literacies:
We need to find better ways to communicate with each other and to engage with artists and a range of forms. The creative needs of those who work in the socially engaged arts need to be met and there needs to be space for children and young people to more freely explore creativity for themselves, instead of those opportunities always being so highly structured. People who care about this need to speak out as advocates for the arts as a cultural right for everyone and there needs to be a climate in which people can interact both locally and internationally, take risks and experience creative transformations for themselves. (A summary of key points by Hamish Fyfe in his ‘Cycles of Affirmation - Art and Community in the New Century lecture. Look out for the full text of his lecture which, based on past experience, will probably be posted here.)
I don’t know about you, but that I think that sounds like an improvement on the society in which we currently live and, unlike many utopian visions, this one sounds deliverable.
When I lived in Ardfert, County Kerry, in the Republic of Ireland in the mid 90s, I remember a radio programme called ‘Queueing For A Living’ in which the presenter Paddy O’Gorman sought out queues of all kinds and recorded conversations he had with those waiting. From laundrettes to prison waiting rooms, there was something about the stories that came out of those everyday situations and people spoke of things I hadn’t heard many people speak of on radio before.
I think Professor Hamish Fyfe of University of Glamorgan would have enjoyed that programme too. I’m looking forward to attending his inaugural professorial lecture this evening at the Glamorgan Business Centre, University of Glamorgan, Trefforest CF37 1DL.
Hamish is a fellow member of DS Cymru and the University of Glamorgan and BBC Wales are collaborating in research into forms of digital storytelling and participative media. I last heard Hamish speak formally at the University at the conclusion of The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling 2007 Research Seminar series on 14th June 2007. In that seminar, “Habits of the Heart” Storytelling and Everyday Life, he compared digital storytelling with the Mass Observation movement. He showed half a dozen digital stories and a 1930s Humphrey Jennings film. You can read the text of that lecture here (pdf file).
It’s fascinating to have the bloodline of what we’re doing in digital storytelling today traced by Hamish from Surrealism, though Mass Observation, via the radio ballards to a new book by Joe Moran called ‘Queuing for Beginners’. Moran (as does O’Gorman) revels in the everyday, routine and the ordinary - but not in the negative sense of these words.
And Hamish (as does Moran) wants the everyday and the ordinary to be taken more seriously by academics and by the mainstream. Because I think we can learn a lot by paying greater attention to the stories people tell in their digital stories.
University of Leeds is advertising two fully-paid PhD scholarships, one of which will be about “Digital storytelling and political engagement”. I studied media management with this university’s Institute of Communications Studies and it’s a great department and a fabulous place to study and live. (Link to application from on right-hand side of this page.)
I had an interesting day at the Media Literacy Task Force’s Digital Media Literacy Summit at Channel 4 in London yesterday.
“Right now there are more than 300 million people around the world watching video content online. It’s a fundamental shift that completely democratises our business.” Peter Chernin, News Corp. (Jon Gisby’s slide; I think this is the source.)
Yes, democracy can be served by absorbing content but it’s participation is what makes the democracy vibrant … and that isn’t happening yet because only:
“0.16% of YouTube users upload to YouTube” (Ewan McIntosh’s slide - photo of Guardian chart, May 2007)
I’d really hoped for more from the Task Force yesterday about how to address this gap. But as we’ve discussed in our own Wales Media Literacy Network, media literacy is a broad church - from understanding media messages and staying safe on the internet to being able to create your own media, so much of the yesterday’s talk was less relvant to content creators.
James Purnell MP - Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport - was refreshingly unconventional in his style as he spoke. When challenged about digital literacy in primary schools, he asked the questioner for possible solutions instead of defending existing policy.
Purnell introduced Dr Tanya Byron (House of Tiny Tearaways) and she later outlined her Byron Review about “risks to children from exposure to potentially harmful or inappropriate material on the internet and in video games”. If you’re interested in this field, Dr Byron invites your input…
Jellyellie (aged 17) said she always took her parents along with her to meet people she’d messaged on MSN - “otherwise they might stab me in my back!” Jellyellie was the day’s most entertaining speaker. She told us how she scared a businessman on a tube train by bluejacking him as he was falling to sleep by telling him she liked his tie. Bluejacking is anonymous bluetooth texting and Jellyellie made a website all about it when she was 13.
P.S. Overheard on the Circle Line yesterday a man telling a story about a large woman on the escalator in front of him getting stuck. Punchline: “I laughed my contact lenses out!”
If you’re starting out in digital storytelling, you face some fundamental decisions that will determine or be determined by equipment and software you have access to. I’m not going to give many answers today, but I’ll come back to these in future. It’s just useful to be aware of the scope…
What kind of computer am I going to use: Apple or PC? Or am I going to use a device like a mobile phone?
Am I going to work in Standard Definition or High Definition?
Which operating system am I going to choose: Windows, Apple, Linux?
Will I launch the operating system from the comupter hard drive or will I launch it from a disk or portable drive? E.g. dyneBolic is a LinuxLive OS which runs from a CD-Rom
Which aspect ratio am I going to use: 4 x 3 squarer format or 16 x 9 widescreen?
Which video editing software am I going to use?
Windows: Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premiere Elements, Adobe Premiere, Avid, etc?
Apple: iMovie, Final Cut Express, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, etc?
Linux: Kino, Cinerella, LiVES, etc.
Browser-based: eyespot, JumpCut, etc?
If you ask the advice of a TV video editor, many will say ‘buy Avid or Final Cut Pro’. I’ve avoided using those when helping people make digital stories because Avid uses baffling professional jargon on labels and FCP’s writing on buttons is too small for many of the people we work with to read. You may decide to go with them or explore other software like Adobe Premiere (Elements?)
Whatever you go for, if you want the stories you make to end up on TV, make your own story using the proposed kit and software, then show it to a technical TV professional to expose any shortcomings.
My friend and colleague Rhys Williams just showed me a website he’s project managed for a new Welsh-language TV show for young people called Mosgito. I haven’t watched it yet but judging by the website this looks like a fantastic show, where the producers have woven elements of participative media into the on-air programme.
They’ve recruited a team of participants - Gwegang - who use their own webcams to record pieces for the show. Other kinds of participation are also encouraged. In the Citcreu (create-kit) area, there are video tutorials on storytelling, camerawork, animation as well as uploaders so authors can share their work.
It’s great to see a programme like this going on air, helping people who participate to get the material they make shared with a big TV audience. Well done Adran Addysg a Dysgu BBC Cymru and S4C!
Here are three links I wanted to share with you in the area of storytelling, participation and citizenship:
1. http://www.friction.tv/
If you’ve got a webcam and a microphone plugged into your computer, you can contribute to this site. It partners with Channel 5 news and is a managable way to get your point across on video. The drawback is that it’s difficult to make a polished piece: good sound and light, memorising something fluid and engaging, looking comfortable in front of the camera, etc. Oftentimes though, the speaker’s passion shines through.
From Mandy Rose
2. http://voicethread.com/
A Flash-based online storytelling tool. You can add photos from Flickr or your computer, upload an audio recording and combine the two to make a digital story. Once registered, the site annoyingly nags you until you upload a photo of yourself. Because it’s a Flash console, you can’t bookmark favourite stories on the site. Best use of this tool is with group photographs where each individual in the picture gives their take on the set-up. Here’s a topical Haloween photo montage: http://voicethread.com/share/14089/
From DK
3. http://www.operationsoapbox.org/
Soapbox project at the Royal Festival Hall in London. I’m not sure whether or not what people say will be published online as video.
From Carwyn Evans
I gave a brief presentation about digital storytelling in Wales on behalf of BBC Wales as part of last night’s RTS Wales Media Literacy Network event at the University of Glamorgan’s new Atrium building in Cardiff. DK of Mediasnackers blogged the session here.
I wanted to show a digital story called Set Free by Dean Byfield during my presentation. I invited Dean to come along and he and his wife Hailey were kind enough to come. There was heartfelt applause at the end of his story and Dean stood up and made a storming off-the-cuff speech about his experience of making his digital story.
Here’s an outline of my presentation from my notes ….
OFCOM defines media literacy as: “the ability to access, understand and CREATE communications in a variety of contexts”.
I’m delighted CREATE is in OFCOM’s definition; CREATING media is at the heart of digital storytelling
Q: What is a digital story?
A: briefly, it’s a two-minute broadcast-quality personal story made by the storyteller themself.
Making a DS for the 1st time often means learning at least two kinds of skills that may be new to the individual:
1. technical - this is the new skill which is most often cited in connection with digital exclusion and skilling for the knowledge economy
2. narrative skills - this is usually sadly underrated.
We’re here at the new Atrium, home of The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling - Prof Mike Wilson and Prof Hamish Fyfe. It’s an international centre of excellence in storytelling.
I feel that the skills of organising and relating experience in the form of a story can be as important in the knowlege economy as the technical skills. These skills of storytelling are harder to learn than technical. Learning in a group - workshop of ten people - is what we’ve found works best.
Let’s watch a story
—– PLAY DIGITAL STORY - - - DEAN BYFIELD - SET FREE —
Introduce Dean and Hailey Byfield.
Process:
1. DS starts with a Storycircle - no computers for the first day.
2. getting down the story and recording it
3. taking and scanning images from own personal collection
4. using video editing software to synchronise images with the audio recording of the story
2,000+ across Wales
600+ at BBC Wales workshops
Thanks largely to the Assembly’s Communities@One - 40+ orgs with an element of DS in Communities first areas of Wales.
We’re forming partnerships with orgs like: Yale College Wrexham; Breaking Barriers, Blackwood; Sbarc!, Caernarfon, Coleg Sir Gar Llanelli; National History Museum, etc.
Importance to BBC Wales -
1. helping to promote media literacy in Wales
2. a self-authored voice for all kinds of people on BBC Wales’s web, radio and TV platforms
3. helping to spread the skills of STORYTELLING
Finish by showing another digital story, by Margaret Hodges.
Here are some public H&S considerations for digital storytelling workshop organisers. I hope they prove useful.
Venue
- nearby parking and public transport
- accessibility for wheelchairs with no trip hazards
- accessible toilets and break-out spaces
- enough space, tables, chairs to accommodate all the equipment and people and to allow facilitators to move comfortably between participants
- power points along two sides of the room makes safer rigging easier.
- break-out spaces - because people will be working intensively together, maybe over a longish period
- check if anyone has any special dietary needs and request food hygiene certificates from caterers for your records. (Thanks to Lisa Jones for suggesting that.)
Rigging - choose room layout and cable routes wisely
- use gaffer tape, ties and mats to make cables safer
Briefings
- give directions to toilets and break-out spaces as part of the housekeeping briefing
- warn about cables and other trip hazards
- warn that drinks and computers don’t mix
- fire drill - what to do if there’s a fire and give the location of the fire exits.
- ask that anyone who has any special needs in the event of emergency lets us know beforehand - either now or one-to-one after this briefing
- don’t rewire or adapt equipment
- seat yourself comfortably (say how) in front of your workstation and take at least a five minute screen break every hour
- using a mouse; it can be re-configured and moved if you’re left handed.
- tilting a laptop screen can improve quality of the picture you see on it
Working practices
- try your best to be ‘in tune’ with the feelings of people at every stage of our workshops
- make sure every team member has received H&S training. (BBC has a great one called The Risk Management of Productions)
- don’t allow a situation where one of your team has to be all alone with a workshop participant (storyteller). Voice recording is a good example. Have one male and one female team member with each participant and make plans so this can be done
- write and lodge a risk assessment for every workshop and write, lodge and maintain role-related risk assessments
- try to work alongside people as they use cameras whenever possible. Sometimes though, people need photos or footage to be taken away from the workshop in the evening or early morning. We brief anyone working with one of our cameras outside the workshop to take care with position and movement, especially with heights, crowds or near traffic. If applicable, we ask that people don’t record dangerous or illegal circumstances or events. We ask people to not to use a camera while walking backwards unless there’s someone else guiding them
- applying principles of diversity in recruitment of participants reduces some risks
- wash-ups after workshops give us an opportunity to discuss, learn and make changes to future models
- there are additional considerations when working with children, young people, vulnerable people and some other groups of people.
I’ve focused on public, not team safety here. If you think of other issues, please use the comments field?
I watched two videos - To Catch a Lobster and Love to Grow. They were mainly video with some still images. They had some really rare moments and certainly revealed something special about the authors and their lives. Having the camera still - on a tripod - when the author was in shot yet often moving when they were out of shot reciforced the image of the author holding the camera and ‘calling the shots’. Having some still images in the video worked well too. The storyteller edits their own video in the workshop.
The audio slideshows I watched -Â Travelling Post and Drawn to Water - were digital stories. The script is written and read by the storyteller. Duration’s a little longer than the 250 words used largely in Wales at 3′00″. There were cross-dissolves in places; I didn’t see a zoom;Â simple is good. There was a lovely use of music on the ones I watched.
As a web viewer, being able to enlarge the video window to 200% is nice and I like the fact the storytellers retain copyright of their story.
Highland Lives have workshops soon at Grantown on Spey and Alness.
Congratulations to Liz Leonard, the Highland Lives team, partners and storytellers on the publication of these first stories.
It’s actually the first page of a brand new sister website to this blog. Aberth Digital Storytelling Resources is a response to what a number of people have asked for: a site that brings together in one place all kinds of equipment and software that digital storytellers will find useful. I’ve chosen to focus on items on sale on eBay because it’s a great way of presenting current resources (like flashcard portable audio recorders)Â alongside discontinued software (like the digital storyteller’s old favourite Adbe Premiere 6.5 which can be installed on both Macs and PCs). I hope you find the new site useful. Please leave comments and suggestions here.
I bumped into Sue Williams of Hyperaction at an Adobe event in Cardiff last week. It was nice to catch up with her and hear about some very exciting plans Hyperaction are making. They’ve just put out a call for freelancers in the south Wales area which I’m pasting here in the hope it’ll be of interest to Aberth DS blog readers.
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HyperAction has been running award-winning multimedia projects with schools and the community since 1997. (http://www.hyperaction.org.uk) Due to a number of exciting new projects in development, we are seeking to expand our pool of freelance workers who can work with us on multimedia projects in a number of different ways – for example
Video recording and editing
Sound recording and editing
Music
Graphic design
Illustration
Animation
Photography
Multimedia production
Web design
Above all, you will need to be able to show that you have experience of working on digital arts / media projects in schools and the community.
Please send us a letter, introducing yourself, attach your CV and include samples of your work on disk. Tell us whether you use Windows, Mac or both platforms - we use both ourselves
I’ve changed this site so you can now add your comments to any post. You do this either at the bottom of the post’s own page or by clicking on the word ‘comments’ or ‘no comments’ at the end of the item on the homepage. I’m hoping the anti-spam device works and I’ll keep an eye on it over the coming weeks. Happy commenting!
The design’s been re-vamped. I lost some categorisation in the migration and I’ll try to fix this in future.
Wow, I’ve just been reading about the Singapore International Storytelling Festival that’s going on this week. 60,000 storytellers are expected to attend. I’m struggling to imagine that many people all coming together for a storytelling festival. Fantastic!
Digital storytelling is on the programme this year and Denise Atchley is taking part. I’ll never forget Denise’s speech at our 2003 Digital Storytelling Conference here at BBC Wales in Cardiff. From the platform, she presented an unfinished digital story made by her late husband Dana in which she filled in the gaps live. It was incredibly moving. The ingternational digital storytelling community of course owes a huge debt to Dana and Denise.
If you’re one of the 60,000 in Singapore this week, be sure not to miss Denise’s presentation.
We looked at workshop space in the last post, today it’s the kit.
You want to bid for funding to set up a digital storytelling project, but you’re not sure what you’re going to need? Here’s a list to build from of examples of equipment needed to run digital storytelling and participatory media workshops. The kit specified below is all portable so, as long as extra trained personnel are available, workshops can be held in external community spaces as well as in the Workshop base. Here’s the shopping list:
laptops with software to capture/edit/show video, image and audio with mains leads and spare batteries. I think Apple computers have been better-suited to digital storytelling than PCs, whilst there’s a higher penetration of PCs here in Wales. At least two of the laptops to be designated and set up for trainers.
image scanner(s) which can be powered from the USB lead - not plugged into the mains
Bluetooth-enabled printer(s)
some digital cameras with fast, large memory cards
tripod (e.g. Manfroto)
two microphones (e.g. Rode)
USB audio interface by Edirol or M-Audio
two mic stands, cables, windshields and clips script stand
portable audio recording solution
portable powered speakers
DV camera for archiving stories. MiniDV tape, not disk, with DV-in enabled.
other appropriate capturing/authoring devices as required for workshops (e.g. Nokia N93 mobile phones)
tape, disk, card and storage stock
portable hard drives
data sticks
external USB floppy drive and card reader
USB and firewire cables
mains extensions/splitters
gaffer tape and rubber mats
flight cases
trolley
access to transport suitable for carrying equipment will be needed by trainer
If you’re planning to set up your own digital storytelling or participatory media project,
you’ll need somewhere to hold your workshops. You can base yourself at one venue or roam around using existing community facilities as venues. Here’s a solution which has the capacity to combine the two scenarios. If you’re making a bid for funding, good luck.
The overall vision is a space where members of the public can go to get help to make their own video and audio which the can be broadcast and published on the mass media. Here are the required features:
accessible by public transport.
parking nearby for loading equipment.
ground-floor room of 440 square feet or more.
accessible toilet on the same floor.
the room needs to be able to be blacked out for presentations.
it can be open for public drop-in but with restrictions during productions.
a see-through lockable capture booth in one corner for audio recording and one-to-one video editing.
plentiful mains power points along all four walls of the room, some at bench height.
lockable equipment storage bays.
re-configurable desk/seating capacity for one trainer plus six members of the public who are authoring their own piece of rich media using DV cameras, stills cameras, mobile phones, etc. in workshop formation.
desks in middle of room and benches around edges.
twelve chairs needed.
computers (see separate post).
all computers in the workshop can access wireless/Bluetooth-enabled data projector, printer, speakers and large collapsible screen.
data projector pointing at the screen or a large plasma screen with DVD player and speakers.
a navigable kiosk showcasing people’s content. The navigation of kiosk application to be based on Storybank’s model (University of Swansea and University of Surrey) and is aesthetically inspired by the superb archive kiosks at the Swansea Waterfront Museum.
some planned activities that aren’t digital-literacy-connected to be scheduled here too
In the next post, I’ll make a shopping list of the kit that may be needed to run workshops at this venue and beyond.
Following on from yesterday’s roundup, here’s the final batch of links, for now… 400+ Tools for Photographers, Videobloggers, Podcasters and Musicians.
I had an email this morning from a student at Albany, NY, USA, who’s making a digital story for a college assignment. He was writing to ask about online tutorials. Here are three that came to mind:
1. www.photobus.co.uk > DS > DS Tutorial. Daniel Meadows goes into the software and the key steps to building your digital story. There’s also a fantastic pdf guide to making a story using iLife on this site.
2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/highlandlives/ - BBC Scotland’s model is a little bit Video Nation and a little bit Digital Storytelling. The tutorials take you through the steps involved.
3. http://uk.current.com/make/training - Current TV was a pioneer in giving engaging step-by-step tutorials. They also talk about getting consents and clearing rights for publication, which are often overlooked by other sites.
If you’re using iMovie or Windows Media Maker to make your digital story, just Google for tutorials for now and I’ll round up the best ones in future.
You’ve been invited to help a group of digital storytellers to post produce their stories at the end of their workshop or course. Here are some things to think about when you prepare.
1. know your ‘deliverables’. Have a list of things you need to take away from the digilab and make sure you go home with them. It’s good to have this printed and hand it out or pin it to the wall. I use my Dream Deliverables list as a guide. (Gosh, that page is being linked to now, it’s Number 1 for that search term in Google today)
2. have a Plan B, Plan C and Plan D. Think about what can go wrong and plan for it. E.g. there may be a mix of Macs and PCs - so I need to think about what filesystem my portable drive has. The machines may be on a network and it may be the administrator’s day off - so I need to have some portable applications on a key drive which I can use without installing them. Take along blank DVD-Rs and CD-Rs.
3. plan the paperwork - at a minimum, you need to take home contact details for everyone. Other bits of paperwork include copyright details of music, images and clippings. Ask (in pre production) for storytellers to get written consents and release paperwork signed when necessary.
4. timetable your time. Allow enough time for a group screening at the end.
5. try to let everyone take home a copy of their story on a DVD. A compilation disc of everyone’s story - as long as no individual objects - is a nice souvenir. If there’s not enough time for it to be done on the day, work out a plan and let everyone know what’s happening.
This list was inspired by a session I did last week with international journalists at the Thomson Foundation. I was invited there by Anna Roberts.
Some people who make a digital story telling report that telling and sharing their story helped make them feel better. The word ‘catharsis‘ is used in evaluation quite often. Digital storytelling is also being used in the field of dementia; Ysbyty Tri Chwm in south Wales leads the field in this, as far as I know.
I’d love to see mention of digital storytelling in this document and I’m mentioning this in case anyone reading this would like to feed into this consultation.
Which personal storytelling forms work well with the volume turned down?
I’ve always been puzzled this paradox: people get so many new skills by making their first digital story …. yet most people only ever produce one digital story. It was 
Yes, DS3 has expanded to two days this year and, as it says on the website: “Whether you work in education, the community or as an artist, it is your opportunity to share experiences, explore new creative ideas, see the latest technological developments, look at examples of best practise in the U.K. and worldwide and celebrate the growing significance of Digital Storytelling”
I’ve observed that working on stories in a group usually helps individuals to improve their story and I love watching how stories are improved, thanks to the group dynamics. That’s one of the reasons digital storytelling works so well as a group workshop activity.
