“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…
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Avoid rhyming poetry – number 6 of 7 DS no-nos
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.
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Avoid pure linear reportage – number 1 of 7 DS no-nos
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.
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Stories that work with the sound turned off
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. Written and first published by…
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Storywalks
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.
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Longer form personal storytelling on Everest
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…
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Unknown Shonan
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…
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Match Game – the five steps
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: ————————————— Alan Thomas plays the match game at BBC…
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Curtains open, lights on
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…
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How to upgrade your home video so it can be broadcast on TV
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…