Six features of the digital story we helped people to make as part of the BBC Capture Wales and Cipolwg ar Gymru digital storytelling project, which ran from 2001-2008 at BBC Cymru Wales were that the digital story is:
- a video of about two minutes duration
2. a personal, usually true, story written and voiced by the individual storyteller
3. a “considered narrative” (Daniel Meadows) usually scripted by the storyteller (c250 words) or proactively told, not reactively in response to a media professional’s questioning
4. illustrated with 20 or so of the storyteller’s own photos or images – sometimes including a short video clip – edited together by the storyteller to make a moving visual narrative
5. may have original music or a relevant sound recording laid over the voice
6. recorded in a workshop with other people who share their own stories and learn from each other
The digital form we used was developed by our whole team, creatively led by Daniel Meadows, with initial inspiration from the late great Dana Atchley and the people who ran our original training the trainers workshops at the Elan Valley Hotel back in 2001: Joe Lambert & Nina Mullen of StoryCenter.org
Other definitions and descriptions of digital storytelling and the digital story include:
Everyone has a story to tell. All over Wales, people are making Digital Stories about real-life experiences and each story is as individual as the person who made it. Each Digital Story is made by the storyteller themself, using his or her own photos, words and voice.
Digital Stories are short, personal tales from the heart – multimedia sonnets from the people.
Written and published originally by Gareth Morlais on 12 July 2017