I’ve been invited to give a presentation about digital storytelling innovations at the Storytelling for a ‘Just’ Future conference this week. The DST Conference Committee is hosting this conference as an online 24-hour Digital Storytelling ‘marathon’ on the 21st and 22nd of June 2021.
There should be some great creative conversations and environments for discussion. The presentation I’m giving is called: ‘Digital Storytelling 2001-08, some innovations’
I’ll talk about the new digital storytelling forms I first encountered in 2001
Daniel Meadows saw Dana Winslow Atchley III’s Home Movies at a course run by Joe Lambert & Nina Mullen of the Center for Digital Storytelling, now Storycenter, in California.
He invited Joe and Nina to come to the Elan Valley in Wales to hold a BBC Cymru Wales training the trainers event which signalled the beginning of BBC Capture Wales / Cipolwg ar Gymru.
Daniel Meadows describes digital stories as we knew them as “Short movies told in the first person, with feeling … 250 words, a dozen pictures, and a duration of about two minutes … tight as sonnets.”
Workshop production was key to digital storytelling innovations. This heralded a shift of power from broadcaster to citizen. In my presentation I’ll talk about health sector advocacy, new points of view (e.g. Paula Symon’s story about Gulf War protests). I’ll also talk about swooping in storytelling, as done so well by Hanne Jones in her Walking with Maurice digital story.
Apart from editorial innovation, technological developments enabled other digital storytelling innovations.
- More affordable kit like the Apple PowerBook laptop opened up the form to more people
- YouTube’s arrival in 2005 meant that anyone could publish to a popular internet video sharing platform.
- Mobiles and faster data networks heralded storytelling on the move. Nokia N93 on Orange 3G was the first time I was to shoot and upload broadcast quality video without wi-fi. I’ll show this 8-second story.
The online 24-hour Digital Storytelling marathon is on 21/22 June 2021. The free event will take place online and will span the whole 24 hours, following the sun across different time zones.