7 Steps to Creating a Digital Story

1. 7 Steps to Creating a Digital Story Tom Banaszewski techszewski@gmail.com techszewski.blogs.com teachstory.org

3. 7 Steps of a Digital Story • 1. Writing the Script • 2. Planning the Project • 3. Creating Folders • 4. Recording Voice Over • 5. Gather, Create, and Edit Media • 6. Rough Cut First then Final Cut • 7. Export and Share Your Digital Story

4. Is it a Digital Story? • A little history lesson • Next Exit • You be the judge • 7 Elements (see hand-out)

5. Defining Digital Storytelling • the practice of combining personal narrative with multimedia to produce a short autobiographical movie

6. Defining Story • “a narrative account constructed around four central themes: character, conflict, struggle, goal” - Kendal Haven Write Right

7. Step 1: What’s Your Story? “Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say,” – Barbara UelandIf You Want to Write

8. Challenges of Writing the Script • Loss of storytelling culture • Weak story literacy skills • Avoiding the narrated slideshow pitfall • Traditional composition approaches • Balancing telling vs. showing

9. “Dancing together text, images and audio on the screen,”– Bernajean Porter DigiTales

10. Many Paths Lead to a Good Story • Answer an open ended question • Concise moment of change • Note card approach • Writing into a photo • Story Spine • Story Sparks (Jay O’Callahan)

11. Story Core • What is the central struggle? • The dramatic question? • Story Circle • Synthesizing experience and emotions

12. Get the Picture of Your Story First • Virtual Portrait of a Story (VPS)

13. VPS for Don’t Call Me Mr. B Parents died early. No chance to ask questions. People shorten my last name to “Mr. B” Make sure people know my full last name. Don’t answer to Mr. B Nobody in family talked about our background. Find peace in maintaining link to my past thru my last name. Don’t know anything about my last name. What are you? Feel good about getting message across to my students.

14. Storyboarding

15. Written Script • Not an essay • No paragraphs • 1-3 sentence chunks • Try to keep to one page

16. Step 2: Planning the Project • Practice what you preach • Fail to plan, plan to fail • Setting realistic expectations • iMovie, Adobe, Microsoft? • Test your software, equipment, working environment

17. 5 Steps to Creating a Digital Story • 1. Write a two to three minute first person story • 2. Collect images to accompany the story • 3. Import images into the computer • 4. Record the voice over. • 5. Align images with script.

18. Step 3: Organizing Your Folders • Original Images • Resized Images • VO • Music • Exports

19. Step 4: Recording the Voice Over • Recording within iMovie • Microphones, headphones • Using Audacity • MP3 recorder

20. Step 5: Gather, Create, Edit Media • Start with images, hold off on video til later • BIG, engaging images • Google, Picassa, Flickr • Visual literacy

21. Editing Images • Magic numbers 640 x 480 • Scanning • Hand drawn images • Resize images

22. Step 6: Rough Cut then Final Edits • Import your images • Drag and Drop • Add VO • Sync images with VO • Adjust timing of images • Add transitions, effects

23. Step 7: Sharing Your Digital Story • Export = compressing = making file size smaller • CD quality • Full DV • Web version • Upload to YouTube