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Updated 8. July 2016
Digital storytelling has a long tradition, but today we use this term for a variety of expressions. Basicly it is about how to use digital technology to tell stories. What these expressions have in common is that we talk about short multimedia narrative, often based on experience or experiences from tthe life of the person telling the story. We should not let ourselves be misled by the term "digital". The basics of digital storytelling is not the digital technology, but how to we tell our stories and how we listen to what others have to tell.
With digital production and distribution technologies the stories can reach a wider audience. The general development of media has resulted in an altered view of the distinction between professional and amateur, and challenges the traditional view on quality and what is worth communicating. When the concept of digital stories was created, this development was in its infancy. Mass media were in control of what could be communicated to a wider audience, which led to a uniformity of the information that was available to the public. This uniformity influenced public opinion in unfortunate ways, while demands and expectations of "professional" quality helped to pacify people who otherwise could have been active storytellers. Therefore, digital storytelling began as a political project, where education in telling with digital media was seen as an important part of a development of ordinary people's awareness of their importance as citizens. The aim was that people in general should learn to use creative ways of working, and let more have their voices heard in public.
It was seen as essential to develop new forms of public expression, not least as a necessary counterbalance to the stories conveyed by commercial media companies, like Disney and other large producers. To accomplish this, the Center for Digital Storytelling developed a workshop model to help participants develop their personal voice, and produce stories that raised social and / or political issues (Lambert 2010).
Putting Purpose To Pixels
Putting Purpose To Pixels
Screen culture and the social network have become the new campfire for story exchanges between cultures, communities and individuals. How are these stories put to purpose in addressing critical issues within our societies, in assisting with own issues of life process and physical and mental health, in helping to make the connections in our networks to act for social change? Reflecting on the role of digital story exchanges in the Arab Spring, and addressing the natural and environmental disaster of the Japanese Tsunami in March, Lambert will share some thoughts on how storytelling is changing in the 21st Century:
Introduction
Introduction
Digital storytelling has traditionally been image driven narratives in combination with sound (both spoken narration and background music). The story is usually about something that is important to the narrator: an event that changed the direction of this person's life, one thing that it is linked to personal memories, another person etc. A digital story can also be an amusing anecdote, something interesting or reflection of something in daily life.
A digital story usually consists of a soundtrack (mostly read by the narrator himself) illustrated with photos (usually private), and sometimes illustrations, drawings, animations and / or video. It is the narrator who chooses material, who writes the script and put it all together using simple software.
The stories are told in a concentrated form: the length is usually only two or three minutes. You can tell a lot in just a few minutes, and long videos may easily lose intensity. Dramaturgy must still be effective, and the story should have a clear focus. Much can for example be achieved by telling a story form the starting point of an object or image.
The Origins
The Origins
Digital stories as a genre is usually associated with the American artist and artist Dana Atchley. In the 1970s he traveled around the United States with a show in where he told stories accompanied by slides, guitar playing and singing. Throughout the 1980s, Atchley began to work with short films based on photographs, 8mm films, video, and various personal items. In the early 1990s Atchley began working with Joe Lambert, and the two were central when establishing The Center for Digital Storytelling in 1994. The center has later developed a specific methodology, which has gradually become the core of the concept which called digital stories.
Digital storytelling began as a way to give ordinary people an opportunity to be heard with their stories. The production of digital stories were originally linked to a workshop model, where people with little experience in media production were given help to tell theirpersonal stories. The purpose was to highlight everyday stories, stories that most often disappear in mainstream media.
Ill: Georgie Pauwels
Additional sources
Additional sources
Digitale fortellinger (in Norwegian), Wikibooks
A Guide to Digital Storytelling
Bruner, Jerome (1991). The Narrative Construction of Reality. Critical Inquiry, 18:1, 1-21.
Core methods (2012). Center for Digital Storytelling.
web.archive.org/web/20120102153910/http://www.storycenter.org/coremethod.html
Digital storytelling in the classroom
7 Elements of Digital Storytelling. http://atr.k12.hi.us/tutorials/tutorials/digstory/elements.htm.
History (2012). Center for Digital Storytelling.
Lambert, Joe (2010). Digital Storytelling Cookbook. Berkeley: Digital Diner Press
web.archive.org/web/20101228225156/http://www.storycenter.org/cookbook.pdf
Workshop Process & Agenda (2012). Center for Digital Storytelling.
http://web.archive.org/web/20111012213256/http://www.storycenter.org/process.html
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