Comments on locative stories 2017

In the original video there is only one view. Even though we use only one image it is possible to use this in multiple ways. Changing the framing is very effective, just by cropping the image we come closer into the situation and we can add some more dramaturgy to the narrative.

Giving the characters voices is a brilliant way of playing with such presentations, even without making a video. Just let the children experiment with different voices as you play the presentation: inside og outside on a mobile device.

There are also a lot of activities that follows from a scenario like this: placing the stones for a fireplace, collecting and chopping wood, get the fire started, cooking, thinking about safety, how we leave the place etc

The second story was placed by the water (Solheimsvannet) and we experienced it under cold and snowy conditions. It is easier to see how it would work as a preparation for a trip to the seaside in the summertime. For such a purpose this video will work brilliantly:

Simple movements can have a really telling effect: by turning the character sideways we do understand that it has fallen asleep.

The sunburned body leads to a potential discussion about how to avoid this.

Even though the story can be seen as trivial there is an important message that children need to get: we have to be careful with the sun. We can not tell hard facts about skin cancer etc to small children, but we can tell stories about how it hurts to get burned by the sun, and how to protect ourselves in the sun. Such messages must be repeated numerous times, and it helps to do this in a playful way.

The next story does also tell effectively with images. We are introduced to two characters, on opposite sides of the waterway. the use of the binoculars does emphasize the distance. There is also a sort of shot-reverse-shot from the one character's perspective to the other, connected by the subjective view through the binoculars. A simple, but still very filmatic sequence:

In this video the characters are photographed in the natural environment, and not separated from the background. this often requires more pictures, but it also make us able to do more work outdoors. We can easily think how we could prepare, take pictures and work on the final result with a group of children. Maybe we can even photograph different scenarios, following the children's ideas, and make several versions. this can be done quite easily, just by making a copy of the presentation and do some variations.

Think- and speech-bubbles works really good in these narratives, and shows a connection between animated films and cartoons. Here we visually get the idea that the two characters want to be together, and the solution they come up with:

This video was made in the simplest presentation software available, but still turned out to be a quite advanced visual story.

The last video brought us back to the campus. The first part plays a song that ends up with a question addressing the children and an activity: do you know a christmas song. You can imagine how you can work with children singing different songs and add them to the video, or sing songs when you are outside, to pøease the character in the story.

This presentation was made in Powerpoint, which have some more features compared to google Presenter. Among these features are more advanced animation and transitions between pages. A feature that you might find useful is the ability to use a plug-in to Powerpoint, called Office Mix. This enables sound- and video recording directly from Powerpoint.

In this case the characters was isolated from the background. The motorcycle was found as clipart. The latter does of course take away some of the authenticity from the final product, but mostly in cases where you use clipart only. in this case the combination works well:

It is worth mentioning that a library of clipart that you will be able to combine these in multiple ways quite fast. With a little practice you will be able to use presentation software and do the layout of the different images on a smartboard, which opens a world of opportunities when working with kids. Just remember that the most useful clipart will be images where objects are separated from the background.

See for example http://pngimg.com/ and http://nobacks.com/ or http://www.stickpng.com/

The last image in this video is a good example of how you can use image manipulation to combine images of things and persons of different scale and make them part of the same universe, manipulated into the same scale:

A little easter egg for those reading this far. It is nice to know how to isolate an image from the background, using image editors like Pixlr. When you know the basics you can always make the necessary corrections when using other methods. Then you can turn to services like clippingmagic.com, that makes some of the more tedious tasks easier.