1: The role of digital storytelling

We can continue to exercise our Liberal Arts conversational skills by talking about the principles of digital storytelling, continue to develop our Media Studies skills by thinking about and analyzing examples of digital stories, and hone our digital media skills by experimenting with digital stories on our own.The quote above from Joe Lambert (pictured at left) is not meant to suggest that the technical aspects of producing a good digital story do not matter at all. Rather it is to suggest that if you come up with a good story --one that you need to tell-- then learning the technical aspects will be naturally motivated by your desire to do justice to your story. There are things to learn about the grammar of putting together a good digital story, and we'll be learning about these kinds of things, but it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. It has to have an emotional connection, a meaningful connection, for you. Lambert's above quote also relates directly to one of the key characteristics of the digital age --namely, artisan production and publication of content. It is increasingly the case in the digital present that individuals have ample access to information, tools, and publishing venues for their own self-generated content. In this sense the digital storytelling movement is a part of a much broader social phenomenon.We'll define digital-stories as meaningful multi-media first-person narratives. This is the definition the Center for Digital Storytelling uses, and we will be using their basic approach/process along with their definition --but we will be using a distilled version of the approach Lambert outlines in the Digital Storytelling Cookbook to get us started.

In broad outline our approach will be as follows:

1) We will look at and talk about examples of digital-stories (some of which we may have already seen)

• • Part I and Part 2 of Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives: a story by Mark Everett

• CDS story examples

  • I Photograph to Remember: a story by Pedro Meyer

2) We will talk about how to develop good story ideas

We will need to talk about what 'good' means. We're looking for story ideas that will, when unfolded, reflect the best things that digital-stories have to offer. As we develop our story ideas, we crossover and back between the Liberal Arts and the Fine Arts. Fine Artists are in some ways more invested in producing products than Liberal Artists are. The ontological status or 'nature' of works of art as products can be seen in this context as quite interesting and/or quizzical, more complex. I mean we say works of art have a life of their own, or speak for themselves. We also sometimes hear the word longevity used in regard to artworks. These kinds of things clue us in to the somewhat quizzical ontology of art objects. The end-products of Liberal Artists are more straightforwardly an extension of their talking. In the case of digital-stories, these two strands are fairly evenly balanced, in that we're talking about producing objects (stories) that are literally based on our talk (with ourselves and others). Yet we are clearly moving more into the realm of Fine Arts as we begin to focus more on aesthetic products. Joe Lambert writes:

"The issue of how we get from our conversational use of story to crafting a work that stands on its own falls more into the category of a general creative process."

We also enter into new types of personal dynamics --but again with some resonances with where we have been in relation to practicing our talking. Again in Lambert's words:

"Stories are the large and small instruments of meaning, of explanation, that we store in our memories. We cannot live without them. So why is it that when many of us are asked to construct a story as a formal presentation, we go blank? We informally tell stories all the time, but the conscious construction of story calls up mental blocks."

This is quite similar to what Macomber notes about how well we talk informally almost anywhere (i.e., about our brother-in-law or roommate) but how we seize up at the prospect of talking in class. Why the mental blocks to formal storytelling then? Joe Lambert cites three possibilities:

• 1. Our ability to pull things together into coherent stories is under constant assault due to the sheer amount of material we are presented with in contemporary life, and the often fragmentary snippets and sound-bites it is presented in. Interestingly, he mentions that we no longer practice the skills that people have in oral cultures to remember stories or chunks of stories in reference to epigrams that are easily remembered and re-purposed into storytelling.

  2. Our internal 'editor' keeps telling us our stories are nothing special, not entertaining enough, not significant enough, etc.

  3. Storytelling has been devalued by the ethos of quick-paced consumerism and advertising, which promotes the idea that the only story is YOU (your personal appearance and so forth), and that this story is told by what you buy, not what you find meaningful. In this case, rather than twelve or so years of school-culture teaching us to sit still, shut up, and learn to write, we have commercial, consumer-culture teaching us for 18+ years that storytelling is best done by professionals and that we should keep our own little stories to ourselves and just BUY the good stories.

How can we counter this? Well, for one thing, I think we can for example work with fragmentation as a theme. I mean if it is a pervasive part of all of our lives these days, why not turn it around, explore it, and use it in our stories? Marshall McLuhan showed the way in this by creating his own sound-bites, adopting and appropriating the techniques of consumer culture to tell a different story. Donna Haraway did something similar in re-appropriating and re-assigning the meaning of the usually hyper-masculine cyborg figures (such as Robocop or Terminator) to tell emancipatory, feminist stories. We can adopt similar 'turnaround' strategies to turn seeming negatives into positives for use in our own storytelling.

I also think we can also make progress against the nay-saying internal 'editor' and the consumerist-mirror by looking at good examples of digital stories. I think good examples give us courage. If a storyteller takes time to pick a story that matters to them, and if their honesty and humanity come through in the telling, the stories are worth watching. Our stories will be, too. And again, it is possible to turn the seeming 'negative' of the internal editor into an important storyline. i.e., a story that tells the tale of overcoming or coming to terms with one's internal editor might be powerful.

We can also bank on the inherent enjoyment that humans take in stories. Neuroscience adds an interesting scientific angle to this. James Zull asserts that humans take intrinsic neurological pleasure in physical movement, and also in anticipated and imagined movement. In the latter category would be things like 'the imagined movement through a story.'

"My argument is that we also get enjoyment and satisfaction through anticipation of movement and imagined movement. We see this in progress toward a goal, such as when we solve a puzzle, derive an equation, or construct a work of art or piece of furniture. And we see it in stories that lead our minds toward a goal. In fact, this is probably the most important thing that keeps us reading a good book or watching a movie. We want something to happen, or are curious about what will happen --anticipated movement!"

--James Zull (2002). The Art of Changing the Brain. Sterling, VA: Stylus

Beyond these general points, Lambert notes, "Everyone has a unique style of expressing himself or herself that can jump off the page or resonate in a storytelling presentation." I think everyone also has a unique take on the creative process, so there are multiple ways to begin to think about and arrive at a story ideas. You can start by taking long walks, by free-writing, by gathering pictures or other materials, by talking (perhaps with an audio recorder running), by having someone interview you or interviewing yourself (again with a recorder running). Lambert notes, "Almost all of us can gain from having source material that appears from an unselfconscious response to a set of directed questions."

3) We'll talk about two different kinds or categories of personal stories that work well with the overall digital-storytelling ethos of telling meaningful first-person narratives.

In this context, and in listing the categories below, we will remember Lambert's encouragement to "keep in mind that these categories are in no way sacrosanct. They cross over in a number of ways."

Stories about someone important

My Meeting Macomber story is in this category. Although --and in direct reference to Lambert's above encouragement-- MM includes several different storylines but it is first and foremost a story about someone who is important to me.

• 1. Character stories

     1. "How we love, are inspired by, want to recognize, or find meaning in our relationship to another person or even pet, is deeply important to us. And the best of these stories tell us more about ourselves than the details of our own lives."

  2. Memorial stories

• • 1. "Honoring and remembering people who have passed is an essential part of the process of grieving. While these stories are often the most difficult and painful to produce, the results are the most powerful."

Stories about events, transformations, or places in one's life

1. Recovery stories

   1. "Sharing the experience of overcoming a great challenge in life, like a health crisis or a great personal obstacle, is the fundamental archetype in human story making. If you can transmit the range of experience from descent, to crisis, to realization, you can always move an audience."

2. Accomplishment stories

• 1. "These stories easily fit into the desire-struggle-realization structure of a classic story. Television sports have taken up the accomplishment story as a staple, and it might be helpful for you to look at and deconstruct an "Olympic Moment" to see how they balance establishing information, interviews, and voiceover."

3. Stories about places in our lives

• 1. "One of the earliest interactive storytelling web sites was a German project, 100 Rooms, that invited people to send a single image of their room at home, and to tell a story about their relationship to their room. Hundreds of people responded with their own intimate stories. You may have a story about your home, an ancestral home, a town, a park, mountain, or forest you love, a restaurant, store, or gathering place."

4) We'll talk about the "seven elements" of digital stories

Regardless of which of the above types of story you decide to tell, here are the CDS's tried-and-true elements to include:

1. A main point

   1. "We believe all stories are told to make a point. Most stories follow the pattern of describing a desire, a need, or a problem that must be addressed by a central character. When we are the central character, the story follows the action this desire leads us to take and then reveals realizations or insights that occurred as we experienced the events of our actions and their relationship to our original desire."

   2. For example, Meeting Macomber starts with my desire to reconnect with a person who is important to me, and then recounts the actions and realizations that take place as I attempt to make this reconnection.

   3. A dramatic question or element of suspense

   4. "Simply making a point doesn't necessarily keep people's attention throughout a story. Well-crafted stories, from Shakespeare to Seinfeld, set up a tension from the beginning that holds you until the end. In Tristane Rainer's Your Life as Story, she reduces all stories to a desire-action-realization model. For her, a story establishes a central desire in the beginning in such a way that the satisfaction or denial of that desire must be resolved in order for the story to end. The conflicts that arise between our desires being met and the desire of other characters or larger forces to stop us creates the dramatic tension."

   5. For example, the dramatic tension or suspense in my Meeting Macomber revolves around whether or not I will be able to make a satisfactory reconnection with him, given the time that has passed since I last saw him, and given that I encounter significant obstacles along the way (including that he has passed away). This element of suspense is something I will need to bring to the foreground when I translate the web-text version of my story into a script, in part because it leads to the main point of my story, which is that re-connections in part have to be made or completed internally, within oneself. In an outward sense, re-connections are perhaps inevitably incomplete.

2. Emotional content

• 1. "All of us have been in the middle of a story, a novel, a film, a theatrical or storytelling performance and found ourselves emotionally engaged. It is as if the story had reached inside our consciousness and taken hold of us, and we know in that moment that we are in for a tearful or joyous ride. This effect is principally the result of a truthful approach to emotional material. A story that deals directly with the fundamental emotional paradigms --of death and our sense of loss, of love and loneliness, of confidence and vulnerability, of acceptance and refection-- will stake a claim on our hearts. Beginning with content that addresses or couches itself in one or another of those contexts will improve the likelihood that you are going to hold an audience's attention." I also think the simple expression of thankfulness is very powerful, whether or not it is accompanied by a sense of loss.

  2. For example, in my MM story, the emotional content revolves I think around the simple fact that people make a difference to one another, and the differences last our entire lifetimes even though the people who made the differences for us may not last our entire lifetimes. My story focuses on a somewhat large and dramatic instance of this in my life (a person who literally passes away days just days before I can thank him for the difference he made in my life) but in many much smaller ways, people, places, and things make a difference as well. I'm writing this in the company of our family cat, for example, and his company makes a difference in my life, too. So, even though there are losses involved (I hate to think that the cat who has been part of my kids' growing up will one day pass on!) there is also much thankfulness involved.

3. The gift of your voice

• 1. "In a story, we are listening for an organic rhythmic pattern that allows us to float into reverie. In the place of reverie we have a complex interaction between following the story and allowing the associative memories the story conjures up to wash over us. We suggest you work at speaking slowly in a conversational style. Finally, digitally constructing the story from a recorded interview [or self-interview] is always a good fallback."

  2. I don't have an example for this or the following elements because I have not produced my MM story in digital format yet. I think the point Lambert makes above, though, is really interesting: what a good story does is take us to a place where our own memories and associations can become, in effect, part of the story. A good story allows room for our own stories to become part of it.

4. The power of the soundtrack

• 1. "Instrumental music, be it classical, folk, jazz, or ambient, is often better suited to the style and meaning of the story's text and visual narratives. The digital context makes testing a particular music in the video much easier than in film and analog media, and so experimentation is encouraged. You may find that, by going against the expected, you create another layer of meaning that adds depth and complexity to your story."

  2. Again this is a step in the process I myself am looking forward to. I think it is fascinating once again to contemplate what Lambert says above, namely that there may be important things to gain by making sure that the sound-track does not completely align with the story: creating some difference or surprise may add layers of meaning along with underscoring the main point of a story.

5. Economy

• 1. "In a normal screenwriting process, the writer is conscious of the visual information that will offer context for the spoken dialogue or narration, and he or she writes into the visual backdrop of the scenes. If the writer and director do a good job, they will shoot just what is necessary to keep the story visually rich while moving forward, with only the minimum of dialogue and number of scenes necessary to allow us to envision the larger story. Economy is generally the biggest problem with telling a story. Most people do not realize that the story they have to tell can be effectively illustrated with a small number of images and video and a relatively short text."

6. Pacing

• 1. "Vitality is the essential issue. Good stories breathe. They generally move along at an even pace, but once in a while they stop. They take a deep breath and proceed. Or if they story calls for it, they walk a little faster, and faster, until they are running, but sooner or later they have to stop and wheeze at the side of the road. Anything that feels like a mechanical rhythm, anything that does not allow for that pause, to let us consider what the story had revealed, soon loses our interest."

5) We will talk about the categories of classical rhetoric

Classical rhetoric features categories of persuasion that are useful to refer to in any situation involving content-production such as storytelling.

Find below the three main ways to appeal to an audience:

• 1. Ethos, or ethical appeal, establishes the character of the storyteller

  2. Pathos, or emotional appeal, establishes an emotional bond or connection between the storyteller and the audience

  3. Logos, or rational appeal, establishes a reasonable informational basis for the story itself that is in some way independent of both the storyteller and audience

Establishing all three of the above appeals in your story enhances its appeal, and thinking in these terms can also be a very effective and easy way to analyze other stories and cultural messages.

6) We will consider a question Dean Wilcox raised when I shared my plans with him

"The question I have about storytelling – or narrative – is structural. Does digital storytelling allow a different structure from more traditional linguistic models? By virtue of its layerability does it promote non-linear, collage, or simultaneous stories? If the assignment is about the media this might be an interesting question. If it is about the process of storytelling them maybe not so much. It could easily be an investigation into both."

For me Dean's questions connects to some extent to the element of surprise of disjuncture, as well as to issues of economy and pacing. I think the Mark Everett story is in many ways a kind of collage --cutting as it does from scenes of him performing onstage, to scenes where he's talking directly to the camera, to scenes based on the visual elements of family photos-- and so in some ways the Everett story has multiple storylines but again the story has a main point and a resolution or closure: in the end Mark Everett mentions that he has gained a better understanding of his father and of himself through the process he has engaged in.

7) We will talk about, stage, and implement the production process

Over the six-week timeframe available to us to produce our digital stories there will be specific assignments and due-dates within the following categories to ensure that we remain on schedule:

• • Create and maintain an up-to-date online worksite: create a Google Site, add pages, content (in a variety of formats), organize and revise the site as needed.

  • Develop your story script: arrive at a story idea, discuss the idea with a group to provide feedback and story development ideas, make sure your story contains the key elements of digital stories, write the story, discuss the story with a group (again reference the list of key elements), storyboard the story.

  • Gather and digitize your story resources: think creatively about this, gather existing image, audio, and video resources that may be of use in telling your story (i.e., family photos, thematically-related photos, audio files, video files etc.). Think contextually: sometimes voiceovers are most powerful when the images showing are contextually related to the spoken content. Digitize (via scanning, etc.) any resources that are not in digital format.

  • Produce the audio spoken-word version of your story script: digitally record the author telling the story (this is different from reading the story; it make take several 'takes' to get the audio version right; listen to the audio on some of the CDS story examples without watching the video for guidance).

  • Produce additional audio content: record ambient sounds and/or atmospheres, record music (if you borrow music it must be copyright-free).

  • Produce the full video version of your story: add titles and credits, add Creative Commons license, use effective transitions and overlays, etc.

  • Present and/or publish the finished version of your story: due the last day of regular classes (for sections 02 and 03 it is due November 19, for section 01 it is due November 20).