The launch of Community Voices projects is drawing nearer. Organisations will be invited to submit their projects for funding by The Media Trust early in the new year. I was interviewed by one the researchers from Corporate Citizenship who compiled the report that informs the approach to be taken by Media Trust towards the Community Voices project. It’s good to see that Digital Storytelling features in the report.
It is my intention be as fully involved in Community Voices as is practical, hoping to bring to the project my conviction that storytelling can be an important factor in digital inclusion. I am therefore pleased to able to offer support in any way I can, including displaying the project’s logo and links on my sites. If you want to know more just click on the logo or the links.
Digital storytelling, the technique of combing narrative with digital media, into short movies emerged as a practice in the 1990s. The technique exploited the increasing accessibility of technologies for capturing audio and images and was exploited particularly for community and social projects. It can be seen as an adaptation of the storytelling tradition which has existed for more than 6,000 years (Abrahamson, 1998). Digital stories have been described by The Digital Storytelling Association (http://www.dsaweb.org/) as “the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling”;. Meadows (2003) identifies it as a social practice, telling stories with easily accessible low-cost technology.
I have started to re evaluate iMovie 8 (part of iLife 09) as a tool for digital storytelling. I was beginning to warm to it until I began some tests to nail down it’s behaviour with still images.
Now it’s driving me to distraction – it’s so inconsistent. So my write up will take a bit longer than I’d hoped. On the whole, at this stage, I’m disappointed with iMovie 8. Transitions make a mess of timings, fine editing is tedious and too many numbers have to be typed into boxes when dragging a clip edge should do the job. More later – hopefully with fewer grumbles …… or perhaps I just need to lock myself away in a darkened room to calm down and wish for a bug fix in Snow Leopard for iMovie HD.
I’ve been evaluating Photo to Moviefrom LQ Graphics as a tool for digital storytelling. My favourite application is iMovie HD. It’s not perfect but better the devil you know – and I know iMovie pretty well now and still discover tricks that make me think “how clever”.
When Apple rewrote iMovie for iLife 08 it presented a host of problems for digital storytellers. The most obvious one is the total lack of a timeline in the conventional video editing style. It can be pressed into use for digital storytelling but for a new user there is a serious lack mouse functions for stills. Almost all of the digital stories told in my workshops are told by beginners using still images. Things improved in iLife 09 but not enough for me to start using it over the HD version.
Building Affected for Life? in Photo to Movie
Last month someone alerted me to Photo to Movie. A package written specifically for still images. It has a timeline and is capable of creating something more sophisticated than a simple slideshow by the use of highly configurable zoom and pan functions. It integrates quite well with iTunes and iPhoto, and so things looked hopeful as I read the help files and absorbed the basic functions. There are also Mac and Windows versions. But would it live up to my hopes? Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve just uploaded the final batch of digital stories made by Engineers in the Engenious Stories project. It was organised by The Universities of Salford and Southampton and funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering. I held workshops in Salford, Bradford, York, Birmingham and Southampton where a wide range of people told an equally varied selection of stories.
In addition, school children at Bittern Park School in Southampton created stories which have been used internally although not published.
I have watched all of these stories as they have been uploading and they are, as always, even better for watching them again. My personal thanks to all of the participants for their hard work in making these digital stories and now I hope they will inspire young people, and some not so young, to consider a career in engineering. As someone who began life as a Broadcast Technician with the BBC I was not a little envious of the work these people have devoted their lives to. Whilst I was taking a path of journalism and broadcasting they were solving engineering problems and turning ideas into practical solutions. We all make our choices, but I can still look longingly at a path I might have followed if other callings hadn’t come my way. Running these workshops reminded me that I still get a buzz from science and technology.
Please go to the digistoriesuk YouTube channel and watch these stories.
I’m testing this software for use in my workshops. It’s available in Mac and Windows versions. There’s a timeline and it works under Snow Leopard. With no sign of a fix for iMovie 6 under Snow Leopard and the download no longer available on the Apple website, I have to do something. So what are the choices?
iMovie ‘09 – limited still image functions
Final Cut Express 4 – complicated for first time users
Photo to Movie – under test
If you have any experience of using this software or suggestions of other software I would value hearing about it.
Culture Shock records ordinary lives in North East
By Culture24 staff | 28 October 2009
(Above) Culture Shock participants editing their digital story. Photograph courtesy Culture Shock
A project in the North East is allowing local people to contribute records of their own lives to the permanent collections of the region’s museums and galleries.
Culture Shock aims to help visitors create 1,000 ‘mini-movies’ in the course of some 100 digital storytelling workshops.
We’re already starting the process of preparing for DS5 next year, and as I suggested at DS4, we would like to use the power of the digital storytelling community to develop the best festival yet! This will be an experiment in crowdsourcing content ideas from the community while the fabulous team at Aberystwyth Arts Centre will manage the nuts and bolts of turning our ideas into a reality.
It’s on June 16th 2010 – book the date in your diary.
Some thoughts on things I’ve seen for October 21st from 17:21 to 17:21:
Diego Goldberg :: The Arrow of Time – I find these family photo collection fascinating. The same day each year they photograph themselves. It reminds me of the film Dana Atchley used to show in Next Exit.
(Above) Culture Shock participants editing their digital story. Photograph courtesy Culture Shock
