My narrative approach started with a long, long time spent considering what story to tell. I initially struggled understanding the format of the assignment. It was unclear to me whether we were supposed to talk about a story, tell a story, tell a story about a story, that sort of thing. But after contacting the professor and resolving my confusion, I spent some more time trying to figure out what story to tell. I watched a few more videos on the Center for Digital Storytelling, but I just couldn’t imagine telling a story about these stories. It seemed like I would have wound up with a crappier copy of the original video. So I actually wrote down the names of the people closest to me, and tried to remember any stories they told me. It then became clear to me that the easiest way to convey some belief in a story was with some decision. I then landed on the story of Leo and Cassie, and Cassie’s decision that it was best for Leo to be with some other family.
At this point in the process, our web-post was due in which we were supposed to discuss where we were in the project. I didn’t have much other than an idea, but someone said they were writing their script for the audio first, and I thought that sounded like a reasonable place to start. When I sat down to write the script, I considered how I might convey the belief of Cassie in the story. But I knew it was part of the assignment to sort of leave that unsaid, so I instead just told the damn story! I figured it would be easy to pick up on the belief if I just illustrated the decision that took place. Displaying the actions of an individual, I found, seemed to be a good indicator of their beliefs.
I hadn’t really considered the audience much in my composition process. I guess I imagined the story being like a children’s book, where the story only lasts 10 pages, conveys some message, and it’s over. Except, instead of children, I supposed my audience was adults. I presented many details in the story that I felt added value to the anecdote, like Cassie buying energy drinks and cigarettes before the road trip, and some images I found amusing. I tended toward a “happy” theme in my audio, so I added to that with happy music and funny images. The story seemed to “suggest” such a theme by itself, so I felt I was only bringing to light what was already there.
At first I had a lot of issues with WeVideo. It all seemed so easy in class when the professor was doing it, and it reminded me of when I had made videos in the past on Windows Movie Maker. But I couldn’t find the timeline in the application, the program was running slowly, and I was getting impatient with things not working. So I found iMovie, a stock application on my Macbook, and used it instead. The format of the program is much like WeVideo (when the timeline is there), and it has some additional features like automatic transitions that I found useful. Someone had suggested in class that we use music that doesn’t “compete” with the narration of the video, so I used a few happy tunes that didn’t have lyrics.
Charles Golden 