Monday, July 14, 2008

Digital Story Telling Day One

Monday, July 14, 2008 1:54:34 PM

Sandy's Intro.
single images
voice over
first person
"I"
3/4 page of script
2-3 minutes
music

example
Silvia and potato
kqed 2004 winner
"really mean to me much"

started with street theater
Joe Lambert created it
center for digital storytelling, CA of course

used to bring communities of people together, people who don't know each other
this is where the movement is, and why it's growing
it tells the common story for common purposes
creating communities of detached people, attaching them in common cause

Seven Elements
point of view
dramatic question
emotional content
economy
pacing
voice
soundtrack

Sandy shows her ds for cynthia's class.
For her, writing stories was a substitute for close long lasting friendships.
She moved often as a child.
In her intro., speaks of impact.
The emotional impact.
The importance of books and writing in her life.
"To be literate, is to be aware."

Shows several of Cynthia's students' products.
cori chander The walk of shame. I wasn't smart enough to catch up. I wanted to prove I wasn't stupid; I just had a weak side. Easier to be unwilling, instead of unable.

*Which comes first; the story or the image?
Probably both. Depends on how you see it first.

Then shows some from last year.
Joyce
Doughnuts. The collection of recipes. Here's the food that I loved that my mother made.
375 degree crisco. grain in a papered dishdrainer.
searched for sound effects
humor - voice - old song, one song, instrumentals, cooking etc.

Abby
Morning Ritual.
Expresso Machine. Mel the dog. Mort.
Sax playing slowly, a jazzy soundtract. Dog licks coffee cup.
Opening the day with love. Mel Dog, Mort Wasserman. Sepia.
An everyday event. That was it. You know so much about her.

Ann
Welcoming Kuma. Final project. An examplar to be used with her students.
Why are we getting a puppy?
(We have fewer responsibilities, why get a dog now? --- We don't have fewer responsibilities.) Followed the Bohmer book. Wrote the stories first. The question asking comes out of the story she first wrote. The economy of word.

Other uses.
Used the concept of dst to talk about the underground railroad. One mural. One character. Author's voice is the voice of someone in the mural. Music that goes with it was recorded by a student chorus in the school. The Liberty Farm, Mr. Bracket's Farm, NYS historical roadsign. RFA, Rome, NY.

Ellen's DS.
About her Mom. Eva Louise's Life. The early days. Bear River Nova Scotia.
Interviews with older memories of the family form a large portion of the sound track, Ellen doing the interviewing. Benjamin and Alice couldn't talk in NS because they were of different churches. Eva arrived in 1917, the first and only girl of her parent's union. Her Mom died in 1917 in childbirth, a stillborn son, the sixth and last. She lived in Saugus, MA with other members of her family. 90 in the final picture.

Bernajean Porter's Website.

Phases and Steps
Preproduction
1 write a narrative script
2 plan the project
3 organizing project folders
Production
4 making the voice over
5 gathering and preparing media resources
Post Production
6 putting it all together
Distribution
7 applause, applause
8 putting it up for people to see

Ellen
Her part is the writing.
Keep a writer's notebook.
Try it digitally. Think like a writer. Put them down, a place to draw your ideas back from. Places to pull the stories from. Personal, short, not for public consumption. When Bohmer describes memoir, this kind of journaling makes sense. Not really a life work. Just pieces. Memoir is a mere slice of ordinary life. Even, a moment.

On Wednesday. Develop a blog. Do the daily writing pieces. Maybe a story. Maybe a grocery list. Looking at the words through writerly eyes. A toolset for your eyes. We'll write every day to give us a little piece to go back to. Linda Rief.

write in classroom
quickwrite: focus write or free write
everyone has to
need to keep writing 4-10 minutes
this is a focus write: My Grandmother's Hair.

My Grandmother's hair.
I see her sitting in the apartment in Utica. My mom had taken me there. I envision myself maybe 8. In reality I was older. College age I think. FIrst Aunt Rita and Uncle Henry had moved to Utica - Bendix Manufacturing had moved him from NJ, there. Later on, after John Steffens died, Grandma Fennekohl followed. She was in her seventies I'm sure. After she moved there, Mom drove her two tone Packard Clipper for years. But I'm getting off track here as memories push their way into Grandma Steffens memories. Her hair was on the whiter side of gray, close to her head, and wavy like the insistent waves of the ocean as they approach a beach before they break. She wore a dark blue dress with a fine print of white dots, and her gray laced up shoes had a substantial heal to them, perhaps two inches high. Really, she was my only grandmother. My parents were older when I came into this world. We moved to the country when I was four. It felt like we lived pretty isolated lives from the rest of the family, and nobody came to visit very much. Dad wasn't what you would call the welcoming kind, and his involvement with alcohol didn't help the situation very much. I remember this moment with Grandma because she told a story about the rats coming up out of the high river water in some early 1900s Spring, up into her apartment building. I can still hear my Mom's nylons swishing together from the discomfort of Grandma telling that story. I'm not sure why. When I asked, she wasn't very clear about her answer. I think her discomfort had more to do with what I might think about where she and Aunt Rita lived as kids than it did about the rats themselves. But the more those nylons swished, the more the details poured forth from Grandma. I remember laughing at her telling, and loving that I was in the room with them both.

Sharing Stories. What did you notice.
Sharing helps others identify stories. Hearing them gets others minds going. Hair is a universal theme. Everyone has a different story. Even me. The kids begin to realize how each one of them is unique and has a unique contribution to make and will be recognized as a competent unique person.

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