VISUAL AND MULTIMEDIA STORYTELLING

A digital story made in Victor, Idaho from early story interviews

A digital story made in Golden, Colorado from story interviews

Why Choose Visual Stories

• Single Images (Still photos, paintings, etc) convey strong emotion, a single point or mood 
• They can speak more loudly than words, especially in this image-centered era
• Images can show things differently, and show different things. 
• Easy to place in the landscape for an ongoing presence
• Terrific way to engage people in a collaborative project (see mnural project examples)

Digital Tools 

• Soundslide (It is not free, but what professionals use; also invites audio)
• Look at Alan Levine's List of Storytelling Tools

Some useful sites for ideas about photoessays (From Josh Schachter):

 http://www.fiftycrows.org

  http://socialdocumentary.net 

  http://www.photophilanthropy.org

  http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essays

  http://www.cpoy.org/index.php?s=WinningImages

Publishing

• Calendars
• Artshows (Visions of the Now and of the Future) Example of an Online Exhibition
• Photo-stories pinned to map in town (or online via Community Almanac)
• Postcards or eCards  Example from Minnesota
• Slide-stories (Stories in Five Images)  Example from Minnesota and from Maine
• Before-and-After Photo Displays in the library, at school, in the newspaper
• Comic stories online or in a 'zine
• Collages as Posters or Online (glogster example)
• Posters or Murals about town    Example from Canada, another from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, one from Philadephia, one from Duke University's Face Up! Project, from high school students in Denver--a mural club,  a series from Chemainus, British Columbia
• Digital & Mural Combinations  UCLA example
• At a story klatch, bring photos to stir the conversation/story pot

Multimedia Stories

The Palace Diner, a digital made by a SALT fellow working with Biddeford, Maine's Heart & Soul Planning Project 

Why Choose Multimedia 

Video brings viewers to the action, to the place central to see and hear. 

Mixing text and image well can amplify the message: two plus two equals far more than four. 

Audio and image complement one another, bringing the viewer close to the teller and to the teller's perspective.

Great way to engage youth

Tools

• Video Editing:  Basic tools-- iMovie (Mac) and Moviemaker(PC) ; Advanced tools: premiere (PC), FinalCutPro (Mac) 
• Picnik for image/text--example above
• Voicethread for voice/image/text; Glogster for multimedia collages, example--a whole compendium of free, easy-to-use digital tools,
• described here by Alan Levine 
• Soundslide example (Many newspapers use this professional quality tool--inexpensive)

Examples

• Hypertext example
•  (text and image)
• Digital Story example
• Joe Lambert's Digital Story about saving the Albany Bulb
• Touching Hearts Stories  narrative made up of several individual stories--note the simple use of image, sound and text
• 360 Degrees Perspective on the U.S. Criminal Justice System: Background, Timeline, Stories and Discussion
• Mapping Memories:  Refugee Youth Stories about Life in Montreal
• NYT Project: One in Eight Million 
• Race in America site
• Mediastorm  A great example
• Shifting Ground
• Interactive narratives.org
• American Diversity Project
• EveryBlock.com
• Holding Up the Memories
• Mountain Workshops
• Marching Together Soundslides 
• Saving the Sierra 
• Meadowlark Project 
• Capture Wales Digital Stories 
• Digital Stories from Canada 
• Stories for Change Digital Storytelling Portal 
• Storytelling Project in Oakland, CA, The Organic City

Mapping Stories

• Philadelphia Mapped Stories: Philaplace
  
• Mapping the stories using Wayfaring
• Flickr MemoryMaps
• Bay Area Map of Dangerous Intersections
• Travels of Marco Polo and Google Maps
• Storymapping Example from Ukiah, California

Tours

Publishing

• Interactive storytelling events:  theater.  See Ukiah project above
• Heart of the Town Festival
• Local television
• Geocaching/Vision quest stories
• Website/wiki/blog as Town Newsletter:  See Alhambra Project or Front Porch Forum
  
• Community Almanac
• Ways to curate the stories from ACMI Museum in Melbourne, Australia
• A way to screen stories that include letters, old pictures, scrapbooks
• City of Memory Project in New York City  (StoryCorps)
• Place Stories in Australia: Software and Server hosting stories combined into one

More story options: