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cookbook january 2010 joe lambert contributions by amy hill nina mullen caleb paull emily paulos thenmozhi soundararajan daniel weinshenker digital diner press digital storytelling

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this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution­noncommercial­ sharealike 2.5 license to view a copy of this license visit http creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5 or send a letter to creative commons 543 howard street 5th floor san francisco california,94105 usa center for digital storytelling 1803 martin luther king jr way berkeley ca 94709 usa www.storycenter.org info@storycenter.org 510-548-2065 tel 510-548-1345 fax produced by the center for digital storytelling a non-profit arts and education organization © 2010 joe lambert digital diner press isbn 978-0-9726440-1-3 also available digital storytelling capturing lives creating community by joe lambert digital diner press 2002 second edition 2006 third edition 2009 ii

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contents preface v 1 stories in our lives 1 2 seven steps of digital storytelling 9 3 approaches to scripting 25 4 storyboarding 31 5 digitizing story elements 36 6 introduction to photoshop elements 44 7 introduction to final cut express 60

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digital storytelling cookbook our work in digital storytelling was inspired by the efforts of the late dana w atchley his performance next exit and the stories he shared continue to inspire others to honor their lives find out more about dana atchley s work at nextexit.com iv

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preface stories move in circles they don t move in straight lines so it helps if you listen in circles there are stories inside stories and stories between stories and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home and part of the finding is getting lost and when you re lost you start to look around and listen corey fischer albert greenberg and naomi newman a travelling jewish theatre from coming from a great distance excerpted from writing for your life by deena metzger when i worked in theater the first show at my venue was a show by john o neal the legendary founder of the free southern theater he was doing one of his junebug jabbo jones stories recounting the events of the rural south and the civil rights movement ten years later to the week john o neal was the last performer before i turned my theater over to new managers performing with naomi newman in crossing the broken bridge a story about african-american and jewish american relations these bookends of my professional theater experience say a great deal about the role story and ancient root cultures played in forming my attitude about the storytelling arts in our civic life in the tremendous oral traditions of african and jewish cultures there is an assessment of storymaking and telling that is synonymous with the value of life itself story is learning celebrating healing and remembering each part of the life process necessitates it failure to make story honor these passages threatens the consciousness of communal identity honoring a life event with the sacrament of story is a profound spiritual value for these cultures it enriches the individual emotional and cultural development and perhaps ultimately the more mysterious development of their soul the circles of stories passing through the journey of my life as a digital storytelling facilitator have brought me back to this as we are made of water bone and biochemistry we are made of stories the students that share their stories in our circles recognize a metamorphosis of sorts a changing that makes them feel different about their lives their identities in this cookbook we share with you our storytelling approach we hope you will find it inspiring as well as useful our cookbook has just one recipe momnotmom by thenmozhi soundararajan to view the completed piece visit us on-line at www.storycenter.org the rest of this cookbook will break this digital story down into a recipe with ingredients that will help you to prepare it all again we ll talk more about stories in gener-al too so you can take this recipe and adapt it to your own tastes we encourage you to make the digital story you re hungry for joe lambert director center for digital storytelling v

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digital storytelling cookbook 1 stories in our lives a story can be as short as explaining why you bought your first car or house or as long as war and peace your own desires in life the kinds of struggles you have faced and most importantly the number and depth of realizations you have taken from your experience all shape your natural abilities as an effective storyteller translating those realizations into stories in the form of essays memoirs autobiographies short stories novels plays screenplays or multimedia scripts is mainly about time you need time to put the raw material before you time to learn procedures and approaches for crafting the story and time to listen to the feedback and improve upon your efforts for some conceiving an idea for a story is an easy process while for others it is the beginning of a crisis 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 why and how do we remember stories what affects our ability to retain stories how do we develop our own sense of voice and story and what kinds of stories from our lives are likely to work as multimedia stories our understanding of how story is at the core of human activity has been a subject of fascination for academics and experts in the computer age educational and artificial intelligence theorist roger schank has argued in the last decade that the road to understanding human intelligence and thus the road to artificial intelligence construction is built on story in schank s 1992 book tell me a story he suggests that the cyclical process of developing increasingly complex levels of stories that we apply in increasingly sophisticated ways to specific situations is one way to map the human cognitive development process stories are the large and small instruments of meaning and explanation that we store in our memories cultural anthropologist gregory bateson was asked in the 1950s if he believed that computer-based artificial intelligence was possible he responded that he did not know but that he believed when you would ask a computer a yes-or-no question and it responded with that reminds me of a story you would be close that reminds me of a story so why is it that when many of us are asked to construct a story as a formal presentation to illustrate an idea we go blank we informally tell stories all the time but the conscious construction of story calls up mental blocks here are three possible reasons overloaded memory bank from the standpoint of cognitive theory the problem is about being overwhelmed by stories that we can t process our minds construct a sense of memory immediately after being part of an experience or hearing a story and unless we have a dramatic experience or have a particular reason to constantly recite the story of the experience it slowly diminishes in our memory retrieval of a given story or experience becomes more difficult the farther away we are in time from the original story or event 1

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chapter 1 stories in our lives in oral culture we humans learned to retain stories as epigrams or little tales that had a meaningful proverb at the end the constant repetition of epigrammatic tales gave us a stock supply of references to put to appropriate use like the hundreds of cowboy sayings i grew up with in texas to apply to a wide range of situations in our current culture many of us have not developed an epigrammatic learning equivalent to these processes at the same time we are bombarded with millions of non-digestible and non-memorable story fragments every time we pick up a phone bump into a friend watch tv listen to the radio read a book or a newspaper or browse the web we simply cannot process every one of these encounters and turn them into epigrams let alone recite and retain them and so they become a jumble of fragments that actually inhibit our ability to construct a coherent story only people who develop effective filtering indexing and repackaging tools in their minds can manage to successfully and consistently articulate meaning that reconstructs a coherent story we think of the skilled professionals in any given field as having developed this process for their specialty they can tell appropriate stories the memory of cases for a trial lawyer for example-based on having systematized a portion of their memories but most skilled professionals have difficulty using examples outside of their respective fields from their personal life or non-professional experience but those who do are often described as storytellers this is one of the arguments for the lifelong memory box as a retrieval/filtering construction system to assist us in this process images videos sounds and other representations of events from our life can help us to reconstruct more complete memories and therefore expand the repertoire of story that we can put to use the editor having worked in arts education settings we are experienced with people telling us that they have no story to tell along with language arts educators and psychologists we are aware that most of us carry around a little voice an editor that tells us that what we have to say is not entertaining or substantial enough to be heard that editor is a composite figure of everyone in our lives who has diminished our sense of creative ability from family members to teachers to employers to society as a whole we live in a culture where expert story-making is a highly valued and rewarded craft once we fall behind in developing our natural storytelling abilities to their fullest extent it takes a much longer commitment and concentration to reclaim those abilities as adults time spent in these creative endeavors is generally considered frivolous and marginal by our society and so few pursue it those of us who have assisted people in trying to reclaim their voice know that it requires a tremendous sensitivity to successfully bring people to a point where they trust that the stories they do tell are vital emotionally powerful and unique were it not that we as human beings have a deep intuitive sense of the power of story it s a wonder that we have a popular storytelling tradition at all 2

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digital storytelling cookbook the good consumer habit our awareness of the residual impact of mass media has grown tremendously over the past thirty years media literacy experts have thoroughly documented that a prolonged exposure to mass media messages over time disintegrates our critical intelligence the process is in part the effect of the over-stimulation we already mentioned yet beyond the fact that we are immersed in too much tv and other media forms it is the style in which these media particularly advertising present themselves that actually affects our sense of ourselves as storytellers if i can get more attention for the kind of shoes i wear or the style of my hair at one-tenth the conscious effort of explaining what the heck is wrong or right about my life in a way that moves you why not take the simpler route instead status and recognition in our consumer culture is an off-the-rack item finding your story the starting point for overcoming a creative block is to start with a small idea it is a natural tendency to want to make a novel or screenplay out of a portion of our life experiences and to think in terms of getting all the details but it is exactly that kind of scale that disables our memory our emphasis on using photographic imagery in our digital storytelling workshops facilitates the process of taking a potential story picture-by-picture pedro meyer in creating his breathtakingly compelling i photograph to remember cd-rom recorded a narrative by simply setting up a tape recorder in his living room he asked his publisher bob stein to sit beside him as he recorded his voice while he described each photograph to bob that was it one take and it became the voice-over that was used for the cd-rom this process may work for your project for all of these reasons and quite a few others a person s initial efforts at story-making can be frustrating we have worked with several high-powered communicators who froze up like a deer in the headlights when it came time for them to construct an emotionally-compelling personal tale perhaps your project does not originate with visual material on hand take a look at our example interview questions in the next section for various kinds of short personal stories have someone interview you then transcribe the words and see what they tell you about the story you are trying to conceive the process of moving from a journalistic technical or official voice towards a more organic and natural voice is often difficult it is as if we are trying to merge the two different parts of our brains the analytical and the emotive most of us can t switch back and forth without getting at least slightly confused the official voice is the voice of our expository writing class our essays and term papers or our formal memos and letters to our professional colleagues we have been taught that this voice carries dispassionate authority useful perhaps in avoiding misunderstandings but absolutely deadly as a story 3 as you are putting together your raw material for your story you are also working to build your narrative voice everyone has a unique style of expressing him or herself that can jump off the page or resonate in a storytelling presentation realizing your voice and making it as rich and textured as you are as a person takes time and practice.

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chapter 1 stories in our lives getting feedback also helps us identify our narrative voice reading material aloud to someone who we know well and asking him or her to identify which part is true to our voice is a useful practice of course crafting a narrative voice by moving away from clichés and redundancy requires pulling out the thesaurus to substitute common verbs and adjectives but in the end take your time and let the ideas and meanings sink in before you edit if something feels overwhelmingly right don t polish it too much we have had lots of scripts that started out fresh and authentic but by the time the authors and collaborators got through with it it was filled with succinct and gorgeous-yet-characterless prose interviewing the following series of question sets for the interview or self-interview process can assist in the development of different kinds of stories but it is not meant to supplant a more direct scripting process if that is how you are accustomed to working however almost all of us can gain from having source material that appears from a less self­conscious response to a set of directed questions in recording your responses you may find that you have sufficient material to make your voice-over cutting and rearranging your responses using digital audio editing software may be all that is required if you take this route keep in mind that you must take steps to ensure a good-quality recording interviewing techniques you may find it easier to respond to these questions directly into a microphone in the privacy of your own home or office as opposed to a workshop space if the prospect of talking to a recording device is off-putting and it may be more likely to increase your self-consciousness than relax you have someone interview you this can be a friend a spouse relative or co-worker this process can be both fun and revealing but requires that the interviewer commit to a few common-sense ideas guidelines for the interviewer 1 study the questions so that you are not reading from the page and feel free to ad lib being able to sustain eye contact assists the interviewee in relaxing and responding in a natural way 2 allow the interviewee to complete his or her thoughts unlike a radio or tv interviewer that is concerned with dead air in the conversation give the interviewee all the time desired to think through and restate something that is a bit difficult to articulate interruptions can cause people to lose their train of thought or become self-aware and steer away from important but perhaps emotionally difficult information let the interviewee tell you when he or she has finished a question before moving on to the next 3 when appropriate use your own intuition when asking questions to get more detailed responses often a person s initial thoughts about a question only retrieves a broad outline of a memory feel free to request specifics or details that would clarify or expand upon a general response 4

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digital storytelling cookbook finally along with ensuring privacy in the interview make sure everyone is comfortable comfortable chairs water at hand and the microphone positioned so as not to disrupt ease of movement a lavaliere or pin-on microphone is the best 4 if the story is about information that is specifically painful or traumatic in the person s life carefully assess how far you will allow the respondent to delve into these memories in many situations where the interviewer is not a spouse or a loved one you may cross into territory that is much better approached in a therapeutic environment with experienced guides or professionally trained advisors we have come perilously close in interviews to taking people into an emotional state from which they cannot return at the session this is embarrassing for the respondent and an emotionally inconsiderate act on the part of the interviewer as the interviewee may not have the therapeutic support to cope with these issues in the hours and days after the interview don t feel you need to hunt for emotionally charged material to make the interview effective if it comes naturally and comfortably so be it kinds of personal stories there are all kinds of stories in our lives that we can develop into multimedia pieces here are a few sets of example questions for some of these stories adapting any of the question sets by integrating the existing sets or developing a separate set is encouraged the story about someone important character stories how we love are inspired by want to recognize and find meaning in our relationships are all aspects of our lives that are deeply important to us perhaps the majority of the stories created in our workshops are about a relationship and in the best stories they tell us more about ourselves than the details of our own life story memorial stories honoring and remembering people who have passed is an essential part of the grieving process these stories are often the most difficult and painful to produce but the results can be the most powerful ­ what is or had been your relationship to this person ­ how would you describe this person physical appearance character etc ­ is there an event/incident that best captures their character ­ what about the person do/did you most enjoy ­ what about the person drives you crazy ­ what lesson did the person give to you that you feel is most important ­ if you had something to say to the person but they never had a chance to hear you say it what would it be 5

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chapter 1 stories in our lives the story about an event in my life adventure stories one of the reasons we travel is to break away from the normalcy of our lives and create new vivid memories all of us who travel know that the experience is usually an invitation to challenge ourselves to change our perspective about our lives and to reassess meaning we often return from these experiences with personal realizations and the process of recounting our travel stories is as much about sharing those realizations as sharing the sense of beauty or interest in the place visited strangely enough while almost everyone tells good travel stories it is often difficult to make an effective multimedia piece from these stories we rarely think about constructing a story with our photographs or videos in advance of a trip and we do not want to take ourselves out of the most exhilarating moments by taking out a camera and recording before your next trip think about creating a story outline based on an idea prior to your visit as well as what sorts of images video or sounds would be useful to establish the story accomplishment stories accomplishment stories are about achieving a goal like graduating from school landing a major contract or being on the winning team in a sporting event these stories easily fit into the desire­struggle­realization structure of a classic story they also tend to be documented so you might find it easy to construct a multimedia story televised sporting events have taken up the accomplishment story as a staple and it might be helpful for you to carefully examine an olympic moment to see how they balance the acts of establishing information interviews and voice-over ­ what was the event time place incident or series of incidents ­ what was your relationship to the event ­ with whom did you experience this event ­ was there a defining moment in the event ­ how did you feel during this event fear exhilaration sharpened awareness joy ­ what did the event teach you ­ how did this event change your life up until this century 90 of the world s population died within a ten-mile radius of the home where they were born and raised while this now might be difficult for us to imagine our sense of place is still the basis of many profound stories one of the earliest interactive storytelling websites 1,000 rooms a german-based project invited people to submit a single image of a room in their home and tell a story about their relationship with it hundreds of people responded with their own intimate stories you may have a story about your current home an ancestral home a town a park a mountain or forest you love a restaurant store or gathering place your insights into place give us insight about your sense of values and connection to community 6 the story about a place in my life

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digital storytelling cookbook the story about what i do for many people with professional careers a life story is shaped by their job author and oral historian studs terkel collected a series of interviews in his book working to demonstrate that we all have unique ways of perceiving and valuing what we do and while jobs help to give some people a sense of identity people also refer to their hobbies or social-commitments when thinking about who they are ­ how would you describe the place ­ with whom did you share this place ­ what general experiences do you relate to this place ­ was there a defining experience at the place ­ what lessons about yourself do you draw from your relationship to this place ­ if you have returned to this place how has it changed a good story often comes from looking at the familiar in a new way and with a new meaning the details of the tasks the culture of the characters that inhabit our workplace or our spiritual or philosophical relationship to our work or avocation can lead us into many stories ­ what is your profession or ongoing interest ­ what experiences interests and/or knowledge in your previous life prepared you for this activity ­ was there an initial event that most affected your decision to pursue this interest ­ who influenced or assisted you in shaping your career interest or skill in this area ­ how has your profession or interest affected your life as a whole family friends where you live ­ what has been the highlight of your vocation other personal stories recovery stories sharing the experience of overcoming a great challenge in life is a fundamental archetype in human story making if you can transmit the range of experience from descent to crisis to realization then you can always move an audience love stories romance partnership familial or fraternal love all naturally lend themselves to the desire-struggle-realization formula we all want to know how someone met their partner what it was like when the baby was born or what our relationship is with our siblings and parents we constantly test other people s experiences in these fundamental relationships to affirm our own these are also stories that tend to have plenty of existing documentation discovery stories the process of learning is a rich field to mine for stories the detective in us gets great pleasure in illustrating how we uncovered the facts to get at a truth whether it is in fixing a broken bicycle or developing a new product 7

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chapter 1 stories in our lives as you decide what story would best serve your needs keep in mind that these categories are in no way sacrosanct and they intersect in a number of ways it is also probable that you will come up with your own additional categories or other ways of dissecting the stories in your mind don t just sit there one of the hardest but most important thing to do is get started because many of these stories ask us to reveal things about ourselves that make us feel vulnerable putting together a story can be a procrastinator s paradise just get up start answering questions on a tape recorder write things down gather up the photos review your videos and bounce your ideas off of your friends and family life is full of stories but you may not have a lifetime to capture them as movies so go for it 8

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digital storytelling cookbook 2 seven steps of digital storytelling during the first few years of our workshops we would discuss with participants what made a story a digital story and what made a digital story a good digital story we came up with seven elements that outlined the fundamentals of digital storytelling and discovered that formally presenting them at the beginning of workshops greatly improved the process and the stories told our emphasis over the years has been to help storytellers find the story they want or need to tell and then help them clearly define that story in the form of solidly written script for many storytellers this process of clarification has proven to be a transformative experience and for us a truly rewarding journey we now look forward to further refining this process and evolving the genre and as we hold onto our original commitment to help storytellers sculpt a focused piece of personal writing we will discuss what makes a story a digital story and what makes a digital story a good digital story to that end this rewrite of the elements reflects where we stand in this journey it is not only a renaming and reordering of the elements but a complete rethinking of our approach to digital storytelling and because we view the storytelling process as a journey we feel that framing our approach around the metaphor of steps rather than elements will more practically guide storytellers along the path of creating a meaningful digital story we want stories we love stories stories keep us alive stories that come from a place of deep insight and with a knowing wink to their audience and stories that tease us into examining our own feelings and beliefs and stories that guide us on our own path but most importantly stories told as stories what s new in this rewrite is the idea that we are helping our storytellers fully visualize their story as a finished piece before they begin to write their script this means that during our group process called the story circle which is discussed at length later in the book we want to help each storyteller not only find and clarify the story being told but also check in with them about how they feel about it identify the moment of change in their story then use that to help them think through how the audience will see and hear their story in the form of a digital story and finally after the story circle is completed and the storyteller has had some time alone with his or her thoughts they can then let all of these considerations inform them as they sit down to write step 1 owning your insights we want to help storytellers find and clarify what their stories are about we often start with the question what s the story you want to tell and then as a follow-up what do you think your story means we want to hear not just what the story is about in the obvious sense it s about my mom my vacation my first real job but what it s really about the storyteller as the person who lived through the story and what it s about between the lines this story is about my toaster but really it s about 9

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chapter 2 seven steps losing my mom to cancer when i was five but it s really about how that experience taught me that i am given chances to learn to trust again over and over finding and clarifying what a story is really about isn t easy it s a journey in which a storyteller s insight or wisdom can evolve even revealing an unexpected outcome helping storytellers find and own their deepest insights is the part of the journey we enjoy the most this process can take time to unfold through check-ins and downtime during the duration of a multi-day workshop other questions that we ask to help storytellers are simple to ask but can be difficult to answer why this story why now what makes it today s version of the story what makes it your version of the story who s it for who s it to how does this story show who you are how does this story show why you are who you are finding and clarifying stories helps people to understand the context of their lives this process of self-reflection helps move from an awareness of i am to a deeper awareness of i have been i am becoming i am and i will be as life proceeds and is reflected upon changes can be better understood and stories have the chance to ripen events from the past that may confuse a storyteller hold dormant insights that can be better understood through the realization of self-narratives and this can happen over the course of years or from one day to the next this can even happen in a single moment through the act of hearing another s story of insight and it can bring those dormant meanings to light elucidating layers of meaning our denver office director daniel weinshenker borrows an aphorism from john gardner when he facilitates storytelling workshops all stories they both agree can really be boiled down to one of two types 1 a stranger came to town or 2 we went on a vacation in other words change came to you or you went towards change these stories in essence fall into the widely used archetype of the symbolic journey the journey of self-understanding and while stories oftentimes have a journey built into them it is important to recognize that that journey occurs for both the storyteller and the audience alike when we hear stories we listen for answers that we can relate to our own lives honoring self-narratives through creative expression with an audience in mind even an audience of one offers the opportunity to not only record and string together your insights but change how others think and feel the way you tell a story depends on the audience what you are trying to say and how you say it depends on who is listening what they already know and don t know and what you want them to know what may be a story intended solely for you may end up being a story that changes someone else s thoughts or feelings and conversely what may be a story for someone else may end up changing the way you think or feel in traditional storytelling it is commonly understood that the purpose of a story is to teach a lesson or moral for example if you wanted to teach a lesson to a group of children about the dangers of fire you would tell them a story relating to fire maybe an encounter you had in the past so that they could better understand the danger however artificial intelligence theorist roger schank tells us that through storytelling it is in fact the teller rather than the listener who seeks to learn from the story told and through the teller s repeated sharing of their story listeners ask questions make comments and tell their own stories in response which then provide the missing pieces to help the teller find a deeper meaning in their own story this process allows the 10

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