Category: adversity

Digital Story Critique: “1st Squad, 3rd Platoon”

From time to time, I’ve listened to episodes of StoryCorps that have aired on NPR.  The simplicity of personal stories using audio recordings is remarkable.  At times, you can hear the emotional undercurrents as people discuss pivotal moments that have forever altered the course of their lives.  A number of these audio recordings have been supplemented with  animation.  To be honest, I’ve often associated animation with comedy genres (“Looney Tunes”, “The Simpsons”, “Futurama”, etc), but I was amazed how the animation work done by the Rauch Brothers complimented the adversity story “1st Squad, 3rd Platoon.” This reflection is told by Marine Lance Cpl. Travis Williams, who talks about how he’s been able to cope with life after a roadside bomb killed all his team members in Iraq back in 2005.  For this critique, I judged the digital story on the following assessment traits (as discussed by Jason Ohler in his book Digital Storytelling in the Classroom:

  • Story – Williams unfolds his experience in chronological order, which gives the viewer time to absorb his story.  The narration feels genuine.  I could hear the sadness and struggle in Williams’s voice as he talks about returning to an empty barracks after the roadside bomb killed his comrades.  Fortunately, the story ends on a positive note as Williams admits he is finding ways to reflect on his good fortune and cherishing every day in civilian life.
  • Originality, voice, creativity – In addition to Williams’s earnest narration, the Rauch Brothers animation’s adds visual context to the digital story.  The expressions on the faces of the characters match the tone of Williams’s voice over.  At no point did I feel the visual element draw my attention away from his narration of tragic events.  The StoryCorps project producers (Lizzie Jacobs, Maya Millett & Mike Rauch) deserve a lot of credit for giving Williams the room to tell his story.
  • Media grammar – Excellent.  Having working in television production, I could recognize the stellar production quality of the entire StoryCorps production team.  Williams’s audio recording was crisp, clean, and rich in detail.  In one instance, I swear I could almost see him crying by listening to the narration.  The video and sound editing are smooth and efficient.  There is some nice instrumental music that adds to the tone of the story.  As I stated earlier, the animation by the Rauch Brothers was impressive.

This was a very emotional story to absorb.  It took me a while to condense my thoughts in a blog review.  Still, I plan on coming back to StoryCorps to check out more personal reflections about people dealing with adversity in their lives.

 

 

Weekly Reflection: Getting Farther Away From the Campfire

256px-Campfire_Pinecone(Photo by Emeldil at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

In chapter 3 of Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community, author Joe Lambert discusses a live stage project of one of his collaborators, Dana Atchley.  In 1990, Atchley began performing a one-person show in his San Fransisco studio called Next Exit,  a guided tour of his life traveling across the United States.  Part of his performance involved a campfire, or more specifically, the image of a campfire on a video monitor.  Atchley would tell stories about meeting “offbeat Americans” and interact with video segments projected on a backdrop.   This metaphor made me think of the times I would be with fellow campers, camp councilors or friends and there would be an exchange of stories near the fire.

In recent years, however, I feel that I am getting farther and farther away from that friendly circle of warmth.  I’ve worked a variety of temporary, seasonal, and part-time jobs since getting laid off from my full-time employer in 2010.  What’s worse, that was the third layoff from a full-time job I’ve had to endure since 2003.  During this time of economic uncertainly, my relationships with work colleagues and friends have weakened.  The shame of not having a steady job makes a person withdraw.  I have two part-time jobs now, but there are semester-dependent positions through higher education institutions.  Come mid-May, I may have to find some other steady work as a source of income.  This employment instability, constant job-searching and feeling of embarrassment has kept me from coming closer to the campfire.

To a certain extent, being enrolled in graduate school has improved my self-esteem and given me a better idea of a possible career track.  The total online nature (and dramatic lack interpersonal engagement) of the Information and Learning Technologies program, however, is giving me some off-campus blues.  WordPress blogging, Twitter exchanges and Zoom meetings are useful, but there’s still a great distance between the “camper” and the “campfire”.  Plus, it seems I am not the only person in my INTE5340 class that has succumbed to disengagement.

Truly, I do want to get closer to the campfire and engage again with my friends, former coworkers and current students.  My fear is that even if I talk, will anyone really listen?  I hope so.

 

 

Digital Story Critique: “It Takes a Crisis”

Often times, an instance of adversity can have long-lasting effects.  In searching for digital stories that give a short glimpse into how people adjust to sudden changes in their lives, I found another story from the Charlestown Digital Story Project entitled “It Takes a Crisis.”  The narrator, Charlotte Valentine, talks about how the psychological adjustments she had to make before and after she decided to divorce after 13 years of marriage.  For this critique, I chose to critique the story using the following assessment traits:

  • Originality/Voice/Creativity – From her time as a shy child to her success as a confident Certified Public Accountant, Valentine narrates her own story.  She discusses how growing up, she always was tough to “please others” and then later on, she learned how to “please herself.” Although the narration sounds a bit scripted, it feels genuine.  The story collaborator, Daniel Rodriguez, gives Valentine “room” to tell her story through her voice and her archived photographs.
  • Flow/Organization/Pacing – Rodriguez wisely presents the story in chronological order.  He organizes the still photos making it easy for the viewer to absorb.  There’s a nice variety of image movement (some story creators rely too much on bring the photos in and out, which was popularized by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns).   The pacing of the images is accompanied by cuts of light and playful piano music.
  • Media Grammar – Overall, the media elements are put together well, but their is a moment where it looks like a photo of Valentine in her flooded basement, after surviving a hurricane, appears to be Photoshopped.  This moment seems to interrupt the genuine nature of the archived images.

I highly recommend anyone to view either this story or the many other stories on this site.

Digital Story Critique: “This is My Story: Dawn’s Story”

One of the Denver public television stations, Colorado Public Television 12 (CPT12), is supporting an initiative called American Graduate, an ongoing project to help local youth in their quest to avoid the pitfalls of life and graduate from high school.  Digital storytelling plays a key role in this initiative and CPT12 has posted a variety of videos created by American Graduate participants.  One of them is a story about a girl’s perspective in the foster care system called “This is My Story: Dawn’s Story.”

For this critique, I chose to review the video using the following assessment traits:

  • Writing – The author, Dawn, uses a very simple narrative to describe to the audience her experience as a foster child.  Details, like meeting her foster parents for the first time and going to church with her “new” sister, draw the viewer into her life.  On the whole, it sounded like Dawn had a good relationship with her new family while striving to maintain ties with her birth mother.  There was no hint of animosity or malice towards either group of people.
  •  Flow/organization/pacing – Not including American Graduate promotional material, Dawn’s story runs about 4 minutes.  She organizes her experience in a very simple chronological timeline from meeting her foster parents to seeing her birth mother again.  The linear progression is effective and, in some ways, takes the audience on a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride.  Nothing feels rushed and the photo images appear at a very steady pace.  The background music compliments the tone of the video.
  • Media application – In addition to the aforementioned background music, Dawn includes a good mix of original photos and video.  At the end, Dawn shows a present-day picture of the young woman she has become.  On the other hand, I thought she repeated a number of images too often and used some odd video effects that seemed out of place.

Stories of adversity take many shapes. I’m glad there’s a Denver-area television station that is giving young people an opportunity to express their rocky journeys through life.

Scholarly Response: “Who is Trying To Destroy Digital Storytelling?”

Every week when I conduct a Google search to find articles on “digital storytelling”, I come up with a variety of links.  At the top of the search page came this piece posted yesterday: “Who is Trying To Destroy Digital Storytelling?”   It comes from a website created by a Boston-area digital marketing firm called Skyword.   Personally, I’m a little suspicious of for-profit organizations that describe digital storytelling in terms of “brands”, “markets” and “entertaining experiences.”  I’ve come to believe that true storytelling should be influenced by factors such as personal desires rather than corporate profits.

Still, I decided to delve into the reading.  The author, a content marketing specialist named John Montesi, gives some compelling examples of well-know tech companies making investments and taking risks in far away lands to give people an opportunity to tell their stories online.   Montesi cites YouTube’s relaunch in Pakistan to meet the government’s rules about illegal content while striving to ensure that the citizens there still have an opportunity to upload and view content.   In addition, Montesi mentions Twitter’s battle with ISIS after it shut down many terror-related accounts.  It’s a tightrope that Twitter must balance between confronting the promotion of terrorism but not to the point where the company denies account users’ rights to freedom of expression.  Much of the article praises the efforts of these social media companies dealing with very tighly-controlled governments and radical organizations.  I wish Montesi would have said something about how many of these same companies are blocked completely in China.  I guess that will be something for another article.

Much of what is considered digital storytelling, whether for-profit or non-profit, would not be possible without the efforts and investment of companies such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.  Definitely something we should all “Like.”