Category: Joe Lambert

INTE 5340 Final Portfolio

IMG_1103Wow! I feel like I’ve come to the end of a long journey. Back in January, I had no idea where my Learning With Digital Stories (INTE 5340) class would take me. I’ve gone down different paths this semester and seen many things and read many stories of adversity. In the process, I’ve been inspired to create my own digital story. The above photo of an old pair of hiking shoes was part of that personal story. I wore them for two summers working outdoor events at the Denver Botanic Gardens in Chatfield. During that time, I faced a number of job-related challenges, from 100 degree temperatures to short-tempered wedding guests! Much like that work experience, I’ve overcome a number of obstacles this semester to better understand the world of digital storytelling and how this form of personal expression can benefit individuals, including myself, who wish to discuss the adversity they have faced in their lives.

Chapter Readings:

I came to enjoy reading chapters of Joe Lambert’s book Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community. The first chapter became the catalyst for my interest in Lambert’s work. Chapter 3 gave me some insight on the long path that Lambert took and the talented people he collaborated with to establish the Center for Digital Storytelling (now StoryCenter) in Berkeley, California. Finally, Chapter 5 gave me an idea of how Lambert and his colleagues at StoryCenter facilitate the creation of digital stories with the authors. I was able to use this chapter as a resource when I created my own digital story about my adversity during my job search. All this insight was made possible when our instructor, Clinical Associate Professor Lori Elliott, gave us the option to read the Lambert chapters (and other readings) in place of our initial assigned text for the semester. It was a welcome change of pace.

Chapter 1: “The Work of Story”

Chapter 3: “A Road Traveled”

Chapter 5: “Seven Steps of Digital Storytelling”

Scholarship Responses:

In addition to the assigned readings, there were a number of articles on the World Wide Web that gave me a better idea of digital storytelling’s impact in society and how it can help people tell their stories regarding adversity. In my alma mater’s alumni magazine, I found an article about how digital storytelling was helping Veteran Administration doctors learn more details about their patients. A fellow classmate, Darren Blackman, commented on how a storytelling project such as that can be “a great way to keep patience(s) as humans not data.” Plus, I discovered a news item from the University of Michigan-Flint about how a $100,000 grant to fund the cleanup of Flint’s contaminated water supply included money to teach local students digital storytelling skills so they can describe what they had been going through during the environmental crisis.

“Story Time”

Digital Storytelling and the Flint Water Crisis

Digital Story Critiques

There was a rich variety of audio and video narratives to view on the internet. StoryCorps offered many examples of people overcoming adversity, including a soldier coping with the death of his comrades (a peer, Alicia Newton, shared this with others on Twitter) as well as a pair of African-American stuntmen confronting racism in Hollywood.  Many of my classmates also found insightful audiovisual narratives on this site as well.  Another website with a wealth of digital stories was, of course, StoryCenter. At the site that Joe Lambert helped build, there were a number of adversity narratives, from a young Pakistani woman challenging cultural traditions by going to college (also critiqued by fellow classmate Kristin Vossler) to an Asian-American conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. Closer to my home in Denver, I found a couple of local digital stories on the American Graduate website, include one young man’s struggle to turn his life around. Each of these unique compositions gave me a perspective of not only how digital storytelling can visualize the concept of adversity, but also how I might be able to express my struggles during my job search over the last 10 plus years.

“1st Squad, 3rd Platoon”

Willie Harris and Alex Brown

“Opening Doors”

“To Be or Not To Be”

“Elisha’s Story”

DS106 Assignments:

These (almost) weekly DS106 projects helped me explore new ways to tell a story either in a couple of hours or in a couple of days. At times, it was challenging to both come up with an idea as well as the best application to utilize in the creation of the assignment. For many of the Daily Creates, I had to think and act (relatively) fast to produce results in Adobe Photoshop, such as these:

“The Words of Shakespeare”

“Old West Wisdom Sayings”

For the Assignment Bank projects, I used a variety of tools, including iMovie, SoundCloud and Vimeo, to create and present an assortment of digital creations.  The last hyperlink listed was easy to record, but it was perhaps the most personal project I completed.

“10 Second Song Mashup”

Motivational Poster

Dear Sixteen Year Old Me

Weekly Reflection:

Every few weeks, it felt good to write down how I was progressing in the course.  Most of the time, I discussed about what I was learning about digital storytelling, but after week 7, I decided to reflect on how a chapter in Joe Lambert’s book was making me think about what I was learning about myself.  Afterwards, it was great to hear such positive feedback from Kristin and Lori about my thoughts.

“Getting Farther Away From the Campfire”

My Digital Story:

All of these readings, articles, blog postings and creative assignments inspired me to compose my own digital story about my adversity during my job search. I choose to put together a montage of still images featuring items or articles of clothing from jobs in my past. With a little music and narration, I was able to tell a story of the rugged career path I have taken over these many years.

“Mementos of Adversity”

So, I’ve come to the end of my journey this semester in Learning with Digital Stories. I’d like to thank my peers in this class for their critiques and comments as well as our instructor, Lori Elliott, for her guidance, energy and encouragement.

Sincerely,

Mark Hahm

Future (2017?) M.A. graduate from the Information and Learning Technologies (with emphasis in eLearning Design and Implementation) program from UC-Denver

Chapter Review: “Designing in Digital”

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I’ve gained a lot of insight from Joe Lambert’s book Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community over the last several weeks. In addition, I’ve viewed a number of digital stories on StoryCenter, the organization that Lambert helped to develop in California. Recently, I created a digital story of my own for my Learning with Digital Stories class (INTE5340) at the University of Colorado-Denver. I incorporated about a dozen photographs of objects I had collected over the years from various former employers to create a 3-minute story called “Mementos of Adversity.” As much as I wanted the images to speak for themselves, I needed to include some detailed narration to give the viewer some idea of the significance of the photographed objects. After reading this chapter, I’m wondering if what I created in iMovie last week could be improved.

In the beginning of the chapter, Lambert comments, “Originality is all about shared culture and context, what I might find trite and sentimental, you might find engrossingly powerful” (p. 106). Lambert uses a digital story entitled “Camaro Boy” as an example. The creator, Robert Kershaw, took an old photograph of his favorite car and cleverly deconstructed the image over the first 55 seconds of the story. Kershaw was able to “reveal” sections of photo to draw the viewer into the story. In addition, he includes a cropped image of him when he talks about his haircut and sunglasses. These are very effective visual design techniques that seem best utilized with images containing people’s faces. My recent presentation was primarily objects, so I chose slow and simple zooms and pans, even though Lambert comments that such actions “should be practiced with constraints” (p.111).  I chose a steady visual pacing of images, but that’s not always the preferred method. Lambert notes how Kershaw changes the pace of images after 2 minutes to a faster pace that illustrates the change in Kershaw’s life over 20 years. “Life went on, like a flashing of scenes before our eyes, is suggested by the urgency of the pace” Lambert comments (p.110).

In addition, Lambert uses a second storytelling example of a man named Robert Gerli who created a audiovisual traveling memoir during a trip through Europe. Lambert comments how Gerli was able to allow his audio narration to be driven by the visual elements.  There’s a consistent use of a visual portrait to introduce members of his travel group and create a pattern that Gerli uses later in the story. Sometimes repetition does have a purpose.

One thing in particular that Lambert said caught my eye. “We are leaving an era of keyboard and mouse based computing, the world will soon be screens small, medium, and large that we touch to design and communicate” he comments (p. 112). To a certain extent, I believe this to be true. People are communicating and sharing raw expressions of themselves by smartphone, tablet and laptop. The composition and refinement of such raw expressions, however, are still being assembled on editing systems with computer monitors, keyboards and mice. The large 27 inch canvas of my 8GB RAM iMac gives me an opportunity to create digital compositions with a wide range of content. I doubt I could accomplish such things on my iPhone.

Thank you Mr. Joe Lambert for your insights. I’ll keep an eye out for your writings online.

Chapter Review: Storyboarding

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In chapter 8 of Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community, author and Center for Digital Storytelling co-founder Joe Lambert discusses the importance of storyboarding as a visual tool to organize a digital story. Having worked in television production myself, I’ve found that storyboarding is useful when trying to present a new client with a unique proposal. As Lambert says, “The art of film storyboarding has taught anyone working on a story (from mega-movies to digital stories) one important lesson: planning on paper will save the enormous expense of time, energy, and money when it comes time to produce your work” (p.97).

Lambert illustrates this point by giving a scenario of a man name Rick, who wanted to create a photo montage for his parents’ 40th anniversary. Rick had a lot of ambition, a ton of content, but very little production planning. In the end, the final project was a disappointment. I found this scenario interesting because I completed a similar project last August for my parents who celebrated their 50th anniversary. It took months to gather all the photographs, weeks to choose the best visual sequence and background music, and hours to ultimately decide on the final cut. Plus, I decided to show the 15-minute presentation to my parents to make sure no particular family member had been omitted. In the end, my family was very impressed by my work.

The 50th anniversary photo montage would not have been possible without a significant amount of planning. In creating digital stories, storyboarding can help a digital author in planning available content, such as photos, video, narration, music and text. Lambert gives an example, which is part of a tutorial called MomnotMom, that allow a digital storyteller to visualize the various elements that will be incorporated into a project. In many ways, it looks similar to a timeline one would find in a video editing application such as WeVideo, iMovie, or Adobe Premiere. In many ways, creating a storyboard is like creating a rough “off-line” edit of a multimedia project without actually using an edit software. One just needs to get a piece of posterboard, Post-it notes and a Sharpie marker. Personally, I would recommend a larger canvas to visualize the story, like a whiteboard in a conference room or classroom (if available).

Lambert concludes the chapter with a digital storytelling example entitled “Ray’s Story.” Unfortunately, there was no mention to where this digital story could be found online. I attempted to do a Google search using the keywords “StoryCenter” and “Ray’s Story”, but there were no clear results. Still, I was intrigued by Lambert’s comments of how the StoryCenter facilitators collaborated with Ray to help create his story about growing up in West Baltimore. Lambert mentions the term “story circle” as a way of the facilitators helping Ray shape the details of his story. He comments how “It’s a matter of listening hard to what the photos are saying, to what’s in between what the storyteller is telling you, in order to find the questions that will help someone discover their insight and their voice” (p.104).

Overall, I’ve been intrigued by what Joe Lambert and his StoryCenter colleagues had implemented to facilitate digital storytelling. Looking forward to the next chapter.

 

 

 

Chapter Review: “Seven Steps of Digital Storytelling”

DS imageAfter reading Chapter 4 of Joe Lambert’s Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community, I was tempted to jump to other readings mentioned by my peers in my Learning With Digital Stories (INTE 5340) class.  On the other hand, I realized that I was one of the few people writing responses to Lambert’s book. So, I decided to proceed to chapter 5 to discover what Lambert and his colleagues consider the important steps in creating a unique digital story.

First of all, Lambert and his StoryCenter team believe in the importance of the digital author expressing his or her viewpoints fully and expanding upon how certain events have changed the author’s life.  More importantly, Lambert focuses on the importance of the author writing without any concern for fame or publicity.  He comments, “If you burden the beginning of your process with the external expectations, you can easily interrupt or edit the little voice inside your head that is working through why the story has great personal meaning for you” (p. 55).  The second step is the author retaining ownership of his or her emotions.  The emotional undercurrent of the story is key in establishing a connection with the readers.  At times, however, the author may be hesitant to disclose certain pieces of information out of concerns of privacy.  Thirdly, the digital story must highlight a pivotal moment when things changed significantly in the author’s life.  The more details the digital author can produce, the better the reader will be able to “see” the significance of the moment.  This concept is key in the fourth step of gathering archived images or creating new ones to create a visual narrative.  Lambert brings up the concepts of “visual metaphor” and “juxtaposition” as clever methods to orchestrate images.  On the other hand, Lambert advises against quickly gathering random images from the Internet that “can take away from the integrity of the story” (p. 63).

After incorporating visual elements, the fifth step in digital storytelling is creating the audio elements.  Key to this is the author recording his or her own voice, since, as Lambert says, “voice not only tells a vital narrative but it also captures the essence of the narrator, their unique character, and their connection to the lived experience” (p.63).  Mixing in music and ambient sound (thunder, traffic noise, etc) can be useful, but only if it adds, rather than subtracts, from the overall emotional tone of the story.  Editing the visual and audio elements together is the sixth step, where the author determines what elements of the story will be included and when those elements will appear.  As a rule, Lambert’s team sets certain constraints regarding narration words (250 – 375) and visual images (less than 20).  The final step is sharing the story with the audience, where digital authors may need to make revisions based on who they want to share their stories with on the World Wide Web.

I found these steps very easy for a novice digital author to comprehend.   Perhaps the biggest challenge for most people would be the first two steps: “Owning Your Insights” and “Owning Your Emotions.”  As an introvert, I’m often reluctant to express myself openly to a group of people, much less the whole Internet.  Still, there’s something very therapeutic about telling a remarkable story to a large group strangers in cyberspace.

Chapter Review: “The World of Digital Storytelling”

1024px-Family_watching_television_1958(Photo by Evert F. Baumgardner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Chapter 3 of Joe Lambert’s book Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community gives a broad overview of how the author came to San Francisco and helped found what would later be known as the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS).  In Chapter 4, Lambert discusses the components of a digital story and how these types of personal narratives fit into what he calls “the taxonomy of media practices” (p.38).

At the start of the chapter, Lambert lays out seven components the CDS values as important in a digital story.  In addition to elements such as photos, soundtrack, length and design, there are a couple of attributes I found interesting.  First is the concept of personal narration.  Unlike documentaries, which sometimes include narration by a celebrity or a professional voice-over artist, the first-person perspective offers more insight and emotional subtext in the tone of the voice.  Second is the “self-revelatory” component that gives the viewer awareness that the author experienced a significant turning point in the course of his/her life. Lastly is the idea of intention, where, as Lambert says, the digital story is “process over product” (p.38) where personal self-awareness by the author is the primary goal and concerns over the social media audience is a distant second.  This final component is significant.  In a Facebook world, it’s challenging for people to tell a revealing story without thinking of pandering to wider audience for the sake of a popular, trending topic.

When Lambert delves into the idea of “the taxonomy of media practices”, there is a statement that caught my attention.  He says, “In our view, the defense of creative control by the specialist creative class tends to ensure voice is not democratically distributed”(p.41).  These words made me reflect on my past experience working in television production.  Often times, it is the cable programmers and production companies who have the editorial power in deciding which sound bites from on-camera individuals make the final cut into the program.  Honestly, I like having that creative control to determine what media elements will be included as well as deleted from the project.  In the world of the decentralized YouTube programming, smartphone cameras and iMovie editing, the common citizen has more opportunities to create and distribute their own stories.  “Creative class” professional such as myself have come to see the impact in both positive and negative ways over the years.  Perhaps the biggest impact has been the steady downsizing in the media industry since the start of the 21st century.  Still, I like the fact that anyone with the proper skills and technology can voice their opinion on the World Wide Web.  This is something that Lambert and his collaborators emphasize in his organization when he states, “We are seeking a broadly applicable method for participatory media production” (p.42).

Overall, I like the simplicity of what Lambert and his cohorts at the Center for Digital Storytelling have established with facilitating the personal narrative.  To be sure, people can feel reluctant to express themselves to a cyberworld of strangers, but Lambert’s model makes storytelling an easy process that can be used by anyone.