DTC/Eng 354
Digital Storytelling
Assignment #3 Interactive Multimedia Digital Storytelling Project
This last major assignment in DTC 354 asks you to bring together all of your imagination, creativity, and storytelling skills. You’ll be using a multimedia storytelling application or platform of your choosing to tell a story that contains the crucial elements of an engaging story that we’ve studied:
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Identifiable character(s) who--
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Makes their own decisions and—
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Changes over time and—
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Experiences conflict, either internal or external and—
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Exists in an identifiable place that has an influence on the story.
You may work with a partner or by yourself. Your story may be fiction or non-fiction. It may be primarily text-based, augmented with images, sounds, music, etc. Or it may be primarily visual or auditory with some text. Some possible examples are:
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An interactive timeline of the evolution of your favorite video game or TV series character
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A photo essay that shows where your cat goes at night when it wants out
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A map story that tells about an epic, life-changing adventure that you had
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A multimedia treatment of a poem or piece of short fiction that you wrote
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Vivid description of an issue of social justice such as food insecurity among university students, that you want to inform others about and motivate to take positive action.
Your story should contain primarily self-created assets. If you use an image, sound, music, or video that someone else made, it must be copyright free, and you must credit the creator at the end of your project using the Creative Commons format that we learned earlier in the semester.
This project must demonstrate a substantial investment of time and effort to earn a high score. Because of the differences in apps, there’s no way to create a definitive list of requirements, but I expect that a quality project will:
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take at least five minutes to fully experience,
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engage us with color, interesting textures, shapes, movement, images, music, etc.
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draw us into the story because we want to find out how it ends or because we find the characters and situation especially interesting and compelling
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leave us thinking about the experience of this multimedia story long after it’s over.
Pitch proposal:
To help you organize your ideas and workflow, you’ll be pitching your story concept to the class. Your pitch is a formal presentation that outlines the main parts of your project. Use PowerPoint or other presentation platform to prepare the following 4 slides:
#1 Overview of your story, i.e. fiction or non-fiction, narrative arc, emotional tone. This slide doesn't need to include a storyboard, but it should describe your whole story from start to finish.
#2 Character(s) Describe each one: who they are, their desires, personalities
#3 Setting Where does the story take place and how does that influence the story you are telling?
#4 Creative plan. Where will your assets come from? What equipment will you require? Will you need to learn any new skills or techniques to get the effects you want? Where will you get that information? How will your multimedia project be unique and interesting to your audience?
Once you’ve pitched your project, you may not change it substantially (i.e. choose a different story or multimedia platform.
Presentation
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Upload the link to your project on our FB page by the due date. We will watch these in class during the last week of the semester.
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Prepare a 5-minute presentation that showcases your project. If your project has a strong chronological narrative theme, show us the story in its entirety. If your project does not have a strong linear organization, then decide which aspects you are going to show us that represent the story you are telling. Be sure to tell us 1) which platform/app you chose to use and why, 2) your creative process (how you developed the story, how you incorporated the various aspects of story into your project, any problems you encountered and how you addressed them) and 3) what do you especially like about your project and what would you change if you could. We will also have time for comments and questions after each presentation.
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Reflection paper
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Prepare a 600-800 word reflection paper that answers the following questions:
1) Describe your creative process--what was your inspiration for the story, how did you decide on the app or platform you chose, how did you incorporate the aspects of story such as character and conflict in your project
2) How did you draw on information or skills that we covered earlier in the course for this project? How do you see yourself using some of the information or skills you learned or practiced here, in the future?
3) What do you see as the strongest or "best" aspects of your project? What do you see as the weakest aspect? What would you change if you could spend another week on the project?
Print out your paper and hand it in on the day project are due (Monday of the last week of classes.)
Multimedia Storytelling Apps and Platforms
These are the best multimedia storytelling applications and platforms that I’ve found. If you know of another that would be appropriate for this project, please send me the link.
Google Tour Builder Tour Builder is a new way to show people the places you've visited and the experiences you had along the way using Google Earth. It lets you pick the locations right on the map, add in photos, text, and video, and then share your creation.
StoryMap Harness the power of maps to tell your story.
TikiToki TikiToki is an online timeline maker for creating beautiful interactive timelines.