DigiTales - How To Guide
- 1) What is a digital story?
- 2) How do you run a digital storytelling workshop?
- Recruiting participants
- Workshop facilities and equipment
- PART 1: STORY CIRCLE
- PART 2: EDIT YOUR STORY
- Screening
- 3) Useful Links
- 4) Using Windows Movie Maker
What is a digital story?
A digital story is a personal story up to 2 minutes long
- Written by the film maker
- Recorded by the film maker
- Using photos or drawings by the film maker
- The film can also use video or animation
- The film can use music as long as it is made by the film maker
- For copyright reasons all materials need to be self-produced. e.g. we can?t use pictures from magazines or books or commercially produced music.
How do you run a digital storytelling workshop?
Recruiting participants
- Hold an introductory session by showing some example films.
- Choose 6-8 participants for a workshop.
- Make sure they can commit the time.
- Tell them what they need to bring to the workshop:
- a favourite object
- 10 - 20 photographs of themselves and their lives relating to their object and idea for a story
Workshop facilities and equipment
- A computer for each participant with editing software, for example:
- MAC: iMovie
- PC: Adobe Premiere / Windows Movie Maker
- To make the most out of the pictures, by cropping (resizing) and manipulating the pictures, it is useful to have eg. Photoshop
- a scanner for paper photographs and drawings
- some digital cameras with cables to download the photos to the computers, in case people need to take more photos.
PART 1: Story Circle (1/2 full day workshop)
Create a relaxed, trusting atmosphere through storytelling exercises.
Examples for storytelling exercises:
- Love / Hate game: everyone has to write a list of things they love. Take turns in reading out the list quickly. Do the same with things they hate. Hate items: have a rant!
- Match game: strike a match and during the time it burns tell me about something you're passionate about.
- Get people to shout out random words. Make a list of 20, and get everyone to write a story based on those words (5-10 min)
- Tell a story about a photo: give everyone a photo they've never seen before, face down in front of them. Give them 1 minute to look at the photo, then tell a story based on the photo.
- Bring an object important to you and describe what it means in a minute (basis for digital story)
- Give people feedback on their story ideas, and tips on how they can develop them further. Remember: they only have 2 minutes, so the story needs to be focussed. What part do you want to hear more about?
- Sometimes it is easier to structure a film by thinking of how it will end. Some people find it easier to visualise their story through storyboarding, then adding the text afterwards.
- Get people to write the first rough draft of their script (~250 words)
- You can also start capturing people's photos and seeing if they need to bring more to the next session.
- Ideally there should be a gap between parts 1 and 2 of the digital storytelling workshop, as this gives people time to think about and improve their script (possibly over a weekend).
PART 2: EDIT YOUR STORY (2-day or 4 x half-day workshop)
Finalise scripts
Read out in a group and give final feedback, print out final versions
Record voiceovers
One person at a time in separate room if possible, careful about paper rustling noise
Scan / import photos (resize photos if you need to 720 x 576)
Think about: How will they tell your story? Do you need to take more? If you need to take more photos, make sure camera is set to high resolution 1600x1200, so you can crop the image and not loose quality
Edit the film
There are many edit programmes available such as iMovie (on the Apple Mac), or Adobe Premiere, Avid or Final Cut Pro etc. A good place to start learning to edit is with the Windows Movie Maker programme. This comes free with the Windows XP operating system, and is quite straightforward to use to edit your pictures and voiceover into a film.
Step by step guide to editing your digital story on Windows Movie Maker - This links to WMM tutorial
If you are using another edit programme, here is an outline of the steps to take to edit your film:
- Create a folder on the desktop or on the server allocated for your workshop. Make sure that this won?t be deleted between the sessions!
- For example: digitales_myname and make subfolders:
- script
- pictures
- Remember to keep saving your project!
- Importing your voiceover and pictures
- Trimming and moving clips around the timeline
- Adding Transitions and Titles
- Export the film as a FULL QUALITY .MOV or ..AVI file (eg. for Windows Movie Maker: choose the DV PAL setting). The file will be quite big (around 0.5 Mb).
NOTE ABOUT COPYRIGHT:
- The pictures need to be the contributor's own, or they cannot be used
- Any music used needs to be the contributor's own - no commercial music can be used.
Screening
The highlight of the workshop is to have a screening at the end, where participants can invite their friends and family. This can happen on the evening of the last day of the workshop, or on the following weekend, or at a later date, where films from other workshops can all be shown. Films can sometimes be a thought-provoking way to open up a discussion to follow the screening.
Useful links
BBC Capture Wales:
www.bbc.co.uk/wales/capturewales/ Other digital storytelling projects:
www.bbc.co.uk/wales/capturewales/about/webguide.shtml
DigiTales - How to Edit Using Windows Movie Maker
The Windows XP operating system comes with Windows Movie Maker. This is a simple programme, which allows you to edit your pictures and voiceover together into a film.
- 1) Collect your material (photographs / drawings and story)
- 2) Save your material into your own folder
- 3) Edit your film
- Import your material
- Edit your film in the Timeline
- Pictures
- Voiceover
- Effects
- Titles
- Export your film
1) Collect your material (photographs / drawings and story)
Remember that you can only use your own images and artwork. You can?t copy images off the internet, or use any commercial music, for copyright reasons. Nothing is to stop you making your own music though!
Once you have collected your pictures together and your story is ready to be typed up, you can get started on your computer.
2) Save your material into your own folder
- Make a folder e.g. on the Desktop (or possibly in a shared drive) Right click on the desktop ? New - Folder
- Save as e.g. joebloggs_digitalstory
- In this folder, make these subfolders:
- Pictures
- Script
- Voiceover
- My film
- You need to place your pieces of material into the right folders before you start editing your film.
- Type your script and save it into your Script folder.
- Record your voiceover, and save in the Voiceover folder.
- Copy your digital photographs off the CD or the camera into your Pictures folder.
- If you have paper photographs or some drawings that you have made, scan these in. Save them into your Pictures folder.
3) Edit your film
- To open the programme, click the Start button on the bottom left of your screen.Under All Programmes choose Windows Movie Maker
- Make a new project and save into your My film folder: File - New Project - Save Project As
- As you go along, save versions 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. so you have backups of your work. E.g. joebloggs_myfilm1, joebloggs_myfilm2 etc.
- On the left you have a menu with three sections and tips.
- Capture Video
- Edit Movie
- Finish Movie
- In these sections, you can find the options you need to make your film. The little arrows on the right of the headers will expand or shrink the options underneath it.
- The middle empty white space is where you material (Pictures and Voiceover) will appear.
- The blue section at the bottom is the Timeline, where you will edit your film together.
- The monitor (black box on the right) is where you will see your film.
Import your material
You can now import your material from your folder.
In the 1. Capture Video menu on the left, choose option Import pictures. Find your folder, and choose the pictures you want. Either bring them in one at a time. or bring a whole selection in at once, by highlighting one file, then Shift + click on the last one, highlighting a whole selection. Or use Ctrl + to pick out a few selected ones from the list. Click Import. Now your pictures should appear in the middle window.
To import your voiceover, choose option Import audio or music. Find your voiceover. Import.
Edit your film in the Timeline
Pictures
There are two ways of viewing the Timeline by choosing Show Storyboard / Show Timeline in the box above the Timeline. Click on Show Storyboard for bringing in your photographs.
Drag the photos one by one into the boxes in the Timeline. (Click on a picture, drag down to the right place on the Timeline, let go of the mouse.)
You can change the order of the photos by clicking on one and dragging it to where you want it to go. Before you let go of the mouse button, a blue line will show you where the photo is being dragged to.
Remember to keep saving your project as you go along!
Voiceover
Choose the Show Timeline view. On the left you can see the names of the Video and Audio tracks. Your pictures are on the Video track. Drag the Voiceover onto the Audio track.
Now you can adjust the length of the pictures to the pace of your voiceover. Click on the picture you wish to stretch. Hover on the edge of the "clip" until a red arrow appears. Click and drag to the left or right, to stretch or shorten the clip.
To view the film, press the play button above the Timeline. The cursor (blue box and black line, that goes along when playing the film) shows you where you are within the film. You can click on the blue square and move it to any point in your film, and start playing from there.
Effects
Once you have your pictures in place, and you have adjusted them to the right length to fit the pace of your voiceover, then you are almost there. You may wish to add some transitions to add a softening effect.
In the 2. Edit Movie menu, click on View video transitions. Scroll down to Fade. Drag this effect down to underneath the pictures you wish to add the transition effect to.
You may wish to try some of the other effects, but some of them don?t often work very well if your film is being watched on the web.
Titles
- Choose Make titles or credits in the left hand menu
- Choose eg. Add title at the beginning or the movie.
- Type in the text, this will appear in the monitor window on the right.
- Choose Change the text font and color to change the font or background colour
- When you are happy with your title, click Done, add title to movie
Export your film
Once you are happy with your film, export it into your folder. In the 3. Finish Movie menu, choose - Save to my computer
- give your film a name eg. Joebloggs_Mysummer
- save in your folder
Movie setting - Other settings: Scroll down to DV-AVI (PAL) (this is the highest quality version needed for publishing on the DigiTales website)
You can choose a lower quality version, to save a copy for yourself. The file size will also be smaller and easier for you to save onto a memory stick etc.
Well done, you have now completed your Digital Story!