Digital Storytelling

“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

That’s actually how West Chester East High School in West Chester, Pennsylvania’s winning entry ends. It begins with a series of close-ups and extreme close-ups of a distraught teen aged girl considering suicide. The first two-thirds are in black and white as we see her planning and some of the actions at school that put her in that state. An act of kindness at school fades the video into color and sends the action back to the girl’s home where she disposes of the tools of her planned end.

The West Chester students did a nice job of creating mood with the B&W footage and making us share her distress with the close-ups. There is a nice symmetry to the whole piece since it ends pretty much where it begins: on the floor, in the girl’s bathroom. This time, however, the sound and the close-up of the bottle of pills hitting the garbage can puts a nice exclamation point on her change of mind.
All three T+L Student MovieFest videos are available at http://www.nsba.org/t+l/moviefest/index.cfm
Speaking of Pennsylvania, Jen Dorman over on the PA DEN blog has found some great digital storytelling resources.
Coming up - storytelling on the high seas.