Digital Storytelling

Drop and give me a close-up, a reverse angle, and don’t forget the rule of thirds, maggot! Well, I wasn’t quite that demanding yesterday out in Harrisburg, PA, but it really was the second annual boot camp for technology coaches in the Keystone state’s Classrooms for the Future program. I got to spend the day makin’ movies AFI Lights! Camera! Education! style with Cohort 2, the second year veterans. What a fun group! And what fun they had with the door scene! They came up with some very interesting scenarios and shot angles for the confused and challenged actors to make their way from one side of a door to the other. I’d share more, but I promised - what gets filmed in Harrisburg, stays in Harrisburg. Let’s just say their was a common theme of very basic human relief.

     And for you “graduates” of any of the recent LCE! trainings, associate AFI Screen Ed director and good buddy, Frank Guttler, is putting together an email list to keep people in touch with the program and offer tips for using the AFI’s resources. He assures me that they won’t sell the names or spam. Nor will you be getting fundraising calls from Al Pacino or Scarlett Johansson (darn!). Drop Frank a line (fguttler@afi.com) if you’d like to join our LCE! alumni email group.

     One of the folks at Davis Art left a comment after my last post tipping me off to their video contest. First, there’s plenty of time to collect one of the $100, $300 or $500 prizes - April 15, 2008 is the deadline. Categories are Elementary School (K-5), Middle School (6-8), High School (9-12), Best of show, and Most compelling story with the simplest use of effects. I don’t know much about the company, but those last two categories and their process definitely set them apart. To enter the contest a student, under the guidance of a teacher or advisor, must go through an online, grade appropriate lesson and studio as well as completing all the steps in the e-portfolio. It should be a personal story of no more than two minutes. Emphasis is on 21st Century Skills and the National Art Standards.

     One of the (many) basic, fundamental, and very important things I’ve picked up from the Center for Digital Storytelling’s philosophy is finding/extracting the story in a flurry of thoughts and facts. I got a graphic reminder of that this weekend when my wife and I traveled out to Grand Lake, Colorado to see our son perform in a Frank Sinatra review. The “kids” (the four of them were still in high school when Ol’ Blue Eyes passed on in 1998) begin the show by threatening to sing all 1300 plus songs that he recorded. Since that would be about a 192 hour show with no intermissions, the writers had to trim things down to a doable two hour performance and then choose and group the songs into some semblance of a story. We got to see the show twice. The first time through, I just mainly watched and enjoyed our son. But the second time I was able to appreciate the job the show’s creators did. They took quotes from Frank and his friends, pieces from about 50 of his songs, and put them in “chapters” that illustrated the Chairman’s life and career. There was a city and travel song segment, one for love songs, another for sad and philosophical songs, and so on. Just like our student storytellers, the writers of this musical tribute had to become familiar enough with facts and details to boil them down to their time constraint and then string them together in a narrative that shares their knowledge and insight of the subject matter. No digital here, but good, concise storytelling.

     I wonder if my mother would have been as excited to see her grandson singing all those Sinatra classics and soloing on “Chicago” as she was when she was a screaming teenager at a Chicago theater in the 40’s listening to the real deal?

And videos about viruses.

First, a contest on YouTube that may give new meaning to “viral video.” Thanks to a blurb on the NJ blog, I see that Novartis Vaccines (a pharmaceutical company) is sponsoring a “FluFlix” contest to show how the flu is spread and why. Unlike the amateur Super Bowl commercial contests, details are just a little sketchy here: videos must be uploaded to YouTube between September 15th and October 26th; there are three categories on how the flu is spread among kids, in the work place and through sports; and there is a $500 prize. You have to be at least 18 to enter, so that eliminates all but our most senior high school students.
However, I am reminded of some of the clever projects the science teachers at my former school came up with. Using the commercial and PSA (public service announcement) formats, there were several different assignments that gave their students a creative stage to share what they learned about a particular germ or illness. After the tsunamai in Thailand a teacher had her students research the diseases that might surface in the aftermath and then make commercials asking for volunteers to come and help fight that particular malady. Another teacher would give an assignment just before the winter holidays asking students to make a PSA on some childhood disease. Then the whole class would vote on which PSA was the best. Each film team had kicked in a couple of dollars in the beginning and the teacher would match it to donate to the research organization of the winning video. And after “Osmosis Jones” came out we saw a few “Fantastic Voyage” (great opportunity for the green screen!) type of videos too.
You don’t have to use special effects to get a powerful message across. A few of you may remember a spot for Jerry Lewis’ telethon. Jack Palance at his ominous best, dressed all in black, slowly walked across a stark set talking about how muscular dystrophy affects children. In the last shot he touches a child on the shoulder and you realize that he is the disease. Anthropomorphization! But that’s a topic for another day…

PC people need read no further, unless you want to engage in a little “now you know how we feel.” Like MovieMaker, the newest iteration of iMovie doesn’t support third party plug-ins. I’ve hesitated to blog about the new iMovie because I haven’t got my hands on a copy of version 7 yet except for a few minutes in the Apple store. However, there has been enough of a flap that the iMovie ‘08 installer leaves the older version intact and Apple allows a free download of iMovie ‘06 for those who may have already trashed it.

This newest version is pretty and has some very cool features, but a lot of the power and control that we have come to enjoy in education have been eliminated. One of the companies that makes great plug-ins is GeeThree and they have posted an interesting chart on the functionality range of the iMovie versions in comparison with Final Cut Pro.

Let me pass on my standard warning here. Transitions and special video effects can be as much distraction as they can be used to advance a story. BUT they (especially the green screen/chromakey effect) can add a lot and expand students’ creative voice, too. Let the author beware!
Third party plug-ins can add an absolutely enormous range of effects to iMovie, too many to go into in any great depth here. But I will give you a little taste of my three favorite makers and encourage you to visit their sites (and download their FREE samples).

cf/x has the most unique sales plan: it’s a la carte. His plug-ins sell for $1.50 to $5.00. I tried the first version of the chromakey and it was a little rough, but that was two generations ago. You can download and try any of the plug-ins before buying. There are a few free ones sprinkled through his list. Here’s a handy one for rotating still and video images.

GeeThree may have the slickest packages. (Sorry I couldn’t resist that. They actually call their collection “Slick.”) Chromakey is in Volume 4, the Hollywood Edition. And their free collection is a must. The aged B&W film effect could add a lot to some stories.

Stupendous Software offers 68 free plug-ins, but it does it by tucking a few free effects into every one of its 16 packages. Be careful with that because your students will rarely pay attention to which ones will end up with a watermark or won’t render. That said, the Masks and Compositing package has a free blue screen plug-in in it.

So, iMovie users, let’s hope that Apple sees the light and opens iMovie ‘08 back up for plug-ins and restores those other powerful features. Or are we waiting for Leopard to see what this version can really do?