Let's imagine that you just went on a fantastic vacation trip to Hawaii. And you brought your digital camera along with you. One day, while surfing some humongous waves, you had a fantastic, yet terrifying encounter with a hammerhead shark (well, it might happen). Wouldn't it be cool to tell your story with pictures? And wouldn't it be cool to use your own voice, so that you could accent the parts that were scary and the parts that were thrilling?
That is what personal narrative digital storytelling is all about.
But how to do it?
If you are an educator, hopefully you have traveled through this site and read some background information about digital storytelling. If you are a student, you may have just come to this page, ready to learn.
Let's say you brought home these three photos from your trip:
That's you on the surfboard, dude. A minute later, you were under water, checking out the fish and catching some big waves. |
This is one of those nice fishies you saw while under the water. Isn't it cute? It's amazing what lurks just below the surface. |
Oops! Along came this shark, and you panicked. You gulped for air and kicked your legs and finally crawled your way to shore on your hands. |
In digital storytelling, your main goal is always to tell an intriguing story, so get out your paper and pen and start writing a personal narrative story of this adventure. You should always focus on the story, not the technology. A good story will overcome glitches in technology, but good technology won't do much for a bad story.
In digital storytelling, it is important to plan out your story. The best way to do that is with a storyboard. You can use the storyboard template that I created or come up with your own. The storyboard gives you some organization before you begin creating your story on the computer. You can view my fictional example of the Shark storyboard here.
Now that you have written a thoughtful and entertaining personal narrative, you need to open up the MovieMaker program, which is bundled in Microsoft XP Operating Systems. You can usually find it in your accessories folder (in the Start menu) but if that proves difficult, use the "search" mode in Start menu to find the program (I would suggest use the keyword "movie"), then drag the shortcut icon right to your desktop.
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This is where things can get tricky, so use these steps: |
(you can also access these steps as a Word document file by going here)
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Under "Tools" of MovieMaker, click on command to "Create New Collection" -- which is just an area in MovieMaker where your images will go before being added into the movie. Give this Collection file a name, such as "My Exciting Adventure.
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Under "File" of MovieMaker, click on "Import into Collection" and then browse to find the desktop folder with the saved images (in this case, it would be the three images of Hawaii). Click on each image, or select all, and then import. All the images should now appear in the Collection folder in MovieMaker.
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At the bottom of the screen, there is a button that says "Show Storyline." Click this, and it will present a series of boxes -- these are the frames of your movie. Now, just click on an image from Collection and drag the image into one of the boxes. Continue dragging images until you've created the sequence of images you want.
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To add a title to your movie either/or at the start and end, go to "Tools" and then down to "Titles and Credits" and follow the directions. To add transitions between frames, go to "Tools" and down to "Video Transition." Click on your choice of transitions and drag down to the area before the image. To add effects to images, go to "Tools" and then down to "Video Effect," and click on your choice of effects and drag down to the small box on the lower left corner of the image you want to be affected.
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To view the sequence, just click on the play button below the little viewing screen to the right. If you want an image to last longer or shorter on the screen, you first need to hit "Show Timeline" icon. Then click on the right side of the image in the timeline and drag either left or right to make longer or shorter.
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To add narration, you will need a microphone with a 1/8" jack that can be plugged into the back of your computer. Then, go to "Tools" and down to "Narrate Timeline." When you are ready, click on "Start Narration" and read the personal narrative that you wrote at the start. Make sure you use voice inflection (tone and pacing) to move your story along. When you are done recording, click on "Stop Narration." The file will be saved within your Collections as a sound file, and then you just drag it down to the space beneath the images in "Timeline" mode. You can move the narration file within the timeline simply by clicking on it and moving it left and right.
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You can also add some music as a soundtrack, but you will have to import a music WAV or MP3 file into the Collection folder, and then drag it to the audio section of the timeline. If you do this and you have a long movie, you may want to break up your narration with short music files. Or you could download a free music mixing software program, such as Audacity, and mix the music under your voice (but be careful of copyright protection on any songs you use).
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When you are satisfied with the movie, go to "File" and down to "Save Movie" and say "yes" to all the prompts. This will create the actual movie file for viewing in your media player. If you don't like the final product, just go back to MovieMaker and your files will still be there. Re-work and edit them as needed.
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Share your movie with your classmates, friends and family. You may want to publish them on the Internet, but that is something your teacher will have to do for you. Most of all, you should feel accomplishment. You have created a true digital story. Congratulations!
