Friday, March 9, 2012

Digital Storytelling Self Reflection

The digital storytelling process was a truly enjoyable and memorable one.  It was easy for Michele and I to get together since I live in Bayonne and she works at SPC.  The Saturday before the digital story was due, we met up at the school library and got a massive amount of work done within only a few hours.  Michele is a delight to work with and I am so glad she is my partner because we get along so well together and we both had a lot of good ideas to use. 

When we met at the library, the first thing that we needed to do was complete the script for the story. We knew that we wanted to have some kind of informational conversation between the two of us so that we can get both our voices, not just one, into the project.  Originally, we were going to video tape us dressed as two old ladies talking about Poe.  This idea was modeled after the two Muppet characters, Waldorf and Statler, who are always cracking jokes.  However, because we needed more time and we were also concerned with audio becoming a problem, we decided to drop this idea and keep it simple. Once we had the script finished, the recording process came in.  This was maybe the area that we had the most trouble with.  It is tricky to record yourself reading from a paper when 1) you need the reading to be flawless without stuttering or mess ups, 2) you need to add emotion to your voice so that it DOESN'T sound like you're reading from a paper and 3) you are talking loud enough into the microphone.  It took us maybe about 10 tries to have a proper recording.  Although this sounds frustrating, it was actually really funny and we found ourselves laughing at our mistakes.

The picture process was not difficult but it was very time consuming.  We took pictures of one another in the library, trying to imagine our expressions if we were really saying the things in our script.  Because I could not get Internet on my laptop in the library, we discussed the types of other pictures we could add into the digital story so that it was not just pictures of the two of us.  When I got home, I added pictures and needed to time them so that they appear at the proper moment of our recording.  I used Movie Maker to compile everything and I was a little disappointed with it.  Unlike the other program, you could not overlap sound clips.  If I had known this in advance, I probably would have used the other program so that we could have had music behind our voice recording. Therefore, the only thing I could do was add music to the opening screens and the closing screens.  We chose to use music composed by Danny Elfman because his music is very eerie which captures the tone of Poe's life perfectly.

Despite a few setbacks, I am extremely happy with our digital story.  I think it is fun, funny, and informative.  I also think that it is able to help people remember facts about Poe's life better.  Out of all of the projects I have had to do in my life, I can honestly say that I had the most fun with this one.  I like doing creative things while also using technology so this sort of thing is right up my alley.  I can definitely see myself using digital storytelling in my classes.

Sunday, March 4, 2012


Michele and I had a lot of fun putting this together and we hope that you all enjoy it!