New media
Digital storytelling part 2: Telling the story
By Denise Atchley |
Creating a storyboard for your digital story is an important and necessary process for visualizing what your story will look like in its completed form. The digital stories made in this workshop are time based—they progress across time in a linear format. A storyboard is a visual road map that allows you to organize what you will be seeing and hearing as your story moves from beginning to end. Creating a detailed storyboard in advance of the editing process helps you to think about what images (photographs, video, other types of artwork) your story will need and provides a guide for you to follow during the edit. Having a well-thought-out storyboard in advance of production reduces the likelihood that you will end up frantically searching for visuals as you go along.
The storyboard template
We have provided a blank storyboard template at the end of the manual for you to create your storyboard. Starting in the upper left corner of the page, use the square boxes for simple sketches or drawings to represent what visuals will be taking place. The space beneath the boxes is used to indicate the audio that accompanies the visual. It is not necessary for you to include the entire text of your script in this space, but it may be helpful to include the beginning and end of the audio portion for each panel so you are clear on exactly what will be said in that section of the story.
Progress in a left-to-right pattern, filling the panels with script and key images as you go. The final panel should be the end of the story, and don't forget a panel for credits! How finely detailed you make your storyboard is up to you. If this is your first digital story, you may wish to organize your storyboard so each scene change is a new panel. You may prefer to create your storyboard based on the audio portion—creating a new panel for each sentence. The main thing is for your story script to be complete, for you to be familiar with all the images needed to support it and know exactly where they will be used. This road map is paper, not stone, and it will likely change as you start to create your piece. As you move into the next sections of this manual and begin working on the computer, keep your completed storyboard handy for reference.
Creating a storyboard
As explained in Chapter 1, digital storytelling uses digital media and digital technology to create media-rich stories. But what exactly does "digital" mean?
The definition of digital describes any system based on discontinuous data or events. Computers are digital machines because at their most basic level they can distinguish between just two values, 0 and 1, or "on" and "off." All data a computer processes must be encoded digitally as a series of zeroes and ones (Webopedia www.webopedia.com). It is important to understand that all the media (also referred to as assets) you will be using to create your digital story must be encoded from its original, i.e., analog format into digital format. We call this process digitization.
Fortunately, current technology makes the digitization process fairly easy since much media created or used today already exists in digital format. Follow this easy rule of thumb: If it already lives on, can be played on or viewed on your computer, it is digital. For example, photographs or video taken using a digital still or video camera are recorded in digital format. Music CDs (for use on your soundtrack) are already in digital format. To use media created with digital devices in your digital story, you must first transfer the information from the digital device into the computer.
Ownership of materials
Before we move on to the details of digitizing your materials, we'll briefly address the issue of ownership of materials and the use of non-owned (not created by you) materials in your digital story. When you are considering and gathering images and music for your digital story, remember who owns or created the images and sounds you plan to include. Using materials that are exclusively owned by you—meaning you took the photograph, created the artwork or wrote the soundtrack—ensures there are no copyright infringement implications. However, as a beginner, it is very likely you may not have all of the materials necessary and will need to supplement your story with images or sounds created by others.
Fair use under the U.S. Copyright Act traditionally allows you to use someone else's work of art to create a new work of art. However, record and entertainment lawyers contesting this approach are attempting to redefine the Fair Use Policy to mean no use without permission and likely compensation. Copyright attorneys are deep in battle, so stay tuned for further developments. In the meantime, if you choose to use images or music in your digital story that are not your own, please acknowledge and credit the author of the material.
Digitizing assets
Visuals are essential to a good digital story. Images used for the video portion of your digital story reinforce the audio as well as help move the story forward and provide context. Visuals can be photographs, video, scanned memorabilia (newspaper clippings or other flat art) or artifacts. Following are processes for digitizing various forms of visuals.
Capturing still photos from a digital camera
Photographs taken using a digital camera are ideal for digital storytelling purposes since they do not require resizing or alteration of the pixel resolution before use. Each brand or make of digital camera does need software to transfer (or download) the photographs to a computer. The most commonly used camera storage devices are memory cards or memory sticks. Depending on what brand of computer or laptop you use, some of these storage devices may be inserted directly into the equipment. If your machine does not provide for an internal reader, an external reader can be used. Connected to the computer via a digital cable, they may also require software for operation.
When read correctly by your computer, your digital photographs will appear in a folder on your computer desktop. To view them, double click on the folder and select each file (the photographs will likely appear as .jpg files) by double clicking on it. Select all of the photos in the file by selecting All (Apple + A) and double clicking on the selection. In some cases, Apple's iPhoto application will launch automatically to view the photos. It is your choice whether or not to use iPhoto to organize your photos. We suggest organizing all of your digital storytelling project files, including photograph files, in a separate folder on the desktop. For simplicity, name a folder with your name followed by the word Materials (example: Leslie Rule Materials). Create subfolders to hold materials such as Scans and Photographs. Move your desired photos from the digital device folder into your photograph folder by selecting and moving them.
Create the following folder structure on your desktop to contain your materials:
- Folder: Leslie Rule Materials
- Subfolder: Scans
- Subfolder: Photographs
Scanning non-digital materials
While preparing digital photographs for your digital story is relatively straightforward, some of the images you wish to use may not have been created digitally and need to be digitized before they can be included. To digitize hard-copy materials such as photographs, memorabilia, articles or artifacts, use a scanner. Scanning is an easily learned skill but requires some additional time compared to merely downloading images from a digital camera.
To scan materials, be sure you have a scanner that is compatible with your computer and the necessary scanning software installed. (Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Elements both have the ability to import scans. Check their Help sections for information regarding installation of the necessary plug-ins.) A flatbed scanner will accommodate almost all still photographs and hard-copy materials, and may include an adapter for scanning slides.
Scan your material at 300 dpi resolution. Save all of your scans in your Scans subfolder and title each scan file as clearly as possible so you can identify the content by its name. For the purposes of digital storytelling, save your scans to your computer in jpg (pronounced j-peg) format. An example of a correctly titled and saved scan would look like this: redflower.jpg.
If you have lots of photos or memorabilia, you may want to scan several items at once, saving the group scan as a single file. You can reopen this file at a later time and use the cut and paste functions in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to separate single images into new individual files. Use the following process to select, copy and paste images from a group scan into separate files.
Enhance photos using Adobe Photoshop Elements
Very few photos are perfect. When you critically examine yours, you may note they are faded or colored with age, over- or underexposed, crooked or even out of focus. Depending on the context of how these images are to be used, these imperfections can add authenticity to your story, but they can also be distracting.
One of the wondrous features of working with digital imagery is the ability to color correct, enhance or edit the images using software created specifically for this purpose. The KQED Digital Storytelling Initiative recommends software by Adobe Systems. For the beginner, Adobe Photoshop Elements is an affordably priced, consumer-level photo-enhancement application designed for anyone wishing to make improvements or changes to their photographs. For the more ambitious and experienced user, Adobe Photoshop is the professional-level version of this software. A much more in-depth application capable of advanced digital image enhancement as well as graphic and Web design functions, it costs significantly more than the consumer version.
Before your photos are imported into iMovie, the KQED Digital Storytelling Initiative recommends an easy 5-minute method to improve any photo by 90 percent. These steps include: rotate, straighten, crop, color correction and use of the clone stamp tool. Take a few minutes to apply these easy steps and you will see a dramatic improvement in your photographs!
If you are using Adobe Photoshop Elements, begin by double clicking on the application (sunflower) icon in the dock. The Welcome screen will prompt you to select from the following options: New File, Browse for File, Connect to Scanner or Camera, Common Issues, Tutorial or Exit. For our purposes, select Browse for File.
File Browser window
The File Browser window will appear, allowing you to navigate through your folders and select a desired file. (File Browser allows you to see a photo in thumbnail size prior to opening it.) Once you have located a desired file, open it into an active window by double clicking on the thumbnail.
Step 1 — Rotate
The first step to improve your image is to make sure the orientation of the photo is correct. This means that people, buildings, landscapes—whatever your subject—should be facing in the correct direction. To rotate a photo, choose Image > Rotate and select the correct direction, 90 left or right. You can also flip images horizontally or vertically to suit your purposes. Save your work.
Step 2 — Straighten and crop
An almost unavoidable by-product of scanning materials manually is that they often appear crooked. Adobe Photoshop Elements provides a straighten command, as well as a straighten-and-crop command. To use the straighten command, choose Image > Rotate > Straighten. Try the straighten-and-crop command by choosing Image > Rotate > Straighten and Crop. If the result is not to your liking (and it probably will not be), undo the action by selecting the Apple + Z keys simultaneously.
You can dramatically shift the attention on a particular portion of an image more specifically by using the crop tool. A good question to ask is what the focus of this picture is, then crop accordingly. For example, if you are using a photograph featuring people central to your story but it includes an airplane in the background, crop the image as close to the people as possible and delete the portion containing the plane unless that plane is significant to the story. Focus on the people; the airplane is not part of the story.
Crop tool window
To make a crop, select the crop tool. Use your mouse to click and drag over the part of the image you want to keep. When you release the mouse button, a marquee bounding box is now in place. The area inside the box is the selection of the crop you wish to keep and the area outside the box (in the shaded area) is to be discarded. If you are not happy with the crop you have selected, press the ESC key, which will remove the bounding box. You can then reposition your crop. Complete the crop when you are satisfied with the areas to be retained and discarded. To complete the crop, press the ENTER or RETURN key on your keyboard or double click on the inside of the bounding box.
Once the crop has been made, save the cropped image as a new (separate) file. To do this, choose File > Save As. (Note: If you just do a regular Save, you will lose the original image and be left with only the cropped one.)
Step 3 — Adjust levels, contrast and color
Use the Auto Levels function to enhance the contrast of your photo. Choose Enhance > Auto Levels. This will automatically adjust the light level of the photo. If the Auto Levels command creates an undesirable result, undo it by pressing the Apple + Z keys simultaneously and try the Auto Contrast function instead (Enhance > Auto Contrast). To adjust levels manually and with more control, choose Enhance > Adjust Brightness/Contrast > Adjust Levels. You can also reach the Adjust Levels dialogue box by using the Command + L keyboard shortcut command.
Auto Levels
Adjust the color
Once again, using an auto command makes color correction easy. Use the auto command for correcting color by choosing Enhance > Auto Color Correction. The Auto Color Correction may have little change or impact if you have previously used an Auto Levels or Auto Contrast function. If you are still not completely satisfied with the color of your photo, make further changes by using the color variations command: Choose Enhance > Adjust Color > Color Variations. Select the area of the image you wish to adjust and use the color wheel buttons to add or subtract a color to your photo. When you are satisfied with the result, click OK to save the changes.
Step 4 — Clone stamp tool
The clone stamp tool is a useful way to easily add or subtract a portion of image (also known as montage) and retouch imperfections in your photographs. To retouch an undesirable blemish from your photo, first select an appropriately sized brush from the pop-up palette in the Options bar. Next, select the clone stamp tool and position it over an area of color you wish to use as a replacement color. Click the mouse button and press the Option key simultaneously; this will pick up the targeted color. Move your cursor to the area you wish to brush out and click your mouse. The color you have previously picked up is now dropped in, replacing an undesirable color or area. Repeat by moving your mouse and clicking, continuing to replace the color until you reach the desired effect.
Brush
This same action can be used to paint in a montage from the same or another active photo window. To create a montage by selecting an element from one picture and moving it to another, follow the same procedure as if you were correcting a blemish. If you are planning on moving a large element of a photo, use a larger brush. First, select your desired brush size. Next, select the clone stamp tool and collect the pixels located in your target area by clicking and holding down the Option key. Place them in another area of the same photo or in another active photo window by holding down your mouse button and "painting" in the image.
Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Elements offer many creative options for enhancing and editing your photos. To get the most from these applications, we recommend spending some time looking at the various features available and experimenting with them. Both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements users can utilize the Help function to search for useful instructions and tips by subject to better use the software.
The KQED DSI uses software created by Apple Computer to edit digital stories. The iLife Suite is a collection of software applications designed by Apple Computer to work seamlessly with each other to manage, enhance and help you create your multimedia collections and projects. The iLife Suite contains:
- iMovie, a video editing application and the primary tool we use to edit your digital story
- iPhoto, a photograph organization tool
- iDVD, for creating and burning DVDs
- iTunes, for managing and playing your music collection
- GarageBand, a sound production application.
KQED teaches and supports iMovie as its video editing tool for several reasons. The KQED DSI computer lab is taught on the Apple Computer platform and iMovie was created for Apple Computers using their operating system. iMovie is also an attractive solution because of its low cost. It is included free with all new Apple computer purchases and is an intuitive, easy-to-learn program that is fun to use and provides results with very high production value. (Note that iMovie and the other iLife applications run only on Mac computers.)
We will now take a look at the structure and features of iMovie. In order for you to work efficiently, you need to understand how to open (or launch) the \software, how to name your work, how your work files are organized, how to import materials and how to resume a project if you stop working for a while. By default of the System X operating system, all of the iLife Suite application icons are located in the dock of your computer. To launch iMovie, double click on the iMovie icon, which is in the shape of the film clapboard.
Organizing your computer to work: File management in iMovie
Dock
iMovie
A Welcome screen appears and will prompt you to "Open an Existing Project," "Quit" or "Create a Project." Since you will be starting a new project, select "Create a Project." You will now be asked to name your project—use your first and last names to title the project (example: LeslieRule) and save it in a desired location on your computer. For the purpose of this workshop, save the project on the desktop by selecting an area of the desktop under Where.
Now let's examine the file structure of the iMovie project. Double click on the file named Leslie-Rule on your desktop. The window that opens contains three items:
- A folder named Media
- A folder named Audio Waveforms
- A project file(file with star) named Leslie-Rule
- A reference movie named LeslieRule.mov
Create a project
Folder
The Media folder contains files of all the elements that will eventually comprise your digital story. This includes transitions, soundtrack, voiceover, imported images such as photographs and scans, and video clips. Any element contained within the timeline (which we will discuss later) will be in the Media folder in the form of a file.
Note: The next time you launch iMovie, the program will automatically open to the most recently named project. This will allow you to continue working where you left off. If you prefer to open another iMovie file, choose File > Open Project, or start a new project by choosing File > New Project.
When you have digitized and made Photoshop corrections and improvements to all of your photographs and scans, you are ready to import these assets into iMovie. Import individual photographs into iMovie by choosing File > Import, navigate to your Photographs subfolder on the desktop, select your desired photo and click Open. Select a contiguous grouping of photos by choosing File > Import, then hold down the Shift key, click on files located contiguous to each other and click Open. iMovie does not provide a function to import an entire folder; only files can be imported into iMovie.
Tip
Although iMovie is an excellent tool for editing video, the software has some frustrating aspects to importing, editing and viewing still photographs. To get the most flexibility with your still photos during the editing process, we recommend taking the following steps before importing into iMovie:
By unchecking the Ken Burns Effect box, your photo will import into iMovie with the correct default Zoom setting of 1.00 or 1.16. This will allow you to use the full range of Zoom settings on the photo when you create a Ken Burns Effect later in the editing process.
Recording the script using Sound Studio
When you have finished writing your script, you are ready to record it for use in the video editing portion of the workshop. As we mentioned earlier, your voice is unique, so we encourage you to record your own narration to add authenticity and ownership to your story. Before you record, mark areas of the script where you wish to pause, speed up or emphasize a word or phrase. Practice reading the material several times to get comfortable with how your voice sounds and to perfect your phrasing and pacing.
When you feel ready to record, open Sound Studio on your computer. Sound Studio is an inexpensive but powerful piece of software with a very intuitive interface that integrates seamlessly with iMovie. We recommend using Sound Studio instead of either GarageBand or the onboard iMovie audio recording capabilities because of its ability to view a waveform and its rich toolbox of filters. There are other very good audio capture software programs available and we encourage you to experiment.
To record a segment of audio, click once on the Record(red) button, then speak directly into the microphone of your computer. On the Apple iMacs used in the KQED workshop, the microphone is located on the right side of the screen. When you have completed speaking your segment (usually a sentence or phrase), stop recording by clicking the Stop button.
Now look at the waveform. A waveform is important to view to determine whether recorded volume is adequate and there is sufficient pause space between words. When you record your script, try to keep the look of the waveform consistent from segment to segment. If the volume of your recording is too low, try recording the segment again speaking more loudly. If the volume is still too low, check the input setting on your computer. To check the input setting, choose System Preferences under the Apple icon or the Finder. From the System Preferences window, click on the Sound icon on the top row of icons. The Sound window will open.
Input volume
Click once on the Input tab and move the slider to increase the input volume setting. Close the Sound window by clicking on the red Close button in the upper left corner. To playback or hear a segment you have recorded, move your cursor to the beginning of the segment and click on the center line separating the left (L) and right (R) channels. Press Play, or your keyboard spacebar, to begin playing the segment. Click Stop or press your spacebar again to stop the playhead. You can also press your spacebar to return to the very beginning of the recording (the first segment).
If you are not happy with your recording, use the cursor to select (highlight) both the left and right channels of the segment, then press the keyboard Delete key. Rerecord the segment until you are satisfied with the results. Then name and save your file in your Materials folder.
Record and review each segment until you are happy with the way it sounds. Be sure to save your work following each successful recorded segment before moving on to the next segment and recording again. Record one segment at a time and keep the reading of your script segments contiguous. When you have successfully recorded your entire script in segments, import the files into iMovie by choosing File > Import and navigate to your saved Sound Studio file. The audio file will import directly into one of two available audio tracks. Be sure the beginning of the audio clip is positioned at the beginning of the timeline or in correct relationship to where your want it to begin.
Capturing video from a digital camera
Digital video camera ownership is becoming more and more common among American households. Because of their increasingly smaller size and ease of use, it seems as though all family members are capable of using a video camera. Everyone loves to record important events in their lives as well as those of their friends and families, but these videos can be tedious and uninteresting to watch in their entirety by people not directly involved or participating in the action. Using clips—or portions of a video—in a digital story is a perfect way to incorporate some impact and motion. Digital storytelling offers an excellent opportunity to utilize hours of footage you have shot through the years by incorporating judicious bits of it to hone a well-crafted story.
To get the best possible results when using video in your story, think very carefully about what and how much footage you want to use. Take notes or create a log of your videotape. Start at the beginning of the tape and write down details of what is happening and who is on camera. Continue to make notes throughout the tape. A good rule of thumb is to make a new notation for each scene change. If a scene is particularly interesting or special, say so in your notes. This may seem like a lot of work, but it is useful for several purposes.
First, it is very frustrating to hold a tape in your hand that is not labeled or identified in some manner. Tapes that are not labeled can easily be lost or discarded. By labeling your tapes clearly and including a detailed shot log, you will have a useful record for identifying the important or useful parts.
The second reason to log your tapes carefully is for the benefit of planning your digital story (you should look at and log your tapes before creating your storyboard) and ease of process while digitizing the video footage you choose to use. It is to your advantage to know exactly what parts of the video you wish to utilize in your story and where they are located on the tape. This is also true of footage or on-camera interviews that are videotaped with the express purpose of being included in your digital story. Interviews can enhance and support digital stories, but it is important to know how and where they fit into the script and exactly what portions of the interview will be most effective. It may seem like a lot of effort, but in the long run, making a log of your videos will make a huge difference in the likelihood of video being useful for editing.
We will discuss some of the technical details and specifications of the computers we recommend for digital storytelling in Chapter 4. However, it is important to know that your computer requires a significant amount of memory, processing power and hard-drive space for creating video projects such as digital stories. Digital video requires 238 MB/minute of hard-drive space. This means that approximately 5 minutes of digital video will use 1 GB of hard-drive space. If you have a computer with a lot of processing power and hard-drive space, this may not be a problem. But if your computer has less power and less hard-drive space available, you may need to act conservatively in terms of how much video you can use in your story.
After you have reviewed your tapes and are familiar with the clips that you plan to use in your digital story, you are ready to digitize the video. To begin, be sure the tape with your video footage is in the camera and the camera is connected to the computer using a 4- to 6-pin Firewire cable. Be sure your camera is turned on and in VTR or VCR mode. Next, in iMovie, click the camera/editing mode switch to Camera.
Edit switch
Playback controls
Use the playback controls to view the tape in the iMovie monitor. Find the clip you want to capture and rewind the tape a few seconds prior to this point. By capturing a few seconds of footage before your desired footage, you will have "handles" to work with in the editing process. When you are ready to capture, click Play, then Import. To stop capturing video, click Import again. You will see the segment of captured video position itself in the iMovie shelf, where it is now ready to be used in editing. To capture additional video, repeat the process with each segment of your choice.
If you want to use footage from a DVD, it is possible but somewhat complicated. Ask your instructor for assistance.
In this package:
Part 1: Finding the experience
Part 2: Telling the story
Part 3: Creating the piece
Part 4: Publishing the work
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