Story+Telling+and+Documentaries

The key element to any video is its story. For our whole lives we have been drawn to the stories told on our televisions and movie screens. Now that you have been given that same power, what story will you tell?

As part of this class, we will focus on two video genres that overlap. They both involve telling us a story.

The first, a **documentary**, gives us information about a particular topic, idea, person, etc. They can be reconstructions of past events with a narrator filling us in on the details or more observational in nature, following an event in progress. In either case, the camera becomes the observer and by the end of a documentary we should be familiar with the topic and its contextual importance.

The second genre has been termed **digital story telling**. This genre widens the scope of the project. While documentary-style digital story tales are common, they do not always have to be informational. You are simply trying to captivate your audience by telling them a compelling story.

The people over at the [|Center for Digital Storytelling] have developed seven elements of a story. While they specifically apply to digital storytelling, they have a universal value. As you plan and develop your video, refer to this list.


 * 1) **Point (of View)** - What is the point of the video? What exactly is being explore or accomplished? Is it just an idea, a mystery, a character, a transformation? This usually goes beyond a simple sequence of events.
 * 2) **Dramatic Question** - How are you going to engage the audience? What question will be building during the video and how will be answered at the end?
 * 3) **Emotional Content** - This is also related to engaging the audience. How will you get the viewers to identify with the video? How will they connect emotionally with the characters or ideas?
 * 4) **The Gift of Your Voice** - For videos that require a dialogue or narration, the flow of that speech is important. A canned speech, sounds, well, canned. Practice your script.
 * 5) **The Power of the Soundtrack** - Music can be used to set a mood or provide drama. The wrong music can ruin a good video!
 * 6) **Economy** - Less is more. Overwhelming the audience with massive numbers of images, cluttered backgrounds, and fast-paced dialogue will cause them to get lost or lose interest because they cannot keep up. Finish your thoughts before moving on to the next one. Use music, images, and dialogue together to tell the story - do not make them compete for attention.
 * 7) **Pacing** - A good video flows evenly. Find the balance between the rabbit and the turtle.

These elements are explain in a lot more detail in the [|Digital Storytelling Cookbook] - the first four chapters are available online.