What a great activity to start off the Fellows program!
The time flew - it was thrilling to know that we'd be assembling the entire story in a day. I kept thinking about how different the process of making a digital story would've been even five years ago - the software had so many easy-to-use features, it took just minutes to overlay a soundtrack using Jamendo, and we recorded our voices on Ipods, which are a basically a household item these days.
As we discussed at the workshop, new media is decentralizing the arts. I think it's great that the barriers to creating and "publishing" art are lower now. And I do believe that Digital Storytelling will be a useful public health tool. This is a compelling medium for marginalized populations and advocates to use to share their experience. I especially like the juxtaposition of photography and narrative - people can choose to keep one element literal and the other figurative (or any other combination!)
After the workshop, I thought about how everybody has had experiences that you'd never imagine they've had. This general concept used to be central to my worldview (especially when I listened to "This American Life" all the time!) but I hadn't thought about it in a while.
We learned a lot about each other over those two days - if not for the workshop, we may have never have heard those stories.
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It was easy, wasn't it? I wonder though, if the technology had been hard to use and the process drawn out, would our storied have benefited from the extra time in production? In other words, did we rush to get our stories on film because the technology afforded it? It would be interesting to revisit the videos in a week or two and see what we would have done differently.
ReplyDeleteI am grateful that I was able to here everyone's story, too. There was something very beautiful about the fact that we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable within the group. Thank you for your story, Santhi!