Digital Storytelling: Creating meaning and emotional impact
Quite honestly, I am fascinated by stories, particularly, true stories. I believe that stories are part of what defines humanity, and the ability to hold, retell, and find meaning in stories is at the root of being human. My quest to understand and immerse myself in storytelling has rooted my academic career.
In The Storytelling Cookbook, Joe Lambert does a great job of dissecting storytelling, helping readers understand how stories are built, and how storytellers (and in turn, their audiences) can shape/create meaning through the building of stories from memory. Lambert is not talking about any stories; however, he is talking about digital stories, which harness the complex abilities and multimedia landscapes the internet provides us.
Digital storytelling is the process of constructing a short story through a synthesis of multimedia that utilizes “images, videos, sounds, and other representations of events from our life [that] can help us to reconstruct more complete memories and therefore expand the repertoire of story that we can put to use” (2). We can be even more specific, and define digital storytelling as a recorded narration of the storyteller imposed over a series of images, movies, and other media (Lambert 18). There is room in the creative process to include other, ambient sounds or music, and to layer images from photographs and videos, but at the core of digital storytelling is the narration of the storyteller.
This is an important distinction to make because part of the journey and power of the digital story is the storyteller’s ability to create meaning through insight, imbue emotion into the story, and find the aha moment, or the clarifying moment of the story. These are the beginning steps to digital storytelling, as described by Lambert, but they are rooted in the meaning-making and knowledge creation the storyteller will undertake, and its impact on the audience.
Storycenter is a website devoted to publishing and collecting digital stories written by everyday people interested in sharing their stories. The stories are catalogued around larger story themes (ranging from identity, healing, family, to education and work). I watched a number of different videos and found that each one of them, in varying ways/levels, followed the roadmap Lambert outlines in his text. All the videos presented a voice-over narrative, imposed over a series of images (photos and/or videos), that details a story. Most of the stories were slice–of-life stories that followed the narrator/storyteller on a personal journey of discover.
“Happy,” from storycenter.org
In “Happy,” the storyteller recounts the tale of her rape at sixteen at the hands of a family member’s boyfriend. The story’s format follows the guidelines Lambert outlines with the narrator speaking over a series of images with music playing in the background. At times the images are explicit in the depiction of the story, and at others they are not and are implicit. Because the narrator speaks in her native language, the video uses subtitles to translate the story, which makes the reader have to read the narrative. This subtle detail means at times the reader must decide whether to focus on the image as a whole, or to read the narrative and not focus as much visual attention on the images being depicted. This is balanced by a slower pace in cycling through the images, longer cuts between the images where at times the screen is black, and the slow pace of the narrator’s story.
The story being told is harrowing—as a result of the rape the young girl became pregnant, and in addition to this trauma, she is also put out of her parent’s house, and completely ignored by the perpetuator and father of her child. Though she is taken in by her aunt, she is also further victimized by the legal system which does nothing to hold her rapist accountable. The emotional turning point in the story is the narrator’s wrestling with her parent’s decision to abandon her. She retells what it feels like to see her parents and the perpetuator in her community, as well as her inability to understand why her parents abandoned her, or why the rapist is free while she mentally suffers.
Although the short film is only three minutes long, it manages to pack an emotional story that forces the reader to mentally and emotionally contend with the storyteller’s experience.
In watching a number of different films on storycenter.org, I notice that all the films follow the guidelines/steps outlined by Lambert. All of the stories are voice over narration over a series of images and short film clips. There is ambient noise or music in the background, and when appropriate a disclaimer and captions. The content of the stories all follow the same story arc—background contextualizing information, emotional content, and a moment of clarity or insight that adds depth to the story.
A sample video from womenwin.org.
In comparison, womenwin.org is a site that also collects digital storytelling; however, the films at womenwin.org does not always follow the steps outlined by Lambert. There are some films that are simply a voice over narration imposed over a single picture of the narrator that does not change. Others are voice overs imposed over a collection/montage of images and/or video. These stories appear to follow the general arc of storytelling, though the site’s focus on women in sports impacts the depth of emotion and moments of clarity presented in the films. As a viewer, the films at womenwin.org does not hold the same impact on me, emotionally, as those at storycenter.org.
Comparing the two different sites and approaches to digital storytelling has impressed on me the need to assemble as many of the elements Lambert covers in The Storytelling Cookbook. Lambert does an excellent job in helping us to understand what elements create impactful stories, and perhaps most important, in a short span of time. Due to an ever-shortening attention span, Lambert’s method of drilling down to the emotional and meaning /knowledge making elements of the story. This, allows the reader to have their own journey and opportunity for personal reflection.
Works Cited
Lambert, Joe. Digital Storytelling Cookbook. Center for Digital Storytelling. Berkeley, Digital Diner Press. 2010.
StoryCenter. storycenter.org/stories.
Womenwin. womenwin.org/stories/digital-storytelling-project/watch-videos