Posts tagged storytelling
Ira Glass on storytelling and harnessing creativity.
Illustrated by David Shiyang Liu.
Joe Sabia uses technology to tell the story of innovative storytelling in history. I just love this video.
Four for OnePublished on bob sacha ’s blogText? Sound? Multimedia? Broadcast TV? Which is the best medium to tell a story? In the last days two major US media outlets chose to feature a story about an obscure 82 year old jazz pianists from Buffalo, NY. Not exactly the usual subject for a national media feeding frenzy but interesting to compare the stories. Which worked well? What did each version leave out? How did each version start and finish?
Here’s the line up:
The story in print from the NYTimes
The story in multimedia, also from the NYTimes
The story on the radio from National Public Radio’s Weekend Editionand finally, the same story on local Buffalo TV News.
I was lucky enough to have Bob Sacha as a substitute professor once (he brought us candy and opened our eyes to multimedia storytelling) Please check out his blog. It’s a constant source of inspiration for me. P.S. I grew up in Buffalo, NY after I moved from Beijing. This story was kind of a big deal. -Chao @cli6cli6
One thing we like are new tools and platforms that enable storytelling, curating and content sharing. This keeps our eyes glued to new platforms such as Storify and why we enjoy our time on Tumblr so much.
It’s also a reason why we’re very interested in an email we just received. It’s the announced launch of Cowbird by artist and technologist Jonathan Harris.
It goes something like this:
After 2+ years of work, 145,000+ lines of code, one Icelandic grass hut, one night in jail, one serving of jellied ram’s testicles with fermented shark meat, and countless pieces of toast with orange marmalade, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to Cowbird, a labor of love, and hopefully something that will have a long and meaningful life.
Cowbird is a community of storytellers, focused on deeper, longer-lasting, more personal storytelling than you’re likely to find anywhere else on the Web.
Cowbird allows you to keep a beautiful audio-visual diary of your life, and to collaborate with others in documenting the overarching “sagas” that shape our world today (starting with the Occupy Wall Street movement).
Our short-term goal is to pioneer a new form of participatory journalism, grounded in the simple human stories behind major news events. Our long-term goal is to build a public library of human experience — kind of like a Wikipedia for real life (but much more beautiful).
Grand plans, indeed, and we’re interested in testing the platform. If you are too, you can request an invitation here. Harris writes that they are looking for writers, filmmakers, journalists and storytellers in general to come onboard to grow the community.
Image: Detail from Jonathan Harris’ Cowbird diary.
Bonus Points: PRI has an interview with Harris in which he explains the project’s genesis.
Siri, Tell Me a Story
Amanda Stewart asks Siri to tell her a story. After some hesitation, Siri complies.
H/T: The Next Web.
Happy Halloween from the FJP
Bonus points, Part 01: Vintage Horror Radio (via iTunes).
Bonus points, Part 02: The Longform.org Guide to Creeps and Creepiness.
Bonus points, Part 03: Close Your Ears, a Slate review of Tales from Beyond the Pale, neu-Radio Horror storytelling.
Bonus points, Part 04: War of the Worlds 1938 Radio Broadcast.
Image: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, by Tom Whalen.
Military Seeks Sensor to Gauge Brain's Reaction to Stories
When humanity began telling stories, it began by telling stories of war. Violent Bronze Age fiction, such as the “Iliad,” the Bible and “Gilgamesh,” cast long shadows over entire cultures, often justifying later battles and inspiring future militaries. That trend of spinning yarns of combat continues to this day. To understand the power of stories to shape modern conflicts, DARPA, the Defense Department’s research arm, has initiated a program that will investigate how storytelling and narrative shape our neurobiology.
» via Live Science
FJP: Propaganda going super tech.
Storybird: A Collaborative Storytelling Tool Posted by Mr. Avery on Monday, September 5th 2011 via Tech Tutorials
I would’ve loved a tool like this when I was younger. :-) -Chao
In this entertaining talk, This American Life contributor and producer Starlee Kine shares her vision of our ideas as rambunctious little orphans that need to find a home. So how do we get them out into the world, and send them on their way? For Kine, the answer is persistence, collaboration, fear, and sheer force of will.
Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus
Stuxnet has been called the world’s first weapon made entirely out of code. It is responsible for damaging Iran’s uranium enrichment infrastructure and effectively halting the country’s nuclear program.
This infographic explores the ramifications of Stuxnet. It was created by Patrick Clair for HungryBeast, a TV program on Australia’s ABC1.
Run Time - 3:21.
There are all sorts of things you can do with periodic tables. Earlier this month, we noted a Periodic Table of Catastrophe (“A is for Armageddon”).
Now ComputerSherpa comes out with a Periodic Table of Storytelling (“Mad is for Mad Scientist”).
The tropes throughout the table come from via the ever amusing TVTropes Wiki.
Animating StoryCorps
Founded in 2003, StoryCorps has recorded 30,000 interviews across the United States of (un)common American stories. It does this by letting people reserve time in their sound booths in New York and San Francisco, and in an additional roving sound booth that reaches other destinations across the country.
To date, some 60,000 people have participated with “best of” stories airing on NPR’s Morning Edition, and all preserved at the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center. Consider it an original radio crowdsourcing project.
Lately, some of the interviews have been animated. The work is done by the Rauch Brothers Animation. You can follow them on Tumblr.
Established networks and studios tend to simply re-purpose linear video content that was created for one medium (television/cinema). They post it on the Internet and simply attach functionality to it, generally at the end of the piece. This approach is flawed and inconsistent with the most basic tenets of the modern web experience: non-linearity and social interaction.
No surprise, the indie crowd is leading the way. A crop of new filmmakers and digital storytellers are pushing the boundaries to explore how to integrate interactivity and social mechanics into video narrative. The results are both promising and inspiring. Let’s take a look at a few.
Mike Knowlton, ScribeMedia.org. Interactivity and Social Mechanics in Online Video.
Knowlton walks us through Arcade Fire’s The Wilderness Downtown, The Johnny Cash Project and Pandemic 1.0 among other examples. Is interesting to think how the template might be used in documentary or long form journalism.
Kurt Vonnegut: the Shapes of Stories
The famed writer walks us through three dramatic prototypes and believes that a computer should be able to hack a storytelling algorithm.
Consider before you embark on your next feature.
Run Time: 4:37.
- Page 1 of 2
- Next »
