A Field Guide

A Curriculum for Playing in the Field:
If you are about to spent time abroad and are interested in experimenting with a digital storytelling curriculum try these four stages of the creative process, giving each stage about a week’s worth of play:

Stage One: Stories Without Words and Sounds
Focusing on the photographic element of digital stories, explore your surroundings–people, places, events, natural landscapes, etc.–and learn to reveal something from different angles. Think about these questions:
How do we express the relationship we have with our surroundings through still images? How do we, or don’t we relate to our photographs? Can we tell who someone is through a photograph? Can photographs show movement? In a photograph, what can people, animals, natural objects, and religious symbols tell us about a landscape and/or a culture? How can we understand our views about a place by the angle of our photographs?

Stage Two: Soundscapes
Stories without text or images. Listen to your environments and take notice of the sounds around you, paying close attention to who or what is making those sounds. Capture sounds using audio recorders and work to make short soundscape stories that reveal something about your environments or an experience. Record and edit your own voices.

Stage Three: Writing Workshops: Creative writing techniques and script development
What happens to the image and soundscape stories when you add words (written text and voiceovers)? Are there differences between a written and an orally told story? How do images, soundscapes, written-words, and oral-words play off of each other?
Using observations from your travel journal and trying out the written exercises on the “Your Words section” add written and oral recordings, focusing on how the addition of language changes the stories. This will help you understand where these mediums intersect, and how one component (image, sound, language) is not merely an illustration or repetition of the other, but extends, amplifies, or complicates meaning. Additionally, this will help you structure a timeline for your digital story and figure out which images and sounds best fit and/or deepen the meaning of your words.

Stage Four: Production of Digital Stories
Start thinking about putting your story together by deciding if it will be 1) a documentary type piece 2) personal stories through a narrative reflection.
Tell your stories through the overarching question, what have I discovered about myself in this place? Refer to the Easy Guide for tips on creating your storyboard and editing your story.

Online Tips on Shooting Video in the Field

UC Berkley’s Complete Equipment Guide for Backpack Journalists- What to Bring

Media Storm’s Gear Kit:

Their video shooting tips:

Their tips on Video cameras:

Their tips on Video camera accessories:

Research Tips on the Logistics of Field Work