An Easy Guide to
Creating Your Own

Step One: Writing the Script:

Experiment with Abroad View’s suggested writing prompts and exercises to write about a 500-word script for your video. Try a free-write at first, thinking about one anecdote from your time abroad and go from here. Here are some leading questions to ask yourself when writing the script:

-What type of digital story is this going to be? A personal, reflective story or a more socio-political piece? A combination of both?
-What was a defining moment in your experience abroad in which your life will never be the same or in which your life will take a different direction forever? BE SPECIFIC

Step Two: Finding Images and Footage:

Once you’ve finalized your script draw a storyboard in which you pair the lines from your script with images. Each video frame lasts for up to 5 seconds (with 5 risking too long) so for a 3-minute video your storyboard should have at lease 36 frames.

Check out:
- this online image of a storyboard for a short advertisement commercial:
-Adobe’s storyboard template:
-UC Berkely’s guide to storyboarding:

Note: This is a good chance to sort through your photographs from abroad and find which visuals are particularly story-worthy. NOTE: Depending on what type of thinker you are, you might be more inspired to write a script by first looking at your photographs. Your storyboard should essentially be the architectural plan for your digital story so that when you are ready to edit you know exactly your layout.

Tips for choosing images: When selecting images think about showing and not telling, or showing one thing to tell another.

Questions to ask of your image:
-Is this image merely decorating my script?
-Is this image illustrating my script?
-Is this image illuminating or enhancing my script?
We’re going for mostly # 3 images but a mix with a few #1 and #2 can work as well. Another interesting tactic is to mix the chronology of your images and your script. In other words how can you illuminate a character’s past through images while narrating their present?
Once you’ve gathered all the images for your storyboard take time to play with them using image-editing software like Adobe Photoshop or through basic image editing programs like iPhoto (NOTE: Most college and university computer labs will have Adobe Photoshop installed on computer lab systems) Also check out UC Berkley’s simple guide to Photoshop for a head start

If you have video footage from abroad, upload it onto your computer and find clips to use in your storyboard. If you’re using both still and moving images think about where a still image makes more sense as opposed to areas in the script that call for image movement.
If you are interested in tips about shooting in the field click here

You can also search for images online but make sure to read up on copyright first:
-Are you copyright savvy?

-Creative Commons: All you need to know about copyright:

-Watch a video about Creative Commons, a non-profit that allows users to share, re-use and re-mix media content legally:
http://search.creativecommons.org/
-Creative Commons Search Engine:

Here are some free image sources:

Kathleen Davis's Tutorial on Finding Free Images Online

-Hundreds of Images licensed for free commercial and non-commercial use

-Free Flickr Images without Copyright worries

-More Free Images Sources:

Step Three: Recording your script:

Once you have finalized your script and storyboard practice reading your script out loud and record several versions (with several tones and pauses) using either a video camera, a computer microphone, or an external microphone. Again most colleges and universities are equipped with audio recording capabilities and many laptops have internal microphones that will suffice. Experiment with repetition and improvising.

Check out these site for tips on recording voiceover:
Sundance Media Group's Tips
UC Berkley's Tips

Step Four: Find additional audio sound-bytes:

Now that you have your script and images selected think about where additional audio tracks like music or sound bytes might fit into your story. When looking through live footage think about where the audio works without the video and vice versa. Be careful of copyright! Insert sound bytes into your storyboard as you see fit.

Free Audio Samples to use in your digital story:
http://ccmixter.org/
http://magnatune.com/
http://www.sectionz.com/cc.asp
http://www.dmusic.com/
http://www.opsound.org/
http://www.digitales.us/resources/music_sound_sources.php

Step Five: Organizing your material:

To make editing easier, organize your media into folders with one folder for voiceover, one for images, one for live footage and one for additional audio sound bytes. No matter the computer editing software that you are using, you will be uploading the content into the program and doing so in an organized manner is important. Use your college’s server to store the media or check out online media storage spaces

Step Six: Editing your digital story:

Now you are ready to Edit! All video editing programs require laying out image and audio tracks, which your storyboard should have already planned out. Follow your storyboard stopping in between each frame to edit. Start editing using basic software like iMovie and then move onto more professional programs like Final Cut Pro (be sure to refer to Media Storm's manual) or Adobe's Premier. Again most colleges have these softwares and the IT department should be equipped with tutorials. Reach out to your school’s media specialist who will most likely work in the IT department and have a title like “Media Services Specialist.” Or reach out to your Film and Media department for referrals as well. Be patient and play! Editing is a purely trial and error type game. Always back up your material and always be ready for a surprise!

Use UC Berkely’s extremely helpful guide to editing with How-To’s for Photoshop, I-Movie, Dreamweaver

Be sure to check out their tips on how to best assemble your story

Additional Resource for Final Cut:
And Premeir:

-Watch a video to frighten you into backing up your work!:

Step Six: Share your story:
Export the final track into a Quick Time movie which you can then burn into a DVD or upload into a blog or website.

An easy way to annotate and share your own videos:

Other places to publish and share your videos, and easy How-To’s
YouTube
Media Storm