Arielle P Digital Story Treatment
From LIS5313
Contents |
[edit] Summary
Title: One Event
Description: My digital story explores how there is no way to know how an event will effect our lives. My fiancee is from the former East Germany and I am from Florida. We both have memories of the day the wall fell, but neither of us knew what it would mean for us personally. This video tells that story.
[edit] Media Assets
The video includes voice, photos, video, and text. The voice narration starts with a phrase in German, to foreshadow the topic of the story. The voice narration continues with me describing my memories from the day the wall fell and Stephan (my fiance) describing his memories from the same day. I chose to use both of our voices to highlight the two different stories. Photos from flickr are used to show images from different world events as an introduction. Personal photos are used later in the video to show our personal situations. The only alteration I did on the photos was to remove some color from the introduction photos so they wouldn't stand out so much against the black and white photos. I have one short video clip from spinxpress which shows scenes from the day the Berlin wall fell. I thought this was important to show the event by itself before describing its effect on us. The music used is an instrumental piece from jamendo.com that grows from a serious tone to a light melody which I thought carried the transition of mood in the story. Some text is used to clarify the story.
[edit] Pacing, Rhythm, and Juxtaposition
The music I have chosen is carrying the rhythm of the video. I tried to match transitions in the music with transitions in the visuals and the story. The music starts off rather foreboding but eases into a light hearted melody at the end. I followed this with visuals as well, starting with impersonal photos at first that are more serious. These photos go a little faster because they have less true impact on the story at hand. As the story transitions to our separate personal experiences the music lightens up a little and the photos become more personal (photos of ourselves). Then a video of the Berlin Wall falling comes up. In juxtaposition with the more light hearted music it is given a positive and promising mood. Then the video transitions to the effects of this event on us and our relationship, ending with a very uplifting melody.
[edit] Narration, Dialogue, and Text
Stephan (in German): "There is no way to know how an event, whether big or small, will effect your life."
Text: Of the many, one event has shaped our lives more than others. We just didn't know it at the time.
Arielle: I remember my parents watching the news on November 9th, 1989. I was 6 years old and more concerned about the delayed start of the promised Candyland game than the details of the story which was the culprit. I remember my father saying, “This is really important, you should be paying attention.”
Stephan: On November 9th, 1989 I was attending additional school classes away from my home in Sonneberg. Thuringia, part of the former GDR. The teacher walked into our class room and asked if we had heard what had happened. Most of us said yes – but in fact, nobody really knew what it meant.
Text: On November 9th, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and the reunification of Germany began"
Text: This allowed Stephan to...teach some American how to make sausage and have fried turkey on Thanksgiving Day.
Text: This allowed Arielle to...experience her first snow in Sonneberg, Germany and find out just how much Germans do love sausage.
Text: November 9th, 1989 allowed us to meet each other...
Text: and will effect us for the rest of our lives.
[edit] Reflection
I am very happy with the way the video turned out. If I had unlimited time to perfect it I would play around with the transitions between visual elements a little more, but I stopped when I realized every time I looked at the video I saw more that could be changed. This could potentially go on for many more days! As it is, I believe it expresses my message and story in an effective and heartfelt manner. In case anyone notices, I used "affect" instead of "effect" on the first text slide. I didn't notice this until it was already posted and don't have time to correct it and render, convert, then post again. Please forgive me!
On a personal note, this assignment allowed me to explore a lot of emotions and thoughts about my relationship with Stephan and the places we both come from. What a wonderful and thought provoking project it has been...I have really enjoyed it!
[edit] Draft Media
[edit] Copyrighted Materials
The only media that did not come with a clear Creative Commons license that I used was the video excerpt from the Berlin Wall fall. I was unable to find any copyright information on the video. It seems to have come from compilation of news clips. I believe it is safe to use, though, because I found it through a Creative Commons search on spinxpress.com.
