CandiceV Digital Story Treatment

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[edit] Summary

Title: Do Cinderella Dreams Come True?

Image: Image:glassslipperthumbnail.jpg

Description: The purpose of my story is to explain how my husband and I met as small children at our local swim team, where I secretly admired him for a number of years, and much later became reacquainted and fell in love. Our story is incredibly unique and a favorite of the family's, so I thought it would be neat to re-create it in video form and keep it in the family. Since my husband, Chris, is four years older than me and barely knew I existed when I was a scrawny little girl on the swim team with him, the story is told from my point of view. This story is important to me because it allows me to show my husband how important he is and has always been to me.

[edit] Media Assets

The primary images I included in my digital story are personal photographs of me and my husband taken during our childhood years on the swim team, as well as from our wedding day. However, I also included images from Flickr that focused on the topics of swimming, love, and friendship. Pictures, such as the photograph of a little girl's clear "glass" slippers next to the swimming pool, the loves me/loves me not flower photo, and the picture of two children embracing with the little girl standing on top of the little boys' feet help to create a flirty and youthful romantic mood. I did not manipulate the pictures that I have selected for my digital story other than to crop and enlarge them. For my final version, I tried to add additional recent photos of myself and my husband as adults in response to the feedback that I received on my rough draft. This way, viewers could get an even better picture of who we are and how our relationship has evolved over time.

The audio for my digital story consists of my narration of how my husband and I met, as well as the song "Histoire de Rein" by ditto ditto from ccMixter. In an effort to make this light hearted song sound even more youthful and carefree, I added the sound effects of children giggling, diving into a pool, and swimming. All of these sound effects are located at SoundSnap and are listed as follows:

[edit] Pacing, Rhythm, and Juxtaposition

For my digital story, I am trying to keep the pacing of the images moderately slow and relaxed, so that their rythhm matches that of the lighted hearted music playing in the background. Since the video is supposed to be romantic and a bit humorous as well, I don't want any moments in the video to seem rushed or anxious. For this reason, I have tried to keep a pretty even tempo, although I have focused on some images in the video longer than others. Varying the time a single photo is focused seems to add a little interest, but it also makes sense because the timing of the images should coordinate with the narration or audio of the story. Some photos will inevitably compliment a longer segment of the audio than others. This was the case for the photo in my video of the two older swimmer girls. I focus on this picture for more time than some of the other images because I describe the girls' interest in my crush, as well as how their age and curves would give them more of a chance at being noticed. It seemed important that the photo remain on the screen while I explained this portion of my story.

Towards the second half of the video, I begin to use more images, rather than personal photos that are symbolic of the emotions and thoughts running through me when I discover that my childhood crush (who I haven't seen since gradeschool) is back in town from the Army, and I am about to see him after all those years for the first time. For this reason, I chose the he loves me/he loves me not flower picture, the picture of the girl shutting her car door, the image of someone, who is about to walk on a heart tile in the street pavement, and the picture of a young girl in flip flops standing on a boy's feet as if they were embracing. I tried to make the images of the flower petals, the heart tile, and those of my husband crossing the street, in particular, reveal the suspense I felt as I wondered if I would still have feelings for my old crush and whether or not he would look anything like what I expected. To further heighten this suspense, I chose to focus only in on a picture of my husband's feet and legs when I say "I look up and there he is..." before revealing the full picture of my husband crossing the street.

Since my rough draft, I have added a picture of my husband in his Army uniform where the narration says "Home from the Army"; a picture of me with my friend where the narration says "A friend called me up to tell me that my childhood crush was...", as well as two of our wedding pictures as the last couple of photos in the video. I have also tried to smooth out issues with timing and pacing, as well as transitions between photos. For the most part, I am happy with my final draft. I only wish that I had been able to completely smooth out the recorded audio for my narration segment. Unfortunately, I had already returned the microphone I had borrowed and was unable to get it back in time.

[edit] Narration, Dialogue, and Text

At the age of 5, I knew my prince charming was tall dark and handsome. We both spent our childhood on the Paddlers swim team, where I watched him timidly from the shallow end as he glided confidently through the water. He was an impressive swimmer with the body of a bronzed god. Unfortunately, the older girls thought so too, and had far more curves and layers of makeup than I could compete with. One day, I thought, I’ll catch his attention…

Home from college, a mutual friend dials to mention that my childhood crush is home from the Army. Would I stop by his parents’ with her to say hello? Just to see…Just to see if he still lived up to my former image of perfection. A car door opens…we step out…heart throbbing, hands sweating, tongue tied, I look up and there he is crossing the street to greet us. He is still the prince of my dreams, and this time, we are both speechless. Cinderella dreams do come true. Yes, Oh yes. They do!

[edit] Reflection

I thoroughly enjoyed working on my story, even though I definitely encountered some obstacles along the way with my microphone, as well as with obtaining the right family pictures for my video. Overall, I like the music that I selected for the story and believe that the video successfully brings across that awkward, romantic quality of young love. This was the mood that I was hoping to create.

For me, the best part of this assignment was the time spent going through old family photos to include in the album. My husband and I laughed and reminisced as we browsed through pages and pages of photos from our childhood and youth. It not only made us aware us of all the experiences and memories we share in common, but it also reminded us of just how lucky we are to have found eachother and to have had such carefree childhoods.

[edit] Draft Media

The following drafts and media components in my video are ready for comment. I primarily want input on how to better adjust my timing towards the first half of the video, as well as ideas for other images that I might want to consider using in the second half of the video, where I receive a phone call from a friend about my crush being in town.

So far, I have not added any photo transitions to my digital story draft, but I plan to in my next one.

[edit] Copyrighted Materials

My digital story does not make use of any copyrighted material. All images in the video are either personal photos or pictures from Flickr that hold a creative commons attribution license.

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