Jenifer A. Digital Story Treatment

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[edit] Summary

Title: My Life as a Mother of Three Boys

Image: Thumbnail of vintage boys.jpg


Vintage: Three boys, all dressed up by freeparking CC Attribution 2.0

Note: I can't get this image to go to the left...What did I do incorrectly? Thx I looked at someone else's Jenifer and they didn't have the posts in it. So I took them off and it worked...Barbara


Description: My purpose is to show the humorous and unexpected side of parenting all boys (even the dog is a boy!). The point of view is of a sometimes exasperated, sometimes clueless, but introspective working mom--me! The idea comes from a Ladies Home Journal feature column where every year a mom writes monthly columns about her family, focusing on the children. Different perspectives have been presented, such as a mom of two adopted Asian daughters. I think it is important to look at life's events in a new light and of course, things always look different when looking back...

[edit] Media Assets

Following a storyboard, I used pictures of my sons, as well as CC Attribution and CC Attribution-noncommercial Flickr photos. Audio came from ccMixter, The Freesound Project and Legal MP3 Music (Thank you Roberta B.:) which had similar CC licenses or Freeware licenses. I hoped the mixing of visuals with sound effects and /or music would convey a semi-serious and semi-humorous depiction along with the narration.

The opening music is "Pink Ink in the Sink" which had a pause that I tightened up. It is not perfect and you can hear a dog in the background. This part of the song (first few seconds or so) sets up the tone for the story.

The vintage photo reminded me of my brothers; the baseball noises reminded me of playing in the backyard while growing up. The snippet from the song "The Great Escape" is used in mock drama to reiterate the title/theme and goes with the Boy Scout photo (our pack/troop at Blue and Gold dinner; two of my sons, my husband and tired me). The "girlie girl" Flickr photos (ladies in mirror, belles, and ladies drinking tea) show what I am not, despite my mom's efforts. I have the sound effect of tea being poured. The belles shot is reminiscent of proms and weddings. Tomboy pictures (girls climbing trees and woman whistling) go with narration and sound effect of whistling. The photo of son Ian sets up the transition into sword fighting with Go-Gurt Tubes which I extend with Flickr pix of sword fighting after the transformation of yogurt into swords:) [I photographed the Go-gurt and swords on the actual carpet (now cleaned) where the two oldest fought it out-- until there was yogurt everywhere-- rather than head to the car for am daycare while I grabbed the youngest. Memories.] Sounds are of swords clashing and whipping the air into playground noises. Boy on bike, boy in mud, and boys tumbling down are boy stunts. Narration of "Stop that!", etc., match pictures. I decided to use the Gorgeous in Green photo as a humorous depiction of dressy stain-resistant* (*but probably Not) clothing. ABC song is upbeat and goes with my "clueless" (narration) in picture w/ son Aaron driving the car. The next image is of Aaron and I smiling broadly and then the overwrite states: "Clueless, but happy!". The credits' style and color continue the feel or tone of maintaining some femininity amongst males.

[edit] Pacing, Rhythm, and Juxtaposition

Pacing is related to narration, underscored by sound effects and music, to convey emotion and advance the plot. It is discordant at times in that it imitates life.... The rhythm varies with the narration and audio. Juxtaposition is thematic and thus flows with the narration and the added sound effects. The style of the image track matches the audio track. Example: The Go-gurt sword fighting sequence starts with the Question "Who knew...?", the image of the box of yogurt tubes, and the sound effects of swords. This scene transitions into yogurt tubes becoming swords as the boys envision themselves as swordfighters, with the sword fighting sounds evolving into play ground (field) noises. Visually, the viewer is taken into this 'playing with yogurt as swords' scene....

[edit] Narration, Dialogue, and Text

Text is only used for title, credits, and over end of last slide before the credits.

Narration: Having three brothers did not prepare me for "Life as a Mother of Boys". I've never been a "girlie-girl", but I do have two sisters and we were raised to be "ladies". I was more of a tom-boy, and so were my friends...climbing trees, building go-carts, whistling. None of this prepared me for raising boys... Who knew Go-Gurt tubes were swords?...Who knew the question "Why?" was not in a boy's understanding, but had to be taught? Boys just do; they don't question their motives--they don't need to have a reason. People know I am the mother of boys by my --"Stop That!!" "No!"--directness. This may seem simple to others, but knowing what I know and having first-hand experiences with my sons has changed my perspective, as well as my ability to find dressy stain-resistant clothes, though [pause] I'm still clueless!!

[edit] Reflection

I did better than anticipated in finding images, sound effects and images. It took hours and hours, but the time invested paid off. I had mega trouble with the audio. I used Audacity and tried with and with out the headset,etc,etc. I finally got a static-free narration stereo track, but it had static after I imported the finished audio with sound effects to Windows Movie Maker. I searched online and found info about noise reduction under the Effects tool in Audacity. [ see http://www.oid.ucla.edu/training/trainingarticles/audacity2] I played with this b/c I got distortion if it was set too high. I then had to covert the WMM into MP4. I redid the track 2x until it sounded good. I used feedback and support to resolve the audio issue. In the end, I checked the sound card (it was fine), updated the Sigma Tel audio driver (Vista has issues, apparently:), used a plug-in microphone, and made sure I exported from Audacity as MP3 (did previously as well:) and Voila! It took time, but hopefully it'll go faster in the future:) Thank you everyone!

On the plus side, I did learn how to fade the slides and credits:) and I figured out why I had trouble with Media Convert.com conversion last time (I think so...I jotted down notes for next time:) I also learned more about Movie Maker, as well as myself:)

I also improved the visuals by using some of the suggestions made in peer feedback. Overall, the suggestions were helpful:)ty While I enjoyed this project, it was frustrating at times. The frustration came with my inexperience in using the technology and handling problems that arose. I did learn some new skills and practiced using patience:) Converting and uploading took a lot longer than expected, so to reduce stress, I wrote myself a reminder to allow plenty of time for this in the future. The digital story video communicates what I intended, I believe....

[edit] Draft Media

Final with corrected audio and visuals

Rough Draft

Images: see video links at top of list (credits are at end of video)

Do I still need to embed thumbnail images here? (From Dr. Tripp: No, you don't need any images here.Ltripp 21:46, 21 March 2008 (EDT)) Thank you:)Jenifer A.

[edit] Copyrighted Materials

I did not use any copyrighted material.

Any use of copyrighted materials should be justified in writing here when you turn in your video. For example, you could state: “I received permission to use this material from…,” or "I think I can make a fair use claim to use _____ material because…”.

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