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Projects: Story

5 star rating

Preserving the Stories of Our Lives

Submitted by: Cris Crissman

Inspired by: StoryCorps

Challenge: StoryCorps is a non-profit dedicated to ensuring that all Americans have the opportunity to learn to tell and preserve their stories. An interview format is usually recommended. You may have heard the weekly StoryCorps story on National Public Radio. Or heard of the National Day of Listening that StoryCorps sponsors the day after Thanksgiving. For this challenge, interview someone who can tell you a special story that you would like to preserve.

Project Specs:

  • Decide who you will interview and prepare a few questions. StoryCorps encourages you to ask “How does this make you feel” to elicit some interesting responses. For more suggestions on the interview and tech tips, visit the StoryCorps site.
  • Prepare your interviewee for the conversation by explaining the process and what you intend to do with the story.
  • Be sure to take a photograph of you and your interviewee together for your blog post.
  • You can edit your story in Audacity and upload to SoundCloud.
  • When you publish on SoundCloud, upload the photo so it will appear to the left of the sound wave visual.
  • Embed this sound wave visual in your blog post.
  • Category: projects
  • Tags: projectstory, storycorps

5 star rating

Hanging Around with Isaac Asimov

Submitted by Cris Crissman

Inspired by Maria Popova of Brain Pickings

Challenge: Create a audio interview in which you introduce someone you’d like to meet and tell a story about that meeting by weaving in your questions and their responses. In Maria Popova’s inspiring video essay, Bill Moyers gets to have all the fun. In yours, you or someone you designate can do the interviewing.

Project Specs:

  • Choose someone from history or present day, real or imaginary, to interview.
  • Create a story about that interview.
  • Weave together your questions (or those of your designate) and audio responses of this person.
  • Category: projects
  • Tags: projectstory, storyvideohost

5 star rating

Dear Photograph

Submitted by Cris Crissman

Inspired by Dear Photo

Challenge: Blend the past and present into a new work of art.

Project Specs:

  • Take a photo representing a time and place important to you.
  • Hold the photo up against the original setting.
  • Make a picture.
  • Write a brief note to the original photograph.
  • Use this note as the script for your audio story. Be sure to add appropriate sounds to make it seem you are recording at that place.
  • Category: projects
  • Tags: projectstory, storydearphoto

5 star rating

Found Art

Submitted by: Cris Crissman

Inspired by: Indiana Jones Journal Mystery and Found Magazine

Challenge: Create a mystery inspired by some note or object that you have found. Or, inversely, of something you have lost and imagine the rest of the story.

Project Specs:

  • Choose an object or note you have found or one you have lost.
  • Tell the rest of the story in audio.
  • Category: projects
  • Tags: projectstory, storyfoundart

5 star rating

A Story is a GIF

Submitted by Cris Crissman

Inspired by Cogdog (Alan Levine), specifically “Keep Clicking Those Ruby GIF Shoes”

Challenge: Create an animated GIF that tells a story with a subtle touch.

Project Specs:

  • Choose a story to tell with a bit of action that enhances rather than overwhelms.
  • Follow Cogdog’s instructions or any other tutorial that provides the scaffolding you need — creating animated GIFs is one of the most popular image editing challenges and there are tons of videos and text how-to’s.
  • Tell an audio story inspired in some way by the gif.
  • Category: project
  • Tag: projectstory, storygif

Animated GIFs are often under-appreciated as simply technical show-offs but like anything else — just the right GIF at the right time can work great. Here’s a good example from Wikipedia . . .

5 star rating My Personal Audio Heartbeat

Submitted by Cris Crissman

Inspired by Web 2.0 Storytelling by Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine

Challenge: Record sounds from your day with a soundtrack in the background to contextualize your activities during that day. Snap a photo at each interval and place the photos and audio files on a timeline to create an “audio heartbeat.”

Project Specs:

  • Plan to pause during several times during the day to record yourself with a sound (music, street, conversations, etc.) to add a layer and context.
  • Snap a photograph to represent each of these “heartbeats” during the day.
  • Place the photos on a timeline. Use a tool like Dipity.
  • Embed the audio file of your day and the timeline in a blog post.
  • Category: projects
  • Tags: projectstory, storyheartbeat

From the Gallery: My Personal Audio Heartbeat

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