I asked my husband the question, "what was your greatest adventure?" and I recorded his answer on video. He told a version of the story I present below. He told it matter-of-factly, as a series of events, and through my deconstruction of the transcript I could see it was a lot more. Though his story does not really follow the arc of the 6 plot points of ancient Greek tragedy (Point of Attack, Exposition, Rise In Action, Climax, Falling Action, Denouement), it has within it a sense of life's lessons. This story draws parallels with at least 11 of Vladimir Propp's 31 functions of a story as well.
In deciding on a medium to present the story, I initially considered creating an interactive map, as geography felt like an obvious part of the story. After playing with StoryMapJS a bit, it became clear that the crux of this story really doesn't have to do with geography at all. It has to do with teenage rebellion and naivete and most recognizably, with straddling the awkward place between childhood and adulthood. The story is of a personal and familial nature, and I felt that could best be conveyed by using old family photos as the primary visual medium.
I decided to tell this story in the first person as it seemed more genuine. As the story itself is a boy's journey towards adulthood, it only felt right to represent that journey in something close to his own voice. As his partner of 15 years, I felt I could take the liberty to do that with a bit of creative freedom meshed in. There is a point, however, where the perspective is flipped and we see my husband on camera telling a short snippet of his story - the first revelation he experienced during this adventure. I struggled with whether this flip in perspective made sense, but ultimately decided to keep it as a way of including his true voice (and also as a sweet commentary of where he currently is in his life, as you can hear our toddler in the background yelling for me). I made this video snippet black and white in hopes to set it apart from the first-person narrative.
Visual assets:
First-hand account video.
Photographs are actual family photographs from 1998 and before which I digitized for purposes of this project.
Two images used are not my own and are used and accredited under the Creative Commons license.
Process documents (click to view):
Coded story transcript
Mind map doc
Click below to view the story.
MFA in Emergent Media | Spring 2018 semester | Digital Storytelling, Prof. Erik Esckilsen
Assignment: Record someone else answering one of four questions, make a transcription of the recording and code it for context, body language, tone, location, people, etc. With this recording as your backbone, create a digital story using elements from narrative structure discussed in class.
