Challenge 3 - Soundtrack for Your Life

creative commons licensed ( BY-SA ) flickr photo shared by gagilas

Challenge

Assemble a music video playlist of that serves as the soundtrack of your life, complete with liner notes. Include all components in a blogpost with your YouTube playlist embedded, so others can listen to it. A playlist bar will appear at the bottom of the embedded video player. Then check out some of your classmates' soundtracks and comment.

Objectives

• Compose a playlist of music videos
• Apply audio composition techniques
• Experiment with audio, video, and text based storytelling tools

Country music singer and songwriter Rodney Crowell has always viewed music as “literature you could hear in your car.”

Rationale

Music is powerful part of human experience. Few things have the power that music can have over us all. Just look at how many iPods are sold, as evidence. For many of us, music is a constant sonic backdrop for our lives. Often a song can connect and capture an experience better than we might be able to initially do ourselves. They trigger powerful emotions, memories, and help us document our lives.

• How does this compilation of music capture elements of your experience?
• What sequence of songs will help you show and tell that story?
• What significant event does a song(s) represent?

Playlist

Select at least eight songs that have deep resonance and meaning for you for whatever reason. Typically, choosing is easiest if you associate a song with an event or experience. Then try to sequence the tracks in such a way that enhances the listening and potential progression of a mood, theme, or other consideration. Then find the tracks on YouTube and compose a playlist of the tracks in the order you have decided.

Liner Notes

Then write the "liner notes" for your soundtrack. The term comes from the name "record liner" or "album liner," a common sight in the vinyl record days. Eventually, more extensive notes began to appear on the paper sleeve record liner, inside of an album jacket, protecting the vinyl album from dust and scratches. Liner notes were always a mix of material, depending on the artist or label. Often they included short essays by the artist or a music journalist.



British jazz musician, radio personality, and writer Benny Green penned the essay for the inside of Miles Davis' masterpiece Kind of Blue (above image). This practice continued with the arrival compact discs to some degree, but is quickly disappearing in the era of the digital download.
Give the mix a title and begin with a little background about yourself and reflection on the compilation as a whole. Also, include the basic track information, like song title, artist, and any other potentially valuable information for each selection. Then using the track information as a subheading, explain why you chose each track. This will likely take a paragraph or so. Consider answering questions like: Why the song is important to you? How it connects to an event or experience in your life? The notes should be personal, engaging, and reflective.

Instructions

• Compose a YouTube playlist (8-12 tracks) and embed it in a blogpost.
• Write the liner notes for your song selections and include them in the post.
• Include a short reflection on the process of completing the challenge at the end of the post.

Legal

• Respect the fact that this is a class project. Music should be appropriate for all audiences. Do not select tracks with potentially offensive lyrics or subject matter.

Challenge 2 - Five Frame Story

a composite image of The Jump - by Canon Camera

Challenge

In the spirit of Flickr’s Visual Storytelling Group, I would like you to create and tell a story in five (5) frames. Still no audio, video, hyperlinks, transitions, animation or any other multimedia elements. You may use text for the title, unless it is already in the photographic image itself. Compose a series of pictures that tell a story.

Objectives

• Compose a visual story with only images
• Apply basic visual storytelling techniques
• Experiment with visual storytelling tools

Rationale

Check the group About page for the rules and more details. You do not need to join the group or post your photographs to the group but feel free to do so. You might get some great feedback from the participants.

• What’s the story?
• What sequence of images will help you show the story unfold?
• What is the conflict or obstacle to be overcome?
• What are the results or consequences, success or failure?
• How can you create a twist or surprise in the last frame?

From the About Page
Guidelines are not rules, but a formula that can be used to suit your creative imagination. Several avenues exist for storytelling, such as journalistic reporting, sequential photos that reveal a moment, photographic poetry, and narrative. The following guidelines are for narrative.

A good story has characters in action with a beginning, middle, and an ending. Fortunately a lot of information can be given in a single photograph, enhancing the limitations of five photographs for your story. Location, time, and atmosphere aid viewer imagination. Keep standards of pictorial beauty, but pack as many storytelling elements in one photograph as possible to develop an action.

1st photo: establish characters and location.
2nd photo: create a situation with possibilities of what might happen.
3rd photo: involve the characters in the situation.
4th photo: build to probable outcomes
5th photo: have a logical, but surprising, end.

As the group explains guidelines are not rules, but understanding the limitations of the task can give a you a stronger sense of purpose and audience expectations. Feel free to deviate but make sure that it is a deliberate choice and you know and understand why you are doing so.

Instructions

• Compose your shots. Use whatever camera you have available.
• Post your Five Frame Sequential Story on your blog, deciding how you want to present it. 
• Write a narration of the work and a reflection on the process of your finished design story.

Legal

• Create a series of original images.

Exemplars

Flickr Group Samples

Take another look at the Visual Storytelling Group Discussions on Flickr for plenty of examples. Of course you can explore the group discussions on your own, but here are some examples that vary in approach and prompted a lot of reaction.

• The Jump - by Canon Camera
• Gender Miscommunication - by nightingai1e
• Revenge of the Strawberries - by JeanMaria
• The Life of a Can - by Seuny
• Learning to Roar! - by Shes on Falla
• Beast to Beauty... - by  Gale's Photographs
• Bird Bathing in the Teeniest Bit of Water It Could Find - by anusrinivasan
• If You Go Out to the Barn Tonight . . .You Better Not Go Alone - by Xylonets

Previous Student Samples

Challenge 1 - Four Slide Autobiography

 

Challenge

In the spirit of Chicago Graduate School of Business' past admissions option, I would like to see how well you can capture yourself in four (4) slides. No audio, no video, no hyperlinks, no transitions, no animation or any other multimedia elements. Nothing but pictures and/or text. That’s it. The presentation software is merely the platform and tool for composing the your story in four images. Make us want to know you.

Objectives

• Compose a visual story with images and text
• Capture your character or personality within set limitations
• Apply basic visual storytelling techniques
• Experiment with visual storytelling tools

Rationale

First and foremost, this is an exercise in visual storytelling. The limitations are meant to provide you with a simple structure within which you can operate successfully. Thus, you are working with the presentation software simply as a platform because it is common and familiar. Avoid using themes or even thinking about your end product as a slide presentation. It isn't really, at least in the way they are typically conceived. 

Ultimately, images are potentially more important than text in this challenge, although both are in play. You may use images that are new or old, so long as you have created them or have permission to use them. You may use as many images as you like, provided that there are no more than four slides.

• What’s your story?
• What is interesting, compelling, and unique about you? 
• Why should anyone want to know you?

Instructions

• Design your slides. Use Keynote, PowerPoint, Google Drive, whatever you like.
• Post your slides in a blogpost, either individually (as JPG files) or as a presentation (embedded code) with a reflection about the process of designing your slides and how or why you made design choices.
• E-mail me with the words "Four Slides" in the Subject line and paste the actual blog address (I need the URL, for example http://whatever-name-you-chose.blogspot.com) in the message.
• Here are the slides from class that break down the parts of the assignment. 

Legal

• Use images that are yours or you have permission to use, not stolen images from the Internet.

Exemplars

Here are a few good samples from last year, in addition to the collection of images at the top of the post. Below, one makes strong use of color. Another uses high contrast black and white with images. The third is conceptually abstract and minimalist. All three create visual themes of their own.
 

Here the Four Slide Sales Pitch: Final Entries from a contest former math teacher Dan Meyer ran a few years ago.

More Blogging Tips

Macro of sharpened colored pencils aranged in a circle - cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo 
shared by Horia Varlan

Since this course is driven by storytelling and meant to be a creative experience here are some general tips and notes of additional guidance for developing a body of work for this class. Most of all, you should use your blog to develop your overall communication skills. Considering that we are working in a digital space there are some additional considerations.

Simply put, use embedded media, written text, and hyperlinks.

Here are some additional suggestions to consider:

• Voice
• Titles & Subtitles
• Media
• Context
• Links

Voice

Write in your own voice. You are not writing formal essays for your academic courses. You are writing on the web about your creative work. It is important to write in a personal way, use first person ("I" and "me"). Be conversational and show your personality in your writing. Remember the class is about storytelling, so write as though you are telling stories. Consider the parts and how best to compose them. Determine when it is better to describe or explain. Most of all play. Play with your writing and cultivate or perhaps rediscover your true, authentic voice.

Titles & Subtitles

Get people's attention with a strong title or headline, like a journalist or news editor. The title is the first thing that anyone sees and may determine whether they read more or not. Be creative in titling your posts. Don't simply use the generic name of the assignment. Think of your title like a movie trailer. It should preview what to expect in the post. Be clever. Use puns, pop culture references, capitalize on current trends. Again, play.

Also, consider using subtitles in your posts, if it makes sense to do so. For example this post, introduces the main idea at the top, including a list of items that will be included, then uses subtitles for each section devoted to the items in the list. The toolbar in your blogging application even has options for different kinds of headings for these purposes. Use them where it helps.

Media

This class is all about creating media. All media should be embedded whenever possible. Include it in the post and make it work with the rest of your content. Why would you want anyone to leave your site if they don't have to do so? Use media, all kinds, and arrange it in a thoughtful way.

Obviously, you will use media that you create but you may consider using media created by others. Always give credit and attribution for anything that you use that is not your own when appropriate. Please don't steal other people's creative work. Exercise your right to fair use but honor copyright.

Context

Provide context for any visitor. An individual post may be the first and only thing a visitor sees from your site. Provide them with enough context to understand what you are doing, as well as how and why. Could a stranger figure out what they are viewing easily? Craft each post so that it can stand on its own as an understandable moment of episode in the broader context of your blog. Think of an individual post like an episode in a traditional sitcom television show. They should be able to enjoy the episode whether or not they are a regular viewer of the series.

Links

Link as much as possible. The world wide web is a web because of all the hyperlinked connections. When writing, if you make a reference to something (from a website, song, book, television show, movie, new item, whatever) add a relevant hyperlink to content that might be helpful. Provide a path to greater understanding. Hyperlinks are like a new form of punctuation for writing on the web, so you get better at using hypertext. Plus, always create links with words. Don't just slap long, machine language, pasted URLs into your posts. Select the most descriptive series of words that will describe where the link will lead and make it a hyperlink.

Coda

Remember, to learn is to both practice and reflect. Plus, nearly all creative efforts involve creating a product from engaging in a process. Your blog for this class provides the opportunity for clarifying and enriching your work and learning. It is also a place to experiment and try things - most of play.

Play with your writing. Play with the way you present the work. Play with how you engage in the doing the assignments. Play with your creativity. Doing so helps you discover possibilities you may never would have considered or even known existed. It also helps you discover your tastes, voice, style, and more.