Composing with Video | Digital Writing 101

UNDERSTANDING THE SYNOPSIS Overview To pitch a screenplay to a potential producer, the most important task the writer faces is preparing a synopsis. The purpose of a synopsis is to …

NOTE: This page refers primarily to using storyboards to create new media stories rather than the kind of personal narratives typically associated with the term “digital storytelling,” but you can …

QUOTES ON STORYTELLING “Telling weak stories with technology is like giving a bad guitar player a bigger amplifier.” “Writing is the primary tool used to plan and create a digital …

MULTIMEDIA STORY PLANNING “If you’re sitting in your minivan, playing your computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that’s entertaining you as you …

AMY’S NOTE: I wrote the material below as part of a calendar entry for November 15, 2013. The students in that class were working on practice video interviews, and I …

ABOUT LIVE VIDEO This approach refers to using a video camera to record a dramatization of a story drawn from personal experience, NOT to simply turning on the video camera …

ABOUT ANIMATION Animation is a technique for creating the illusion of live video using characters and scenery that are not in fact alive (i.e., inanimate). While live video is made …

THE BASICS Definition: recording what appears on your screen (after orchestrating a variety of actions to appear in web or desktop apps, like web browsers, social media apps, photo editing …

NOTE: The material below is from a syllabus page for my digital storytelling class. When I have time, I’ll rework this material into a stand alone help page, with more …

(the material below is from a calendar entry for my Fall 2013 digital storytelling class, but I plan to develop it further to suit a broader variety of video storytelling …

A video blog entry is pretty much what the name implies: an informal video recording featuring you sharing whatever you would’ve otherwise written about in a blog post. The info …

I created this help page for students who will be making video blog entries or video interviews for the first time, using iMovie ’11. The steps below are very basic …

This screencast is part of a series on how to create a photo essay using iMovie ’11, but you might find it useful even if you plan to use iMovie …

If you want to make a video you posted on YouTube visible only to people who have the URL (like our class), you can change the Privacy setting from Public …

This screencast is part 3 of a series on how to create a photo essay using iMovie ’11, but you might find it useful even if you plan to use …

Because you can find so many tutorials on Windows MovieMaker on the web, I don’t have a lot of details here. I recommend that you start by browsing Microsoft’s MovieMaker …