Storyboards

     I had the pleasure last week of building a storyboard for the first time. I had a cheat sheet template to help me through the process making it very easy to do with everything organized for me. I realize storyboards are employed for film or theater blocking design, but I find that it could work just as well for writing a novel. Some writers, like myself, need visual aid which could be provided by organizing the plot of the book with a storyboard. Sometimes, just words on a page do not leap out enough to better organize the flow of the story. It might even be fun to do my outline for an essay with a storyboard instead! There are a number of websites that provide templates for storyboards with varying attention to detail. I found that Adobe Spark was my favorite application due to its straight forward design and it is easy to use. It also helps that it is free: https://www.adobe.com/express/create/storyboard ! I happened to also use Spark for the creation of my digital story. Below is a template provided by my Professor for the use of our in class storyboards, which gives you an idea of how it might be look. The other websites provide help with graphics or drawing if that is not your forte. I for one had to use photographs I had already taken because I did not feel inclined to draw. The beauty of storyboarding in our technologically advanced world is that you do not have to and have various ways to bring your creative ideas to life. It is no wonder that everyone of us has smartphone with a built-in camera to help us document our lives posted to a Pinterest mood board, Instagram, or Tumblr account and not to mention blogging! The world we live in today provides a plethora of creative outlets that are at our disposal if we decide to take advantage. 

Digital Storytelling

    This week I spent a great deal of my time learning how to make a video with the help of the application Spark by Adobe. I really enjoyed the process of creating my visual story. It was not as difficult as I had imagined it might be because I found that creating a highly detailed storyboard ahead of time had done most of the work. Spark provides easy templates for which you can choose from a list of themes, and then you are off plugging in all the details to your heart's content! They also provide free background music with various styles; the only issue is you can only choose one score and not multiple. This made it tough to cultivate the atmosphere I wanted the audience to experience because I had to choose one song that would work across the board. I suppose I should not complain too much since Adobe has made Spark very easy to use and it being free with your affiliated school account. Yet, I rather think if they provided an upgrade for the ability to modify the videos more minutely then I would consider using it in a professional capacity. Another thing I learned is that you must have sufficient space so that sound will not echo or carry. I could not streamline the recording of my voiceover enough to my liking because I lacked a space in which it sounded uniform. I live in a large studio and would need to find an alternative space in the future in which to record or better yet install a better microphone than the built-in laptop version. Even with the challenges I faced in creating this digital story I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome. I did not think I would have the skill to put something like this together that I might actually be proud of, and I feel more confident in using this medium in the near future.  

Here is the link to Adobe Spark: https://spark.adobe.com/sp/# 

                        The Truth I Learned in Lockdown

The New Reality

 

A brilliant film I just happened to watch this weekend, Being There (1979), Jack Warden's character says, "Life is a state of mind". This alludes to the idea that we see what we want to see, and the movie explores America's concept of reality in media and politics. This is a commentary on America in the form of satire. Peter Sellers plays the lead character, Chance, who has lived an isolated existence as a gardener that is dependent on his employer. He appears to be without any intelligence except for his knowledge on gardening and watching television. When his employer dies, he follows a series of mishaps upon entering the real world and being unaccustomed to its social norms. He accidentally, by chance, is mistaken for having refreshing wisdom on financial matters and becomes a media sensation. This is what we have see happen in American culture with the rise of the celebrity, some even found on Instagram or YouTube. I wonder if Lord Byron ever considered just how much celebrities would influence society. This all being said to come a long way to my point of the blogging revolution of how we have become our own voices of reality and subsequently journalists. Blogging can have many faces for professional and personal purposes because not all employers want to know your true thoughts/feelings on everything and vice versa. Luckily there is a way to shield your personal world from your public by adopting separate blogs for the two worlds. Blogging can be a highly beneficial tool for archiving personal knowledge and interests that might draw the attention of other bloggers who are like-minded or enlightened. This platform can serve as a display of your talents to build a wider network that could also help professionally. The different mediums that you can attach to a blog aid in making your ideas come to life that provide a different engagement than the regular news track. Blogging, therefore, is your state of mind.  

This is the trailer for Being There (1979):