Ira Glass Talks About Elements of Great Storytelling
Ira Glass, host of This American Life, has taken the time to talk about the keys to great storytelling. In these videos (linked below) Glass shares tips on presentation and development of stories. I think I caught him saying “hell” twice, but the rest of the discussion is very relevant for anyone teaching storytelling.
Videos (via Your Daily Awesome)
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Stranger #3
Michelle is from a small “hick” town (her words) outside of Austin. She has a younger sister who she basically raised because their father left and their mother had to work. She is on her way to visit family in Germany. This is the first time she’s made the trip to Germany without her sister. We actually talked to a while about photography and technology. In the end, Michelle got her camera out and took my picture as well. So I think I avoided the creepiness factor on this one.
Predator
I’ve been posting a lot of garbage animated gifs on here, essentially just reveling in the chaos of what can be made. After reading Alan’s post I decided to publish something a little more serious and a little more in line with the spirit of the original challenge. The movement is minimal. The eyes convey just how freaked out Arnold is at this moment as the alien climbs right next to him. This scene is from Predator. That was back in 1987. I remembered the eyes, although it took me a while to find the scene on the internet. In my head I actually confused it some with this Rambo scene. Anyway, I love the creepy feel and think it’s closer to the original spirit of the challenge and the If We Don’t Remember Me site.
Like a Car Chase
This project was inspired by a Sklar brothers bit that I heard on the VA Beach AM comedy channel the other day. An edited and condensed version of track 16 is here. Now on to the assignment . . . Take any video.The worse the video, the easier this is. Look for something with virtually no action. If it’s exciting, you’ll never keep up. Add your voice over as if you were a local TV news anchor attempting to provide color commentary without stating anything as a fact or with certainty. Add all the hedge words and banalities that exemplify this kind of coverage. If you’re looking for the DS106 tag/aggregation for the assignment go here (AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments1085). The basic idea is this is almost the opposite of what we want students to do with writing. We want them to be specific, to eliminate hedge words, to make a strong argument, and to take a specific stance. In a class, I might flip it both ways. Have one understated version with no definite statements and then do another version which overstates things (like this Daily Show clip description which I may dig up the video for at some point). Or you could simply give them the option to either understate or overstate the commentary. This is a quick and dirty […]