Course Description:
Emerging models of interactive and immersive (full & any screen, scrolling and responsive) storytelling are disrupting the ways we can reach and engage with our constituents. This course in Studio Production will have a deep concentration on the production aspects and development tools necessary to create Snow Fall-like immersive web stories. We will be coupling a critical look at these emerging models while working through the technical aspects of story creation and the implementation of web deveopment tools and platforms (HTML 5 & jQuery). This will be a project-based course through which students will acquire the strategy and skills to make informed designs about the development and use of immersive storytelling processes. Previous multimedia production and web development is not necessary, though a willingness to learn and play with the underlying technologies is a must.
Student Testimonial:
“This class blends multimedia storytelling and places it into a digital context. We used different mediums (video, text, photos, maps, and more,) to tell a story. Not only do we get to tell a story, but we also are guided in the technical aspects of video, photography, and web design. There are more practical skills actually used in this class than I can count on my fingers and toes! I really learned the importance of setting a scene. My previous degree is in filmmaking, and it seems like in longer-format storytelling (films, novels, etc) you can take more time building the landscape of a story. However, in digital storytelling, it is essential to get your visual ‘lede’ line – Having a map, photo, or video to set the scene of your story is essential to get your point across succinctly and clearly. Brevity is the soul of wit (and the internet). I really enjoyed that the class had both structure and freedom. We had a well defined storytelling goal to achieve for the class, but Scott opened up the way we told it to as many ways as we wanted to. This gave everyone the ability to choose which digital platforms to use and to perfect. While we all had to create a website, (with certain grade requirements – one video, photos, etc), it was up to us which web platform we used, and how much detail we put into individual aspects of the story. For instance, if a student wanted to really focus on good film, they could do that while selecting an easier web platform to plug their video into. Or, if a student wanted to really focus on building a detailed website, they could do that and be able to add shorter videos. The flexibility to work on your own strengths and interest in storytelling was really great.”
University of Washington
Department of Communication