Tuesday 13 May 2008

Storyboarding a multimedia story

I was looking for some ideas on how to storyboard a video interview, when I came across this instead.

It's a really useful piece by Jane Stevens on how to plan a multimedia story.

It seems like something that would be very helplful in getting traditional journalists to start thinking about stories in a non-linear (linearity being yet another skill which needs to be unlearned) way:

She suggests:

Divide the story into its logical, nonlinear parts, such as:

  • a lead or nut paragraph, essentially addressing why this story is important
  • profiles of the main person or people in the story
  • the event or situation
  • any process or how something works
  • pros and cons
  • the history of the event or situation
  • other related issues raised by the story

Instead of thinking "first part," "second part", "third part", "fourth part", think "this part", "that part", "another part", and "yet another part". It helps to avoid linear thinking. The home page comprises a headline, nut graph, an establishing visual (can be a background or central photograph, a slide show or a video), and links to the other parts, which are usually subtopics of the overall story.
She goes to give some useful ideas for identifying which parts of the story are most appropriate for:
  • video
  • still photos
  • audio
  • graphics
  • maps
  • text
  • interactivity
Terrific stuff.

Check out the full Multimedia Storytelling article here.

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