Digital Storytelling Scheme

My current mission statement is that I want to explore how to use media in the context of social justice organizing with youth. What does that mean? I want to teach kids from marginalized communities (latino and/or queer to be exact) how to use media in order to tell the stories that are important to them. This means 1) affirming that what they have to say matters 2) sharing a technical skill that has practical applications, and 3) creating media that could potentially be employed towards a variety of educational and political ends.

All that seems great, but what does it look like? Well, I learned about two models when I attended the Allied Media Conference. On was presented by The Center For Digital Storytelling. They travel around doing 3 day workshops with other non-profits.. Here are my notes…

7 Elements: point (why that story at that moment), dramatic question, emotional content, voice, soundtrack, economy (300 wds), pacing.

Workshop Model about 12 students w/ two instructors

Day 1: Elements, writing time, idea discussion, adobe training, production time

Day 2: Scripting, story boarding, photo workshop, voiceovers, DV tutorial Final Cut, Production time

Day 3: Rough edit, special effects, production time, screening

How to use: Silence Speaks National Center for Lesbian Rights compile include w/ manual for outreach to social workers, include with letter lobbying congress, include with grant proposal

Funding: grants through community organizations, work exchange

Website: Storiesforchange.net; decentralized youtube; Storycenter.org

Similar organizations: Mass Impact in Boston, Creative Narration in Seattle…

It produces impressive results in terms of stories (which are normally a series of still images put to narration), but not in terms of relationships. It’s training more than growing with the learner, but that being said, it takes a lot less investment from the trainer or the learner. It’s logistically manageable.

I’m thinking that it would be feasible to follow more or less this model in making an afterschool program that would meet a couple of hours a week for a month or so. Perhaps if we were to target a group that already met regularly, like a Queer Straight Alliances, then there would be a group of people who felt already felt comfortable talking about personal things, then it may work. The first step seems like it should be finding a partner in crime...

Documentary Abstracts:

Here's a little update on the projects that have been floating around in my mind for a while...

Queering Gender: I would profile individuals that identify as genderqueer, portraying how the binary model of gender is limiting and how people struggle to create an identity outside of it.

Filmmaker Commentary: I’m nervous about asking people to talk about such as personal topic in front of a camera, but I’m enthusiastic that I know people who fit the description and the editing itself will be fairly easy.

Military: Reflexive documentary (a documentary exploring an issue through the personal life of the filmmaker) about the way military service has effected and continues to effect my family. The military has dramatically shaped the lives of people in my mother’s family often with tragic consequences (prison, paralysis, dependency etc.) and yet it is a legacy that gets renewed with each generation. Further more, I've recently made contact with my father’s side of the family who are from an occupied territory (Puerto Rico) only to find that a whole round of them have gone to and/or returned from Iraq . I want to explore how military service undermines the health of American families but also makes them dependent on it, creating generational
cycles that makes its influence seem inevitable.

Filmmaker Commentary: I'm not on terribly good terms with my family, so it is questionable whether or not they would be willing to talk on camera about it, however if they were, then I think it could be very provocative. And who knows, maybe we could come to understand one another better in the process.

Trans-activism: I want to talk create an intergenerational dialogue about activism in trans-gender communities through creating a film that attempts to portray both consistent themes and how activism in trans-communities have changed over time. I hope to tell the history of activism not through a linear narrative but rather through juxtaposing experiences of new activists with those of people who were active in the past.

Filmmaker Commentary: This will probably be hard because it will require me getting in touch with people living in vastly different places. Structure will also be problematic if I want it to be coherent.