Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Storytelling on TV

I just finished watching the Jane Pauley show, which focused on personal storytelling. The first part was an emotional story of a woman with ALS who was telling her story for her very young son. I wish they had given more tips on how to tell these stories, rather than just showing the examples. I got a lot more out of the non-profit Story Corps program, which maintains a small soundproof booth in Grand Central Station where two (or three) people record a 40-minute CD for $10. There are many excerpts from those recordings on their website, which also has some great resources for interview questions and recording tools. The third example was the 100-word autobiography project sponsored by the Washington Post. That sounds like a great tool to limit the length of digital stories. Several examples shown on the show looked like classic digital stories told with still images. The show's website mentioned the SOLEIL LIFESTORY NETWORK -- Turning Memories Into Memoirs® and the Center for Digital Storytelling, but not the Association for Personal Historians, which is causing some angst on their listserv. So storytelling goes mainstream!

1 comment:

Jeremy said...

http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/stephen.harlow/

Stephen Harlow is doing some interesting writing about digital storytelling and the role of blogs. Lots of good conversations on this topic lately...