A Digital Story...it moves and plays music!

For this assignment I used the Animoto.com website to create a digital story using downloaded photos, images and music. This was challenge, but once completed, quite rewarding. I didn't create a masterpiece, but I did create, and when it comes to me and computers, that my friend is quite an accomplishment. I tried to appeal to the masses and convey some humor in my story, although it did have an underlying meaning only known to myself and my professor. Was my story important? It was disguised not to be, but it was important to me as it symbolically portrayed an event in my life. Because this was my first real attempt at a digital story that moved, and with some personal issues going on, this assignment took me a lot longer than expected. I had issues with fitting all my pictures within a 30 second window and have the music match up with the photographs and story that I was trying to tell. I never did accomplish that feat to my satisfaction, but nevertheless I was still relatively happy with what I came up with. As aggravating as this assignment was in the beginning, middle and end, I did have fun with it which is why the next assignment came with a little less aggravation and a little more fun.

Chapter One, Digital Storytelling..here we go

This first assignment we went to Wordle.net and using this program create a brief story by using a group of words graphically. Ever since I was a kid and someone told me that I was really good at art and should become an artist I have felt a kind of pressure to always be creative, interesting, funny, what ever it took to get approval of my work...I decided this one time that I wouldn't worry about what anyone else thought of my work and just create something that was meaningful to me.

I am what you would call technologically declined. I'm not familiar with creating anything on the computer, I always relied on a pencil or paintbrush. So I dove in a hoped the claims were true, that this was a simple program. To my relief it was just that. The words I used to tell a story were issues that I have been dealing with for a while. It turns out that this project was a bit therapeutic in a way. I actually had no intended audience, I did this for myself. Did I want to evoke certain feelings or emotions? No, my intention was to get a handle on the feelings and emotions I already was experiencing.

I feel that this project gave me a kind of awareness as far as being myself, to let go of inhibitions and be myself. It may not make it more interesting but it is definitely more real.