How will my story be told? Digital Storytelling

Kira MacGregor

TITLE: …Les Femme

AUTHOR: Kira MacGregor

A Digital Story documenting an Exhibition at the Cairns Regional Gallery. This documentary explores

the artists through their works and considers the concepts that surround each piece. The story

concludes with thought given to the context in which the work is displayed and an exhibition and

Gallery in general.

Story Line: Les Femme is an exhibition hosted at the Cairns Regional Gallery. The exhibition has been

collated by 6 female artists and explores issues such as loss of culture, ageing, the sense of loss and

innocence. All photos have been taken by the author excluding the building images. They portray the

artworks and the surrounds.

Story Outline:

Who – Kira MacGregor as an audience

What – the Les Femme Exhibition

When – follows the author through a viewing of the exhibition over an hour

Where – Cairns Regional Gallery

Why – give audience an experience and understanding of an exhibition and bring awareness to art in

general and the concepts.

Content: Images taken by the author have been used. Images of the outside of the gallery have been

outside, including the stairs image. Narration has also been created by the author and the classical

sound file was re-mixed by the author with an original sound source from SoundCloud.com.

The Process:

Step 1: Wrote up my story plan

then collected a folder of images.

Step 2: Created a simple story board in PowerPoint using my images and forming a simple narration. Step 3: Once satisfied with storyboard wrote a narration in Word in order to have a succinct story and to assist in a well spoken recording. Step 4: Then recorded the narration using a headphone and speaker setup. This worked exceedingly better than just using a computer microphone. I was satisfied with the outcome except the narration was excessively long. So I had to begin a long process of editing the narration down to 4min, which was finally successful.

Step 5: I downloaded a free file from SoundCloud.com and then opened it up in a program called Audacity. This allowed me to chop and change the piece creating a sound that would work with my story and have the correct length I needed.

1. SoundCloud 2. Downloading into Audacity 3. Editing file with Audacity

Step 6: Once sound files were complete I imported all my images and sounds into Windows Movie Maker. Then sorted and placed according to the storyline and added transitions effects to all images.

Step 7: I imported the sound files onto the story board then adjusted all the images viewing times to fit the narration. Lastly, I added a beginning slide and end titles.

Step 8: From experiments with the last digital story I had created an animation of my name. So as the end title to the third story I added the shots as a trademark of my digital stories.

Reflection: As the second attempt of making a successful digital story, I was much more satisfied with

the outcome.

I had found a solution to the background noise when narrating, by finding a headset, making it a lot

easier to record. The re-mixed sound file and narration fit well with the images after a little bit of

toggling with the time of images.

I also had a fairly successful photo shoot which improved the quality of the story, although, some did

not work out as well. The transitions also carry the story well, providing a fluent walk through the

gallery.

The shortening of the narration was the most unfortunate as I had to cut a lot of the story out leaving

only the main points. I had planned to explain in more depth the artist’s artworks but now I have only

simply noted them and the works or concept. Overall, I stuck to the storyline fairly well and had no

dramatic changes other than the narration.