1. Digital Media Production
Info + Web Tech Course
Digital Media Production
Anselm Spoerri PhD (MIT)
Rutgers University

2. Multimedia Story Design
Lecture 1 - Overview
Course Overview
Course Goals | Learning Objectives
In a Nutshell
Your Guide
Gameplan
Multimedia Story Design
Types of Stories
Steps of Developing Digital Story
Knight Digital Media Center
Trends & How To
Examples and Resources
Lectures – Week 1 Content

3. Plan + Develop Digital Multimedia Story
Course Goals
Plan + Develop Digital Multimedia Story
Design + Construct Website that uses standard compliant XHTML, HTML5 and CSS.
Apply Video Editing Principles to produce concise video pieces.
Apply Animation Design Principles to create interactive animations.

4. Plan + Develop Multimedia Story that is well researched.
Learning Objectives
Plan + Develop Multimedia Story that is well researched.
Capture Photo & Video Footage that is visually engaging
Create Storyboard of video story to be produced.
Create + Upload XHTML Web pages standards compliant and contain relative and absolute links, tables, images and embedded video
Design external Cascading Style Sheets control the layout and visual appearance of Web pages.

5. Learning Objectives
Understand Basics of JavaScript to create interactive slideshow with concise captions.
Edit Video Footage using Premiere Elements to produce well structured video in post-production.
Create Animation using Flash presents information in a well timed and interactive way.

6. Individual Exercises
Exercise 1: Web Design – Present Story Outline for major multimedia project. Due Week 4 | Rev Week 7 Exercise 2: Photography – Create Photo Essay using JavaScript. Due Week 6 | Rev Week 9 Exercise 3: Web Design – Develop Website with Storyboard for video. Due Week 8 | Rev Week 11 Exercise 4: Video – Capture & Edit Video using good camerawork and editing techniques. Due Week 10 | Rev Week 13 Exercise 5: Animation – Design Animation using Flash to communicate key facts or concepts. Due Week 12 | Rev Week 14

7. Term Project and Discussions
Term Project: Digital Multimedia Story – Create Website using XHTML, CSS, JavaScript that contains interactive Slideshow, Video and Animation. Due Week 15
Discussions – Three Graded Discussions
Topic 1: Identify Key Elements of Engaging Multimedia Story – Week 2
Topic 2: Analyze Video – Week 7
Topic 3: Analyze Animation – Week 11
Students provide constructive feedback for exercises

8. Able to Create Web pages | Image Slideshows | Video | Animations
In a nutshell
Master
Digital Media Production Mechanics
Create Something of Meaning
Able to Create Web pages | Image Slideshows | Video | Animations
Analyze  Emulate  Create
Able to Code & Troubleshoot
Copy  Paste  Understand  Customize

9. Anselm Spoerri Teaching Your Guide Computer Vision Filmmaker – IMAGO
Information Visualization – searchCrystal
Media Sharing – Souvenir
Rutgers Website
Teaching
Information Technology | Web Design
Multimedia Production – student highlights
Information Visualization - whereRU

10. Gameplan
Course Website
Schedule
Lectures
Narrated Lectures | Handout | Video Demos | Step-by-Step files
Requirements
Exercises

11. Course Content Gameplan MCIS 507 – Digital Media Production
and will incorporate customized content from
MLIS 550 – Info Tech + Web Design
MLIS 555 – Multimedia Production
LyndaCampus
Adobe TV
Web Resources

12. Communication Gameplan Online Discussions – use eCollege.
Virtual Office – use Discussion board in eCollege to create communal resource.
Virtual Meeting – chat, voice conferencing and screen / application sharing service.
Virtual Help – use Skype or Adobe Connect service.

13. Gameplan Hardware Digital Camera to capture photos and videos.
Headset with built-in microphone.
Software
Web Editing: NotePad++ (Win; free); TextWrangler (Mac, free).
File Transfer: Filezilla (Win / Mac; free).
Image Editing: Pixlr (Win / Mac; free); Photoshop Elements (Win / Mac; $120).
Audio Editing: Audacity (Win / Mac; free).
Video Editing: Premiere Elements (Win / Mac; $120).
Animation: Flash (Win / Mac; accessible for free via

14. Multimedia Story Design - Overview
Source: Digital Storytelling Cookbook by Joe Lampert
Story is learning, celebrating, healing, and remembering.
Most have little voice, an editor, telling us that what we have to say is not entertaining or substantial enough.
Start with a small idea to overcome creative block.
Describe “picture-by-picture” to create story elements. Observe the patterns of words used.
Combine “Analytical” with “Emotive”
Interview / Self-Interview process can help to develop story.

15. Multimedia Story Design – Types of Stories
Someone Important
Character Stories: how we love, are inspired by, want to recognize, and find meaning in our relationships.
Memorial Stories: honoring and remembering people who have passed is an essential part of the grieving process.
Event in My Life
Adventure Stories: we travel to break away from the normalcy of our lives and to create new vivid memories. Before trip, create a story outline of what kinds of images, video, or sounds useful for story.
Accomplishment Stories: about achieving a goal and easily fit into the desire–struggle–realization structure of a classic story.
Place in My Life
Your insights into place give us insight about your sense of values and connection to community.
What I Do
Jobs help to give some sense of identity, people also refer to their hobbies or social-commitments when thinking about who they are.

16. Multimedia Story Design – Types of Stories
Recovery
Sharing the experience of overcoming a great challenge in life is a fundamental archetype in human story making: descent-crisis- realization pattern.
Love
Romance, partnership, familial or fraternal love all naturally lend themselves to the desire-struggle-realization formula.
Discovery
Process of learning is a rich field to mine for stories, illustrating how we uncovered the facts to get at a truth or insight.
Good Story often comes from looking at the familiar in a new way and with a new meaning.
Stories ask us to reveal things about ourselves that make us feel vulnerable.

17. Steps of Developing Digital Story
Help storytellers fully visualize their story before they begin to write script.
Identify the moment of change in their story.
Owning Your Insights What it’s really about: the storyteller, as the person who lived through the story. How does this story show who you are?
Change came to you or you went towards change - archetype of symbolic journey of self-understanding.
Owning Your Emotions Become aware of the emotional resonance of story.
Sharing your story (idea), what emotions did you experience?
Become aware of contrasting and complex feelings and express without relying in clichés or using “feeling” words.
Knowing your intended audience shapes emotional content of your story.

18. Steps of Developing Digital Story
Finding The Moment Identify moment that you can use to illustrate your insight.
Once this moment of change is identified, you need to determine how it will be used to shape the story.
If you can paint the audience a portrait of both you, and your experience of moment of change, then you are creating a scene.
Describe recalled images without being concerned about whether or not they exist as actual photos.
Juxtaposition: image followed by another can create new layer of meaning.

19. Steps of Developing Digital Story
Seeing Your Story Describe images when recalling moment of change.
Why this image? What is it conveying to you? Is the meaning explicit or implicit?
Literal or direct images are used to illustrate a story.
Implicit image have multiple layers of meaning.
Two common techniques to convey meaning through the use of implicit imagery are visual metaphor and juxtaposition.
Well-chosen images mediate between story and audience.
Hearing Your Story Sound is one of the best ways to convey emotional tone through how voice-over is performed and ambient sound + music work with story.
Is ambient sound or music enhancing the story, or not?
Music can alter our perception of visual information.
The more spoken voice is inserted into the written script, the more you will pull audience into story.

20. Steps of Developing Digital Story
Assembling Your Story How are you structuring the story? How are layers of visual + audio narratives working together?
At what point will moment of change appear? What are the necessary parts of my story?
Determine how much to tell audience and at what point. Don’t give away too much information all at once.
Once basic structure in place, the next step is scripting and storyboarding: laying out how visual and audio narratives will complement each other to best tell the story.
If an image conveys my meaning better than words can, how can I use my words to tell another aspect of the scene?
Closure: audience understands pieces as single idea.
How does the pacing contribute to the story’s meaning? Fast pace, quick edits + upbeat music can convey urgency. Slow pace with gradual transitions and extended shots may convey calmness.

21. Steps of Developing Digital Story
Sharing Your Story Who is your audience? What was your purpose in creating the story?
Contextualizing: if you know who the audience will be and what they know about you, then it will help determine how much context to provide about the story.
You may choose to provide contextual information outside or inside of the story.
If you know presentation setting, this will help you determine what kind of contextualizing materials to provide.
Digital Storytelling Cookbook: Approaches to Scripting and Storyboarding

22. Digital Media Production – Further Required Readings
Knight Digital Media Center
Transition to Digital Journalism Covers major digital tools and trends that are disrupting news industry and changing the way journalists work.
What is a Multimedia Story? Best multimedia stories are multi-dimensional.
Go into field to report the story face-to-face with sources.
Gather as much information as possible in rough storyboard - outline of the story that lays out the multimedia possibilities.
Assembling Your Story? Describes different elements that can go into a multimedia story and steps and stages needed to pull it together.
Picking Right Media for Story Understand strengths and weaknesses of video, images, audio, text and data and types of stories lend themselves.

23. Digital Media Production – Digital Multimedia Story
Examples
Spilling Over created by students at School of Journalism and Mass Communication University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
What is the True Cost of Gasoline? an animated feature created by the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The Reckoning: New York Times journalists use digital media to present stories and information about Sept. 11 on the 10-year anniversary.
Resources
News21
Knight Digital Media Center
NY Times Multimedia
Economist Multimedia