Digital Storyelling With a Literary Mindset

In today’s learning environment, students are immersed in their phones and other visual technology—very few are reading books from printed pages. This may seem like a crisis, which it is in a sense if students lose practice with literary-mindedness. However, literary standards can be met using the medium that students are choosing for their lives. It’s not an all-or-nothing world. The urgency of bringing literary-mindedness and critical thinking skills can be met with videography and storytelling. This medium is powerful for reengaging (or even engaging students for the first time) to literacy and social engagement.

My English language arts and journalism students have taken the opportunity to produce their own video stories; they submitted their videos to film festivals and local public television stations and had their videos aired publicly with tremendous positive response. These are the steps I’ve used to help get students started in making their imaginations and stories public, all while meeting the standards that teachers must keep in mind.

Reflection Helps Students Identify Important Topics 

First, students reflect on their life experiences and issues that are personally important to them.

Here are some prompts that teachers can use to spur these reflections:

• What’s the toughest thing about being a kid/teenager these days?
• Dear Younger Me… (a message to yourself in the past)
• I wish my teacher/classmates/parents knew…
• Practice makes perfect
• Inspiration, influences, and aspirations
• What we don’t learn in school…
• Whatever you’d like to share!

From these reflections, a student can write a script that they recite impromptu to the camera, but their delivery should be natural and conversational, as though they are speaking directly to the viewer from the heart. Some find it easier to just write out talking points ahead of time and then speak extemporaneously, using the points as a guide. 

B-roll and Shot Sequences Support the Focus Statement 

Choosing a location for filming plus planning out B-roll footage to edit into the production for different points of view for the audience is the next step. B-roll is the supplemental video footage that shows a variety of shots, reenactments, or other action details while the narrator continues to tell the story. B-roll does not necessarily have the narrator onscreen.

I have students start with a slide show activity before they shoot B-roll so that they can plan out the shots that end up in the final video. The slide show focuses on four basic shots (wide, medium, close-up, extreme close-up). Students write a paragraph to explain why these shots strengthen their focus statement; then they compile the shots into a slide show (using Google Slides) and describe how each shot matches its purpose.

After students are familiar with the basic still shots, they can practice longer sequences by coming up with another strong focus statement to develop into a compelling 10-shot sequence. Students write a paragraph to explain why their focus statement is a strong one. Next, students decide on the best 10 shots to support their focus statement. While preparing for their shots, students can use a shot list template to plan the audio and visual representation of their video production.

Filming, Editing, and Determining the Tone

Finally, after the practice and planning, students film and then edit the video using the best-available editing software—iMovie or Adobe Premiere Pro (the industry standard). For classroom showings, any video setting should work, but videos recorded on student phones (that will be broadcast on TV) should be set to 1920p x 1080p. While we’re able to offer the best technology at hand at our school (DJI Osmo Pocket 3 cameras, mirrorless digital Nikon cameras, and external microphones), personal smartphones can function as the primary recording tool or can also be used when a second camera is needed for filming.

In this last stage of the process, students fully refine the audience and the video’s purpose. The refinement is much more intense than when they are writing paragraphs during planning because they add language input, visual input, and auditory layering input, which are fundamental to the audience’s experience.

Tone can affect the production, and in this process, students develop a keen awareness of how their tone changes their relationship with their audience. The tone is related to the production’s purpose, so the lighting, background, music, ambient/natural sounds like birds or thunder, and prosody of the speech can be intentionally crafted to appeal to and affect the audience. During the process, students get feedback on tone from me, their peers, and mentors/professionals (when available). 

Different Genres of Videos Can Address a Variety of Issues

Once students gain confidence in their production abilities using personal reflections, they can choose other genres for their productions. They can produce nonfiction or human interest stories that include interviews to showcase issues that are important to them and need to be shared. They can produce a profile of someone in the community or a how-to explanation video to show their local wisdom and skills, or they can make a strong personal opinion piece about a topic in society that they find relevant and important. For example, my students addressed concerns about the impact of land development.

My students’ productions have aired on the HIKI NŌ news program on PBS Hawai’i. Highlights include A Song from My Ancestors, in which my student reflected on her cultural identity, and The Shadow Monster, in which my student recounted how she overcame her anxiety. The local cable television station on the Big Island of Hawai‘i (Nā Leo TV) broadcast my students’ short film/documentary, Cardboard Friendship, which addressed the issue of homelessness and bullying. The documentary also had a public screening at the Hawai‘i International Film Festival in the category Youth Leading by Example on Civic Engagement. 

Usually, the final video product takes about three months to complete (reflecting, brainstorming, script writing, planning the shot list, filming, and then editing). The process is not always linear; sometimes editing may show a need for more filming. Students work on their video productions for an hour or two each week, and the final videos are between 90 seconds and four minutes long.