Narrating and Demonstrating the Work We Do
One of my New Years Resolutions for 2015 is to be happy. To find more joy in life and to live in the moment. I like structure. I keep track of everything. On a daily basis, I have three agendas going. This can be both stressful and calming all at once. This morning, my bestie […]Read Post ›
Do I have a communication shape? I think it may be a crumbling slope, maybe a slump.
David Robertson [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
I have systematically done less and less writing since leaving University. Short sweet and to the point is often my modus operandi now. Running after small children kind of gets in the way of sitting in a café with a notepad. I am excited for the Youshow to help me start to flex those writing muscles again. So a quick stretch and let’s hit the ‘gym’.
My job is very visual. I capture content on video either through a camera, or downloading content already posted on the web. I manipulate these sequences of images into something that hopefully is engaging and relevant to students. Most of my projects are based around interviewing subject matter experts. For the most part I control the image acquisition by manipulating the camera to produce an image I like. I have a bunch of constraints on what I can do.
Time: thousands of academics have talked about duration of learning through media. So listening to their wisdom and adding my own experience I try to keep video down to 6 minutes or less. Digestible bits.
Size: High Def video takes up a lot of room. So I have to balance files size vs quality vs frame size. Full HD on the camera I use shoots 5gb per minute. So a 10 minute raw video is 50gb. I have settings on my camera I can use to reduce this, but this file size doubles because I have to back it up. So one copy of the file goes into special backup drive, and the other file on to my system. Then the editing software makes a nice editing friendly version, so more file space is used up. Wait, wait, wait. I seem to be heading down a rabbit hole of technical detail. Maybe I will save that for another post. Suffice to say I have to try to keep file size down and quality up which is a balance.
Space: Where to shoot is a constant struggle. Doing interviews often lead to the clichéd look of professor sitting in front of a wall of books. We have no actual studio space on campus. Often I book a meeting room which can work well. Although bus noise can be an issue since there is a bus stop just outside of our building.
I try to keep the look of the visuals more simplistic and clear. Limit camera movement, subtle lighting, clear audio.
The work I do is nicely varied; sometimes planning and shooting chemistry lab scenarios for students working on their chemistry labs at home, sometimes interviews with subject matter exports on topics ranging from pre-confederation history to Aboriginal taxation issues to overviews on the work of Plato.
Sometimes while trying to figure out how to explain something visually I get to research different video techniques whether that be lighting, editing, or slit scan
Am I bragging? No, am I having fun? Yes.
I have tried a few times over the years to create a blog, but have never been successful. I will try to see what I can do this time around. It could be interesting to see how it goes!
So I buy a long distance phone card at Superstore when I’m grocery shopping last night because I had to use one once recently and they’re pretty handy things really especially considering work doesn’t want me racking up long distance charges on my work cell phone which is my only phone, right? So I get home and put the groceries away and start dinner because it’s late since I stayed late at work and then went grocery shopping and now I’m getting hungry and then I think hey I should call ____ using my new long distance phone card, right? So I pull the thing out and put on my glasses and hold the card under the lamp because the print on those things is super super tiny and I don’t know how they expect us old people with less than perfect vision can ever read the silly things and I dial the teeny tiny phone number on the card and then when I get to the prompt where they ask for the card number I’m all like what’s the card number maybe that number there so I plunk in the super long number on the card and then the prompt says I’m sorry that is an incorrect card number so I plunk it in again thinking I’d mis-plunked and it tells me the same damn thing, right? So I’m all like what the heck is this crap and I peer at the teeny tiny writing on the back of the phone card again and then read the instructions that I didn’t read the first time because the writing is like super super tiny and there it instructs me to scratch the back of the card in a certain spot and that will be my card number and so I…
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I took graduate linguistics courses from Robert Longacre in the early 80s. He often described narrative plot structures in a way similar to Kurt Vonnegut. However, Longacre’s schema was more detailed.
One of the details of plot structure I remember was a discussion of the ‘inciting incident’. Between the ‘beginning and middle’ often discussed as the overall structure of a story, is the occasion where something unusual happens, the event that makes the story begin to be interesting.
What the inciting incident looks like is sometimes called the ‘One day…’ part of the story. So, you begin the story (‘Once upon a time…’ or ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far away…’) where you set a stage. ‘Tom was an unfortunate girl who grew up in the hamlet of Zizzor, just south of London…’ (Added detail—with hat-tip to Umberto Eco): ‘Unfortunately also, she had no need to wear glasses.’) Stage-setting is mostly about description, providing a world for the participants and others to be introduced to readers. But description is not narration. The narration per se begins with the first event of the story.
The inciting incident begins with something like: ‘On one particularly cloudy Tuesday, Tom boarded the bus that would take her to school (or as she liked to think of it, prison). The only available seat was next to an ancient toad-like (gentle)man in a rather rumpled suit of indeterminate colour. Because Tom did not want to stand for the half-hour ride, she sat next to the man. Tom settled herself as the bus pulled away from the stop. Breaking the unspoken law of public transport, the man turned and looked Tom over very carefully, as if considering something that made Tom quite uncomfortable. At the very moment Tom was about to ask her ‘assailant’ not to stare, the man spoke…’ At this point, the story is off and running (or readers have clicked away to something else).
I think different people approach storytelling in different ways, but for me, the story begins with the inciting incident. When I tell design stories, I always begin with the inciting incident. Others may decide upon an overall structure for the story or some moral area they want to explore, but for me, it’s as if the story needs to begin to tell itself to me, so that I can tell it to others. Later on, I’ll figure out what principle the story should illustrate or what the overall plot structure should be and other details.
Then again, I’m not a published author, so following me might lead to misfortune.
Thompson Rivers University (TRU) and the Insurance Institute of Canada (IIC) have entered into an agreement whereby TRU, through its Open Learning division, has awarded academic credit to 14 of IIC’s professional development courses into the Bachelor of General Studies. This opportunity recognizes the knowledge gained by insurance professionals and allow them to grow even…
The Department of Strategic Partnerships is responsible for the development, support and promotion of formal academic related relationships with industry, government, non-profit, First Nation/Aboriginal groups, educational institutions, and professiona…
