BLC10: Alas Media-Digital Storytelling

In the two presentations I had the pleasure of attending, Alas Media told us that we could all be story tellers and journalists, capturing stories in words, pictures and video! This blog comprises the salient links from the two presentations, from good music editing sites to those offering the technology to capture initial ideas and information in a storyboarding exercise. Finally, there are links to free websites offering image manipulation. Further information and explanations can be found on the fabulous websites that Alas Media operate, namely ...

http://www.alasmedia.net/
http://alasmedia.wikispaces.com/AM_home

The following sites offer royalty-free images and music for presentations ...

• Compfight - Creative Commons licenced images [look for images that are no less than 700 pix in dimension!]
• Incompetech - copyright-free music

Applications for making slideshows and presentations ...

• Animoto
• Animoto for the iphone
• Kizoa

Free music editing applications on the web ...

• Apple Garageband for Mac - drag your video over Garageband to turn this into a whole scoring schedule
• Mantis by Indabamusic
• Aviary Suite

Mindmaps are brilliant for story boarding videos before you begin filming ...

• My WebSpiration - an Alas Media fave!
• Mindomo - free basic version
• Bubbl.us
• Text2Mindmap

Online image editors ...

• Aviary Suite
• PixIr
• Sumo Paint
• Picasa photo editing
• Pixelmator [not free]

Finally, some tips ... iMovie - choose a royalty-free or self-created piece of music and drag ito the main window. Use the clip trimmer tool by right-clicking on the icon. You can place markers at certain time intervals [use the m key to invoke the marker]. If you drag images or video footage over the icon you get a montage of images and videos to the music.

When you are taking photos, take wide shots, medium and close ups; each picture will help tell a story from different angles. And the same is true for videos - shoot the same scene from different angles and use 'precision' editing to switch between them for the final result.

When you're buying a camera, make sure you get one with video/audio capability. Sometimes, putting a cover over the microphone improves the sound by cutting out the background noise!