28: Digital Storytelling - an easy way for beginner filmmakers to tell their story

Lesson 28 from my course How to Kickstart Your First Documentary will help you get a different perspective and fine-tune your documentary into a multidimensional creation. In the last lesson I showed how scrapbooking can not only help you define your documentary but also help you research your subject and place it out visually in a very hands-on way. Taking this one step further is bringing to life your photos with an audio story or film essay. This is one way of using Digital Storytelling to kickstart your documentary.

One of the most beautiful digital stories I have ever seen is La Jetée, a 1962 sci-fi story about the fallout from world war three by the incomparable Chris Marker, French artist, filmmaker and documentarian. It was this work which drew me into the world of storytelling differently. 

La Jetée shot book - Chris Marker. Image Royal Film Archive, Belgium

​Marker's work is fictional, the elements bring us into a space where the sound and music haunt and jar us into reaction against the black and white, sometimes ghastly and haunting images. Let's break this down to documentary and keep it simple.

• Write the script you will record
• Select the photos you will bring alive
• Use location scouting for the best places to shoot your documentary stills 
• Edit both together using a simple app such as Canva video editor ,which is free​​

Canva is wonderfully easy; it is simply drop, cut, paste. You will find clear video tutorials on their website. A great way to begin to understand the editing process.
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• For good Audio sound use a Lavalier mic for your cell phone, or the Blue Yeti Nano Mic for your computer.

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Here is an example from a recent workshop that I gave on Digital Storytelling. Click on the image to view my short story about Philadelphia Carman who lived1803-1851.
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​In the next workshop I will talk about the PAPER EDIT, how it can shape our documentary film before it even hits the computer editing suite
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• Do you want a face-to-face chat?
• Do you need some extra help to shape your documentary?
• Are you having problems starting out, not sure where to start?​
• Contact me below with your questions

Have a great week, enjoy the creative flow. And see you in the next workshop.

Jeanne