The best six weeks of summer
The trials and triumphs of learning multimedia storytelling
Over the past six weeks, I participated in a mobile storytelling class to improve my overall communication skills.
I am a fairly decent self-taught journalist, as I have never taken an actual class in the field, but have participated as an editor for my school’s newspaper.
However, despite working for the paper for several semesters, I have neglected to learn more about the art of telling stories through photos and videos.
This class, which focuses heavily on multimedia storytelling, has been a significant challenge for me.
I thrive each week writing my blog posts, as this is what I am familiar with.
But when it would come down to submitting my weekly photo or video assignment, I struggled. A lot.
I never realized how difficult it could be to shoot a great photo or capture a moment on video. There is a lot of technique involved in doing this, which I never really understood prior to taking this class.
I believe I gained the most amount of skill in the area of creating photos.
I have always enjoyed taking photos, but I never realized there was a science behind getting a good picture. I personally always felt that I was a decent photographer, but this class made me rethink this entirely.
Angles, lighting and setting were three factors I never deeply considered when taking photos.
But after a few weeks of instruction, I am so excited to photograph more things in the future, and actually look like I know what I’m doing.
I will use these skills for my own personal endeavors, but I also want to bring the skills I have learned to the newspaper this upcoming semester.
Understanding how to tell a story through words is important. But being able to showcase an event from several multimedia perspectives will enhance any kind of story.
This leads to my second major takeaway from the class — telling stories through photos and videos on social media.
I have been active on social media for almost 10 years now, but I only ever saw it as a way to publish stories about what’s going on in my life. However, I now know the impact of using social media to tell stories about important things going on in the world.
I was able to watch one of the most historically significant racial protests unfold from Twitter during the course of this class, which was an amazing opportunity to learn more about mobile storytelling.
Citizen and professional journalists alike captured every moment on camera, depicting scenes of police brutality, peaceful protesting and looting.
As horrific as some of these events were, I am grateful for the opportunity to observe people telling their stories through Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
To me, mobile storytelling is the most powerful tool we have at our fingertips. Everyone can be held accountable for their actions within seconds of an event occurring. This can be dangerous if abused, but ultimately it has presented itself to be crucial for gathering information about what’s going on in the world.
I have learned so many things from this mobile storytelling class. Despite a few roadblocks in my development of creating multimedia projects, I have come out of this class a stronger storyteller, and I cannot wait to bring these new skills into future projects.
