Video Stories

To Do This Week

Visual Narrative DUE March 7 (this Saturday)

bsavage-appleseed

Midterm Grades are Due Wednesday at 5pm. All late projects must be submitted by Wednesday at 12pm.

Video/Audio Narrative (15%)

DUE March 26

For this project, you will create a 30–90 second video narrative. The video can be live action, still images, animation, recorded audio, voice-over, text on screen, or any combination of these elements.

The most important requirement is that your video tells a story. The story may be real or fictional, but it must have a clear:

• Beginning – introduce the situation, character, or problem
• Middle – develop the situation, create tension, change, or discovery
• End – resolve the situation or leave the viewer with a meaningful conclusion

You may narrate your story through voice-over, on-screen text, sound design, visuals alone, or a combination. The images do not have to literally illustrate the narration, but they should contribute to the emotional tone, meaning, or progression of the story.

Use editing techniques such as continuity (smooth, logical progression) and/or montage (juxtaposition of images to create meaning). Consider how sequencing, timing, framing, sound, and transitions shape the viewer’s experience.

Media Options

• Live-action video you record
• Still images (photographs, drawings, AI images, archival images)
• Voice-over narration
• Text on screen
• Sound effects and/or music
• Any combination of the above

Ideas

• A personal story or anecdote: Tell a meaningful or memorable moment. Use voice-over, reenactments, or symbolic imagery.
• A story about an object or place: Focus on an object/place and reveal its meaning, history, or emotional significance.
• A sound-driven story: Create a narrative using sound effects and images without spoken language.
• A fictional micro-story: Invent a short narrative with a character, situation, and resolution.
• An experimental or poetic narrative: Use montage, symbolism, and association to suggest a story indirectly.

Goals

• Practice telling a complete story in a short time format
• Use editing to create meaning and emotional impact
• Combine image, sound, and time into a unified narrative
• Explore continuity and/or montage techniques

Submission Requirements

• Length: 30–90 seconds
• Must include image and sound
• Must have a clear beginning, middle, and end
• Export as MP4 (H.264)
• Upload to YouTube or Vimeo (unlisted) and share link on Canvas and Slack
• Generative AI is fine to use for this assignment

Video Project info

Cinema Language

• framing
• continuity editing
• montage (discontinuous editing)
• sound and image
• text with image

Story elements

• Character — actions reveals character
• POV — restricted or omniscient narration?
• Setting — the world of the story
• Plot — linear sequence of events, cause and effect chain
• Editing — the presented order of temporal events
• Voice-over narration — thread through the sequence of images, clarity
• Dialogue — move plot and reveal character (minimal dialogue!)
• Description/exposition — information important to the story but not in the plot, the backstory
• style — in the look and in the telling

Student Projects

Video Narrative Essay

One-Minute Stories

In-Class Exercise: On-Campus Short Sequence

In small groups, go out on campus and shoot a 5–10 shot sequence under 30 seconds. Consider shots between 2-5 seconds each. No dialogue. Sound will be added in the next module — for now, focus entirely on the images and how they cut together, but keep the sound as reference.

Required Shot Types

1. Establishing shot — sets the location and context (wide, environmental)
2. Medium shot — the character in their setting, action beginning
3. Close-up leading to a directed POV shot — show the character's eyes/face, then cut to what they are looking at, or imagining.
4. One montage sequence — a brief dream, daydream, memory flash, or imagined scenario (2–5 shots, discontinuous from the main action, short shot durations)
5. Return to the present — resolution or reaction

Shots should aim for continuity (consistent eyeline, screen direction, action cuts) but the montage sequence should break from this intentionally.

Each student edits their own version of the group's footage.

Story Scenarios

Choose one of the following — or your groups designs your own version:

• The Daydream
  A student sits in class, zoning out. We follow their gaze to something in the room — a window, a clock, another student. Cut to a brief montage of where their mind goes (a place, an activity, a fantasy). Then back to reality: the professor calls on them.
• The Temptation
  A student notices an unattended bag, laptop, or phone. A close-up on the object, then a directed POV. A flash of imagined consequences — caught, confronted, embarrassed — plays out in a rapid montage. Cut back: they walk away, do nothing, or make a different choice.
• The Late Arrival
  A student is rushing to class — wrong building, locked door, wrong floor. Student opens a class door and enters an imaginary world. Wakes up.
• The Forgotten Thing
  Mid-walk across campus, the student freezes. Close-up: expression shifts. A memory-flash montage — the last place they had it, the moment they left it behind. Now they have to decide: go back or keep going?

After You Shoot

Import your clips into Premiere. Each person edits their own cut, ready for next week's module on audio. Pay attention to: where you place the montage sequence, how long each shot holds, and how the cuts create or break rhythm.

Final Project (20% of final grade)

The final project is to be a digital story that incorporates at least two of the modules covered in this class: diagrammatic, visual, video/animation, hyperlinked/interactive, game-like storytelling. The work may be a significant reworking of a previous project or a new idea and direction.

The final project will have required stages and deadlines and each of these will be graded separately for a certain percentage of the final project grade. It is important that you do not leave everything to the last minute. In the last weeks, our class time will be focused on building these stories so that you can get help from me and your classmates. You are not to use this time for other class projects.

Project Summary (5%)

DUE April 16th — After our in-class brainstorming to work out your story idea and approach, you are to write a paragraph summary shared in Slack. What is the plot? What form will it take — Twine, HTML, video, comic slides? What are your inspirations — what are the works in this class or elsewhere that are models for what you want to do?

Project Critique (10%)

DUE April 30th (last class) — We will have an in-class critique of your digital stories. The grading will be based on how much of the work you have completed. I will also be giving you my feedback.

Final Project (85%)

DUE May 4th (exam week) — Based on the critiques, you are to address the issues raised and complete the final version of your work for grading. Make a post with a link to the work and give a brief summary or artist statement about what you set out to do and describe the process of how you made it.