No Man is an Island

how I learned to tell a story

I approached this week's assignment in EDLD_5363 Multimedia and Video Technology with some trepidation. Tell a personal story? You mean a personal story about myself? Are your kidding me? What am I going to find in my life interesting enough for someone else to want to watch? More importantly, how far do I want to go with this before I need therapy. (Or the viewers need therapy, there is a distinct risk of that.)

Then I watched some of the examples. And I was blown away. The stories were so powerful. But I still didn't think I could produce anything nearly as concise and meaningful, certainly nothing about my life has ever been worthy of a movie.

I thought about what to write for a couple of days and read some of the scripts posted by colleagues. And then the pressure started. The scripts I read were absolutely fantastic. There was no way I could ever do anything like that.

I've always considered myself a creative person, I like to think I have a vision - an eye - if you will for design, composition and writing that conveys meaning. I was a journalism and mass communications major. I worked for awhile as a free-lance writer after leaving a job in a printing company. I pride myself on being able to "get it" when someone else is being clever.

But that doesn't mean I could ever actually create a meaningful story. I posted my script on the discussion board and got some good feedback. Then something happened. I starting thinking about all the other stories I could tell. And I changed my mind. I wrote a new script, posted it, and had it reviewed. Again the feedback was positive. I began to think that I could actually produce a short video that had meaning. The video is posted here. I'll let you decide.