Digital Story #mymelbourne

Connect to my digital story #mymelbourne, via the link below:

http://emmaodono.tumblr.com/

REFLECTION:

My digital story has taken shape on the blogging platform tumblr.com, I discovered this was the best way to showcase my digital story in a logical, aesthetically pleasing and easily accessible way. I changed this from my original plan to use wordpress, as tumblr I felt had a better ability to showcase my story in a way that demonstrated the narrative and my intention to paint a picture of #mymelbourne . This change in platform was informed by the flipped lecture ‘Visual Storytelling For Web: Tips and Techniques’, which highlighted the importance of composition, ‘the placement or arrangement of digital elements in a work’ (Source: Filizefe 2009, Accessed at: http://www.slideshare.net/filizefe/visual-storytelling-for-web-tips-and-techniques)

I think I was successful in giving my story a united feel, and attempting to carry out a similar aesthetic through all six photographs. I was able to do this by, as proposed, using my iPhone 5 and the panaroma function. I then used iPhoto to edit these images in order to manipulate the brightness, contrast and hue to make all the photos have a similar style. I increased the brightness and exposure slightly and significantly increased the contrast to give the images their bright vibrant appearance, which I think captured the essence of what I was trying to say I felt about Melbourne as a city.

The six locations I chose were significant and important because I think they captured the key elements of Melbourne I love and enjoy. The architecture, studying, exercising, the outdoors, food and cooking. I think they provided a good amount of variety in; location, appearance and purpose. The variety in my opinion helping to maintain the interest of the audience.

I used text sparingly, as I was attempting to let the photographs themselves do most of the talking and tell the story, I thought a great deal of text would distract from the beauty in the photos. I wanted my audience/viewer to spend the majority of their viewing time shaping their own perception of the location I had posted. The text I did use took on the same skeleton for each image, once again in order to create a sense of unity throughout the piece. Using single words in a list to describe what draws me to each location, I think was enough to give the audience a taste, hopefully imploring them to want to find out more.

My use of hyperlinks is also very integral to my story as it allows the level of interactivity with the audience, that through my research, I thought was a very important aspect of keeping a digital story engaging. The links are optional extras, but allow the audience to find out more through; maps, websites, blogs, reviews and videos. This was my attempt to make this digital story a trans-media type presentation and to engage the audience on a more secondary level. Trans-media story-telling is raised in the flipped lecture ‘Getting Started with Transmedia Storytelling’, ‘“Transmedia storytelling” is telling a story across multiple media and preferably, although it doesn’t always happen, with a degree of audience participation, interaction and collaboration’ (Source: Robert Pratten 2011, Accessed at: http://www.slideshare.net/ZenFilms/getting-started-in-transmedia-storytelling).

This idea of interactivity is similar to that discussed in the digital story-telling flipped lecture ‘Creating an Interactive Adventure’, ‘Stories must have a reason to branch.’ (Source: Edwin, May 2012, Accessed at: http://thefictionengine.com/2012/05/creating-an-interactive-adventure/). I interpreted this quote in a non-fiction sense for the structure of my story, and the reason to branch was a desire to find out more.

I used social media quite extensively as I was creating my digital story and at it’s completion in order to gain a wider readership, as noted in the flipped lecture ‘A Perfect Storm’, where it was noted marketing must be ‘A cross-platform explosion’ (Source: Mel Exon, Accessed at: http://www.slideshare.net/melex11/the-perfect-storm-the-social-web-storytelling-and-brands-08-07). I will post some screen shots below, to demonstrate the way I did this. By connecting through the hashtag #mymelbourne, and posting as the story grew, I was able to allow people to follow the story as it developed. I have received lots of feedback from my connections on these social media sites, many of the comments revolving around the quality of the photographs and their interest in the concept.

Please see my twitter profile @emmaodono to directly see the tweets relating to my digital story. These can be identified with the hashtag #mymelbourne.

Similarly connect to me via my username emmaodono on iPhone application ‘instagram’, to see my use of this social media platform, relevant photos will be linked with the hashtag #mymelbourne.

SOCIAL MEDIA SCREEN SHOTS:

#mymelbourne Instagram on Twitter:

#mymelbourne Instagram on Facebook:

#mymelbourne on Twitter:

#mymelbourne on Facebook:

This is definitely a story I want to continue building on. Hopefully as my readership grows and people begin to post their interpretations of the hashtag #mymelbourne, these too could be added into the blog. This would create a greater texture to the story and hopefully widen it’s scope around Melbourne. This draws on the idea raised in the flipped lecture, ‘The Perfect Storm’, which highlights, ‘People are spending more time with content made by people like themselves’ (Source: Mel Exon, Accessed at: http://www.slideshare.net/melex11/the-perfect-storm-the-social-web-storytelling-and-brands-08-07). Also on reflection this idea offers a great potential for any city or town around the world. If one blog could be created where readers could access multiple countries #mynewyork #myparis #myberlin #mykenya, I could see this digital story becoming a means of researching potential travel destinations and connecting with people all around the world,  ultimately this idea of connection being the notion this course Networked Media is based around.