Ryan Whalen - Digital Storytelling

I decided for my last blog post to add some bonus feature style content to my final selfie.  The background is still hanging on my wall.  When my fiancé's aunt came to babysit this morning, she asked me what it was and I got to telling her about the class.  She thought that it sounded interesting.  I realized as I was talking to her there is still so much more I could say in a final selfie or even just about the final selfie.  You know what really drove me nuts?  The hissing on my iPhone microphone.  I tried everything to get it to not hiss!  After I made the video I looked at the footage again and thought maybe the iPhone footage is of poorer quality than the Mac footage.  Yet in the Mac footage I can't see all of the details that I can in the iPhone footage.  I really don't know what to think.  I still have more to learn about video.  I heard the guy who made The Room,  shot the whole movie with two types fo cameras because he couldn't understand the difference bet

Oh, Hey!  You know, this semester in digital storytelling, I learned quite a bit.  A lot of it was just simple technical stuff about making a video.  Things such as: turn on the lights or use the lights to create dramatic effects.  Having a background is definitely going to increase the quality of your video.  You look so much more professional.  If that doesn’t work, you can always pander to the lowest common denominator with cute little animals. Sometimes, it’s easier to have someone else hold the camera.  You also might realize that the camera on your Mac just isn’t that great.  One thing that I really struggled with was speaking up.  I tried to make my videos louder, because personally, that was one of my biggest issues.  All of these tools can be used to tell your story.  My story is primarily about records and about comic books.  But, it can be about anything, whatever is personal to you.  One of the most important things that we learned about digital storytelling this se

Working as a team in module was a totally different experience from the rest of the class.  The Lambert text especially focuses on individuals telling their own stories.  So far every project had been a representation of me as an individual.  The collaborative process was totally different but very enjoyable.  I once remember a quote about comic book artist Frank Miller saying something along the lines of some guys can write, some guys can draw, some guys can color, etc but he is one of the few guys that can make a complete comic book himself.  I thought about that in terms of digital storytelling.  There is something to be said for purity of vision and creating something with flavor but a creator is also risking going off the rails by working in a vacuum.  I think of the great work a guy like Frank Miller has done and bizarre, arguably terrible work that has Amos come out of such uncompromising vision.  I think that working as a group was good for me.  I love to be the idea person

Hey Everybody, welcome to Nerd Concepts.  Every episode I wear a wacky costume and explain a nerdy concept.  Today we are talking  about retcons.  I’m dressed as lazy Spider-man because he has one of the most well known and unpopular retcons, which we will get to in a minute.  Retcon is short for retroactive continuity.  Retcons are when new information is released in a story that changes your  understanding of previous events.  Sometimes, this is because an incoming writer on a series in some form of media doesn’t like where a previous writer was taking a series, to fix a an unintentional continuity error or simply to shake things up.  The concept is very common  to comic books but can appear in any media.  Swamp Thing, shown here in the early volume written by Len Wein, was a guy who turned into a mutant plant monster.  When writer Alan Moore took over Swamp Thing he didn’t ignore the previous series but changed readers  understanding of it by making Swamp Thing a li

M3 Digital Story Project: It’s Time to Get Moving Written by: Ryan Whalen Narration: April Crenshaw, using Garageband Editing : Max Chaiet, using Adobe Premier Pro 2015 version for Apple  Images and video: Stock photographs (see references), as well as personal videos/photographs of Ryan and Max’s families Music during credits: Original song by Richie Correa, used with permission.                       It’s Time to Get Moving Script Max standing on playground Max: It’s time to get moving!  Title of“It’s Time to Get Moving” flashes on screen Montage of stock and personal videos/photographs while April narrates  April: Kids today are seeing a change in lifestyle that has been going on since the 80’s. Rainy day activities are becoming everyday activities. Only 42%  of 6-11 year olds are getting an hour of physical activity every day and only 8% of teenagers. The results aren’t good for our little ones. 17% of U.S. children are obese with numbers twice that for lower income and disadva