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Storytelling 2.0PHOTO: MARGARET MULLIGAN Lambert, Meadows and others echo a universal cliché that happens to be true: Everybody has a story to tell. “Stories help define who we are,” Meadows says, describing the digital yarns that his workshop participants make as “pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a gaggle of invisible histories, which, when viewed together, tell a bigger story of our time.” During its three- to five-day workshops, BBC Capture Wales trains participants on the equipment so they can then start digital story circles in their own communities. It also broadcasts on television some of the two-minute stories and posts them on its website. Would digital storytelling be as popular if it weren’t for reality TV? Probably not. But this sort of digitized oral storytelling is more democratic than any cleverly edited reality show. At the Workmen’s Hall, we gather for biscuits and another cup of tar-black tea, then retreat to the second floor for a story circle. When everyone realizes what a big task they have – condensing their life stories into two-minute audio snapshots – and how little time they have to do it in, they get a bit “ratty,” says one instructor. Each of the seven participants reads the 250-word scripts they wrote the night before. Mary, a woman in her 70s who has never used a computer and who almost dropped out of the workshop from a misplaced sense of unimportance, describes her feisty grandmother. In 1912, after her 30-year-old husband was killed in the mines and delivered home in a sack along with a 10-shilling note, Mary’s grandmother chained herself to a rail outside the mining company to successfully demand a job. While she talks, Mary remembers forgotten details, like the clay pipe her grandmother smoked. Murmurs of approval ripple through the room. Later everyone records their voice-overs in a modest auditorium with red velvet chairs, a small screen and a sign over the door marked Cinema. Olwyn, a silver-haired woman, describes her father getting lost in a blizzard on his way home one night; Chloë, a student, talks about her favourite cat. “I sound like a 12-year-old boy,” says Chloë when she hears the playback. “Everybody hates their own voice,” Meadows assures her. “But everyone likes other peoples’ voices.” He weaves “atmos” or ambient sound into the pauses between sentences to give the audio track warmth. Tomorrow they will stitch it together with a selection of photos. If it all sounds a little low-tech, that’s because it is. “We want the technology to serve the story, not the other way around,” Gilly Adams, who helps participants write their scripts, tells me. |
