Over the last several years, there have been many crowd-sourced multimedia projects. Life In A Day and One Day on Earth, to take two examples, gave us a sense for the way we live, whether it is in Baltimore or Bali.
The latest one _ A Day In the World _ asks all of us to make pictures of everyday life:
Because you love photography. Because you have something to say. Because your life matters. Because the idea of doing something together worldwide is thrilling. Because you like the thought of saving a little something of yourself for generations to come. Because your take on daily life is part of a much bigger picture.
The organizers want to then create a website, book and exhibitions. Check out the site.
These projects always fascinate me for their ambition (get people around the entire world to contribute) and what they say about us (there are millions of people out there who are ready and willing to tell their story).
Photo credit: Thomas Hawk, via Flickr. Original photo by Penelope Umbrico.
‘The Fall and the Ascension.’
Backstory: Sad story of the bear in Boulder, Colo., who became an Internet sensation when his fall from a tree was captured on video and who later died as he was looking for food.
(Thanks Matt for the caption)
’2:44 p.m., New York. Sotheby’s Prize Patrol.’
Backstory: The Scream, the painting by Edvard Munch, sells for a record $119 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York.
(Thanks Joe for the caption)
Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal, contemplates the affect stories have on our mental health:
The human mind is addicted to stories. We make them up all time, and we can easily be taken in by them. Once we latch on to a story (be it a religious narrative or a conspiracy theory) it’s hard to give it up. So we need to be wary of the power of story. But, on the other hand, a little fiction can be a good thing. Take our own life stories. We all have a story that we tell about ourselves—about who we are, what our formative experiences were, and what our lives mean. But psychologists have shown that these stories aren’t very trustworthy. They are based on distorted memories and wildly optimistic assessments of our own qualities. Yet, crafting these stories—and believing them—seems to be preserve our mental health. People who don’t overrate their own personal qualities tend to get depressed. So the little fictions we make up about ourselves are healthy, so long as they don’t cross over into narcissistic travesty.
‘Moo cow. No cow.’
Backstory: U.S. discovers mad cow disease in dairy cow in California, first new case in the country since 2006.
Wesley Allsbrook is a Rhode Island School of Design graduate and an artist who has produced illustrations for many publications. One of them was for a New York Times Magazine story that was part of a package that won the Pulitzer Prize.
When they announced the winners last week, I did what many journalists do on Prize Day: I immediately checked out the best our craft has to offer, and zeroed in on NYTer Jeffrey Gettleman’s vivid stories about a couple taken by Somali pirates.
I was immediately struck, however, by Wesley’s illustrations. They were alive, from the movement that came across in the lines she used to make her images to the beautiful color palette. They blended perfectly with the story.
More news organizations are experimenting with illustrations and comics to tell stories. But it can be a tricky endeavor. Wesley graciously gives AStory.In a glimpse at how she navigated those pitfalls and offers advice for storytellers in different mediums.
Read her interview:S: How did the idea that you would do a series of illustrations for the New York Times story come about?
WA: The “graphic novel treatment” idea for that piece, I have to admit, came from the magazine’s art department. Despite the overwhelming appeal of comics to just about everyone, it can be a hard sell in the sketch phase. It’s rare that I’m hired without the expectation that I’ll be doing something specific — usually a single image, or a narratively unrelated series. I had a relationship with the Times, and it seemed that they were aware that I was into the sequential thing. By all accounts, it was a great privilege to do something so unique to my typical working life.
S: One of the areas that I’m most curious about is that moment or series of steps that led to an idea. Can you describe that process for this assignment?
WA: The article itself had distinct dramatic and journalistic sides. The Chandler’s harrowing misadventure gave readers a very human point of access to the issue of piracy in Somalia. We very quickly decided that the illustrations would cover the most dramatic landmarks in their story. I presented pencils for review, got corrections, warnings, and approval, and went to final. I used pencil, ink, and digital color. In the final stage, we did some revision of the script and some minor changes to ‘characters’ faces. Really this all happened over the course of about a week, like a drawing sprint.
S: How did you go about translating the text story into the illustrations?
WA: With Gettleman’s writing, it wasn’t hard. I didn’t want to put words in the Chandler’s mouths, so we stuck to sound-effects. In truth, these images can’t exist outside of the context of their article as a complete comic. In this way, they’re true illustrations. Gettleman tells us where we are at every step of the Chandler’s journey. The images simply help readers to imagine and to feel the events that he describes.
S: What advice would you offer storytellers in other formats about seeing a story and then translating that into another medium?
WA: I really believe that comics create their own language. They can give narrative that palimpsestic quality of real life, full of contradiction, metaphor, and nested meaning … Or they can reduce a story to it’s essential bones, stripping away distracting details and uncommunicative protrusions. What seems to be important in switching from one narrative medium to another is that the translation brings something new to the source material. I don’t always feel that I achieve this in my own work, but it’s the goal of any illustrator to both elucidate and inform his or her subjects.
Photo credit: Wesley Allsbrook.
Off and on since my daughter was born, my wife and I have been thinking about creating a children’s book. With all the tools available nowadays to produce e-books, it seems that it’s never been easier. Looking as I do for advice on storytelling, I came across the late, great E.B. White.
In an interview with The Paris Review, he talks about the difference between writing for adults and for children:
Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept, almost without question, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly. I handed them, against the advice of experts, a mouse-boy, and they accepted it without a quiver. In Charlotte’s Web, I gave them a literate spider, and they took that.
Some writers for children deliberately avoid using words they think a child doesn’t know. This emasculates the prose and, I suspect, bores the reader. Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention. I’m lucky again: my own vocabulary is small, compared to most writers, and I tend to use the short words. So it’s no problem for me to write for children. We have a lot in common.
Read the rest of the interview.
Photo credit: Pratham Books, via Flickr.
When hunting for a job, you hear it all the time. The cover letter needs to tell a story.
That’s what Robert Pirosh did back in the 1930s. He left his job as a copywriter to give screenwriting a shot in Hollywood. It’s clear in his letter that the future Academy Award winner could tell quite the story:
Dear Sir:
I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave “V” words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land’s-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.
I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around.
I have just returned and I still like words.
May I have a few with you?
h/t: Letters of Note.
Photo credit: Pierre Metivier, via Flickr.
Copyright 2011. A Story.In. All Rights Reserved.
