Online Storytelling (Erin)

Slideshows

The saying “a picture’s worth a thousand words” has never been truer then when it comes to slideshows. Sometimes it seems better to express a story in pictures rather then words and such was the case in the slideshow “Shattered”. This slideshow depicted the event of 9/11 from the view of the people affected instead of just showing the towers falling. Although the slideshow may have benefited from music or some captions with the photos it still got its point across of how devastating the day was. When I think about slideshows I usually don’t associate them with news worthy material but instead with school and class projects. However, when I think about it slideshows have been used as forms of media in many different ways, like YouTube for instance. That whole website is made up of videos and there are in fact many that have been created as slideshows to inform the public of many different aspects.

http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/shattered/

Stories Without Words

Although “Stories Without Words” was listed as a separate category then slideshows, they seem very similar if not the same exact thing. The only difference that I found when looking at “The Fall of the Twin Towers” was that unlike “Shattered” it was animated and resembled more of a slideshow then “Shattered” did. When refereeing to online story telling forms it seems like the same form can be called a variety of different things but yet it still represents the same one concept. The various names that can be applied to one concept would seem to me to lead to a little confusion and perhaps a misconception. I know when I saw stories without words I figured, or assumed that not only would it be animated but that there would also be music in the background. The music in the background would just enhance the pictures and it would still be able to not have words. It just seems to mislead the consumer and gives false hope when looking for a specific type of media.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/flash/photo/attack/sequence/tower_sequence.htm

Animated Stories

When I think of animation and animated stories I tend to think of the cartoons that I grew up watching as well as the various videos that can be found on the internet. However, animated stories can be used to display important information as well, and helps the consumer to better understand what is going on instead of just reading a story. This was the case when I watched both “How the pros play the masters” and “How Tiger played it”. Without having much, if any knowledge, about professional golf it was still very easy to understand what they were talking about when playing the 13th hole at Augusta. This type of animation also allowed you to go at your own pace and click when you wanted to hear the next step allowing for time to process what had just been explained and also not making the consumer feel rushed or left confused at all.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/augusta/tour/pros_play/no13/