Creating a Digital Narrative (a Slide Show with Voiceover)

When writers talk about "voice," they're usually referring to a style of writing that shows some personality. Readers are left to imagine for themselves the timbre and pitch of a writer's spoken words.

Not so when it comes to a digital narrative that includes both audio and visual elements. This past week, my assignment was to write a script, select or create images, figure out a way to combine the text with the images, and then add a recording of my own voice reading the script in time with the slideshow. I felt oddly nervous about recording my voice, so I saved that step for last. 

I experimented with a combination of tools. I tried iPhoto, PowerPoint, iMovie, and something entirely new to me: Screenr.com, a free web-based screen recorder. The steps I took were as follows:

1. Draft a preliminary script. I started with a basic outline of my ideas and uploaded a copy of the Word document to Google Docs. I then revised the script so it would be more conversational but within the three– to five–minute suggested time limit (roughly 300–500 words). I later inserted notes to indicate what type of images I envisioned using with the text. 
2. Search for usable images. I browsed: Google Images, searching for photos "labeled for reuse;" Flickr, specifying Creative Commons; and PowerPoint's limited selection of clipart. I spent hours searching but couldn't find exactly what I wanted (at least, not without risking copyright infringement). Most of the "labeled for reuse" photos were so disappointing that I knew I could do better myself.
3. Create my own images. I grabbed a camera and played amateur photographer for a few days. I thought about the ideas I wanted to represent, arranged items I had at home, and started taking pictures. I set up displays inside and outside, experimented with the lighting, and took dozens of shots to get just the right ones. Then I imported, cropped and edited the pictures until I was satisfied with my collection. Finally, I used the Mac utility called Grab (see "Using Grab") to capture images of webpages and logos. 
4. Arrange the images in a slideshow. Using PowerPoint, I organized the pictures as a series of slides. I had performance problems with a few of the slides that contained multiple images, but I resolved them. (I grouped the images together, saved them as a single JPG image, and then replacing the grouped images with the JPG file.) Initially, I thought I needed to assign a specific time interval for the transitions between slides, and I was worried about getting my voiceover to synchronize correctly. So, I tried to think like a poet: I counted syllables, practiced reading my script out loud, and continued revising until my words were evenly (if not melodically) apportioned to the slides. I eventually learned that all of this preparation was unnecessary because—if I used Screenr—I could control the pace easily. 
5. Export the slideshow as a movie (creating a .mov file). At this point, I naively thought I was almost finished.
6. Use iMovie to create a voiceover. Never having used iMovie before, I played around with it for a while before I figured out how to get the voiceover to work. Once I succeeded, I exported the file and viewed it with Quicktime. Unfortunately, although the sound worked fine, the images looked terrible. The PowerPoint transitions had lost something in translation, the resolution had deteriorated, and iMovie had cropped all my slides. I knew I could probably figure out a way to fix these problems, but did I really want to spend the time?

Convinced I was making this assignment harder than it needed to be, I went back to review Helen Barrett's resources on Digital Stories in ePortfolios and Digital Storytelling Tools. I read anew her Screenr recommendation. 

 was very easy to use.

1. I opened my PowerPoint slideshow, which was set up to transition manually from one slide to the next.
2. I went to the Screenr website and followed the instructions for framing the PowerPoint slideshow window and recording the voiceover.
3. I read my script, advancing the slides as I needed them. 

When I was done, I played back the result. Success! Although it was too short (1:23 minutes), it worked as well as I had hoped it would. Now that I'd seen how easy this was to do, I felt free to revise my script and add more slides. I repeated the steps a few more times before I felt the narrative represented my best effort. 

The final result? You can see it embedded in my capstone portfolio. The final word count is 345, about twice as long as I had originally planned, but the recording is still a bit short (just over two and a half minutes). I feel I would be adding unnecessary padding, though, if I made it any longer.