Video and Revised Philosophy of Storytelling

Like I mentioned last time, stories are told for many reasons: to entertain, to persuade, and or to make a point.  As an audience, I think you must understand why you are hearing a story in order to dwindle down its message to determine its truth.  Lies and exaggeration, combination and omission: all of these are tools used by some extent by a storyteller.  Are they okay to use?  While I think the obvious answer would be “no”, I think that using these tools has become commonplace for those who tell stories, whether they like it or not.  Adding visuals can add layers to a story as well, but perhaps not to the same conclusion a reader would come to naturally.

        By adding visuals, I think we “plant a seed” of how a reader should interpret the story’s message.  This can be used to reinforce a truthful story, to “ground” a fictionalized one, or to distract the reader from a false story.  The way in which we use these graphics also can change how a reader perceives the message.  Going back to my example of a story about a crazy subway encounter on the way to work recanted among colleagues: this could very easily be exaggerated by dramatic music, low camera angles, and quick-cut-together scenes.  On the other hand, sad music can tell an audience they should feel sad, or suspenseful music to create a sense of fear.

These literary and visual “tools” are used to create connections amongst audiences and to express emotion and creativity, but I think so many times they are abused and replaced by over-the-top versions of themselves in order to provoke a certain feeling.  Whether these effects change the main plot of the storyline or just adds to unnecessary components of the story, surely this varies on the storyteller and why the story is being told.

In a recent class we watched the opening credits of a scary movie with happy 90’s rock music in the background.  The credits contained lots of aerial footage of deserted nature scenes.  When asked what type of movie we thought this was an intro to, almost the entire class said romantic comedy.  When the 90’s music was muted and the real music was played, we quickly realized this was rather the opening credits to a horror movie. This is a great way that visuals and audio can evoke certain feelings to an audience.

 

I have not changed the audio of my last draft (aside from removing Frank Sinatra’s New York song, which I intend to put back in later), but I have added most or all of the visual elements to my timeline.  Because my project is so dependent on travel, the majority of the footage I have used at this time I did not capture myself.  The few clips I did capture myself were the scenes of the country and the city of Pittsburgh through a moving car, and a few of the still images while listing city nicknames.  I intend to get out and about over the next week and replace some of these sources with original content.