Final Project - Mark Machi

Philosophy of Storytelling

Humans are dependent on storytelling. It is a tool that we use everyday, and it is a tool that has multiple purposes. Stories are used as a means of learning, relating, and expressing oneself in a manner that provides deeper connection. Stories allow us to explain the more nuanced aspects of whatever it is we want to convey. They add layers and feelings that individual words by themselves cannot express. This allows stories to give us the ability to reach the same emotional and mental ground with the people we share them with.

 For example, you could tell someone you are happy, but the word happy could be received and perceived in a way that doesn’t do the feeling you are experiencing justice. A single word can hardly be used to express the complex nature of human thought or emotion. A story on the other hand can depict everything you went through to achieve that happiness. The hardships and struggles you faced, and relief of overcoming them.

Utilizing stories allows humans to give context and grants us the ability to fully grasp and comprehend deep emotions. In a way, stories provide the framework for learning and are vital to developing young minds. It is difficult to explain complex ideas to children and have them fully understand what you are telling them, but if you use a story, that enables children to understand in a format that is simple and easy to grasp.

The structure and method of constructing stories is not something that is set in stone. Authors can arrange and visualize their work in a variety of ways that they deem fit to drive the point that they want to make. One can tell a story in chronological order, or jump from one time point to the next to add depth and perspective. Authors can add visual queues to make sure the audience experiences the story in the way that the author wants, or visuals can be withheld to allow the audience to create their own interpretation of the story. This in a way allows for the creation of many stories. All of which are similar, yet each are unique in the listeners’ minds. This is beautiful relationship that demonstrates how stories can connect us, but at the same time demonstrates our individuality.

Process Reflection

Deciding on what to write about was one of the most time consuming aspects of this project for me. I was very unsure of what it was that I wanted to invest my time in and explore. I felt compelled to write about something I knew, but at the same time I wanted to adventure into territory that I was unfamiliar with, which is what I can safely say I did.

Originally, my story was about theft, but even I knew when I first wrote it that that topic is too broad to really extract any value from. This led me to revise my writing. I researched and talked to people to get some idea of direction on what it was I really wanted to share with people. It wasn’t until I watched a documentary on illegal music that I found my end topic, copyright laws. While this seemed a little dry on the surface, it fit my needs to work on something that I knew about, illegal music downloading, and something that I had never explored before, the reasoning behind why people steal music and what it really means to steal.

Reading books like Bluets and Invisible Cities and using feedback from small groups really helped me revise how I wanted to word my story. I knew that a dry topic like copyright needed to be told in a way that kept people’s attention and actually provoked thought in the audience. I felt that using questions and descriptive imagery achieved my goal of thoughtful reflection in the audience.

The creation of the visuals was somewhat of a daunting task. I had never used Adobe Premier before, but thankfully it was fairly intuitive to use and the class demonstrations were extremely helpful. Deciding what to add as visual aids to my project caused me many headaches simply because I didn’t know how one goes about visualizing laws. I ended up with a hodgepodge of visuals. Some of which were real people and others were of cartoons. I felt that this mash up of visuals really did my topic justice. I learned that blank space and can actually be a good thing at times, especially if you want to drive a point home or force the audience to reflect. However, I feel that I might have gone too overboard with the blank screens. I felt that black screens simply fit better in certain aspects than trying to force a visual image that simple doesn’t fit the story. Which makes me think that maybe some stories don’t need visuals.

All and all I felt content with my project. I still feel like that there is tons of work that can be done to it, but the one thing that I’ve learned is that creators always feel like they can add or edit more. They feel like whatever project they are working on isn’t perfect yet, which is an impossible goal. I’ve learned that you should be happy with what you’ve created and not continuously revise and edit it until the end of time since you will never achieve perfection.