Yesterday was the 60th Anniversary of Human Rights Day. Inspired by a post from Beth Kanter about the Witness project, I decided to take her challenge and create a video answering the question:
I also wanted to do this as an experiment because of the tremendous interest and power of user generated content, and because I'd never created a video before and wondered what it would take. (That is why it got finished today, rather than yesterday :>)
Elements of a good Story
Effective storytelling is a really important part of conveying a message. For advice about this, I headed over to the WeAreMedia project and reviewed the storytelling module. There's a wonderful video there from Ira Glass.
Ira talks about 2 essential elements or building blocks for a story:
- Power of the anecdote
- Raise a question from the beginning - bait,
- why is this happening,
- throwing out questions and then answering them along the way,
- having a sequence of events,
- start with the action
- Moment of reflection
- here's why you are listening
- Here's why I'm wasting your time
- How to make it compelling
Here's my video
Warning: This video creates some graphic and powerful images that may not be suitable for younger children.
I've had a powerful interest in Tibet since I was around 10 years old. I didn't know much about it other then I had to go there. For my 40th birthday I organized a group of friends for a short visit. I don't have a video camera, so this is just created with iMovie on my MAC. Here's more about Tibet and social media.
Your Job - should you choose to accept it
Can you create a video for your organization that tells a personal and intriguing story?
I'd love to see it.
