WELCOME! This website is dedicated to the Digital Storytelling project for the Tufts University sociology seminar, “The Masculine Mystique.”
Digital storytelling is the use of computer-based tools to tell a story of about 5 minutes in length. This project is designed to increase your skills in communicating an important message on a masculinity-related topic of your group’s choosing. While there are some guidelines we need you to follow, you’re otherwise free to tell a story your group wants to tell: the topic, audience, point-of-view, images and sounds, art and music are up to you. You and your group can retain full rights to the video after the class ends, or you can give Tufts the rights to use your video for educational purposes (e.g. a future YouTube page which features these videos and similar content). We hope also that you’ll consider sharing your video on the website of Defying Gender Roles, founded by Fletcher alumnus Sebastián Molano.
The story-making process has 5 stages:
- Set-Up: Form groups, assign roles, review expectations, sign Group Contract, brainstorm a topic idea or two.
- Research: Locate important sources (primary, secondary, class notes, images, videos, sounds/music) and create a working bibliography, and prepare for interviews (if applicable).
- Design: Create a Video Treatment Plan, a summary of your vision for the project. Then take all materials and create a rough outline of your entire video, called a Storyboard, broken down by scene with your script, media, and sounds.
- Production: Use iMovie or other software to make the storyboard come alive, submit a rough cut for review, edit and polish the video.
- Presentation and Reflection: Celebrate, premiere the stories, reflect on and assess your own and your group members’ work.
This project is truly a collaborative effort. You’ll need to work closely with your group members, and also get to know and draw on the expertise of the staff at Tisch Library, the Digital Design Studio, the Art Gallery, and other campus experts and resources. And this project would not have been possible without generous assistance from Dr. Colin Orians’s Environmental Biology course, which has been creating digital stories for some time now. Dr. Orian graciously permitted our class to adapt the project website he developed. For inspiration and examples of excellent digital stories, see:
- Environmental Biology Fall 2015 Digital Stories
- Tufts Environmental Science YouTube page. Search for the short (<5 minute) student-produced videos.
- University of Minnesota Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies’ short multimedia projects.
- The University of Houston’s Digital Storytelling website. Tons of stories in many categories.
- StoryCenter. Many excellent videos on topics relevant for our seminar (e.g. identity, education, social justice, human rights).
- “American Male”. Won a recent MTV competition for films on the subject of privilege (courtesy of Douglas).
Most of all, we want you to enjoy this assignment. It’ll be challenging, but we’re confident the final products will be exemplary. Be creative, kick around lots of ideas, and feel free to run things by Freeden or the Support Team if there’s something you want to try out.
**If you see any errors on this website, please let Freeden know!**