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Archiving/Work Flow Project

Step One: Reflecting

Today I’ve started to think more about my creative process in crafting digital stories and how to archive my photos/video footage from the iPhone. My first step: reflecting on the process.

I like using the iPhone for creating content and, quite frequently, for crafting stories. The iPhone app enables you to quickly edit footage and post it online. I use Vimeo. This easy and fast process has enabled me to generate lots (over 100) short digital moments which capture daily experiences in my life. What I find especially great about this process is that because it’s fairly effortless—it only takes about 5 minutes to edit clips, create a story out of the footage and add sound—it doesn’t take up too much time or overwhelm me with complicated software. And it doesn’t distract me from experiencing life, not just documenting it.

I am realizing, however, that this almost effortless process comes at a price. Because I can just start shooting and quickly editing, I’m not thinking about the creative process (how I’m setting up and constructing my stories) and I’m not thinking about how to archive the photos and video footage that I’m creating for future projects or for others to watch/use. Sure these photos are being stored on iCloud and on my various devices, so they are being archived. But, increasingly, I’m finding Apple’s approach to the cloud and the ways that they control the managing and archiving of photos to make the process tedious, frustrating and often unworkable. Ugh. Don’t get me started on how much I dislike the recent software updates to the iPhone, Photos and iCloud. 

Instead of continuing to complain to STA, my Apple/tech expert, about my frustrations or give up on doing more digital stories, I’ve decided that I need a more deliberate plan on how to build archiving into my storytelling process. It might be more tedious, but since I’m committed to not only telling my stories, but documenting life for future stories/storytellers, I must carefully archive what I’m doing. The first part of my plan is to export the videos and photos that I can access on Photos (from 2012…where’s my earlier stuff?) to a highly organized hard drive, with folders for each year and type of content. This will take some time…

Work Flow and Archiving

I just returned from a wonderful 10 day vacation with my family. As I hiked through Utah at Zion National Park, I started thinking about my difficulties with managing my creative process/work flow for creating digital stories while using the iPhone. I’ve decided that a useful and necessary project for me would be to research and think about: 1. how to archive photos/videos from iPhoto and 2. how to manage my creative process as I create new stories using my iPhone as my exclusive (or at least primary) camera.  As I do my research, I will add links and information on this blog and on my resource page.

The Genius of Caring

When I get the chance, I’d like to spend some time exploring and thinking about this interactive web project: The Genius of Caring

The Genius of Caring is a web based interactive story sharing project that features documentary portraits of those whose lives have been touched by Alzheimer’s and other caregiving intensive diseases. The site also allows users to contribute to our story archive, the Care Gallery. The project offers a uniquely intimate glimpse into the caregiving experience and creates an intimate portrait of a community connected through compassion.

Site Description

I briefly explored this project this morning. I’m particularly interested in critically assessing their care gallery. Would this work for generating stories, reflections on The Farm?

More on Good Luck Soup

Good Luck Soup is a transmedia documentary project on the journey of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians before, during, and after World War II.

Told through both a traditional film and an interactive documentary, the feature film tells the story of one Japanese American family, while the interactive film tells the stories of many.

Description from Project Site

I’m particularly drawn to this project for several reasons. It originates from the desire of the filmmaker, Matthew Hashiguchi, to document his family’s stories. It functions as a space for his family, and other Japanese Americans, to easily share their stories and images. And, it offers a model for supplementing and providing additional perspectives to Hashiguchi’s own telling of the story through his documentary.

For my The Farm project, I’m interested in collecting and sharing stories from people who visited, lived or worked at my family’s farm. I’m hoping to use those stories to supplement/complement my own narrative/s about the Farm. I’m always looking for models for how to do that online.

Since the full version of this site won’t launch until October 6th, I can’t write a lot about how it works online right now. But, I wanted to mention Hashiguchi’s method for collecting stories:

  • Oral histories collected through “interview gathering sessions” conducted in select cities
  • Online submissions
  • Submissions e/mailed to Hashiguchi

I look forward to checking out the full site and how stories are submitted and displayed online. I checked out the Kickstarter video and I like how the stories will be mapped and how submitters can provide a name and stories/photos about their birthplace, internment camp and current location. Will that still be possible in the final version? I hope so.

In addition to collecting stories and photos from family/community members, Hashiguchi is also using archival footage:

The historical footage and photographs used were available, royalty free, through the National Archives. I’d say a majority of the historical footage comes from WWII propaganda films. Photographers Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange also made much of their work from the internment camps available to the public and for educational purposes, which is certainly what we’re doing.

Matthew Hashiguchi

Is footage like this available for the UP/Amasa?