Creating the digital family stories for 2015. Starting with the end – Christmas 2015.
I am creating some “Chapter” videos for Christmas 2015. Prep, Christmas Day, Christmas with Family and then the Crazy Family Christmas.
From there I will go backwards and create videos, slide shows and other designs for each month about what family was doing etc.
Going forward I am now set up to create each month as it happens. The digital organization is in a good place – still needs some tweaks and some faocus – but so much better than before. A post on the process and system will be coming soon. Light Room has been great. Google Photos, Apple Photos and iCloud also have a role in management. Next is getting the family stories website in order and updated!
2016 will bring continuing the story creation and organization. Creating a family recipe site, getting ready for my first grandchild by doing hands on creation in nursery prep and in creating the digital story of waiting for arrival. Hoping I can keep up with all of my ideas. And oh-yeah – maybe fitting in #western106 too!
This video was created in iMovie using photos and video captured by family and self. I used Google Audio for sound…..nice to not have the ads show up in the product!
I have been in this online world since 1993. I can actually find footprints back as far as 1991 – although those are somewhat limited and not as available anymore.
As I have gone through the growth of digital media and sharing things of course have changed. At first it was easy to maintain personal and business info, then flowed into having two separate identities. How many of you had 2 or 3 “cell phones” because of having to keep work and personal separate for privacy and billing purposes?
The the timeframe of it is who you are so it is all together.
Then comes the time where you become like the character Sybil (1980’s character) and not only have business, personal, professional, but also alter identities and characters!
Part of my decisions in how I maintain info was based on “how to maintain info”. So for the most part I am me – one identity mostly konarheim in everything I do online.
Now that I have joined the ds106 club and improving my skills and learning all sorts of new neat stuff that I am applying to family digital stories I am finding that I do need to somehow protect my family in some ways. I know it can’t be 100% but some protocols do need to be in place.
The first challenge is photos. I have 40K of digital photos from 1998 to present that are now in the cloud for backup and family access. To make them available without too many issues they are on Flickr. But they are under my konarheim account which I have used for years as my social photo account. To move all the photos now would be insane. So my decision at this point is to use a second account as my social account. Had I thought sooner, I would have created the second account for family only – but too late for that now without investment of money, lots of time and headaches.
Some of my issues come from jumping on board early or using tools available – as they always will improve and evolve. I don’ t regret those decisions. I fully understand nothing stays the same and longevity means messy.
So just a warning – that as I change over there may be broken links and missing files and if I catch them I will fix.
If you have any great management ideas – I’d love to hear them.
As I am cleaning up historical I am also thinking of how to organize and where to store present forward. Knowing full well it will be the best informed decision of today and undoubtedly can be improved upon when the next new things pop up tomorrow.
Seems I have been absent in some ways in posting and updating. But I have been busy creating and #4Life. My intent was to create along #ds106tales this fall but seems they are now in week 7 already!
I look back at the last 8 months and how much the DS106 community has accelerated my skill building and made a difference in my creations. Adopting the “Make Art Damn it!” frame of mind has been awesome. Learning from others, expanding possibilities. I started this journey to learn things so I could use the stacks of family content now in my possession and under my care due to the loss of parents and parents-in-law over the last years. The loss along with my own children now adults and starting their own life paths of careers, love, and family, I wanted to be able to start creating in ways that would be special for them and the future through digital storytelling of family.
My brother-in-law by alignment of the stars has a milestone birthday of 70 years in October. My husband and sister-in-law wanted to do something to remember and celebrate their big brother’s milestone. Deadlines and specific targets always seem to keep me focused and this seemed a good kick-start to now applying some of my learned ds106 skills to something personal.
I have created GIFs of family and events. Scanning photos, capturing audio and whatever I can. Rochelle Lockridge introduced me to Flipbuilder via the Noir106 radio programs in spring 2015. The many assignments of the ds106 assignment bank in audio, design, video, have given me lots of practice of which most is posted in this blog. The daily create has been a great source as well! Sandy Brown-Jensen has been a muse and inspiration as she shares her family storytelling creations. Thanks Sandy!
And thanks to all my #DS106 friends for your support and sharing (Twitter): @mdvfunes, @johnjohnston, @ronald_2008, and so many others – too many to list, but so important! Follow the #ds106 tag in Twitter and you will see them.
DESIGN: Created some designs to use as chapter start pages and book cover
I used Canava for these design posters. A handy tool for good graphic plates when you need several instead of one intense grand creation.
I practiced my audio and video skills and learned lots! So much it is hard to share. I used Wondershare Filmora and iMovie as video editors and expanded on tools within each. I used the iMovie map animation in a video about the places he has lived over the years – so cool! The feature was there right in front of me all the time, but I discovered it thru this tutorial.
Each one improved IMHO. I used Audacity for audio and created audio scripts and clips first. Then imported into the video editors. For some of the videos I used features in one and then imported into the other video editor to gain the best features of each. I also used some of the iMovie templates, but to escape from the constraints, built a foundation and then changed the movie to a new project. This kept the theme transitions in place and available, but then allowed me to add and change to meet my needs.
I also was able to use family video from years past. Boy – a lot of footage and not much captured! LOL. I used a downloader to convert the DVD footage to usable digital pieces and edited in the video editors. A few I used FinalCut Pro for editing, to create content pieces much as I did with Audacity for sound. Without all the fancy interface it was powerful, but less cluttered and assisted in sticking to creating content pieces instead of production.
I also used my JibJab account and captured some video card creations to manipulate and build upon.
The Flip Book Creation:
The Flip book itself was a learning experience. Creating the WP plugin version and getting it to be accessible via a web page on a sub-domain I created for family stories.
The sub domain will give the opportunity to create something more static and approaches content differently than a straight up blog. I am going to try different versions of the theme with the sub domain over the next few months.
Flip Book Builder worked well. Things I know I will do differently are in customizing presentation and making sure the table of content links actually become links. I included the thumbnails open in the link to help family see the navigation. In the future, I would present with the option closed as the default.
The biggest AHA was that I now want to improve an develop more skill in using a page layout tool. I have access to inDesign – but will also look for some other open source options. The first flip book is okay- but being able to make the pages look more art like and not document layout will be more pleasing for reading. It is not just about the content. Content is first and critical – but presentation makes the content shine.
As I move on to the next family project – I will reflect and try to post some process and development posts.
To see the Flip book check out my Family Stories site (still working on a better title for the site – suggestions welcomed!)
I am building Flipbooks of family stories and leaning the software and possible distributions. This is a learning exercise in posting the book in a WordPress site.
This example Flipbook is put together quickly from some other content, but gave me the chance to try the embed video and some other features. To build this the content is created and then saved as a pdf which is imported into Flipbuilder. After it is loaded, you are able to customize and arrange for your final outcome.
The stories I am working on will need to be accessible by family as easily as possible and an online version seems the path over creating hard media with instructions on loading etc. Some hints on how to use the links in the book might be needed. The advantage of having content in primary sources and not uploading files etc. is a consideration as well. With an online version I can update content on storage sites as long as the link in the book stays the same.
The options for publishing are:
Create a zip file and distribute. Takes time to load and depending on machine set ups may need some hoops to jump through. Instructions to find index.html etc and having a Chrome browser is necessary
Create HTML files – more technical directions
Upload to provider – paid for service
FTP to website – whoa – that calls back skills I haven’t used in a while!
Export as WordPress Plugin and activate in my own domain (from ReclaimHosting.com) Distribute link – YES! Did this in under 10 minutes! and it seems to work – what do you think?
Thanks to @rockylou22 – Rochelle Lockridge, for modeling the Flipbook possibilities. Love it!
The Flipbook!
SOUND FILE
***the one thing I didn’t remember to do with this example was to add the sound file of the narration of the story….but I know that is possible and will work in the future!
