Scripts and Stories for Educational Media projects

Scripts and Stories for Educational Media projects

Jan 31, 2019

Scripting and storyboarding is about creating roadmaps to guide each phase of the production process. It’s an essential part of video and audio creation, but it’s a practice that can also bring clarity and order to any other project you are working on. Done well, it provides a path that will ensure your project is created in the most effective and efficient manner possible.

TLC event link

Whether you are planning a video, podcast, animation or even powerpoint presentation for your class, you will want to document the project using scripts and storyboards. The following are a collection of resources from our workshop.

Notes from the UBC Studios workshop

Scripting notes and resources

Resources go here

Storyboarding notes and resources

 

A sample storyboard template.

A sample EdMedia project

In Going Visual II we look closely at storytelling and breaking down a lesson into a series of descriptive images. To demonstrate this approach we used the app Educreations and our own syllabus for the workshop.

We went through a very typical process from script to storyboard to final production, and documented the promotions.

How did we make it?

1. First, we talked about what we wanted/needed to communicate to planned out the idea quickly using a storyboard. You can of course make your video on Educreations by starting with the app itself, but we find it’s always easier to rough out our ideas first. Here is the one we used for our video:

educreations storyboard
Storyboard rough for planning our syllabus “explainer video”.

2. We then fleshed that storyboard out with a script so that we’d know what to say. This we spoke out naturally and made quick bullet point notes so our dialogue would feel natural.

3. Finally, we fired up the app. It took four takes of about 4 minutes each until we got something we liked. We both tried making one to get practice.

Yonkoma

The style of a 4 panel comic is called “Yonkoma“. A typical Yonkoma is laid our with 4 vertical panels, of the following steps.

Ki (起):The first panel forms the basis of the story; it sets the scene.
Shō (承): The second panel develops upon the foundation of the story laid down in the first panel.
Ten (転): The third panel is the climax, in which an unforeseen development occurs.
Ketsu (結): The fourth panel is the conclusion, in which the effects of the third panel are seen.

These guides get taken further on the site Instructables through a step by step activity entitled “How to write 4-panel Manga“.

The 4panel Project

4panel.ca is an ongoing collection of 4 panel comic strips, with a wide range of contributors, and styles.

http://4panel.ca
http://4panel.ca

4PANEL.CA is a space where a range of talented artists creatively explore the four-panel comics format in a formal, abstract, literary, conceptual and/or transformative context.

 

Four icon Challenge

Storytelling can be challenging, but boiling down the essential components of a story to its essential visual elements can help you understand whats important to keep. One exercise you can do to help practice your visual story telling skills is the “Four icon challenge“. Kyle Tezak, a designer in Minneapolis published the challenge as a “fun design challenge” but ended up pushing it further than expected.

This personal project attempts to boil down stories into four icons while keeping the narrative intact. The project started as a fun design challenge for me to do in my spare time, but I actually ended up learning a lot about the significance of objects and themes in storytelling. It also forced me to re-examine some of my favorite stories and gain a deeper understanding of them.

For the EdMedia program, I have refined the instructions below. The challenge is to find the icons, images or visuals that you make yourself, that tell the story as best you can.

  1. Choose your story. This could be a movie, or book from popular culture or a story of your own.
  2. Choose you media. (you may use the storyboard template but any blank page will do
  3. Share your story. Having others guess is half the fun.