Digital Storytelling as it relates to Entertainment

This week I read the article about digital storytelling, which I found to be particularly interesting. I am involved in the entertainment industry, specifically in film and television, which is all about storytelling in a sense. The beginning of the article was great – it gave pointers on what sorts of questions to ask yourself to form a proper narrative. For me, that was especially helpful because I am interviewing for a couple real jobs this week and being able to effectively communicate the story of my life and experiences is crucial. To do this, I found the “Accomplishment Stories” section particularly helpful because it made me reflect on certain instances in my work career. I know that I am qualified, but sometimes it is difficult to pull up extremely specific instances and be able to talk about “what the event taught me” and “how the event changed my life.” I thought it was interesting that the article talked about storytelling as a way of “filtering, indexing and repackaging tools.” The story is always there – it’s just a matter of putting the right materials in the right place to form something that will be appealing and interesting to others.

 

However, I did disagree with the “Good Consumer Habit” section of the article. When I started to read, as I mentioned at the beginning, I immediately thought about film and television because directors, cinematographers, actors, show-runners – they’re all storytellers. And then I get to the section that discusses mass media and it only mentions that we are “immersed in too much TV” and that exposure to mass media depletes our “critical intelligence” and I have to strongly disagree with this. Sure, reading a thousand magazine articles about the Kardashians might deplete a few brain cells… but ultimately I believe media and television are a universal tie between all cultures. Films themselves are true art forms and directors and scriptwriters should be applauded, not lumped into the group of people that tell their story to simply just garner attention.

2 thoughts on “Digital Storytelling as it relates to Entertainment”

  1. It’s really interesting to think about how we can tell stories that are engrossing, interesting — and don’t murder any brain cells! I’m excited to see what kinds of digital stories you come up with.

  2. I agree with your point that narrative film and tv do not contribute to any loss in knowledge. Although this is a common held belief, I feel that as we move forward in a world that is becoming increasingly more digital, this argument will fail to hold up. The medium of narrative video’s are so broad that any overarching statement on what they provide viewers seems to be a big generalization.

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