I’m developing a new course for the spring that encapsulates my current new interest in visual narrative.

Visual Narrative For Professionals and Qualitative Researchers

The Internet is largely visual.  In the digital world, skill in making visual media is increasingly important. Professionals and researchers increasingly need to be able to present their work visually.  Visual media are used for presentations, websites, and the like. In short, visual media are made for a purpose and an audience; combined with text or audio; sequenced and juxtaposed.  They are used to summarize and present to others one’s work or the needs of clients; to solicit support; to persuade; to tell stories.

Almost anyone can use a camcorder or point-and-shoot camera to make media. Not everyone knows how to make media of good technical quality: to skillfully manage things like lighting and exposure, and the technologies of making and editing media.

However, making images and video is not enough. Most people’s knowledge about how to effectively use these media trails far behind our ability to create hours and gigabytes of video, audio, and still images.

In this seminar, we will address both the technical and more theoretical aspects of making multimedia narratives.  We will address both the conceptual and the hands-on issues of making visual media and constructing multi-media narratives.

We will read from such fields as visual anthropology, visual studies, and narrative.  We will also work with media capture and editing technologies.  Each student will produce a multimedia narrative appropriate to his or her own work.

This is not a hard-core technical class.  We will use mostly simple technologies to enable quick capture and production, rather than spending extensive time and energy mastering complex technologies (though students are welcome to do so on their own).  We expect that students will range of those with minimal technical skills but a need to do this kind of work, to those with excellent technical skills who want to learn how to effectively use those skills.