Multimedia Storyboarding: Going Beyond "CliffsNotes"
Team Members: Bianca Nickols, Christopher Meltzer, Shaane Syed, Jenna Frazier, Raymond Weyls
Project Mission Statement:
Storyboard using iWeb:
- Each storyboard will serve as an interactive, in-depth analysis tool for a specific literary work
- A one-stop resource guide for a certain text; an illustrative, detail- and research-oriented "Cliff'sNotes" style reference tool
- A virtual entity of literature complete with hypertext links to various representative and analytical tools
- Each board will link to a specific scene and will feature various items relevant to that scene, including but not limited to:
- plot summary
- character descriptions and biographies
- author bio and links to other works by same author, or works with similar themes
- explanations or examples of cultural references and allusions, customs, ideas, themes, and symbols in the work
- maps of physical locations and geographical terrain
- graphs based on quantitative information in the book
- audio or music samples related to or mentioned in the work
- external resources such as academic articles, text analysis tools (i.e. Tapor), etc
- A long-term plan for this project would be to create storyboards for a number of widely-read pieces of literature, and compile and organize them into a searchable database and resource guide
Example of Storyboard Project (using Dreamweaver):
http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~cmeltzer/
Literary Work:
"Indian Camp" by Ernest Hemingway:
This is a story about a young Nick Adams traveling across river with his father Dr. Adams who has been summoned to help a young Indian deliver her child. Nick witnesses his father performing a cesarean with a fishing knife on the woman using no medication. Following this painful ordeal, Nick and his father find the woman's husband dead in the bunk above because "he couldn't stand things" and eventually slit his own throat. Throughout the story, Nick is struggling with many issues such as life, death, suffering, endurance, and their relation to perceived masculinity.
Considering the fluidity and graphic imagery Hemingway maintains throughout "Indian Camp", a story board would be an ideal representation of concepts and ideas that readers wouldn't have necessarily known without extensive research from outside sources. Using the application Dreamweaver, we would be able to make a storyboard representation of different scenes from "Indian Camp" and use each of the images as links connecting to in-dept text analysis and research from other sources.
Example: http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~bianca_nickols/
Research topics might include representations of different themes, stories from Hemingway's childhood, and subjects of racism/sexism, just to name a few. Ultimately all the research will lead back to the life of Nick, and hopefully to that of Hemingway.
Why?
- This could potentially be a valuable tool for students researching literary works for scholarly purposes or the average web user who simply has an interest in learning more about the intricacies of a particular work.
- Whereas existing resources offer limited information about various works, we would compile it all into one location. For example, Cliff'sNotes offers little more than plot summary, character lists, and abbreviated thematic content. Google offers random information sorted by popularity that users must wade through to find relevant sources. External features alluded to in works (cultural information, maps, songs, customs, history) must usually be researched independently. We would find the best sources on all aspects of the work and organize them in one convenient location for users to peruse at their leisure.
- This will be a truly comprehensive analysis of a literary work, organized in a convenient, user-friendly, and aesthetically appealing way
Link to Storyboard:
http://web.mac.com/cmeltzer1/iWeb/
Tapor Word Analysis Tools:
