This is a photography and storytelling workshop.
Practice how to build and tell a story using a storyboard.
Materials needed
✓ A storyboard (A4 print-out with empty boxes for words or drawings)
✓ Pencils and erasers, hard surface for writing or drawing on.
Proposed location
✓ Indoors at tables
Steps
1.
The facilitator names a theme, e.g. a journey, fear and courage.
In pairs, each participant chooses one event which they experienced on one day, fitting to the theme, which is simple and can be told in 3 mins, e.g. overcoming fear to cross a river on foot, stone by stone.
2.
Your partner tells you their story in 3 mins, now swap, and you tell yours.
3.
Sitting in pairs at the table, break down your story into actions.
Write a title for each action into the top or bottom of each box.
Draw the action into the boxes two to eight – using simple drawings e.g. stick-people.
4.
Mark any turning point in your story, this is using the most exciting moment or when something changes e.g. you find a way to overcome your fear. Mark the action arc on your story drawing lines up and down from the turning point. Write your opening sentence in box one, this could be a question, which you answer at the end. Write something you learned from the experience in box 9. This is your insight or message.
5.
Stand up, put your storyboard on the table or a chair, tell your partner the story again, this time also with gestures. Look at the storyboard to remind you what is the next step. You should find that the drawings allow you to tell your story more freely, than if you had written out the story as a text.
Closing up
- Discussion: 15 Mins.
- In what ways did you find the storyboard useful?
To go further
- Present your story to the whole group, pegging or taping your storyboard to a music stand, positioned to the side or below you.
- Draw a storyboard for another story. This story may be longer and need a second page.
Tips
✓
You do not need to be good at drawing to make and use your own storyboard.
✓
At the end of your story you may –
a. Tell the audience your insight, or what you learned through the experience.
b. Leave the audience to discover the message or their own message in the story.
c. If you asked a question at the beginning, you may ask the audience for one or more answers at the end. You may find there are several different and surprising answers.
