Ensemble

Final project for Digital Storytelling class.

A multiform story written in four points-of-view and a collective narrative. Up to 5 simultaneous perspectives are available for the same events.

• Earned me my A
• It's browser-independent (!). (Yes, I learned from my mistakes with Rewind.) Template-driven, written with a PHP backbone.

Case Study

This is a digital storytelling project, and as such has several key elements.

Navigation

Digital stories can be non-linear in timeline. This particular project tells a story from four points of view and gives a third-person narrative point of view as well.

The first page of the site gives specific instructions for how to use the site. In addition, for those headstrong individuals who choose to throw caution to the wind, there are several clues for navigation -- previous and next are obvious. The first choice the reader has is what to click on the page; clicking on a character portrait will bring the reader to that individual's first chapter in the story, while clicking "next" will bring the person to the first third-person narrative, which leads to a series of historical and background information for the story. In these chapters, the portraits are no longer links -- there are no personal narratives available. After 4 chapters first-person character narratives begin to become available, and the reader can choose whether they prefer moving forward, backward or sideways through the chapters. There is a chapter index if someone gets lost. The first individual narrative is "Catching Babies," where the queen, attending a birth, is midwife to the birth of another character in the story. Clicking "next" while in a first-person narrative gives the next chapter in that particular person's story. In many cases, this is a jump in time.

Orientation

One difficulty when writing and programming for digital storytelling (in this case a true multiform story) is that the reader may become disoriented, unsure of where they are in the story, which other events have or have not taken place yet. There are specific design considerations that need to be made to help maintain or regain the reader's orientation. In Ensemble, when the speaker changes, the by-line switches to the name of whom is speaking. There is also a chapter list available, to help the reader see which stories they have read, and which ones they have missed. Not all of the story chapters are finished, but the overall third-person narrative is completed, thus all chapters down the narrative column have names and links. Some chapters read "none" -- these are chapters that do not exist for that character. The "next" button or "previous" button will take the reader to the next or previous story in their personal timeline.

Grounding

The chapter list (see above) can help to serve as a grounding element in the story, pulling the reader out of the disorientation of the 4-dimensional 5-perspective timeline. In addition, Ensemble has a credits page, which gives some brief explanation of the graphical icons used and what they mean in the story, along with giving credits and linking to the full artwork the character portraits are derived from. This is not included in the story introduction, because it contains spoilers.