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| Train approaching Seraulim / Suravali station, Goa |
-Brian Mendonca
When I asked my students to come up with a digital story as part of the undergraduate syllabus I did not know what to expect. Digital story telling (DST) is one of the components of the communication skills course where students have to make a video on a topic of their choice to tell a story of their own.
The DSTs - which ranged from 70 MB to 220 MB - were uploaded on Google Classroom. Several DSTs would not open, so I asked the students to send their work on WhatsApp., which I later downloaded to a folder on my desktop. As I whetted - or waded through - some 50-odd MP4s I was quite overwhelmed at the ingenuity and skill of the students.
When it came to using apps like Canva, InShot, Kinemaster, or Power Director, the students did not bat an eyelid. Many used their own lives to create their stories, e.g. the sports the student participated in; the friends the student had; the dishes they enjoyed cooking; or the pets they so loved at home.
A good many of them showcased Goa in terms of its history, culture, temples, churches, festivals and even Goan weddings. Others were bitten by the travel bug and recorded their experiences at places like Karwar, Udaipur and Vellankanni. Being April, students also did their stories on waterfalls like Dudhsagar and treks to Pali. Heritage sites like Big Foot, Loutolim and KOCL farms, Nuvem were also subjects for digital stories. One student did a heartwarming story on stray dogs. She urged the viewer to care for them and not hurt them.
Many students resorted to cartoons and animation to present their stories. One particular app that got my goat was TweenCraft on Google Play where a story could be created with the help of stock characters which were used to mouth inane dialogues. Animaker was an app with helped with stock cartoon characters to push a story. Some stories which were lifted from this app even had a readymade voice over (VO) which came with the story. If the app was doing all the work how does one grade the student?
Some of the parameters are:
1. STORY: What is the story? Does it hang together well?
2. SCRIPT: Does the script support the story? Is it well-written?
3. VISUALS: Still or motion? Do they tie in with the script?
4. VOICE: How confident is the voice? Is the pronunciation okay? Is the language proper?
5. DURATION: Is it one minute or five? Is the story sustained over that time?
6. BALANCE: How do the elements sync together? Is the music appropriate? Is it too loud?
7. EFFECTS: Are the pictures captioned? Are there special effects like spooky sounds?
8. CREDITS: Is the name of the student on the digital story? Have the sources been credited?
It was an animated story set in Ratnagiri that quite intrigued me. It was about suicides happening at the same time in the afternoon in a village. When I struck a conversation with the students she shared that it was a real incident in her village in Seraulim, Goa. When I asked why she masked the name of the village, she had no answer. She narrated on social media:
This was a small incident that happened that is 3 people died due to suicide and they happened to die around 3 pm and on saturdays (on different saturdays). So someone spread a rumours of ghost. So everyone in that ward got scared but later priest did prayer and after that no one died.
In the digital story of the Seraulim suicides I felt lay the raison d'etre (reason to be) of the digital story. This was investigative reporting at its best. The digital story had the potential to become a documentary, which is a faithful record of the facts of the case.
Why are we reluctant to speak of the hidden stories of Goa? It is the youth who must come forward and use the technology of digital stories to bring awareness, if not change.
I am reminded of the vision of the savant Alito Siqueira who pioneered a new way of thinking about issues encouraging students to interrogate the obvious. (See Hanv Konn?).
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