Establish Germany´s Premier Story Teller Platform on the Internet
1 What will you do? |
With partners I will found a platform for story telling on the internet.
There seems to be no such platform where people can go and watch/listen to stories told by professionals (or hobbyists). The stories can range from fairy tail or ghost stories to crime or erotic stories.
Comedians have a lot of such platforms (also on TV). But strangely enough story tellers don´t.
So we will try to establish the first and then largest ;-) platform for story telling. We´ll start by publishing stories told by my co-founder. She has already made a business out of it and now wants to expand. But later we´ll also host other story tellers and make additional offerings. |
2 How will you test your idea and measure success? |
We´ll check Google Analytics numbers on the web site and Youtube view figures.
Also we´ll count the number of offline engagements and revenue. |
3 How will you know you are done? |
Once we get invited to TV talk shows and one of the major TV networks has offered us our own show, I guess we´re done :-) |
4 How will you enjoy the journey? |
Realizing our ideas is fun already :-) And once the number of online/offline visitors is rising, you can be sure we´ll have even more fun. Reaching people and making a difference is pure joy. |
Created Sep 20, 2010
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Comments & Observations
Matthew Cornell This sounds fantastic, Ralf, and you and your partner are ready to go. One of the bigger experiments I've seen so far. I'm curious if you know about http://storycorps.org/ ? I heard a little about it on the radio some time ago, and it seemed like good work. Since my mom died last November I think a lot about the transfer of family history. I have an aunt who is the last of my mom's siblings, and I've been thinking about calling her up. (We haven't talked in ages.) I especially worry about my 10 yo daughter, who knew her grandmother from yearly visits for a few days. It's a sad commentary on the loss of the village and extended family. I think I see the need for your new project. Great luck to you two.
Sep 20, 2010
Ralf Westphal Thx for the link to storycorps. That´s a really interesting project.
The stories in on our platform, though, will (probably) be fictional. It´s gonna be storytelling like centuries ago.
Sep 20, 2010
Ralf Westphal We did our first rehearsal to see how to set up a stage and get acquaintant with all the technical stuff like light, camera, sound. Although we were unable to use the originally booked location we ended up with a pretty satisfying result. All went well. If you like, have a look here for our first video of an oral story: http://bit.ly/99qOrk (German content, but maybe you want to watch anyway and let me know your general impression.)
Lessons learned: Check all cameras for the same image ration (4:3). The location´s acoustics should be a bit better than this time (less "echo"). Have more fabric at hand for stage background. Use a 16 GB memory card for camera #2. Use a tripod for camera #3. Do a white balance with all cameras. No extra sound recording needed.
Sep 23, 2010
Matthew Cornell I love it - she's great! It was even fun watching without understanding German - you can tell it's a rich performance. Great colors, too, and I liked the camera work. Lots of effort there, and great results. I'm excited for your idea. I thought "this sounds like digital storytelling" where we can reach others who might have been in the village if we'd lived many years ago. I found the phrase has some use, e.g., http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/ . Great lessons - they'll come in handy for other video experimenters, I'm sure. Very cool, Ralf. :-)
Sep 23, 2010
Ralf Westphal The other day we taped a total of 10 stories. Hope this time the sound is a little better than last time. Other than that video production is going ok.
Now we need to move on. A website is needed and/or a blog. That´s where we present our message and can invite people to tell stories.
Oct 15, 2010
Ralf Westphal Ah, one more thing: Over the course of the past weeks we realized a change of purpose. Whereas we started out to build the platform more or less to help marketing my story teller partner´s business we now see it independent of that. It´s supposed to be a more general cultural platform open for almost anyboy.
The platform is supposed to further the cause of story telling in general as a "trade" and a means to bring different cultures closer together.
And it´s focused on fictional stories, no biographical anecdotes or musings about relationships or the world.
Oct 15, 2010
Matthew Cornell That's really exciting, Ralf. It's fun to see direction emerge from the experiment - a success right there, in a way. Can't wait to see what happens next!
Oct 16, 2010
Ralf Westphal This experiment still goes on. I published a new video.
Now we need to move forward with our homepage. But what´s our message? Since it´s still in flux I guess we just start a blog first. Writing a bit, writing snippets feels good for finding out what we really mean :-)
Nov 05, 2010
Matthew Cornell Yes, writing to know what you're thinking works for me too. It helps to experiment - go for breadth - until I see a direction or get a good feeling about what the message is. Also, to avoid perfection, I try to pick *some* message, even if it's not perfect, then have a way to test it. How would you go about this in your project?
Nov 16, 2010
Ralf Westphal "Pick *some* message" is a good idea - as long as it´s not too far off ;-) And then try explaining that message and see if it works. That´s what we´re doing.
Nov 16, 2010