Presentations Lab: Storyboarding
CTL Presentation Skills team
http://ctl.utsc.utoronto.ca/ac
Today’s Agenda
• We’ll explore a technique called Storyboarding
• Narrates a series of frames depicting what you want to say
• Allows others to see the flow of your presentation
Storyboarding in 4 steps
1.Brainstorm
2.Group &
Identify the core ideas for
your presentation
3.Apply a visual
organizer
4.Create a
storyboard plan
What kind of perspective do you have?
▪ Explore
– What might be happening?
– What people are involved? In
what way?
▪ Describe
– What is happening?
– What people are involved? In
what way?
▪ Understand
– Why it is happening?
▪ Explain
– Why is it happening?
▪ Predict
– What is likely to happen?
▪ Change
– How can it be made to be
different?
▪ Evaluate
– What has happened? Why did it
happen?
▪ Assess impacts
– What have been, or are likely to
be, its individual, social and
environmental consequences?
Why have these consequences
occurred?
Blaikie, N. Designing Social Research, 2000. Polity, UK.
Steps 1-2: Brainstorm & Group Core Idea (an iterative process… Do this with YOUR topic!)
…Knowing “which” story to tell is half the battle!
Funexampl
e
Map out your research topic area: (consider
including…)- academic concepts/theories
- voices (peoples, individuals, organizations, movements)
- timescales (now/before/ever, pre-colonial, personal
growth)
- resources (technical, corporate, scientific, power,
community)
- tensions (power, struggle, resistance)
- difference (what has changed? how has it changed?)
- affect and the non-representational (surface and reveal
something that is otherwise missing from the map)
Complete Steps 1-2. Decide which story to tell…
Step 3: Decide how best to tell the story… (apply a visual organizer)
How would you tell your story?
Example:
▪ CATEGORICAL– Here’s a well-curated series
of themes / voices / experiences
Example:
▪ HIGHLY CLIMACTIC– A cascading series,
culminating in a final (or near final) expression
Step 3: Decide how best to tell the story… (apply a visual organizer)
How can you tell a compelling story?
Example:
▪ UNFOLDING PROCESS– It was how it was (describe how
it was). And now it is how it is (describe that too):
– Capture a state of affairs; observe the evidence and traces of change / struggle / resistance over some period of time; and, try to better understand how things came to be the way they now are
Don’t just describe. Explain!
Step 3: Decide how best to tell the story… (apply a visual organizer)
How would you tell any story?
Example:
▪ SPATIAL / LIMINAL– Presented as a deliberate
choice of one vector/direction over others
– Consider: Eco Tourism, Religious pilgrimage, Adventure Tourism
Example:
▪ EXPANDING RADIUS– Focused exploration across
an expanding series of dimensions, e.g. My identity, vs. my identity and family life, vs. my identity in my community
Complete Step 3: Apply Visual Organizers
Mix & match.
Try one and see if it fits.
No “best” answer. Use the worksheets.
Come up with a “way” of telling your story…
Step 4: Make your own storyboarding plan
▪ At the end of the day,
you need a plan!– No matter how you tell your
story, it’ll be comprised of a
series of “things” – these may be
photographs, audio descriptions,
video clips, a step in the Prezi
path, witty and/or impactful text
on a screen.
– Let’s break it down into a series
of storyboards
▪ Turn your Step 3 efforts into a
storyboard…
▪ Break down by SCENE / SHOT
– Shot/Purpose: articulate why this
shot helps build / reveal the scene
– Visual requirements (image files,
videos, step in Prezi path,
Powerpoint Slide, …? )
– Audio/Textual requirements (text
script, audio voiceover)
THANK-YOU!
CTL Presentation Skills team
http://ctl.utsc.utoronto.ca/ac