Multimedia Storytelling Workshop

What is multimedia? Through a combination of critiques and hands-on learning, students will gain an understanding of what multimedia is, where it is going, and how it can be used for powerful storytelling. Students will be exposed to cutting-edge work and engage in critical discussions about what makes effective multimedia storytelling. The course will provide students with a foundation in gathering audio and visual materials as well as the skills to produce their own multimedia piece. A background in either photography or audio is helpful but not required. Students will learn the basics of Adobe Premiere Pro and will need a digital SLR camera and audio recorder. (25 hours)

Catherine Orr and Elena Rue are founders of StoryMineMedia, a visual storytelling company based out of Carrboro, N.C., that specializes in documentary stories. StoryMine produces independent projects and partners with nonprofits, foundations, and other organizations to create vibrant stories that people connect with—stories that move people, to action, to curiosity, to laughter (http://www.storyminemedia.com/)

Catherine Orr is a documentary journalist specializing in visual storytelling. She received her bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary and worked in international education at the University of Richmond. She completed her master’s degree at the University of North Carolina, where she was a Roy H. Park Fellow. She was editor-in-chief of Coal: A Love Story, produced by UNC–Chapel Hill’s Powering a Nation team as part of the Carnegie and Knight-funded News21 initiative, which received a 2012 SXSW Interactive Award, the Grantham Prize Award of Special Merit, and a recent write-up in the Sundance Film Festival’s online publication.

Elena Rue is a multimedia storyteller who uses the camera as a tool for exploration and learning. As a Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow in 2006, she spent ten months working with the NGO Hope for Children in Ethiopia, and for three years, she coordinated the Literacy Through Photography program at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. She is a 2011 graduate of the master’s program at the UNC–Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she was a 2010 Carnegie-Knight News21 Fellow and a 2010–11 Reese Felts Digital Newsroom Fellow. Rue teaches photography and multimedia courses at the Center for Documentary Studies and is also the program director of the Lewis Hine Documentary Fellowship program.