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