Storyboard Projects
Technical Instructions

As more and more teachers are integrating multimedia into their teaching, a new technique is emerging as a change-of-pace from the video projects done in the past. We are calling these projects Storyboard Projects. They consist of a web page with still photos and narrative text and perhaps audio explaining the photos. So here are some examples of Storyboard Projects done in 2005 by Fiona Gillespie.

These Storyboard Projects are easier to do than video projects because there are no long video shooting hours. And much of the material that students will need to put in their projects can be done at home and away from the Multimedia Center. The steps which the students will take are:

• Take pictures
• Upload photos to student I drive
• Resize the photos
• Make sound recordings (music, voice-overs, sound effects, etc.)
• Put all of the items on a web page

The only step requiring out-of-the-ordinary software is the voice-overs. Student can make short (60 second) voice-overs with the program Sound Recorder on their computers with a cheap microphone. Or longer recordings can be made with Sound Forge on the Multimedia Center PCs. Once students have collected their assets (photos and sounds), they can assemble them their web page with Expression Web. Adding the sound is a little complicated but we have prepared a template that will streamline this sound process.

Detailed Steps:

• Make a new folder on your I: drive to hold all your images and sound files
• Copy the StoryboardTemplate.htm file from P:/Multimedia Center/Storyboard Projects to your new folder
• Rename the htm file
• Resize your images in Photoshop or some other imaging program. One photo for each storyboard panel.
• Make your voice-overs and sound files. One for each panel.
• Refine your web page
• Test the web page thoroughly.

You may choose to resize your images in a digital image program like Microsoft Photo Editor. And you may make simple sound voice-overs in Sound Recorder. Or you may to be fancier and use Photoshop and/or Sound Forge. If you use Sound Recorder, the files will be saved as .WAV files. If you use Sound Forge, save the files as .WMA files (see Diagram).

If making the images in Photoshop remember the following:

• Images have to be small. To get 4 per row on a web requires the images to be 200x150 pixels.
• Borders around the photos make the images standout from the page.
• When ready to save in Photoshop, do a Save for Web and adjust file types and settings to get the smallest file that still has good quality. experiment with jpg, gif, png-8, and png-24.

When making sound files in Sound Forge remember the following:

• All sounds on the web page should have uniform volumes within a sound clip and between clips.
• Save sound files from Sound Forge as wma with at least 56 Kbps quality

The web page template (StoryboardTemplate.htm on the P: drive) is set-up to use images and sound files that are numbered 1 through 8. Panel 1's image will be 1.jpg or 1.png. The sound file for Panel will be named 1.wma, and so on. When you save your image and sound files you will have to name your files with this numbering convention or you will have to re-code the web page. Also, if you have more than 8 panels, you will have to add code to your web page. (It's easy to do.) Look here for more information.