Focalpoint SFX

For six days between 17th and 22nd November 2008, the St. Francis Xavier Higher Secondary School in Siolim (generally referred to as SFX) had ten eager and enthusiastic participants working hard on making their own digital short stories. The participants sailed through the 'Test Drive DST' session on the first day, facing head-on the intricacies of Movie Maker and the challenge to make a 1-minute story based on photos and music provided to them. Most participants were able to finish their 'mini-DST' projects in the 2 hours allotted to them. Of course, some fine tuning like managing audio volumes or visual transitions would have required much more time, but that didn't matter since the idea was more to give the participants a hands-on of the DST process and less to have them come out with a technically and artistically perfect product. After all, there would be ample time later in the workshop for them to perfect their skills. Here are two samples of the outputs of this exercise:

'A Life of A Girl' by Velisha Araujo


'Truth of Life' (in Hindi) by Roshan Salgaonkar


In the weeks before the workshop and during the initial DST presentation from GoCreat, Fr. Paul Sagayam, Principal of SFX, had been a big help to us - not just in welcoming the idea of having the workshop, but also making sure we got all the onsite support we needed to set up the lab in preparation for the workshop. This is what Fr. Sagayam had to say when he paid a brief visit on Day-1 of the workshop:



In the days that followed, the participants made drawings, told their stories, wrote and rewrote scripts, travelled around Siolim taking photos for their stories, did the storyboarding, and finally made their stories into short films using Movie Maker. Their indivudual stories follow...

'The Riverside' by Cheryl Mascarenhas


'My Village and Me' by Claricia D'Souza


'Beyond Your Wildest Imagination' by Denzil Gomes


'A Thinker's Paradise' by Fiona D'Cruz


'My Eighth Wonder' by Hortencia Pereira


'Vacation in Majali' by Prajakta Sail


'Nature Lover' by Richa Pednekar


'Heaven of Water' by Rochelle Fernandes


'The Playground' by Roshan Salgaonkar


'Trees' by Velisha Araujo


As in previous workshops, the whole process was as uplifting and exciting to the GoCreat facilitators as it was for the participants, and we thank our young participants and the school for this. On the last day, we decided to give a video camera to the students to play around with and also to record for us their feedback; from the footage it certainly looked like they had a good time with the camera. As for the feedback, if only they had kept the mike on... :) But we used their raw video clips, added our own footage from the previous days and made a 3 and a half minute video which I think brings out the fun we had at the workshop. Here it is:

Upcoming Workshops in Video, DST and online media tools

GoCreat will be partnering with Video Volunteers to conduct a few workshops in Goa specifically for grassroots activists. The workshops will help participants in using video, new media tools and DST effectively to communicate and project online, issues they are tackling on the ground. Here is the tentative outline.

We will be conducting a workshop in Benaulim (South Goa), a village where citizens are actively protesting rampant and un-planned development that is destroying the lush green fields and charm of the countryside. This workshop will be on Video Blogging and Online Activism. This is a two-day workshop on 18th and 19th from 10am to 6pm.

Participants will be using camera phones (to be provided by VV) and will each be creating a film on a topic/issue of choice in Benaulim village. As such, participants will need to come prepared with an accessible story/issue they would like to tackle in 3 hours of field work made into a short (1min-3min) film.
Resource persons: Namita Singh and Gasper D'Souza

Day two of the workshop will deal with online activism - promoting your cause/video through New Media tools.
Resource person: Freeman Murray

Next, we will be conducting a series of workshops over 4 days from Nov 25th to 28th as follows from 10am to 2.30pm:

Nov 25th: Introduction to Online Activism.
This session will take participants through the New Media tools available to highlight, create awareness and promote the cause online.

Nov 26th: Video Blogging
The session will seek to help participants to work with simple equipment (like cellphone cameras) to create effective visual documents of activities and post these online to blogs and social media sites.

Nov 27th and 28th: Digital Storytelling
This is a hands-on workshop where we will take participants through the process of creating a digital story - a short personal story using pictures (still images, paintings, newspaper clippings etc), the participant's voice and background music.
We normally conduct these workshops over a period of 5 days and is a process oriented workshop. So this is going to be a squeeze and more product oriented. So our aim will be to help participants to put together a product - their digital stories, in the 2 days.

Participants at this workshop are required to bring in a wide variety of images (between 10 to 15 photographs, scans of drawings/paintings, scans of newspaper clippings etc) that concern the issue/story they wish to tell along with an idea of the storyline (i.e. their personal story - what to say on the issue).

We will go through the process of putting the images together in sequences (a time-line) and record the voice of the participant for each story.

This is the first time we are directly addressing workshops for activists. It should have it's own challenges. Stay tuned for our experiences and workshop outcomes.

Test Driving Movie Maker

One of the ideas that came out of the brainstorming that happened within the GoCreat group, after the Holy Cross DST Workshop, was to have the participants get their hands dirty with Movie Maker right on day one - go through the whole process of making a DST, based on material that we would provide. Get the technology barrier out of the way (not much of a barrier for these youngsters I must say) and acquaint yourself well with the steps that you would be following while making the 'real' Digital Story. Since the second DST workshop that we planned to conduct in Siolim (at SFX Higher Secondary School) was fast approaching, it was decided to apply this idea there.

And so was conceived the 'DST Test Drive'. Based on a maximum of four images (from a set of 10) that the participants would be asked to select, they would write a script, record it in their voices, select a background music (from a set of four pieces), put all this in a Movie Maker project and churn out a short 1 minute film, all in 2 hours flat. A recipe for disaster? What better way to find out than to try it within the group.

So we decided to hold a 2 hour session on Movie Maker for GoCreators, on Wed 22nd Oct at ICG; 6 people signed up for the test drive. We used the 'Production Kits' from the Holy Cross Workshop as the raw material - these were participant-wise folders created during the workshop, containing (for each participant) the audio recording of his/her narration, the photos and the background music that went into the DST. Having this ready-made meant that the test drivers could focus completely on Movie Maker alone and wouldn't have to spend time on other activities. The session went quite well and gave us the confidence to proceed with the planned 'Test Drive DST' module in the next workshop, at SFX.

Fluid Borders - Hallo Goa Nara

What happens when you put a bunch of 20 odd students from 2 cultures, not knowing each other's languages, in one space, for one day? On September 6, a group of university students and professors from Nara, Japan got together with students of Goa University for a day-long cross-cultural interaction at the International Center, Goa. This interaction was a part of the Toyota Foundation funded "Goa - Nara Neighbourhood Project"

Fluid Borders is an audio presentation of the day's events.

View the Audio Slideshow

De-constructing Goa-Nara

I realised just how much of a hassle it can be, specially for beginners like myself, to balance between audio and photography. Both require just as much thought and attention! For each scene, I made sure I got my images first. I then put down the camera and began recording the audio. But in many instances I found that I needed to capture audio and simultaneously also get a still image. Those were time when I had the mic in one hand and framed shots with the other. A good experience!

Following advice from great teachers like Cyndy Green and Angela Grant (if these are not already on your daily reading list, I strongly recommend you have them), I have begun my multimedia work with a strong emphasis on audio. So, besides making sure I got my shots as I normally would in photojournalism, I also ensured I had good audio for all scenes.

Back home, I edited my audio recordings (using Audacity) down to the clips I thought I could use. Then came the task of sequencing the audio. For this, I used the two interviews I did on location as a rough backbone to go through the timeline (I did mix the interviews around, taking portions from one spot and moving them to another - before or after).

Next, I selected the good live audio from the scenes and inserted them between the interview clips. Finally, I recorded my voiceover to tie together the various segments. I kept voiceover down to the minimum, using it only where absolutely required.

Reading Cyndy and Angela, I realised how important it is, for us photojournalists, to get the audio track right. My endeavour is to try and get an audio that could even go as a standalone piece - perhaps on radio a la NPR (potential buyers, please note :-) ?). Not sure how much I succeeded towards this end.

Anyway, I finally got down to picture selection and editing. (Note: I more or less had a pretty good idea about the images I had, before I began the production). I then sequenced them and got the images and audio into SoundSlides. Here I had to adjust the timings for each image to match audio and images and the result is what you see.

One key point is background music. I've used music by gurdonark, under the CC license from ccmixter.org/. This is a must have site on your list for production. Under the license, music is free to re-use and distribute with attribution to the creator.

View the Presentation

Holy Cross School - Final Cuts

At the end of Day 6 of the DST Workshop held at Holy Cross High School in Siolim, 10 films were complete. Salil Konkar, Alito Siqueira, Gasper D’souza and Preeti Padgaonkar sat editing the films under direction from the participants. And the young enthusiasts knew exactly what they wanted!

Here are the final films.

'Sateri Mai' - Alisha Govekar:




'My House in the Past' - Bryan Britto




'Zhar' - Delaila Fernandes




'My Beautiful House' - George Monteiro

'When I first caught a Fish' - Michael Fernandes

'Vhal Mhozo Ixtt' - Nabila D'Souza

'The Ground and Me' - Rowena Petters

'Ticketless in Borivali Park' - Sharon Sebastian

'My Dream- Football' - Valencia Braganza

'My living room' - Yohann Fernandes

Hallo Goa Nara

The one day program titled "Hallo Goa Nara" Goa Nara students interaction programme will be held on September 6th at the International Centre Goa. In this regard professor Alito Sequeira from the department of Sociology Goa University, professor Kyoko Matsukawa from the department of Sociology Nara University, Gasper Desouza photojournalist whose work has appeared internationally, Preeti Padgaonkar a student from the department of Sociology Goa University sat together at a restaurent in Panjim, Goa discussing what the event should focus on.

As our Japanese collegues do not share common language with Goan students various activities such as dancing and painting were suggested. It was emphasized that the language should not be a barrier in interacting and the variious activities of the day should give a glimpse of the other person and culture.

GoCreat to be represented at Panos South Asia workshop on Multimedia

Even as we have been in the thick of the DST workshop in Holy Cross School Siolim, we have just received news that Gasper has been selected to attend the Panos South Asia workshop on "Multimedia Local Content Production for ICT4D" in Katmandu, Nepal for his work with GoCreat.

The 8-day workshop starts on 22nd Sep, through to 29th Sep.

The workshop will focus on how organisations and groups like GoCreat can use multimedia to give voice to the community at the grassroots. It would also give us an opportunity to see how to use Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) and establish synergies with the media.

This is a major shot in the arm for GoCreat and the exposure gained from this international workshop will go a long way in our endeavours in multimedia with the local communities in Goa.

Holy Cross, Siolim: Trail blazing at 75

When Holy Cross Convent Siolim turned 75 years old it tuned on into an ancient learning approach and combined it with sophisticated modern technology – the digital story. The digital story is a media artifact. It is personal narrative that enables new approaches to reflection and engagement from our story teller students. It is made from digital images and sounds. Selected students of the school participated in a hands on and minds on Digital Story Telling Workshop from August 18 to 23, 2008 facilitated by Gocreat.

Our little story tellers spend six enthusiastic fun filled and intensely serious afternoons and have produced for us their little stories. “My favorite place” was the theme and the students were free to craft the story just as they wished. The digital stories they made invite us to enter their intimate world ranging from their living room at home, to the bounty that Mother Nature has given Siolim the springs and rivulets and one of the presiding deity of Siolim – Sateri. You will see that our little citizens indeed have their heads, minds and values in the right place. At the end of the workshop we are optimistic about all that is central to life and love, to humanity and its survival. No words can be a substitute to experiencing the films of these young people.

From Gocreat we want you all little citizens to know that we are deeply touched first by your stories and so also by all that you put into making your stories. We want to thank you for giving us this opportunity to be in your presence while you were at your most sincere and fun filled best. We wish you all good things and sure some day you will all be artists in your own unique ways.

We would also like to than Sr. Principal, for taking the risk and allowing us to work with you all and tolerating all the noise and disturbance during the six afternoons we spent with you, often overshooting the time allotted to us. We were also deeply encouraged by the enthusiasm show by your teachers who were around to help us and who were so keen to learn DST themselves. Martin was all things to all persons and helped with everything from setting computers and making sure that we have nice snacks and tea to keep us going. And all the other teachers and students who kept peeping in and enjoying the fun…you too made it fun to be around.

Digital Story Telling is a blend of the ancient art of story telling and modern computer and digital technology. We all know that whether we should use computers in education is no longer an issue. The question that confounds us is how to do it? Perhaps on its 75th birthday, Holy Cross High School has introduced yet another innovation in Goa, just as it had 75 years ago been one of the pioneers in women’s education in Goa.

From all of us at Gocreat….and keep the fun going….

- A note by Alito Siqueira

GoCreat DST workshop at Holy Cross School

Over the next week, GoCreat will be helping out in conducting a digital storytelling workshop in Holy Cross High School, Siolim, Goa. This workshop, is organised as part of the Goa-Nara Neighbourhood project (see: http://siolimdiaries.blogspot.com).

This workshop marks another outreach for GoCreat. So far we have worked in the 5-day format (6 work-hour days). The school environment comes with its own special needs and considerations and we will address them in following posts.

My First Day at School

In this digital story, Chelsea who completed her third birthday in Jan 2008, recounts her first day at school in the nursery class. The conflicting emotions she is going through are interesting. Is her first day also her last? Or did she enjoy herself?
Created by Gasper D'souza

Second GoCreat DST Workshop: July 18 - 22

On July 18th, 2008, GoCreat began its second workshop with the students of the Department of Sociology, Goa University.
In all 8 students are participating in the 5 day workshop. What makes this special for us, is that as part of our small endeavour to create community media centers in Goa, the students created their own blog and will be encouraged to start regular blogging.
While the proceedings from the present workshop will be blogged live and hopefully, the students will continue blogging even after the end of the workshop thus creating a micro-community online. A good spin-off from the GoCreat DST workshop, we would think.
Let's see how this one pans out!

GoCreat's First Digital Story Screenings

Day 4 and 5 were intense with each participant working at a feverish pace, learning the ropes, and producing their very own stories.

Over the past 5 days at the workshop, they polished their scripts, visualised possibilities, created storyboards and finally put it all together today (May 30) as their first Digital stories.

GoCreat was privileged to have 5 distinguished persons join us at the end of the workshop to preview and comment on the work. We had Jonnathan Josenhans (Film animation), Apurva Kulkarni (Artist, Art historian and critique), Rahul Srivastave (Writer and free lance researcher), Anita Haladi (Economics lecturer, film buff and organiser of training for students in film) and Isabel Vaz (English lecturer, Director of drama and film and as she called herself a ‘story teller’). We had an enlightening discussion on the possibilities and limitations of the DST.

For the facilitators Gasper and Alito it was an encouraging and learning experience. As one of the participants put it: "We gained so much... a voice... a craft... and a path."

A more detailed evaluation of the workshop and its process will follow.

But now, without ado, here are the films...

Sanvad (Dialogue) | Milan
(Marathi | Playing time: 4.11)


Dreamland | Nileema
(English | Playing time: 2:17)


My Hobby | Joseph
(English | Playing time: 2:28)


Lost in the Market | Preeti
(English | Playing time: 1:46)


So Often | Pamela
(English | Playing time: 8:29)

A story in 60 minutes

Today was a day of intense hands on work on the computers. Participants were introduced to Microsoft's Photo Story software. Through this very user-friendly software, they learnt how to sequence images, add voice-over, apply motion - pan and zoom and use inter-slide transitions.




Next was an exciting exercise. Participants were given a set of 20 images and 5 soundtracks (of various moods) for background music. Each had to select any 6 images of their choice and, using voiceovers, transitions, movements and other techniques learnt earlier, had to make a short story.



It was interesting to see the different stories than came from the same set of 20 images!

Fun by Joseph


Lonely by Nileema


Hope by Pamela


Musings by Milan


Confusion by Preeti


The above videos are first-time efforts by participants as an exercise in digital story telling and were completed in one hour. More to come as the workshop progresses.

GoCreat Workshop on DST

Today, May 26, GoCreat begins a 5-day workshop on Digital Storytelling (see brochure). We have 5 very enthusiastic participants with varying backgrounds, all raring to go! Among us we have, a journalist, an artist, two MA students of Sociology and one 14-year old student of std 9.



Alito started the participants off with an introduction to the concept of DST and the film "Mom Not Mom" was screened (watch the film on the Digital Storytelling Center website).



The participants then expressed their feelings after viewing the film using crayon on paper. And boy, did we get variety!


- Pamela


- Joseph


- Milan


- Nileema


- Preeti


- Alito


- Gasper

Next everyone got hands on experience in basic photo editing using the free Google software - Picasa.

By the end of the day, participants put together their first draft story in about 250 words. They then evaluated their own stories using the Seven Principles of Storytelling. This is the story they will be working on, over the next 5 days, converting it into a DST.



The current DST workshop is a followup of our experiences working with the Siolim Diaries project viewed at: siolimdiaries.blogspot.com.

What's in a Story?

Rahul Srivastava, co-director of PUKAR, Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research, a Mumbai-based research initiative delivered a talk to members of GoCreat on what makes a good story.

Rahul has written on the environment, popular culture and new knowledge practices. He has studied sociology and anthropology in India and the United Kingdom.

Listen to excerpts of Rahul's discourse...

Challenging times for journalists

"Rarely can a single person excel at so many skill sets"
- Steve Herman, South Asia correspondent, Voice of America

Steve Herman, delivering his address at the seminar on Convergence in Media at St Xavier's College, Mapusa, spoke about the perils and challenges that technology has thrown at media houses and journalists.

Does asking a single journalist to work in multiple media simultaneously reduce the quality of the final product? With so many sources of information, can we trust all we see or read on the Internet?

According to Steve, as long as media houses and journalists remain responsible and consumers are able to discern the factual from the fictitious, we are headed for a truly positive media revolution.

Listen to excerpts from Steve Herman's talk (8min 7MB):

Converge for your own good

"Convergence for a journalist today is a fact of life. You have to live with it, you have to train for it, you have to be ready to develop and use the many skills required of you today."
- Prem Panicker, Editor - Rediff.com

Students, j-School lecturers and journalists were given a brief dose of convergence in media and the emergence of the new journalist during Prem's talk at the Convergence seminar at St Xavier's College, Mapusa.

Prem spoke of the need for journalists to equip themselves with new skills required for multimedia story-telling. Skills such as the ability to record good sound and video clips and use of digital cameras. But more importantly, Prem stressed on the need for maintaining the age-old focus on content. Multimedia journalists are not just techies with tools. They need to think about each story they work on. Today it is not just enough to research and write your story. You also need to think about what medium is best to tell that story. More importantly, different aspects of the same story may be told using different media. The ability of a journalist today, to combine various media into a multimedia package is what would make a sought-after journalist.

Using his own experiences as a background for his talk, Prem made his point clear - learn the new skills and improve your story-telling ability in the new media or languish in the old.

Listen to this audio recorded at the seminar (13 min | 12MB):

Freezing in on a Story

The group has had a couple of "coming together" meetings. After brainstorming sessions over tea and "batata wadas" we froze in on the theme "Market"

Within this broad theme, each participant came up with ideas for individual stories. They got to know what makes for a "strong story" while at the same time, being feasible/manageable.

We used the online courses from the BBC Training website (bbctraining.com) and participants learnt how to "Prepare to tell a story"

Key concepts learnt for good storytelling were:
1. A Hook
2. Characters
3. A setting
4. A key question

During the second meet, the documentary "Walmart - High Price of Low Cost" was screened, since the topic we chose was Market.

After deliberations, we narrowed in on the following story ideas:
1. Child's view of the market (an audio slideshow perhaps)
2. Sounds of vendor calls (an audio presentation)
3. A multimedia (still images and video) feature on the remnants of the old economy (traditional vendors selling products prepared by them) struggling to survive in the new world.
4. Personal relationships formed in the marketplace.


More later...

Welcome to GoCreat

GoCreat is an experiment in multimedia story-telling and innovative pedagogy. It seeks to bring together individuals of various backgrounds with a common desire to use new-media as a powerful tool for expressing themselves.
Based in Goa, India, the group comprises of a photojournalist, a lecturer of the Goa University, a newspaper journalist and a bunch of enthusiastic students. By-and-by you will be introduced to this intrepid bunch.
What can you expect on this blog? As the main description goes, it is a work in progress and will document the experiences of the group as we seek to use multimedia tools and techniques to tell stories.