Presentations: Storyboarding

CTL Presentation Skills team

http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/ctl/presentation-skills

What is Story Boarding?

• The creation of a series of frames depicting what you want to say• Similar to what occurs in movie production

• 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?

▪ Describe

– What is happening?

– What people are involved? In

what way?

▪ Understand and Explain

– Why it is happening?

▪ Predict and Change

– What is likely to happen in the

future?

– 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.

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?)

…Knowing “which” story to tell is half the battle!

Steps 1-2: Brainstorm & Group Core Ideas (an iterative process… Do this with YOUR topic!)

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)

Activity

Resources!