Layout ideas

Before I do the interview which I have planned for tomorrow, I need to decide how I want this to look so that I can make sure the audio is not going to feel like it has been thrown over the top of my design. I have come up with three ideas that will give all of the sections their own part making sure that the story is not too confusing and to show that between sections time has passed. 

My first idea is to have a photo album theme, with this I could have captions summarising photos to match the audio so they do not look out of place and also have the option to say either my Nan's age on the sections or the year so the viewer can see that time passes between each section. Here is a rough mock up of what this could look like.

My second idea is to have a table with scattered photos on it, this would work nicely as a main page and each photo works as a link to their relevant page. It would start as a large pile of over lapping photos and when you select the photo you want to see you click it and the other photos move outward leaving this photo in place and the camera zooms in giving you a page layout with your chosen photo, other photos, drawings and animations around it with a heading telling you which section you are on and text explaining the story. In this you would also have a back button to make the camera zoom back out and the photos to move back in so you end up back at the first page again. Here is a drawing of what the first page could look like.

My third layout idea is to have all of the events and sections on a timeline, this will work in a similar way to the second idea in that it is a main page which takes you to separate parts of the story as you please. However what this idea will do that the second didn't was build a strong structure to represent time and order to the sections of the story so the viewer will not come across my nan leaving St. Annes before she has even arrived there. Here is an idea of the sections that I have divided along a timeline. 

The key thing that I have learnt from all of my designs is that I need my audio to work as a story but to be clearly split between my sections so that when you start on section two it doesn't sound like it starts half way through a sentence but also doesn't repeat what you have already heard in section one. I will have to try and make this clear when interviewing my Nan.

Interview sections and questions

It has taken me a couple of days to get through my Nan's life story as it has taken some decoding. Some of the story touches on family issues that are best not to be spoken about as it could cause serious family arguments and upsets, because of this my Nan decided when writing her book she would change everyones name and the names of places the story takes place. This works fine in the interest of keeping the family happy but has made my life particularly difficult as I have had to go through this book with a tooth comb and then try and piece the story back together with real names and places. 
However its done now and there are lots of points that I have pulled out that could be very interesting, here is a break down of the sections I will be using and the questions I will be asking in the interview about each section.

10 days old
      Explain about being given to Mrs Bowden and how your father didn't know you were there
      Why did your mother do this?

Split up
      Explain how your father found out about Mrs Bowden and how he reacted
      Where did your mother go after the break up? Did she keep the house?
      Please tell us the quote on the divorce papers

Age 3
      What is St. Annes?
      Talk about being put into St. Annes, how did you feel?
      Why were you put there? 

Moving to the "big ward"
      How old were you when you moved to the big ward
      Talk about moving from the baby ward where you were happy
      How did the big ward change when christmas came?

Playing going home
      How old were you when you played this?
      What is "going home"?

Dinner in St. Annes
      What was dinner like in St. Annes?
      What happened when you didn't eat your dinner or tried to give it away?
      Tell the story about you being given a laxative because you refused your dinner

Start of the bombing
      What was the start of the bombings like? Were you scared?
      Explain why the robin sitting on the sacred heart was significant 

Evacuation
      Talk about the damage the bombs had done to the home
      Where were you evacuated to?
      Were you excited or nervous to be evacuated?  

Going to stay with mother and new husband
      Explain the meeting between you and your mothers new husband
      Did you get on with your mother at the time you stayed with her?
      Did you like her new husband?

Punished for ruining shoes
      Explain how you were always ruining your shoes and having to get them repaired
      What happened when you ruined your favourite red shoes?
      How did sister act after the incident?

End of the war
      How old were you then?
      Were you pleased to be back in Brighton?
      Did the home look different?

Sneaking into the cinema
      Why did you sneak into the cinema, and who were you with?
      Talk about being too scared to watch the films
      why were you so scared to watch them?

Fake leaving
      Talk about pretending to leave the home and then finding out you were actually leaving
      How did it feel to know you were finally leaving St. Annes?
      Did you feel ready to go?

End
      Talk about going to live with your mother
      Explain  how it was the end of one section of your life, but opened doors for the next part.

Collecting more

After deciding to stick with my Nan's life story I realised that I needed to go back to hers to collect more photos and information. When I went round she had written out yet more stories on bits of paper, envelopes and she also gave me her life story which she has written in the style of a book. This has given me a lot to look through so I will need to start reading through the book pulling out interesting parts to put in chronological order, from this I will be able to write up some interview questions and keep her on track to talk about the right things! 

Change of plan

After deciding to base my Ebook around the story of my Auntie finding out the truth behind her family tree, I went into lesson to discuss this with my tutor. I started by telling them a few of the other stories that my Nan had given me which I felt were all too short to stand as a story on their own, However when I was telling these mini stories to my tutors they suggested that the story would be extremely interesting if I used most of the stories together to tell a full life story of my Nan. Once they had suggested this, I couldn't quite work out why it hadn't been my idea! 

So I have now decided to scrap the story of my Auntie and do a story of my Nan's childhood. Luckily she has boxes of old photos stored away which I will be able to look through and she has also written a book about her life which I have access to and will be able to take sections out of. 

My next steps with this new story direction is to gather the story and photos together as quickly as possible in order to prepare the questions that I am going to ask in the interview. After this is done I will start doing a story plan, record the interview and hopefully have a good idea of what my Ebook will look like, with some good mock ups of the colours and themes for the pitch. 

Accidental Story

While my nan and I were looking through her old photos and reading the stories she had written me, we came across a photo of my older sisters christening. The lady holding her looked very much like my auntie but my nan told me it was my Great Auntie Jenny.
When I mentioned that she looked like my Auntie Debbie, my nan told me a story about how funny it was for me to mention that.

Jenny had been my nan's next door neighbour when my nan and granddad moved into a house in Crowborough in August 1964. From that moment on, my nan and Jenny became best friends, and Jenny got promoted to an Auntie. Many years later my Auntie Debbie was sitting with my nan talking about all of her aunties, but when she came to Auntie Jenny, my nan shook her head and explained that she was not her real auntie, she was just a very good friend.
Debbie didn't take this very well at all and cried for ages because she really wanted my Jenny to be her real Auntie.
A little while later, Jenny was looking through her family history to put together a family tree and found that Debbie's Great Granddad's sister was Jenny's Great Grandma, so they are actually related, which could possibly explain why they look so similar!

Jenny holding my sister, 1992

Auntie Debbie holding Ava, 2012

This is such a simple story with a happy ending, but has a lot of elements that I could use to turn it into a book. I will need to keep searching through the family history to make sure that I have all of the correct information and possibly find some photos or possibly some video that I could use for this piece. But I feel that with the family tree creating the basis for this story, It could come out very well.

Family Stories

Knowing that my nan has lots of old photos and family stories I asked her to have a think about a few stories that she has photos to compliment. I then went round to her house to find that she had written seven different stories which she had written on envelopes that had photos inside. So we sat down and went through the stories to see what she had come up with. Here are a few of the stories she has given me...


Story 1:

"Mother and I on one of her visits to Mrs Bowden, whom she gave me to when I was 10 days old. Though she had to take me back when my Dad came home on leave. Some one told him what was going on and he filed for divorce and I was put into care at the age of three"


Story 2:

"Mother and I ages about three and just before she put me into St Annes, having been made a ward of court and actually given to my fathers custody, but he being in the army, agree to have me put away. He then abandoned me. At least my mother kept in touch, she didn't want me, but didn't want anyone else to have me. My cousin, Gino, told me , she'd planned to leave me there till I died, which happened to some of the girls, if their family didn't come to take them home. Some only went home when they were 14 and old enough to work and giving in another wage to the house and I know some who were sexually and physically abused by their fathers. Others put into service to scivvy for the rich and Dr family. Some, to escape became nuns. And perhaps to dish out the abuse, they themselves had received. Where I was left until I was about 17 years old, was where the word "care" did not exist"

My nan, with her mother. Aged three

Story 5:

"My mother and I, taken in Trafalgar Square. I was 18 years old and although you can't see them, she made me wear boys shoes and long grey boys socks and you can see, she still made me wear ribbons in my hair, this was before she took me to an Italian barber and told him in Italian, to give me short back and sides, I came out looking like a boy. She hated me and was jealous of me or maybe my youth and kept me dressed as a child while I lived that one year with her. I think my stepfather, Cescene was afraid of her, he left her 6 months after he made her take me out of St Annes, he was 12 or 14 years younger than her. Many times I heard her beating him up in her bedroom. Not very happy in this picture." 

My nan, with her mother and aunties. Aged 18

Ebook?!

First things first, what on earth is an Ebook?!

An Ebook is an electronic book or a digital book that can be read on multiple digital platforms including the Ipad.

"Ebooks can be anything from the digital version of a paper book, to more interactive content that includes hyperlinks and multimedia"
www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp

After the class digging deeper into what we need to do for this project, I realised that the one bit I am stuck on is visualising what the finished product is going to look like, and I think this comes down to calling it an Ebook. When I first heard that it was an Ebook I instantly thought of a text heavy page which you turn to get another text heavy page with the occasional picture. This however is not the case with what we are doing, from what I have gathered from looking at other example of Ebooks (even though there are no accurate example for this project as we are doing something quite new in the field) I gather it will look more like a picture book with animation and video tied into it so that it looks seamless and becomes interactive. I have been shown a little on how to use Ibook author which is the software we will use to create the Ebook once we have all our elements together and I have started to see how we are going to make it work. We have also been shown a tutorial on how to make a photo seem more 3D which was really helpful and inspiring. After these few lessons on options we can use in our Ebooks, I have a much better understanding of what it will look like, however I don't think I will have a complete idea until I start using Ibooks more or maybe even until I start putting my project together in it!
So until then I will need to really get thinking about what story I am doing to give myself the best chance of being able to build it well. 


Some examples



This is an advert for "The Beatles Yellow Submarine", this book is available on the Ibooks store and while this book is coded and hugely complex, this gives a good idea of how you can take the Ibook away from being a normal plain book. This book shows how interactive and interesting the Ebooks can be. This has really got me thinking about what I can make my book look like and what I can make it do. 

Here is an example of documentary animation that I found very useful for this project.
This animation uses mainly photos which apear to have been cut out leaving a white edge which shows they are photos. The colour scheme is quite de-saturated which I think also really works well here and the important objects seem to be a lot brighter making them stand out from the background.
Although there is no audio telling the story in this piece the message is clear and I think works perfectly without spoken audio.

In this documentary animation the use of spoken audio is very strong, the animation would not work without it. From start to finish we are spoken through a story, with the passion of the words spoken it makes the whole piece seem more real. The colour scheme in this animation mainly suites the book keeping an orangey brown town, but the odd colour is thrown in to make the scenes work. This animation is very effective and tells a real story from start to end. What this animation also has is a credit roll at the end where it thanks the people taking part. I think this is a great idea and I will try and use this in my book.