Production-on-the-go practice: storyboarding as a retrospective and redundant school literacy activity

Abstract

Storyboarding is one common strategy used in teaching young people digital media. This paper argues that in adolescents' literacy practices, they engage in production on the go. The metaphor is described in this paper to put forward the argument that storyboarding can be a retrospective and redundant literacy activity in adolescents' school literacy practices when it is not their inherent practice to engage in a two-step process in digital media production, i.e., design intended to precede production. Drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of New Literacy Studies, this study adopts an ethnographic perspective to gain insights into 10 14-year-old Chinese adolescents' literacy practices in Singapore. Data for this paper were collected over a period of eight months from participant observations, with video-and-audio recordings, semi-structured and in-depth text-elicited group and individual interviews, the adolescents' research diaries and artefacts from their literacy practices.

Keywords:

• digital media production
• design
• storyboarding
• production on the go

Notes

Transcription convention (adapted from Freebody 2003)

Each group had an average of four members for the Flash and MediaStage productions. There were more than 10 participating adolescents when the audio data, presented in the excerpts, were collected. Nonetheless, Heng, Elisa and Jane in Melissa's group (see Excerpts 4 and 5) had dropped out of the research participation towards the end of the study.

A key frame in animation and filmmaking is a drawing that defines the starting and ending points of any smooth transition. They are called ‘frames’ because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film. (Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_frame.)

Lah and lor are particles used in Singlish used by the speakers to emphasise a point made in the particular instance of talk.