The making of Mini Movie Studio. I took the same people and places from the Storyspiration cards, laser cut them so they were stand-up figures, and painted them with chalkboard paint so the kids could customize the characters and settings to fit their stories. During interviews with parents, I’d learned that they value artifacts of their child’s pretend play (artwork, photos, and videos, for example), so I slapped an iPhone stand on the end of the “stage” for the final narrative to be recorded. The whole setup became the Mini Movie Studio. 

Storyspiration Screen Plays: Banana Peel

Remember those ol’ Storyspiration cards? I’ve been testing them with kids lately, and as a way to evaluate and understand their stories, I decided to transcribe them into screen plays. I added nothing to these, just organized the chatter. Enjoy! 

Banana Peel

By Alex (4 years old)

Characters: A curious, yet unfortunate, ballerina. Three hungry ghost fish, living in a haunted house.

A naked banana who we don’t see because it lives in the sky.

ACT ONE

Setting: A haunted house at night

(The scene opens on dark night. The only thing in sight is a house, evidently haunted.)

Narrator: “Suddenly!”

(The stillness of the night is broken by a giant banana peel falling out of the sky. It lands on the house with a “SLOP!”)

Narrator: “The banana dropped its peel on the house!”

(Alarmed by the commotion, a ballerina enters from stage left. She cautiously creeps toward the house with the enormous banana peel. Three ghost fish float out of an open window of the house.)

Narrator: “The ballerina’s gonna get eaten. By the ghosts.”

(The ghost fish swoop in, cut off her head, and swallow her up.)

Ghost fish: “Chomp!”

Narrator: “Suddenly! The ghost throwed the banana peel in the trashcan.” 

(Together, the three ghost fish hoist the giant banana peel from their roof and deposit it in the outside trashcan on the side of their haunted house.)

MUSICAL NUMBER: “Banana Peel”

Ghost fish: (Singing) “I ran over a banana peel, banana peel, banana peel, I ran over a banana peeeeel…. Go throw it in the trashcan.” (Chorus repeats 3x)

The End

Thesis as a tweet

Ready for a challenge? Take a topic you’ve been thinking on, writing about, and working on for 6 months and condense the whole thing to 140 characters. That’s when you really know what you’re talking about! So here we go, my thesis in a tweet:

“Making kids pretend players for life by designing creative storytelling tools for kids that prolong the lifespan of narrative play in the home. @myself”

Story play REMIX!

Remember back in the day when I created this book with little stuffies to see how kids’ used 2D and 3D objects to tell stories? Well, here we have the story play project 2.0 using (extra)ordinary materials (thanks to the amazing Daniela Rosner) as a response to the play pattern of the kids. 

With the insights from the 2D/3D prototype testing, I wanted to enhance the product with interactive elements that would respond to the gestures and actions I observed. I chose to explore sound and light as ways to inspire storytelling and engage the child. I wanted each page of the book to be a different exploration of a sense, so the child would learn to incorporate features of her surroundings into her stories. I didn’t want to lose the relationship between the 3D object and the book, so I took care in designing the way the object requires the book to create the interaction (completing a circuit) and vice versa. 

Touch

For the first page, which was illustrated with an indoor and outdoor castle scene, I chose to explore the sense of touch. I created a stroke circuit with conductive and non-conductive thread stitched into felt to represent a strip of grass. Two rows of conductive stitches were connected to LED flowers on either side of the strip. Then a battery was inserted into the stuffed mouse with brads connecting the positive and negative to the outside of the fabric, acting as feet. When the child moves the mouse over the grass, the circuit is completed and the lights turn on. 

Additionally, on the illustration of the stove inside the castle, I painted a circuit with copper paint and then placed a piece of heat-retaining fabric on top, with more copper paint to illustrate the coils of the stove. When the mouse is placed at the stove, the fabric heats up and becomes warm to the touch. 

Light

For the garden page of the book, I chose to explore light. I painted a potentiometer with conductive paint onto the path leading into the home, and connected it to LEDs in the fireplace. When the mouse scoots along the path (as I observed the children gesturing in the first prototype) the fire changes dimness, and as the mouse moves nearer, the fire gets brighter. 

Sound

For the last page of the book, I explored sound. I’d observed my test subjects moving the objects, but they didn’t move the actual book in their storytelling. So I wondered, how could the book become the object? To encourage movement of the 2D element of this product, I installed a tilt sensor on the page using a flat piece of metal, conductive thread, and copper tape and connected it to a microphone, speaker, and recording chip. I stitched steel fiber into the belly of a stuffed mouse so that when the mouse is placed near the mast of the ship, the circuit completes and the storyteller’s voice is recorded. Then, when the book is tilted to either side, the metal plate shifts to the end of the tilt sensor, switching on the pre-recorded sound. For example, the child could say “woosh” as the mouse was on the boat and then by rocking the boat, he or she would hear “woosh” with every tilt. 

This is all very exciting for me because in the world of electronic toys, there aren’t many out there using soft circuits and electronic textiles. Is there a way we could take this from crafty to mass market-able?

My robot is laughing at my idea to make him out of plants. That was going to be a big stinky moving pile of compost. Fine, robot! You will be plastic. (At least until I figure out how to control your laughter.)

Mini Movie Set Screen Plays: The Buglary

The following screen play came from a narrative play session with Annabel, who was testing my Mini Movie Set prototype. It’s a set of various shapes (settings and characters) that were laser cut and then painted with chalkboard paint so the kids can customize the objects they choose. I slapped an iPhone holder on the front of the “stage” so once everything is set up, the movie can be recorded and shared. This story is a fun one!

The Burglary 

By Annabel (5 years old)

Characters: Coco, a 9 year old who is sometimes a girl and sometimes a boy. He likes to play, but doesn’t like to pick up very much. Little boy, a child who lives in the farmhouse and grows up to become a guard, and later a robber. The guards, masked in purple and green, are the noble protectors of the farm’s valuables. The robbers are of assorted species; they are the villainous group of this tale.

ACT ONE

Setting: A yard with one happy green Christmas tree at stage left. A sad purple Christmas tree leans in back stage right. The day is cloudy.

(A yellow house enters from the sky and bounces three times before landing on the ground. Coco is hanging from the window sill.)

Narrator: “Coco’s in the house! Coco’s in the house!”

(Coco hangs on for dear life)

(A little boy exits the house and stands in the front yard)

Narrator: “They live on a farm.” 

Horse: (Enters stage right, neighing)

Narrator: “And the truck is bringing back some food.”

(A truck enters stage right and parks behind the house)

Someone in the distance: “We need a fence for the horsie or he’ll get out!”

ACT TWO

Setting: A yellow house on a farm. There is a happy green tree and a sad purple tree behind the house. The day is cloudy. A boy stands in the front yard and Coco is still hanging from the window of the house.

A burglar is inside the house.

Narrator: “The boy has to help get him out.”

Little boy: “Get away! Get away!”

(The little boy approaches the burglar and a fight ensues. The little boy wins, and burglar tumbles, airborne, out of the scene.)

Narrator: “He’s dead. Good. Coco told the boy there was a robber coming. Pshoooow! I put a cannon in him!”

ACT THREE

Setting: A yellow house on a farm with a purple picket fence. There is one happy green Christmas tree and a sad purple Christmas tree behind the house. There is a pond with one fish at stage right. The day is cloudy. In the front yard lies a dead robber with a cannon in him. 

Narrator: “These are the guards. Three guards. There are three.”

(The boy from the first two acts has been promoted to guard and he stands in front of the fence. A second guard wearing a green mask enters from the sky.)

Narrator: “Here’s the next guard. This guard is gonna be the strongest. He’s gonna fight!”

(The third guard, much smaller than the other two, enters from the sky wearing a purple mask. The previously dead robber swoops in from stage left and is quickly launched into outer space by the green and purple masked guards. An enthusiastic celebration takes place off-stage.)

Narrator: “They jump for joy!”

Narrator: “Now this is the robber!”

(A moustached gentleman enters stage left.)

Purple-Mask: “Oh robber!”

Narrator: “Brrrrraaawwwwhhh!”

(The guard attacks the gentleman, sending him to his doom off-stage left. Both guards perform a celebratory dance.)

Both guards: “Yaaaay.” 

Purple-Mask: “Two robbers down.”

Narrator: “Three robbers down!”

(Men of all shapes and species enter stage left as the two guards battle them one by one.)

The curtain closes on the action.

Epilogue 

In what must have been the worst ambush in the history of farmhouse burglary, the two brave guards fought a total of eight robbers in quick succession. Among the pile of perishers lay a ninja, a boy, two fish, a giraffe, a bathroom rug, the planet Neptune, and a horse shaped like a dog. Coco, unscathed and perched on the window of the house, was the only witness to the brutality.  What treasure contained within a yellow farmhouse could attract so many money-hungry bandits? They were all after the happy green and sad purple Christmas trees. 

The End

Munchie’s big debut at the Ecopoesis symposium at CCA. (ecopoesis.org) You go, Munchie!

Story-spiration

Sometimes it’s hard to come up with a story on the fly. I think it’s harder for adults than it is for kids. When I first downloaded the sweet iPad app, ToonTastic, I was immediately stumped when I was required to narrate my story with no planning, no script, and no idea of how I wanted to resolve it. Meanwhile, kids across the world are using the app to make animated stories that go something like this: “There was this pirate. And there was this princess. And they went into the castle. “Oooo don’t kill me!” “Rarrr, I’m going to get you!” [end scene one] [scene two is on the moon] “Oh, hello mother, would you like to go to tea?” [end scene two] [scene three is back in the castle] “I’m scared!” The End.” 

Um, what? Where’s the story arc? The character development? The suspense? As a writer, this baffles me! Kids don’t feel the need to adhere to the rules of Hollywood script writing, or the Elements of Style. Their narratives are disjointed and sporadic, but isn’t that why we love them? There’s something whimsical about listing to a child tell a story and then wondering how it came together in her little brain. Though the story lines are created from thin air, the characters and settings seem to be responses to what’s familiar to them. So I thought–to jumpstart the making portion of my thesis work–that it might be helpful to create a storytelling tool for kids and adults alike. 

The recipe for a narrative is: a person + a place + a problem. With this in mind, I created a series of Story-spiration cards that can be mixed and matched to create a story. Just combine the cards and start telling your story. I’ll use these with kids and adults and record what they come up with. 

Week Notes 11/18

Slowly but surely, I’m making progress on my human://nature project! I figured out how to send commands to my robot so technically I could make him autonomous. However, the programming that would go into this would be a huge time suck, especially now when I have so much other stuff in the queue waiting to be cranked out. So, for the sake of my time and sanity, I’m going to run him via RC until I have some extra time to mess around with the coding. Also this week, I got the Arduino to servo action working, so the little guy will be able to open his mouth when your hand gets in range. I’m super happy that I have all these pieces together, so now I just have to put them all together for a final product.

On that note, I was originally thinking that he’d be plastic and I’d vacuform him or something for the prototype. But then last night I hit upon a weird idea. I was thinking about robots and nature, and started wondering whether plastic was the ideal solution. I mean, it’s clean and cheap, but what if instead the structure came from something more natural? What if the outer shell of the bin was made of plants or moss– something that could benefit from the compost inside for the short time that it exists in the bin. I may be sending myself into a dead end of smelly compost, but I’m thinking I should at least try it out. I mean, if there’s any time to fail big, it’s in grad school, right?