Inquiry #1 Project: Digital Story Telling

INQUIRY 1 ASSIGNMENT

For our first inquiry assignment we were to choose a cultural aspect that we wanted to research and learn more about. I choose to focus on why so many shops, cafes, and small restaurants close so early in Plymouth. Unlike at home, many places that would be equivalent to a Jimmy John's, or a Caribou Coffee close around 5:30 p.m. The big kicker is that the only mall they have in Plymouth closes at 6:00! Can you believe it?! Needless to say, we were really shocked since we are accustomed to malls staying open until 9:00 during the week. As a class we needed to create a digital story using pictures to describe our experience with this particular cultural aspect and explain our story in a narrative form. I was lucky enough to have used photo story before, but never had I used Windows Movie Maker. It is actually quite simple and straight forward. What I chose to do was to create a dialogue first then add pictures and videos that would correlate with my story. Kristin, (fashion) Michelle (water use), Stephanie (gun control), and I made many trips to the local mall to talk with Plymothians about their experiences with our topics. While we were at the mall, Kristin and I were approached by a security guard who told us that we are not supposed to be taking photos, or video coverage due to the fact that they have had problems in the past with people trying to secretly take footage in order to figure out the structural makeup of the mall. So, that was our closest encounter of doing something "against the law." He was actually quite nice about it, just informing us of "the rules." Too bad, we should have told him that it was all for our college class. When you are watching the movie, look for the Primark photos and video footage. That is what we "got caught" taking! Kristin actually had footage of the security guard at the front of the store turning customers away before the store was actually closed. Since my video had to be less than 5 minutes, I chose to just use the footage of the gate coming down ... for effect obviously! It would have been better with the Semisonic song, "Closing Time."