C250 StoryLab 1

Fall 2024
Steve Layton
Office Hours
2-4 Thursdays
FF Room M030E
Lecture
Woodburn Hall room 100
T R 11:30-12:45

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Welcome to C250

In brief, this intensive, hands-on course has three primary objectives: to teach you basic media-creation skills, to help you analyze your storytelling to make the best use of words, visuals and sound, and to enable and encourage you to work effectively in teams. StoryLab 1 will prepare you with the necessary knowledge to transition into higher-level, more specialized courses across the Media School curriculum, including advertising, journalism and public relations. StoryLab 1 is a core course for all students seeking the BA in Media and the BA in Journalism. Even if you are not a Media School major, however, you will still find StoryLab 1 valuable and fullfilling on its own.

1) Basic media skills: These skills will launch your media degree or whatever degree you are pursuing. We’ll teach you how to shoot and edit compelling photos and video interviews, record enlightening and entertaining audio and write effectively to target specific mediums, like advertising, social media, news and public relations. You will learn and create effective multi-channel, multi-platform communication. It will benefit any of you who need to promote your brand (yourself) through innovative storytelling. Who doesn’t need that?

2) Critical analysis: We will listen to, watch and read a lot of well-executed media examples. You will analyze how a videographer's unique shots capture viewers' attention within the first three seconds of a documentary. You will marvel at the voicing skills an NPR reporter employs to pull you into a story. You will see how advertising campaign designs communicate their products' strengths.

Along with exploiting each medium's strengths, you will tell stories that express diverse viewpoints. Your stories should incorporate people of varying economic means, of different ethnic, political, ideological and religious backgrounds. People who are older or younger than you. People who live in the country — if you are from the city — and vice versa. We also will discuss issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

3) Team collaboration: You will learn how to delegate and assume tasks in teams to create four projects focusing on visual communication, public relations, news and advertising. You will soon see that effective collaboration is necessary in virtually every media environment. Along with creating team projects, you often will be asked to evaluate media in discussions with other students. Your input is valuable. Our desired outcome is that you will become harsh critics instead of passive media consumers. We’ll know we’ve done our job if, for example:

As part of your learning outcomes, you should be able to:

Welcome to Storylab.

Course Details

Lecture: 11:30AM-12:45PM Tuesdays and Thursdays in room 100, Woodburn Hall

Lab: Weekly (Thursday or Friday) in Franklin Hall (basement level)

Required texts and materials:

Cover of Vincent Filak's Dyanamics of Media Writing

Canvas and other website information: The course will be run through Canvas, with Adobe Suite / LinkedInLearning tutorials plus specific C250 tutorials available on YouTube.