Different con­di­tions lead us to dif­fer­ent strate­gies for cre­at­ing sto­ries. We adapt and seek solu­tions. In this lec­ture, Mary Gelman explains the specifics of shoot­ing social sto­ries online through exam­ples of her cur­rent work: a pho­to sto­ry about a large Russian fam­i­ly with eleven chil­dren that is self-isolating; a FaceTime sto­ry about cheat­ing in a mar­riage; and an essay about juve­nile offend­ers who are in reha­bil­i­ta­tion. Mary shares her approach of cre­at­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with her sub­jects using soci­o­log­i­cal and method­olog­i­cal skills, and dis­cuss­es the chal­lenges of mak­ing long-distance sto­ries via FaceTime.

This lec­ture was orig­i­nal­ly host­ed at VII Interactive, a new resource for shar­ing insights and infor­ma­tion on the craft of visu­al sto­ry­telling. We are build­ing dif­fer­ent plat­forms with­in the VII ecosys­tem, where the pub­lic can engage direct­ly, online with a live instruc­tor. VII Interactive offers pro­gram­ming that is free and avail­able to every­one, in addi­tion to paid class­es and indi­vid­ual men­tor­ing that can be fash­ioned to your needs.