Blog post 23: Multimedia

Choose any one story from this list of 2013 winners: Best of Photojournalism 2013 Multimedia. Please choose a different story from other students who posted before you did.

Read both Kern, chapter 6, and Kobré, chapter 12, before you view the multimedia.

NOTE: Be sure to select a STORY with AUDIO.

In your blog post, do all of the following:

1. Provide the title of the story, and make the title a direct link to the main story page.
2. Summarize the story (do not copy/paste anything; use your own words).
3. Tell how the story made you feel as you watched and listened to it.
4. Discuss the images (specify whether they are video or stills or both). You may compare them to images from some other visual media; for example, are they cinematic? Are they like print news images? Are they like TV news images?
5. Discuss the audio — both its content and the way it contributes to the story.
6. Separately, discuss the use of natural sound (nat SOT) in the story.

Blog post 22: Reading assignment

In this blog post, publish your notes from Kern, chapter 6, and Kobré, chapter 12.

Your notes must appear in the form of two (2) numbered lists, one for each chapter. Write a brief statement above each list to explain or summarize that list.

The goal is for you to highlight or capture the ideas or information that resonated most strongly with you, in a format that other people might find interesting to read.

Audio and photo story

The point of this assignment is for you to combine still photos and audio to create an interesting story. A true story, of course.

An audio slideshow is really a lot different from video, and that’s why the requirement is to use stills. The pace is different — the gathering of the assets is different. You can show a lot of variety and evoke a lot of feelings with a slideshow, allowing the viewer to just experience the frozen moment in each image.

However, it’s very important not to leave any image hanging there too long. A rule of thumb is to allow no more than 5 seconds for any one photo. Longer is boring. So do the math: You need 18 GOOD photos to make a 90-second story!

Blog post 21: Reading assignment

In this blog post, publish your notes from Kern chapter 5 and Kobré chapter 10. Your notes must appear in the form of TWO (2) numbered lists (one list for each chapter). Write a brief statement above each list to explain or summarize it.

Write at least three (3) items in each of the lists.

A list is not meant to represent everything in the chapter. It should represent what was most meaningful to YOU. Thus each student’s list will be different.

Audio 2: An in-depth edited interview

NOTE: READ Kern, Chapter 13, BEFORE you edit your interview! Also REVIEW Kern, pp. 219–223. These pages will help you think in a professional manner when you are making editing decisions.

Conduct an in-depth interview with a UF international student. Details about your interview subject and the topic can be found here:

Pitch (document) for Audio 2

DO NOT conduct the interview until AFTER your pitch has been explicitly approved by your instructor.

After you have posted the interview link here, you will also SEND THE LINK via email to your interview subject. We want your subject to hear your edited interview and make a comment on the SoundCloud page.

Blog post 3: Analyze an audio-only interview

There are 9 edited interviews here: http://transom.org/?p=35965 

Choose ONE of those interviews, and do two things before you start writing the blog post:

• Read everything on the story page (some of the reporters had an interesting experience in finding their interview subject).
• Listen attentively to the complete interview without stopping the audio. Most of the interviews are 6–8 minutes long.  I strongly recommend using headphones. If you use headphones, you will probably pay more attention.

After that, analyze the story you heard in the interview, and write a blog post containing your analysis.

The idea is that we learn how to tell good stories by listening to good stories.

Pitch (document) for Audio 2

Your “Audio 2″ will be an interview with an international student at UF.

The interview must NOT be conducted until AFTER you have made your pitch, orally, in class, on Sept. 10.

COME TO CLASS (Sept. 10) PREPARED TO MAKE YOUR PITCH.

You cannot conduct the interview until after your pitch has been approved.

The pitch assignment includes both a printed document and a presentation by you in class. “Presentation” is a little exaggerated. What it really is, is a pitch — to the instructor and your fellow students. (Covered in Kern, Chapter 12. READ IT.) If your pitch fails, you will have to re-do it within 24 hours. If your pitch fails miserably, you will have to find a different interview subject AND write a new pitch.

IMPORTANT: Before you identify your intended interview subject, COMPLETE the Blog Post 3 assignment. It will help you think about STORIES.

Audio 1: Edited audio interview

This will be an edited version of the interview you conducted during class, with a classmate, in the first class meeting. DO NOT use any other interview for this assignment.

Please read about grading criteria for audio assignments in this course. Those criteria apply to all audio assignments.

Note: You must set up your own individual SoundCloud account, if you have not done so already. Make sure you have completed a profile at SoundCloud and uploaded a profile picture at SoundCloud.

A nice radio story with just a little reporter voice included

I caught this audio story (5 min.) on Only a Game over the weekend. It’s really well done, I thought — and you should note how little we hear of the reporter’s voice.

The editing is very nice.

The topic is a particular skateboarders’ trick, the McTwist.

One thing to note is that this story was reported and edited by a photojournalist, Andrew Norton. So you need to think about why a photojournalist goes out and learns how to do audio at a professional level. Uh huh. Because now he’s getting paid to put a 5-minute story on NPR.

Oh, and guess what? He was one of the students in the Transom workshop last spring, which produced the projects you critiqued earlier this semester.

Resources for Soundslides

Download and install the free demo version of Soundslides Plus for Mac.

Instructions (PDF): How to upload a Soundslides to Dropbox

Instructions for beginners: Soundslides: A Brief Introduction

See examples of Soundslides stories.

Tips for type of story, audio timing, captions, etc.:

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Soundslides stories are great with a combination of natural sound and interviews. For tips on multitrack editing with Audacity, download this PDF.

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