Today at the Multimedia Reporting Seminar

Story Shells
We started today with a discussion of multimedia story shells. These shells are a way to package a variety of content elements that cover various aspects of a story. Jane Stevens explained several types of shells and gave these examples:
- Site shell - Greenpeace http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/
- Beat shell - Kansas Legislature http://www.cjonline.com/legislature
- Issue shell - Conflict in Iraq http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2002/conflict_with_iraq/default.stm
- Story shell - Touching Hearts http://www.heraldsun.com/heart/better.html

Jane began the discussion of how to storyboard a multimedia story shell with the Touching Hearts story mentioned above. The process involves pre-planning the basic sections of the story. I equate this to coming up with the topics or themes that are anticipated to be covered when out shooting the story.

In the Touching Hearts story, the main sections were the mission, stories, and people. Some of this could be researched and known ahead of time. For example, the mission would cover the history and background of the doctors going to Nicaragua to do heart surgery on children. Some of the people involved, such as the doctors could be known in advance. The stories would be discovered while covering the story, though it would be expected that there would be some stories on the children treated.