I have a professional background in video production and Web design. I am an Assistant Professor of Mass Communication and Journalism at California State University, Fresno.
Yesterday we had an intro to Flash and the creation of a photo slide show with text, music and video. We then launched fully into producing our multimedia story. We were ambitious and decided we wanted to do our project entirely in Flash.
My team 's story was called "Prof-casting." It's about UC Berkeley's recent effort to provide a number of courses via podcast, free to the public.
Last night we split in to two groups with Tom and Joel working on audio clips and the scripts. Genetta and I worked on the intro Flash. Today we quickly realized that we were too ambitious and needed to scale things back to working on just one of the story segments, "On Campus". That took us all day. We were able to add text, photos, audio files and two video clips. We then had assistance in bringing the segment into the intro Flash movie so that you can click on the link and the "On Campus" segment plays. We also got the "home" link active, but the remaining ones were pipedreams.
To see our finished project (or as finished as we could do in the time we had) you'll go to http://journalism.berkeley.edu/multimedia/projects/ . The link to our project isn't availabe yet, but all of the May 2006 projects will be up soon.
This was a great training experience. I recommend it to any journalist or professor who wants to learn to do multimedia storytelling. The Knight New Media Center (Formerly Western Knight Center for Specialized Media)
In the morning we had a great session on the voice with Marilyn Pittman. She's a professional voice artist who works with newscasters and radio announcers. She shared her tips sheet, "Talk Better Radio: Four dynamics of good vocal variety. The four dynamics are:
Pitch
Volume
Tempo
Rhythm
These are used on operative words, key words that tell the story. When abridged to the operative words, you still know the key details.
She also showed us how to mark a script, underling the operative words and adding slash marks where to take breaths.
Following the voice session we focused on the software. Photo preparation for the Web and basic image editing were presented in a crash course in using Photoshop. This was followed by a session on editing using Final Cut Pro. We covered drag and drop editing, setting audio levels and adding text and dissolves. In the evening capturing footage was covered and we began capturing footage from our first video interview.
At lunch we had a speaker from Internet Broadcasting, Phil Numrich. He spoke about online advertising for TV stations. Now I know why TV station news Website suck. Most are p;roduced by organizations like Internet Broadcasting, who hires the people to write the news around their online ads.
Yesterday at the multimedia seminar was all about learning how to use the technology.
One session focused on audio and a tutorial on using a mini disc recorder. There was some discussion about moving to using flash recorders. One advantage being the ease of just taking the flash card and inserting it into the reader on a computer. There's no conversion or capture. Berkeley will be converting to this in the future.
Still photography was also covered. One of the challenges was the variation in how individual camera models describe and locate functions.
We also went out in the field to shoot video and audio for our podcasting story. We had two on-camera interviews, one with Andrew Keating, the grad assistant for a history professor who's course was podcast, and the other with Mara Hancock, the associate director of educational technology at Berkeley.
Some of the concepts discussed on Monday came up. For example, the placement of the camera for the first interview was a bit above the subject. This was done to move some distracting horizontal lines into a better position in the background. Then when we set up for Mara, the background led to the placing of the camera very low to the subject. Fortunately, Joel questioned the angle early in the recording, so he and I decided to stop the interview and reposition. We then raised the camera to a level that matched better with the first interview.
Having taught video for several years, it was interesting to be reminded of the various constraints that arise in the field. Despite knowing principles and techniques, you still have compromises due to lack of time, equipment, and location issues. You have to decide which to deal with and which to let go. In our case, the psychological impression of the subject was deemed more important, rightfully so than background imperfections.
Highlights from day one of the Multimedia Seminar at the Western Knight Center.
Ellen Seidler was the instructor for over 3 1/2 hours of training on field video. Using Sony 3 CCD mini DV cameras she showed the group the funtions and operation of the camera. In addition to the camera she went through the field equipment kit which included hand and lapel mics, headphones and tripod.
At left she demonstrates how to load the mini DV tape which requires gentlyl pushing a specific button to properly close the tape door.
Paul Grabowicz, one of the instructors, shows my teammates, Tom Honig, The Santa Cruz Sentinel, and Joel Rose, WHYY radio, how to set up the camera on the tripod.
A nice feature of the Sony-made tripod is a pan handle with remote zoom and record button. To work it has a cable connected to the camera's LINC connector.
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.
So I'm at UC Berkeley this week as a fellow in the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism's seminar on multimedia reporting. The primary instructor is Jane Ellen Stevens who I reported on in a February post. I am joined by 15 colleagues who are working journalists from organizations like Newsday, the Washington Post, the Tampa Tribune, and the Orange County Register. I'm the only academic.
I'm hoping to further enhance my technical and content skills in creating multimedia stories. I'm also interested in what my colleagues are doing at their news organizations regarding convergence. Finally, I'm looking for ideas for teaching these skills.
Yesterday Michael Skoler from Minnisota Public Radio presented a brilliant approach to involving audience members as story sources. They've created "Public Insight Journalism". Audience members register with PIJ and indicate areas of interest and expertise. They now have over 18,000 registered in their network. Through a custome database, quieries are sent to those with interest/expertise in a topic area that has a survey. The responses are then analyzed for use in stories, sometimes including interviews. This has lead to many stories that use them as sources.
Next year they plan to make their custome software available for free to other news organizations.
At the end of April I attended the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) conference that occurs at the end of the NAB. The conference theme was "Convergence Shockwave: Change, Challenge and Opportunity " so there where a number of sessions related to convergence and the changes taking place in broadcasting and journalism.
The first panel I attended gave a nice overview of the changing nature of journalism. Interesting discussion points included how in the online world audience members are active participants and with Web logs news organizations can know what information interests their audience and then tailor news to match audience interests.
One professor in the audience was concerned about the negative impact on our democracy when professional journalists were not the arbitures of truth. He had a problem with allowing the audience to choose what they were most interested in and have that influence the news given to them. He implied that journalists were best able to determine what citizens needed to know. What arrogance. How arrogant and hypocritical to mention the press's role in upholding democracy and in the same breath imply that journalists need to tell the citizenry what they should know. In other words, we (journalists) must control (gatekeep) information for your own good. Hmm, that's not democracy that's an authoritarian approach trying to maintain the illusion of the people's participation.
The Web has been around long enough that Americans have developed the ability to sort through the information and do a respectable job of finding valid information that serves their needs. Certainly, some get mislead sometimes, but so do journalists. In fact, we've found through our own online information resources, that journalists sometimes mislead us too.
It's tough to feed the blogging beast. First, I didn't have anything I wanted to say after my last post. And then I did, but had no time to get to it. Now I'm at a week long workshop on multimedia reporting with wireless access, so I hope to post a few times this week.
