Feb
7
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Feb
3
An Atlas of Cyberspaces - Information Space Maps
Feb
3
Great indy music blog
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Warren Ellis has been doing a great service for listeners and musicians alike with his Apparat Programme. I’ve also got the podcast link over in the right collumn somewhere.
Feb
3
Sue Johnson asked to for help in building an online learning module about field blogging for the Online News Association. She’s been interviewing us off and on for a couple of weeks now, and we did an email Q about audio slideshows……
When did you think a story warranted this approach? (as opposed to video or stills with captions)
Audio slideshows and video are obviously very similar mediums and in large part are actually functionally interchangeable in terms of the storytelling. The choice between the two frankly has as much to do with time and the multimedia producer’s comfort level as it does with storytelling. I’m faster producing video than I am audio slideshows, Jim Seida (another one of the media producers) is the opposite. Sometimes that makes the difference. It shouldn’t, but in dealing with reality on the ground, sometimes it does.That said, they do have different strengths in terms of what they bring to the storytelling. For me video has more of a verite quality. That was the feel I was looking for when I accompanied Huey Mhire back to his home for the first time in Cameron Parish, La. (see it here).
He was seeing the damage for the first time, and I wanted the viewer to have that same experience. I wanted a raw, live feel (though there was actually a lot of editing involved) and the sense that you were really experiencing the environment.
Our audio slideshows tend to be more visual and lyrical (for a lack of a better word) than your typical video. A user can spend time exploring an image, pulling out more detail before you move on to the next idea. By stopping moments and focusing on visual details, the storytelling is more reflective and often more poignant. Jim Seida did a wonderful sequence here that illustrates it better than I can say it.
Still image slideshows obviously rely entirely on the images to convey the storytelling. Every once in a while I would come across a situation that I felt was so strong visually that I decided to forgo audio. You’re able to include any image that’s strong, which is very liberating. Also, since the user navigates at his/her own pace, so you’re able to include even richer and more detailed images than you might in an audio-driven slideshow.
You were one person recording audio and taking pictures. What’s your method? Do you interview first then photograph? Or vice versa?
The method depends largely on the situation, and (again) on the individual producer. I tend to shoot for a little bit to gather the obvious and strongest visuals, then interview (focusing my questions to drive the visual scene) then shoot again to pick up visuals to match the most interesting points uncovered in the audio interview. It doesn’t always work like that, but the two are ideally intertwined.
You also try to record as much natural sound as you can, again to provide more texture and play off of the visual content.
In production, the process is a little bit reversed– I always start by editing the audio to completion. Then I’ll lay the visuals in on top of that. The audio interview is the stortytelling spine, so you’ve got to get that right first. Strong visuals are equally important, but if you’ve done you’re job your strongest audio plays directly to your strongest visuals.
Feb
3
CBS kicks Google off the island
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Google loses CBS after one month…via Arstechnica
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