End of The Semester

As the final project for our photojournalism 4720 class, we had to make a multimedia package suitable for the web.  My teammembers and I decided to do this project over the Emerald Eagle scholarship program  at UNT.  The program provides qualifying students with 4 years of  paid tuition and fees as well as several other benefits.  Our team’s goal was to show how two students were personally benefitted by the program.  We followed these two students for several days and tried to tell their stories through a combination of video, photo and audio interviews.  We packaged all these elements into a Flash presentation.

Doing the project was a blast for me and it helped to reinforce everything we learned about multimedia during the semester.  I think I also got better at planning things out.  Fortunately, the process was made a lot easier thanks to great volunteers we had in Emerald Eagle graduate assistant Chelsea Clark and students Elia Santamaria and Johnny Villarreal.  My classmates,  Amber Cross, Daniel Richardson and Rebecca Evans also put huge amount of work into this.  I felt we made a great team, so much so that I wouldn’t hesistate to do another such project with them.   This project was a great end to a very helpful class.

Great Multimedia Story

For my journalism 4720, I recently took a look at a video and photo slideshow about the national election by the New York Times.  The project was basically a narrative report on the recent election, except the Times decided to pick up with the campaigning that started early last year.  The Times project was very neat and incredibly comprehensive; it provided a dynamic and engaging rehash of the most important headlines over the last two years that dealt with the elections, such as issues, vice-presidential choices, the drawn-out primaries and the historic November 4 election night. 

The slideshow included bits of videos, lots of photos, graphics, audio interviews with voters, audio soundbites of the presidential candidates, and a narration by one of the Times reporters.  Despite the complexity of having to mix all these elements together, the Times did it successfully.  I believe they pulled this project off for the following reasons: the Times staff took great photos that engaged the reader in the story and secondly the narration was also excellent and provided the thread that kept the story from falling apart.  Finally, the use of Flash and web graphics made it possible to organize the story well and make the layout clean, engaging and elegant, yet easy for viewers to use.  For example, the story opened up with a timeline moving in the background then a map of the U.S. appeared and little mug shots of voters popped up over different states as they discussed why the election was important to them.  Without the help of these graphic elements to provide order to a huge amount of information, the reader would either be confused or quite repelled.  Again, the photos were incredible and really helped lend a big impact, the narration was wonderful and kept my attention the entire time and finally the design and graphics used throughout the story provided it with incredible organization and just great visual appeal.  The use of graphics helped move the story along without a doubt.  In my opinion, the video clips of the candidates and voters also provided support to the story, but they didn’t do as much heavy lifting as the first three elements I listed; I think the story could have stood even without the video.  Overall, the story was excellent and I recommend taking a look at it below. 

Choosing a President by the New York Times

Early Voting Photos

For class we went out to take some politically oriented photos and first I had little success finding political events.  I went through several ideas during the last week, none of which worked out as I hoped.  Fortunately, Monday I decided to take a look at the early voting taking place in Denton at the Joseph A. Carroll Building.  The place was packed and the staff members gave me permission to take photos.

The ladies in the top photo are long time friends and they went hand-in-hand to vote together.  They were wonderfully kind and let me snap away.  I like the photo because it gives the viewer a sense of the diversity of people that go and vote and also it has emotion, it shows that the two ladies are close friends.  Friendship is a great thing and I knew immediately when I saw the ladies that they were my subject.  This photo combines the satisfaction of voting and of friendship.  I also like that the Carroll Building is in the background, so it helps add some context to the photo.

The bottom photo is of Mr. Ray Roberts, who was waiting in line to vote.  He was also very friendly and thus let me accomplish my goal of getting a close-up shot of a voter registration card.  I was looking for something a little more different from the average voting picture we see of people waiting in lines, so I looked for details instead.

So here are my two favorites from my shoot on Monday.

October 20, 2008 — Long-time friends Mary McNeely (left) and Mary Gregg exit the Joseph A. Carroll Building hand-in-hand after they voted on the first day of early voting.

October 20, 2008 — Ray Roberts holds out his voter registration card as he waits in line to vote on the first day of early voting in Denton.  Early voting took place at the Joseph A. Carroll Building in Denton.

My Views on Some Multimedia Sites

Recently our class was asked to take a look at some websites featuring multimedia stories.  I took a look at three seperate sites covering the Halifax explosion in 1917, Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech and a multimedia story about a family whose son was murdered.

Halifax Explosion

CBC’s multimedia site dedicated completely to the Halifax explosion was incredible to say the least.  The writing was vivid and clearly drew out a mental picture of how Halifax was in 1917; the writer(s) went as far as describing the communications, transportation and harbor life at the time.  The writing carried the reader through the story by using suspense, lots of description and clear explanations of how the event unfolded.  Embedded in the writing were several links that explained certain items in more detail to readers.  For example, picric acid was just one of the many items explained in more detail to the reader.  The site also included loads of interactive graphics such as a cityscape of Halifax in 1917 and a Morse code translator and a map showing the size of the explosion relative to Halifax.  I thought it was also interesting that CBC included an interview with one of the survivors and also 3-D drawings of the ships involved in the disaster. The interactive features were crucial to giving me a better understanding of the historic event especially since the site went into much detail and provided several pages of text.  But CBC thought this aspect out well too and divided the text and features into five sections based on the chronological order of the event, allowing readers to look at a section and then continue reading the story another day.  Overall, the site was impressive and had a lot of supplemental interactice graphics, web links and video interviews that helped make an encyclopedia-sized story easier to read and understand.

Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech

Another website I looked at was dedicated entirely to Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.  This site, though it had an interesting combination of Churchill’s speech and a moving timeline, was harder for me to navigate and seemed a little more confusing than CBC’s Halifax site.  The writing was lively and descriptive of the events that happened in 1945-1947 such as the creation of the atomic bomb or the U.S. island-hopping campaign in Japan and the aftermath in Europe.  The viewer was also presented with a moving timeline with several interactive links that explained certain events in more detail if a reader wished to learn more about them.  It was impressive being able to listen to one of Churchill’s most important speeches but with all the timeline items staring me in the face, I would open one up during the speech and then lose track of the actual speech.  I guess Churchill Speech interactive had good intentions trying to get more information to the viewer but at the same time they made the process more time consuming and distracting.  A viewer might just have to listen to the Churchill speech first and then go through all the timeline items later.  Other than this, the website did a good job of bringing interactive extras to the viewers through the use of old photos and detailed writing expanding my knowledge on specific events.

Boston Globe Video

The Boston Globe video on the murder of 13-year-old Luis Gerena was very touching and it really drew me in to the story and to the pain this family was feeling over the loss of a loved one.  It must have been tough for the videographer covering this but it must have been even more difficult for the family and the video really got this feeling of grief across.  The videographer and reporter covering this really did a good job covering the funeral and then getting Luis’s young sister’s heartfelt comments.  The story was saddening and I guess could only have been told and shared well with video.  With just writing, the audience might not have felt as much emotion, and photos would not have been the best course either because the audio of the heartbroken wails, and the reflections on Luis, are what really add so much more to this.  Video, I believe, truly was the best option for covering such an emotional story as this one and the Boston Globe staff did a good job sharing it.

First Soundslides

Last week in class we did a Soundslides project which included photos of a student-related activity and audio to go with it.  I came across a racquetball class of all things and thought it would make some good audio even though I knew from prior experience that shooting it would be tricky.  The photography was indeed very tricky due to low lighting and also because most of the time the players face the front wall not you.  Overall, I had fun with the project.  Here it is for you viewing.

Racquetball

The Interview

Last Friday I interviewed a friend I’ve known for a couple of semesters.  His name is John Klower and he also attends UNT and is engaged in plenty of interesting activities, so I did a small interview on one of his hobbies, broadcasting for his online radio show, The John Zone.  Coming up with questions on the spot wasn’t too difficult since John’s hobby is so unique but the post-interview editing was something else.  Even though the interview was only six minutes, it took me a while to get acquainted with Audacity, the audio editing program we use.  You can find the interview here: John Klower Interview .

My Goals

I hope to achieve a lot of things in the journalism and the web course I am currently taking.  I hope to become more web and tech-savvy and I also want to learn new skills such as slideshows and audio and video.  I hope these skills will help me become a more well-rounded photojournalists and will help make me a better one.  I also hope to produce some interesting stories and to tell them in a more compelling way thanks to the use of video and audio.