The following are some notes from today's Skill Swap, an interactive journalism seminar hosted by the Walter J. Lemke Department of Journalism and the Northwest Arkansas Society of Professional Journalists. I hope you find them useful!
How to Tell a Story Through Multimedia- by Jon Schleuss
Audio, hyperlinks and maps are also multimedia that we shouldn’t neglect.
Video Before shooting, you should have an angle: what’s most interesting here?, what am I hearing right now? Weight helps reduce shaky results, so the bigger camera the better.
Start as far back as possible without panning or zooming, just an outside shot. Next shot closer, still wide. Next shot, action. Another shot, human emotion. (still no panning or zooming) Other shots: details like tattoo needles, facial expression, shots from the floor, etc.
Other interesting shots
-perspective of the chair
-strong focus on actions
-interactions with other people
HD video is a difficult to edit.
Don’t be afraid to keep it short, make your editing life as easy as possible. Use a tripod. External microphones are good and listening to the recording with headphones during the interview will give you a better idea of the digital sound you’re producing. Have the interviewee talk to you, not the camera. Let them tell you the story.
Editing- imovie is very simple to use. Break up your video often. Have plenty of still shots and multiple interviews, voices. While editing, set your volume to middle, so you can get an idea of what the audience will hear, or how you can change it to become even. Don’t be discouraged: video editing gets faster with practice. Keynote and PowerPoint are good for dropping pictures right into your video editing timeline. Youtube videos are a quick way to walk you through new programs.
Length- 3-4 minutes is as long as you want to go. Very complex stories can take 5-6 minutes, which are miniature documentaries.
Photos
Lighting is key for still images because the shutter is not always open. Over the shoulder is a good shot.
For shooting photos with limited movement, long zoom lens and wide-angle lens are good. You can always crop, so take a wide shot; also a close-up capturing more emotion. Shoot as many pictures as possible, you can always delete them later.
Keep photo slideshows short, like people’s attention spans. Maintain a wide and consistent variety of close-ups and wide angle shots. Also, creative commons is a good way to find pictures, simply attribute them.
Audio
For some of my stories, I use a Zoom H2 device for audio (a little expensive, but good, of course). Garage band has good podcast features. Have a second set of eyes check out your story to give you a fresh perspective, maybe new angles.
Text is Multimedia, Too
Wordpress.com is a hosted solution for starting your own blog and is free initially. It’s really powerful. You can download it and install on your own server, like many news sources do. Blogger is getting antiquated; it’s not as robust. Years ago, several blog sources were all about on the same level, but eventually Wordpress rose above. 20-25% of the world’s websites are being built on Wordpress.
Writing for the web should be very, very concise.
You can find an Article on pointer about the beginnings of NYTimes on the internet- how writing for the web changed and a good book Search Engine Optimization by Rebecca Lieb (on Amazon for $1)
SEO! Keep in mind the key words that can bring people to your story. Need source code for this? Not really. Have a twitter-sized sentence at the top left hand corner of your blog to introduce it. Have multiple versions of your catch-phrase on social media, as a way to brand yourself.
Audience
Leave things open-ended so people will comment. Talk to your audience directly, so they know you’re a person. Anything that makes the reader stop and re-read is bad writing. Consistency of voice: write a mission statement, even make it your background if you must. Try to keep your subjects/topics consistent. In the design of your blog, never go more than five colors. (Black and white are two good options, then you can choose the other three.) Don’t talk to everyone, talk to one person to have a point of view to tell the story through. Know who your audience is and target them through your content. How is this person accessing your blog?
Design
The best design is simple. Less is more (colors, boxes, pictures, etc). When minimal colors are used, it lets pictures take over. To build your audience, it doesn’t matter as much how often you post, but post consistently and your audience will stay. You can import your blog from Blogger into Wordpress.
Interactive
Easy options for election night:
In a google doc spreadsheet, several people can effectively edit a document at the same time. Polls, surveys are also options on Google docs, simply pick your required fields and questions. This trumps Survey Monkey because it compiles your data for you. You can build maps through Google. It’s an easy way to calculate distance, even via sidewalk.
A free resource for journalists to quickly save information for later (such as uploading massive PDFs, embed links) is Documentcloud.org/ You can use this from your smart phone.
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