Two Down, One to Go: Student Work Roundup

At the end of every semester, the deluge comes in: semester-long projects, last minute reshoots - they all flood in. They come on my class server, by CD and flash drive. In the last week alone, I have ingested 8 gigabytes worth of images, audio and video ... the little iMac in my office was really looking forward to this weekend, after having pulled two over-nighters compressing video. 

But it's worth it ... I think ... as two of the Documentary Photography projects are now in the wild. The first was a look at Rural Health Care issues in the counties around Athens, done in collaboration with Prof. Patricia Thomas's graduate Health and Medical Reporting class. Students tackled everything from aging to gangs in text, photos, audio and video. Considering only two of my students had ever shot video seriously before this semester, the results are pretty amazing. Spend some time with those stories.

On Friday, I built and released the second project - A Day at UGA: One campus, one hour, one story. This was a joint effort with Prof. Valerie Boyd's class and is fairly close to a dreaded "day in the life," but man ... some of these stories just rock. My sixteen students worked on profiles with the sixteen students in Prof. Boyd's class, but that left eight hours uncovered ... so my students paired up and did eight more. 

We'll launch one more project next week - and it's huge. I'm hopefully these sixteen students realize what they've accomplished this semester. It would have been very easy for this class to become a technical class - shooting HD video, editing in Final Cut Pro, refining audio - but they never once looked at it that way. During our weekend workshop in early March, when they were struggling with the tech stuff, they did not waste time with editors asking about those problems - they talked about their stories. 

And that, to me, is what this class was all about. Stories. 

Fisheye on CNN

CNN has apparently modified a Flip camera with a fisheye lens and is giving you - yes you! - a tour of their work space. 

Nice to see they're using technology to save journalism ...

(Okay, that was pretty snarky, and it is kind of cool ...)

Rural Health Care in North Georgia

Over the last few months, the students in Documentary Photography have been working with students in Prof. Patricia Thomas' Health and Medical Reporting class to look at health care issues in the rural counties around Athens. A few moments ago, the final package went live on The Grady Journal.

Working in teams, 22 students produced eight videos, eight audio slide shows and eight text stories covering everything from aging to teen pregnancy. Go take a look and leave a comment, they'd love to hear them. 

Juggling on Assignment

Adam Westbrook, a reporter for a British radio station, talks about balancing the needs of audio, stills and video while on assignment. (Thanks to Koci at Multimedia Shooter for the link.)

Weekend Workshop Round Table Talks

As part of this year’s Photojournalism Weekend Workshop, we’re going to have a few informal round-table discussions on issues the editors and our students are wrestling with. The schedule is below and all of these will be held in the Photojournalism Lab (room 130 of Grady College).

If you’re around and want to sit in, you’re more than welcome to join us. Each of these will run about 30 minutes.

If you’re coming to the Saturday or Sunday talks, I’ll be at the first floor, south west corner door about 10 minutes prior to the start to let folks in. (That’s the door closest to Tate Center with the automatic opener on it.)

Friday, 1 p.m. - Using "Social Media" to Build Communities - How do sites like Facebook affect our readership? How can we take advantage of those communities? Do we need to draw readers to our sites or do we go to where the readers are?

Friday, 4 p.m. - Communities Without Borders - How do you make coverage decisions when geography isn't as strong of a defining value? Do we need to redefine "community journalism?"

Saturday, 1 p.m. - Back Pack Journalism - It’s spreading, does it work? Can it work? Do concerns about quality and depth trump the immediacy of it?

Saturday, 4 p.m. - The Role of Video - How important is this? Do we use it because we have it or do we use it when it works best?

Sunday, 10 a.m. - How to Survive - It has been a brutal year in the journalism realm, so how do students keep hope alive? Or should they?

iMovie Image Stabilization

The latest version of Apple's iMovie now has software image stabilization - and the results are, well, dramatic. 

I don't know how this works, I don't know if it's seriously degrading the quality or if it's better or worse than in-camera stabilization. But it is cool ... 

Streaming Video Hits New Records

CNN.com reports that Tuesday's presidential inauguration shattered records for online video streaming with 7.7 million people watching the event. 

(For the record, I wasn't one of them as I couldn't get the feed to load ... grr ...)

The Red & Black Weekly News Update

The student paper here at UGA, The Red & Black, has started doing a weekly news update - a short video highlighting what's coming up in the week's paper. Each one has gotten a little smoother, a little more polished. They've played with the format a couple of times and the newest iteration came out this week with a walk-around-the-newsroom idea.

Does it work? 

UNC Students in Tierra del Fuego

South of Here is a collection of multimedia pieces produced by students from the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Facultad de Communicaciòn at the Universidad de los Andes in Santidago, Chile. 

An interesting mix of storytelling - audio slide shows, videos and Flash animations. 

Princess Leia on CNN?

If you watched CNN on election night (or followed the Twitter comments on it), you got to see an ... well ... entertaining bit of technology - holograms. (Okay, the experts say they were really tomograms.) Poynter has put together a piece explaining them for you, including a video link to CNN's technical explanation. 

Useful? Or just technology for toys sake? 

The Power of True Multimedia

This ... this ... this is what multimedia can do so well. 

The New York Times, the Gray Lady, has put together a nearly 14-minute long tour-de-force looking at the presidential campaign. It is a stunning combination of photos, videos, audio, graphics and narrations. 

It is a complete package. 

How complete? Pay attention to the "Related Links" box below the main screen It changes throughout, offering up links to other stories the Times has done. But look closely - you can click right now and away from the may piece, or you can save them for later and watch them AFTER you're done with the main piece. 

And that is brilliant conceptual storytelling, the melding of the push and pull formats in journalism. 

Shoot All Day, Edit All Night

Ready to make your first film? Want to maybe get a little something out of the deal? Yeah, this is outside of journalism (maybe, maybe not), but Apple's Insomnia Film Festival is coming up. Register now, then make a movie in 24 hours starting at 9 a.m. on November 15. 

THIS Changes Everything ... Perhaps ...

Canon has announced it's replacement for the long-in-the-tooth 5D, the 5D Mark II. All of the goodness you'd expect are there - higher resolution (a whopping, card-massacring 21 megapixels), better autofocus, better shadow detail, better noise control at high ISO, etc., all with the pure joy of a full frame CMOS chip. 

As with Nikon's D90, there's now a video mode, as well, and it tromps the resolution of Big N's camera -  1920 x 1080 pixel (1080p) resolution versus the D90's 1280 x 720. But that's not what has me tempted to call my Canon guy at 8 in the morning - it's that the 5D has a microphone jack built into it. And that, as any video shooter knows, is the killer feature.

Every point and shoot camera, as well as the D90 has the ability to record ambient sound through a built in mic, but none (that I'm aware of) has the ability to choose the microphone and microphone placement that is optimal for the story you're working on. Bad audio is something viewers just will not tolerate - shaky video is okay if they can hear what's going on. 

With news shooters needing to do video and stills, this camera should allow them to do both with one kit. 

Of course, the price difference between the D90 (around $1,000) and the 5D Mark II (around $2,700) is substantial. But a high definition video camera is more than the difference between them in price. 

Update: Canon also revved their top of the line point and shoot, now called the G10. The big news is the lens goes wider (to a 35 mm/full frame equivalent of 28 mm), but they also crammed 14 megapixels onto a very small chip. I'd rather have the previous chip with this lens, but oh well ... 

YouTube Tries Journalism ... Again

Google and YouTube have announced a video journalism contest, co-sponsored by the Pulitzer Center and Sony. First prize is a Sony VAIO laptop and $10,000 to do another story.

There are some flaws in the plan, but this may be the start of Google (who owns YouTube) pushing into the concept of  "citizen journalism." 

(Thanks to colleague Kaye Sweetser for the link.)

The State Fair on Speed

Ben Garvin, late of the Berkshire Eagle and now of the Pioneer Press, has strung together 4,000 still photos to make a two minute video-esque look at the Minnesota State Fair. 

"Last Stop"

The New York Times has a neat multimedia feature up on the city's subway system. But they're done it with a little twist: Ever wonder where the train goes after you get off? The rode all of the lines to the end, and then did photos, audio slide shows or videos about the areas at the end of the lines.

(Thanks to Prof. Janice Hume for the link.)

Top Tips for the Video Cook

(Very obscure title there.)

Mindy McAdams, Flash Goddess, has a guest post from Sue Robinson about the recent Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication video workshop. Good tips in her summation.

"The Girl in the Window"

Lane DeGregory and Melissa Lyttle, of the St. Petersburg Times, have published the horrifying story of Dani, a seven year old feral girl - essentially abandoned in her own home - and the efforts of a family to help her.

Steve Myers of the Poynter Institute has an interview with Lyttle and DeGregory about the story and how they approached it. 

Joint Grady College-Greenville News Project

As some of you know, we did a Maymester multimedia journalism course that was a joint project with the Greenville (S.C.) News. The News reached out to us a year ago and has been offering a lot of informational support, particularly to our multimedia classes.

The managing editor there, Chris Weston, came to me in the fall and asked about doing a project looking at water issues across the Georgia-South Carolina border. In early May, ten students started learning how to shoot video, what to shoot and were then sent out with story ideas generated by the News' staff. After a week in the field, they came back in and learned how to edit.

Weston and I planned on having the students produce five stories. This morning, the paper posted nine that the students put together.

The News loaned us three staffers for parts of the project - business reporter David Dykes, who headed up the series; chief photographer Owen Riley, who spent a day shooting with the class in South Carolina; and Adam Wickliffe, the multimedia editor, who joined Riley in Athens for the final class to help polish the stories.

I need to thank Kent for letting me put the class on the books, Conrad for his invaluable assistance and the journalism department as a whole for their support. And, of course, all the folks up in Greenville who helped put this together.

The stories and videos are online now.

Nine of them, reported, shot and edited in three weeks.

Nothing like exceeding expectations.

Newly Minted Multimedia Journalists

Rusty Bailey, who's at the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune this summer as a multimedia intern, sent along a link to his first solo video - and a spot news piece, to boot.

And Sara Guevara, in her first week on staff at the Gainesville (Ga.) Times shot a piece on a new business. But not just any new business - this is a tourist helicopter service.

Not bad for less than a week off campus ...