Multimedia Backstory: Make Your Stories Sing

Picture: A student at the West End School studies in his room. By Derek Poore

UPDATE, Feb. 9, 2011: This piece won Best Multimedia in the 2010 Pictures of the Year Competition held by the Kentucky News Photographers Association.

In March and April 2010 I produced a video story for The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal on a small boarding school called the West End School. Video was shot on four separate days. All that shooting generated a first cut that was nearly five minutes long.

Needless to say there was some repetition in the interviews and the cutaways and b-roll weren't always necessary. But with critiques from Bob Sacha, a former producer at MediaStorm, and David Stephenson at the University of Kentucky, I managed to trim it down to three minutes. The pace is quicker, there are more visuals and interview voice overs breathe a bit better.

That's not to suggest it wasn't hard. All that cutting. Storytelling, especially in journalism, is most effective when the audience is entertained and educated all at the same time. Mark Twain supposedly said "if I see an adjective, I kill it." Editing video can be similar. "I feel like great films show, don't tell," Sacha told me.

The best print journalists visualize their stories before they do any reporting. This helps them assemble a narrative after interview subjects and the end result is a story, not an article.

Removing that one greatly-composed piece of b-roll to quicken the pace of a transition or cutting a wordy 15-second explanation from an interview session to a snappier five-second sound bite may be tough, but ultimately will help the audience enjoy and understand your piece.

Back To Maine

I'm happy to be back on the schedule for the 2011 Maine Media Workshops. I will teach multimedia distribution June 26-July 2 in Rockport. 

Visual storytelling is no longer confined to one screen, TV networks or even websites. The work we create and the stories we tell can be seen on smartphones, iPads, flat screen touch panels at trades shows -- the possibilities are growing every month.

Journalists have never before had the number of outlets to publish media available to us today. We'll cover exporting workflows, including Quicktime compression, Flash formats and streaming video. The class will look at the incorporation of content into websites and basic DVD authoring.

We'll also take a stab at Design, typography and branding and they apply to publishing and self-promotion. Additionally, students will learn how social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can bolster the visibility of documentary work.

Check out the Maine Media site to register.

Mountain Workshops 2010: Behind the scenes

In October I had the pleasure of attending the Mountain Workshops for the second straight year. Held in Elizabethtown, Ky., about 45 miles south of Louisville, the workshops welcomed more than 70 photojournalists who scoured Hardin County for picture and video stories.

In its 35th year, it was one of the largest workshops ever, if not the biggest, said James Kenney, director of the photojournalism program at Western Kentucky University, host of the workshops. Check out the video — it was produced by the enormously talented staff that in many cases uses vacation time from their day jobs to support the workshops.