Final Project

New photos, interview to come

Yesterday I got a hold of Martha Stone, who let me stop by for dinner at the shelter. I got some nice photos of the volunteers preparing dinner in the kitchen. I played around with different angles, and I think the pictures came out nicely. Again, the pictures are those of the volunteers, not the residents (I've been told several times not to come close to the residents at all). I have an interview set up for tomorrow with C.G., a volunteer at Cross Roads and a very friendly lady. Right now, I'm trying to think of solid interview questions that would tie up all my visuals and main content.

Some progress

It's been a pretty interesting week with some ups and downs. Last week, I interviewed and took photos of a few volunteers at the shelter, who were working in the kitchen. The lady was sweet to talk to, but the audio recording did not come out as well as I hoped it would. I'm trying to come back there and take more, better photos and maybe video, but the process of getting permission is rather difficult.

Unfortunately, those in charge of the shelter don't like the idea of me going anywhere near their residents. The only way I could take pictures there is by promising to not approach the homeless at all while I'm at Cross Roads. However, on Thanksgiving all the residents were invited to the South Church for community dinner, and I got a chance to speak to a couple of them. They would not answer specific questions about their experience or their situation of homelessness, but I think I got their personalities on tape at least.

I was surprised that the homeless themselves don't really have that big of a problem getting asked questions. They were pretty good people, and quite joyous. My project, however, still needs more work, and I'm getting really nervous about the deadline. I wish I had a better topic, but that's all I could come up with in a short time, so I'm trying to make the best of it. I really need more visuals, especially those pertaining to the shelter itself, which is hard to do. I have photos and video from the Thanksgiving event, but I want more photos having to do with the new facility at Cross Roads, since that is what over half of my audio is about.

Lastly, I was really, really impressed with the class projects I saw. I really wish I was better at thinking of good topics, such as the medical marijuana user, or any other topic in which the key person has no trouble telling anything on film.

Cross Roads

So my horseback riding story isn't happening anymore, and I've switched to another story. There's a homeless shelter in Portsmouth, which just got a new facility to replace the old buildings. Cross Roads is trying to improve the quality of living for those who come there, while still making sure those people don't see the place as a permanent home.

At the open house last Wednesday, I got a nice interview with one of the people that works there. I've posted the audio of it on my blog. I think the quality of the audio itself came out nicely--I used the windscreen this time, so there is way less distortion.

I've also posted some pictures I took, which are pretty much photos of empty rooms in the new facility and the old building. Walking through the shelter, I was so surprised at the difference between the two. The new facility looks like a 4-star hotel compared to the old rooms.In the final project, I'll use only a very few of these photos, since the rooms are empty with no people in it. However, it's still nice to show how super different the two places are.

My next big step in the project is finding the people seeking shelter that would want to talk to me, and focusing on the homeless themselves if I can. I'm still working on finding that willing person, but there's a big Thanksgiving dinner held for all the residents by the Rotary Club, and I'm thinking that would be a nice place to come. Martha Stone, who I interviewed at the open house, is also helping me out. Also, tomorrow, I'm going to follow around a volunteer at the shelter in order for me to get more of a feel for the place and do more recording. I'm probably going to keep coming back to the place several times a week, because it's important for me to find a nice angle on the story.

Better pumpkin slides...

I redid my pumpkin slides in Moviemaker, and this time it worked. Here is my slideshow:

Starting the big project

So I'm kind of nervous to start working on our big video project this semester. At first, I was going to do something on the nursing homes and the difference activities for the elderly make. However, I realized that such places might have a problem if I brought a camera in there, and I would be very limited with what I can do with the project. So, I thought of doing something for therapeutic horseback riding.

The challenge with this topic, as I realized in group discussions, is that therapeutic horseback riding has been done and redone before. There have been many stories dedicated to covering developmentally-challenged children, for example, whose cognitive skills improve from spending time with horses. So, my challenge in the project will have to be finding a different angle that has not been covered before. I'd like to find something compelling and new about the topic, something that no one had previously realized about what horseback riding does, or doesn't do for the kids. More importantly, I'll be seeking to find an answer to the "so what" question, which will take a bit of searching.

I really liked some of the ideas that were brought up in groups. A couple people had profile-type stories in mind about interesting people, and I thought that would be kind of cool. That way, the topic is narrow and one just has to find what aspect of a person to focus on. Maybe for my project, I'll focus not so much on horses, but rather a specific child I'll be talking about (I am still yet to find him or her). I could take the story out of the barn and into that child's life. I want the viewer to really feel like they're getting to know him or her. Maybe I'll follow the kid around and show the struggles, the successes, and little moments of joy. And the horseback riding can be the glue that holds the story together.

On another note, I've attempted to post my slideshow on pumpkins at the bottom of the blog, though I don't think it worked for some reason. I'm hoping I just don't see it because I don't have the right version of Adobe Flashplayer, but I'm thinking that's not the case. Sometimes, I wish multimedia journalism didn't come with consistent technical difficulties. I really liked the photos I took, especially with the pumpkins and the kids. Maybe I'll post the photos separately if it really isn't working.

First video project

For this week's project I got a video camera and got some shots of the career fair at the MUB. It was pretty interesting, and I was surprised at how many people were there. Many of the people in the booths actually had gone to UNH and returned to find employees for their companies. It was nice getting to talk to a variety of people at the fair--it didn't feel as creepy as taking still photos.

When interviewing the employers and prospective UNH students, I was having trouble getting an interesting shot, not just a frame filled with a guy talking for a period of time. I already had to be pretty far away from the interviewee so that the shot is not too close, so I didn't have much space to move the camera around to get more of the background or other objects.

But I think I got a variety of shots--some wide range, and some close-ups of the conversations. I found the article on sequencing really helpful, and I kept in mind trying to get at least 10 second sequences.

"One in 8 Million" story analysis

Looking through the various media sites, I really enjoyed watching videos from New York Time’s “One in 8 Million” collection. The different people’s stories were really captivating. I like the technique of letting the interviewee narrate the story, while showing pictures relating to the mood of what’s being said. The one story I really liked was about a former bar fighter named Steven Marmo, who tells about his past problems with anger and getting into fights. The story takes a turning point when he talks about gets in trouble while drinking at work and turning his life for the better after his taking up bicycle racing.

One of the main reasons I picked this story is that it has a clear progression from a conflict situation to a resolution, and it keeps the viewers on their toes while keeping with a direct storyline. The story that Marmo tells has a clear beginning, high point, and an end, and the photos that accompany the narration do a great job of representing the tone of what’s being said. At the beginning, when Marmo talks about his stored feelings of anger and energy, and wanting to release that energy by fighting, he is shown pulling heavy objects while doing construction work. The “conflict” of the story is resolved when Marmo talks about picking out a bike at a store and realizing that he hadn’t gotten in trouble since bike racing. The photo of him in a bike store is really great—he’s standing in front of a large selection of bikes. Not only is that photo graphically appealing, but it also portrays the feeling of many open possibilities. During the resolution part of the story happens when Marmo starts bike racing and he hasn’t gotten in trouble since.

The style of photography in this story deals a lot with motion and playing with shadows to convey emotion. When the narration talks about Marmo getting drunk at work and doing something inappropriate, the shadow is over his eyes in the photo, showing his guilt, or recalling of dark times. Many of the photos are intimate, making viewers feel like they’re getting to know Marmo as a person.

The photos captivate the viewer by conveying the by presenting intense sensations to the story. The first half of the images present Marmo’s physical struggle at the construction site, and the second half show feelings of speed and freedom through him bicycling. At the beginning, when Marmo talks about his stored feelings of anger and energy, he is shown pulling down heavy objects with rope. From his posture, as well as the angles of the photos, you can really feel the motion of pulling down something heavy, demonstrating Marmo’s struggle. When the images go from construction work to the bicycle, the images convey his feelings of freedom and that nothing can stop him by showing him speeding down the bridge on his bike.

Overall, the story clearly shows Marmo’s transformation from being a troubled, violence-prone kid to finding a better way to channel his energy at the end. In a way, the story shows that people can change for the better even if they have been a certain way for a long time. It shows that emotions such as anger, which might need to be taken out in a physical way, can be channeled through a more positive activity, such as biking.

Here's a link of this story:

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/index.html#steven_marmo

Audio interviews and Audacity

So our project for this week was quite interesting. We got a reference librarian as an interviewee. At first I thought there wouldn't be enough sounds to record at a quiet library, but you never notice all the noise that goes on there... dozens of students typing, pencils being sharpened, pages being leafed through, even footsteps. I think we got a pretty good b-roll going, considering we recorded in a place that was supposed to be quiet.

Our librarian was great--she was able to talk for a good amount of time, and she was really good at talking fluidly. Editing the interview with Audacity, however, was kind of harder than I thought--I've never worked with that application before. It's cool how you can edit stuff out and merge background noise and talking, though. It's just finding out exactly what you need to eliminate and making sure you're not deleting too many things that's hard. But hopefully we'll work with sound more in the future.

I'm kind of excited to start learning multimedia. I've always liked taking pictures, though I've never gotten into editing them much or making them into journalism. I've never really blogged, though I've sort of started a blog last year; it only has one entry. I can usually never think of what to write about.

The multimedia stories I've watched recently really showed me that certain stories are much more effective with pictures, sound, and video rather than just print. Last class, we watched the story on mediastorm.com about the legacy of Chernobyl, which I found really powerful. The shocking pictures of mutated children, as well as the interviews, really showed the impact of the disaster--something that would be impossible to show in just print. What the interviewee said at the end was also kind of scary--he said that they say something like Chernobyl will never happen again, but things break, and we never know. I can really say it's one of the most powerful videos I've ever watched.

Another nice video I've seen recently, at http://masteringmultimedia.wordpress.com/, is about injured war veterans. I really liked the way the facts and statistics are covered by a voice-over by a reporter, while letting the interviewees tell the human side of the story. This is a good technique, as the veterans being interviewed are there to explain their experience, rather than tell solid information on how many people have been injured, etc. I was watching a local news channel the other day, and half of their interview time was the people telling statistics rather than something human. I found that kind of boring, since I was expecting them to say more about their reactions to what happened.

Overall, though, I'm looking forward to learning how to work with multimedia , as great stories can come out of that. I think it might be hard to edit stuff though, after you've gotten all the footage. It might be difficult deciding what things to cut out and what's important to the story enough to keep. Hopefully combining sound, still photos and video into one project won't turn out too challenging at the end.