and the winners are (feb 07)

The NPPA multimedia clip contest results were posted recently. Here is the wrap up for this month.

Mike De Sisti keeps doing some great video work up at the The Post-Crescent in Appleton Wisconsin. His 'wacky weather' feature is a nice piece of work and kudos for Mike in getting the folks enjoying the unseasonable weather AND the snowmobile salesman.

The Washington Post demonstrated why they won best use of multimedia in POY with their video coverage of President Ford’s Funeral.

The San Antonio Express-News had a 'fun and irreverent' video of a recent ice storm. I am a big fan of breaking up the traditional narrative and they do a fun little piece that gives a nice take on the “man on the street’ genre. I have to point out that there are not as many controls as I would like on the package (ie, be able to skip to the end to give folks credit).

Ed Kashi and National Geographic have a great chaptered project on the Curse of the Black Gold. For those of you who might have forgotten Ed was detained for a time while shooting this project. I really admire ed’s work and much prefer this over his 'flip book project.'

An HM to the Northwest Herald for 'King Pin Pooch' that wasn’t a great project in my humble opinion but a great story find. How can you beat a dog who bowls at a bowling alley.

nimble

Last week on NPR’s show Day to Day, they ran a series on the Five Best Ideas in Television. Take away the term TV and the conversations about convergence and advertising sound remarkably familiar.

Check out the ideas: cbs invests in a star who doesn't watch tv, what if television ads got smarter, an old tv concept’s importance, on web tv someone is always watching and tv’s next big hit may come from the country’s fringes.

Two of the not-so-surprising ideas that emerged are 'Content is king' and the creation of content that engages people or gets them involved (also called stickiness). The idea of engaging readers/viewers with content or storytelling that brings them back, has them talking about the show outside of the event is an idea that news organizations could certainly embrace. Ron Reason talks about the idea of giving readers two things to change their life or that they should know about to talk about at work.

So why should I care about this you ask, it is about TV?

One of the interesting concepts that show like 'Heroes' and 'Lost' are utilizing are using different storytelling mediums (including and especially the internet) to broaden their show’s story line in other ways. Once again, who in the new media or news organizations (formerly newspapers) cares?

If readers/viewers are willing to log online after a TV show to vote or follow 'clues' then they are certainly willing and able to go online to find a new way to 'read' or interact with a story. Audio slide shows, flash packages, video are all ways to broaden how news organizations can tell their stories online AND INVOLVE readers/viewers.

Adjusting to the new market, thinking of news as a market, are all ideas that nimble companies are embracing and dinosaur newspapers are ignoring.

r*i*t

A big shout-out to my former institution of higher learning, R*I*T.

The have a project titled Voices of Rochester that has a great opening interface. My primary observation is that while it was an admirable project, by focusing on so many people, there is almost too much information, and what is there is not as good as it could have been had people been able to take more time.

Having been through the grind in Ra-cha-cha, I understand how it happened. I just wish that the professors there, and I am not pointing any fingers, would try and propose manageable projects or dissuade students from reaching so high.

One person per subject, while it would not have been so broad, could have yielded much stronger results and then the next class could have filled in the picture better.

Overall a B for effort, C for content.

thought

In the Sunday NYT’s PLAY magazine an interesting article written by Daniel Coyle about developing tennis prodigies yielded the following gem:

Deliberate practice means working on technique, seeking constant critical feedback and focusing ruthlessly on improving weakness.

'It feels like you are constantly stretching yourself into an uncomfortable are beyond what you can do.'
- K. Anders Ericsson, Professor of Psychology

I found this to be a very good summary of life in multimedia.

not just a number

I have seen it mentioned on a number of sites today, wow. We are limited only by our imagination these days...and not even that.

Not Just a Number is an amazing look at homicides in Oakland, that is not only a community project, but also a way for people to get involved and write to their leaders. The project is a collaboration of the Oakland Tribune, InsideBayArea.com and 49th parallel productions.

pushing boundaries

A colleague of mine, Andrew Dolph at the Medina Gazette, recently published a audio sound slide package about high school wrestling titled On Wrestling. If he was not directly influenced by Richard K-H over at the San Jose Mercury News I will eat my hat.

That being said, I think andrew does some interesting things to 'breakout of the box' that sound slides can easily put a photographer into mentally. As I noted with the San Jose piece, even though the progression of the show is linear, the editing does not need to be, nor do how you display the images always need to directly correspond to the frame of the program.

My primary concern is quality of the images. While many were 'grainy,' which I didn’t mind, a central repeating image, the subject against a white background seemed badly toned on my monitor (which admittedly is calibrated for our system). My 2-D professor advocated for having spotless technique when trying something different and while I appreciated Andrew’s efforts, that one frame really bothered me, especially seeing it repeatedly.

All that being said, I liked it. I thought his use of the the diptych worked quite well, although I am not sure it had to fade out the way it faded in. I liked the strip of images across the top of the infamous 'white frame' although I wondered if we needed a blank frame, then the same frame with his name and then the same frame with the sequence. I think it would have worked well as just the white frame with the sequence.

I think what San Jose did remarkably well, and Andrew to some extent, is start pushing the boundaries of what sound slides can do. Just like any other tool in our kit, a photographer/digital mojo needs to know what that instrument can do, its range and the scales before starting to play jazz.

Well done, Andrew, I like the way you are thinking.

back

If you have a few minutes, check out A Break in the Road.

Be patient and let the ad run, and be warned it can be addictive.
It is a really interesting way to think about sound, and yes, even
fun. (Don't tell your editor you are having any fun.)

Kudos for multimediashooter for the find.