Only last month did I discover that the National Press Photographers Association has a multimedia counterpart to its Monthly Newspaper Clip Contest. I do read the NPPA monthly magazine, but somehow I either missed the announcement of the new contest or simply wasn't interested in multimedia enough a year ago to take notice. I'm fairly certain of the reaction most of my colleagues had at the time, though: "Great. Just what our profession needs. Another contest."
We do need this contest, because it can help establish the standards for what our profession is becoming. The NPPA Multimedia Contest consolidates the most current multimedia examples contributed by NPPA members and opens the monthly judging to the entire membership. Over the past year, NPPA's new contest program has accumulated three dozen examples of good multimedia journalism in each of its five categories. This is a valuable resource for those of us just learning the ways of multimedia production.
In an era of inter-connectivity, however, I think the website for this program needs one logical development to make it an even more valuable exchange of ideas among NPPA members about what makes good multimedia. By enabling NPPA members to post comments on individual entries, the program could establish both peer-based feedback on the work of contest entrants from one month to the next, as well as an example-based discussion of what constitutes "good work." This could take the form of a provision for comments attached to each entry on the contest website or perhaps adding another NPPA forum discussion group devoted to exchanging critiques and opinions on current contest entries and winners.
In order for a contest to be educational, it is not enough simply to see what is considered the best by those doing the judging, but to understand why.
In that spirit, I'll declare my own choices among the current "November" entries (actually October productions entered in November competition) for the one category in the Multimedia Contest that I can enter: Individual Audio Slideshow.
First Place: "Jehovah's Witnesses Rebuild in 4 Days" by Kerry Maloney of the Idaho Statesman. This production could serve as an archetype for good multimedia journalism. Maloney's audio delivers a clear telling of a remarkable story about a religious community that normally doesn't even like to be photographed. His visuals support the audio story, but not in a lock-step, obvious manner. He even makes a nice, appropriate use of flipbook action, but uses no pointless pans or zooms. At the end, I am awed by the industry of this church community and understand their faith a little better.
Second Place: "Down to the Corps" by Bradly J. Boner of the Jackson Hole News. You gotta admire the photographer who can bring fresh treatment to a threadbare subject. How many times have we seen the basic training story? And yet, by seeing the experience through a letter written to a recruit's father, a trite subject is transformed into a story about a relationship. The images are all spot-on and coordinated with a near professional reading of the letter by the father. His laconic tone reflects humor and pride. Even after viewing this production several times, I have to shake my head over the sheer logistics involved: travel between Jackson Hole and San Diego, time spent covering the camp, acquisition of the letter and arrangement for the father to read it aloud, and the anticipation of visual points made in that letter. Wonderful work!
Third Place: "A Yankees fan in Red Sox nation" by Mike Dean of the Gloucester Daily Times. Oddly, one of the attributes of this production that appealed to me is its brevity – less than 90 seconds. Dean doesn't belabor his subject. He introduces an irrepressible, though displaced, Yankees fan, establishes his mission in life and takes us through his skirmishes, concluding with an excellent closing image.
All 52 entries for November will be posted on the contest website and can be viewed until Dec. 1. After that, only the three selections for first, second and third will be available. In the interest of full disclosure, I entered "Chalk" but in my own estimation, it ranks somewhere in the middle of the pack.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Multimedia mascot – parrot or lyrebird?
The remarkable creatures of Australia have fascinated me for most of my life. I was delighted years ago when Dirck Halstead embraced the duck-billed platypus as the principle icon in his crusade for still photographers to diversify their skills and learn the ways of video. The lure of his Platypus Workshop is learning how to use new, more effective tools for story telling in preparation for becoming producers rather than mere photographers.
Personal websites, blogging and podcasting now make the possibility of self-publishing available to anyone. Newspaper photographers simply don't need the structure of a newspaper any more in order to publish their work. The opportunity to produce ones own stories in new ways, however, presents ethical challenges for the photojournalist grounded in familiar journalistic standards and editorial hierarchy. The one-man-band multimedia journalist becomes responsible for adapting old journalistic standards to new forms of telling stories.
What comes to mind is an argument between a parrot and a lyrebird.
The lyrebird is an Australian bird of near mythic musical powers. Among all the birds of the world, there is no more accomplished mimic than the lyrebird. Its song – unique to each lyrebird – is comprised of the many, varied sounds in its environment, which each lyrebird combines and recombines and weaves into a new sensibility. The lyrebird literally gives meaning to what it hears. Its song, in effect, tells the stories of its community.
We all know what a parrot is. The parrot is the reporter in us all. The parrot is the bird that keeps repeating in our ear: "Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy." Reporting is a discipline built upon accuracy. Story telling, on he other hand, is an art form, and the lyrebird is the artist in us. This is the bird that uses its own ear to pick and choose from what it hears in its perception of the story. This is the bird that makes sense of it all for the rest of us.
That’s what audio editing should accomplish. It should make as much sense to the ear as photo editing makes sense to the eye.
There is a fundamental conflict of interest between rote reporting and story telling. There is a dialectic tug of war between the duty to adhere to documentary accuracy and the impulse to interpret. Both birds are necessary in the production of multimedia journalism, but they are not the same, the parrot and the lyrebird. They have different roles. Sometimes that is the difference between accuracy and truth.
Personal websites, blogging and podcasting now make the possibility of self-publishing available to anyone. Newspaper photographers simply don't need the structure of a newspaper any more in order to publish their work. The opportunity to produce ones own stories in new ways, however, presents ethical challenges for the photojournalist grounded in familiar journalistic standards and editorial hierarchy. The one-man-band multimedia journalist becomes responsible for adapting old journalistic standards to new forms of telling stories.
What comes to mind is an argument between a parrot and a lyrebird.
The lyrebird is an Australian bird of near mythic musical powers. Among all the birds of the world, there is no more accomplished mimic than the lyrebird. Its song – unique to each lyrebird – is comprised of the many, varied sounds in its environment, which each lyrebird combines and recombines and weaves into a new sensibility. The lyrebird literally gives meaning to what it hears. Its song, in effect, tells the stories of its community.
We all know what a parrot is. The parrot is the reporter in us all. The parrot is the bird that keeps repeating in our ear: "Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy." Reporting is a discipline built upon accuracy. Story telling, on he other hand, is an art form, and the lyrebird is the artist in us. This is the bird that uses its own ear to pick and choose from what it hears in its perception of the story. This is the bird that makes sense of it all for the rest of us.
That’s what audio editing should accomplish. It should make as much sense to the ear as photo editing makes sense to the eye.
There is a fundamental conflict of interest between rote reporting and story telling. There is a dialectic tug of war between the duty to adhere to documentary accuracy and the impulse to interpret. Both birds are necessary in the production of multimedia journalism, but they are not the same, the parrot and the lyrebird. They have different roles. Sometimes that is the difference between accuracy and truth.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Crossng the line . . . wherever that is
I’m comfortable with all but a few decisions I made editing the audio story for the slide show production of “Chalk," but in at least one or two instances I think I crossed a line between journalism and everything else.
Since completing the production, I’ve managed to find very few specific sets of guidelines on the Internet for the ethics of audio editing. Having read everything I can find now makes me wonder what I was thinking with some of these decisions. Evidently, I was thinking more about how to achieve effective story telling in an unfamiliar medium, rather than transferring familiar standards of responsible reporting. The issue isn’t a question of trade offs between the two, but of telling a story in any medium in the right way.
Case #1 – “Chalk is such an easy medium to embrace “
In “Truth in audio” posted on the website Teaching Online Journalism, Mindy McAdams offers the same cardinal rule for audio editing as for written journalism: Never change the meaning of what the person said.
In my interview with the chalk festival chairman I asked what the appeal about chalk was for young and old alike. She started talking about its use by children and went on to explain how the appeal of the chalk festival itself was its primary purpose in having fun. The original segment [click boldface type to listen] lasted 53 seconds, which I cut in half for the production segment. Part of what I cut out was the context of her wonderful, lyrical pronunciation of the word “chalk." However, by dropping out her specific reference to children, I generalized the meaning of her statement to apply chalk’s appeal to everyone, young and old.
Case #2 – Cutting to the bone or beyond?
On the website for The Canadian Journalism Project, Mary McGuire provides more specific applications for audio editing in her article “Ethical guidelines for editing audio.” In her view, it’s okay to cut out most forms of “verbal stalling,” reiterations, and subordinate clauses. It’s okay, according to her, to make edits that help someone sound sharper, tighter and clearer.
In the interview the chairman spent a full minute talking about the event’s growth. I cut the original segment – complete with stalls, reiterations and unfinished sentences – down to less than 15 seconds for the production segment. I left the selected parts in their original order and hopefully preserved their context and meaning, but just where do you draw the line before the cutting becomes excessive?
Case #3 – Shuffling for effect
Not only did I cut down the original segment of the chairman’s reply to my question about the next day’s weather, I shifted parts of her response around her laughter to give a more ironic edge to her reply in the production segment. I have genuine schism over whether this juggling was ethical, because it clearly improved the audio, even though nothing was added. Only the order of the components was changed, but did this change also shift the meaning of what she said, however subtle? If this were a photo, I’d know my ethical limits. You don’t shift pyramids in order to improve the composition of an image. With audio, I’m not so certain about the rules on rearrangements.
Case #4 – A little background music
On the website Pointeronline, Al Tompkins lays down one unequivocal rule in his article “Sliding Sound, Altered Images.” His first edict for audio editing is utterly simple: Do not add. He further cautions against the use of music in journalistic productions if the music was not ambient sound gathered at the same time and place of the story.
I recorded the guitarist playing at the chalk festival, knowing the music might make good a unifying background for the entire production. I added this music track as one more layer of audio for the production, and even had to loop it out to the production length of two and a half minutes, due to its original recording length of only one minute and six seconds. I don’t know what the rules are for the use of ambient sound as imposed background, much less the sort of manipulation involved to make it fit my production needs.
It seems to me that ethical grounding for audio editing is even more important to those of us learning the ropes of audio-driven slide show production than for those learning video production, because we have to start by producing an audio story before adding visuals. Without firm guidelines, the temptation to manipulate audio in the editing process will prove as seductive as the opportunity to “improve” images in Photoshop in our early days of going digital.
I was not surprised to discover that the only audio file I could find posted by the National Press Photographers Association on its website from the 2007 Summit multimedia immersion workshop is the panel discussion on the complex ethical issues emerging from newspaper photojournalism’s transition into multimedia journalism. Nor was the significance lost on me that the one-hour-and-13-minute audio recording was posted in its entirety – unedited.
Since completing the production, I’ve managed to find very few specific sets of guidelines on the Internet for the ethics of audio editing. Having read everything I can find now makes me wonder what I was thinking with some of these decisions. Evidently, I was thinking more about how to achieve effective story telling in an unfamiliar medium, rather than transferring familiar standards of responsible reporting. The issue isn’t a question of trade offs between the two, but of telling a story in any medium in the right way.
Case #1 – “Chalk is such an easy medium to embrace “
In “Truth in audio” posted on the website Teaching Online Journalism, Mindy McAdams offers the same cardinal rule for audio editing as for written journalism: Never change the meaning of what the person said.
In my interview with the chalk festival chairman I asked what the appeal about chalk was for young and old alike. She started talking about its use by children and went on to explain how the appeal of the chalk festival itself was its primary purpose in having fun. The original segment [click boldface type to listen] lasted 53 seconds, which I cut in half for the production segment. Part of what I cut out was the context of her wonderful, lyrical pronunciation of the word “chalk." However, by dropping out her specific reference to children, I generalized the meaning of her statement to apply chalk’s appeal to everyone, young and old.
Case #2 – Cutting to the bone or beyond?
On the website for The Canadian Journalism Project, Mary McGuire provides more specific applications for audio editing in her article “Ethical guidelines for editing audio.” In her view, it’s okay to cut out most forms of “verbal stalling,” reiterations, and subordinate clauses. It’s okay, according to her, to make edits that help someone sound sharper, tighter and clearer.
In the interview the chairman spent a full minute talking about the event’s growth. I cut the original segment – complete with stalls, reiterations and unfinished sentences – down to less than 15 seconds for the production segment. I left the selected parts in their original order and hopefully preserved their context and meaning, but just where do you draw the line before the cutting becomes excessive?
Case #3 – Shuffling for effect
Not only did I cut down the original segment of the chairman’s reply to my question about the next day’s weather, I shifted parts of her response around her laughter to give a more ironic edge to her reply in the production segment. I have genuine schism over whether this juggling was ethical, because it clearly improved the audio, even though nothing was added. Only the order of the components was changed, but did this change also shift the meaning of what she said, however subtle? If this were a photo, I’d know my ethical limits. You don’t shift pyramids in order to improve the composition of an image. With audio, I’m not so certain about the rules on rearrangements.
Case #4 – A little background music
On the website Pointeronline, Al Tompkins lays down one unequivocal rule in his article “Sliding Sound, Altered Images.” His first edict for audio editing is utterly simple: Do not add. He further cautions against the use of music in journalistic productions if the music was not ambient sound gathered at the same time and place of the story.
I recorded the guitarist playing at the chalk festival, knowing the music might make good a unifying background for the entire production. I added this music track as one more layer of audio for the production, and even had to loop it out to the production length of two and a half minutes, due to its original recording length of only one minute and six seconds. I don’t know what the rules are for the use of ambient sound as imposed background, much less the sort of manipulation involved to make it fit my production needs.
It seems to me that ethical grounding for audio editing is even more important to those of us learning the ropes of audio-driven slide show production than for those learning video production, because we have to start by producing an audio story before adding visuals. Without firm guidelines, the temptation to manipulate audio in the editing process will prove as seductive as the opportunity to “improve” images in Photoshop in our early days of going digital.
I was not surprised to discover that the only audio file I could find posted by the National Press Photographers Association on its website from the 2007 Summit multimedia immersion workshop is the panel discussion on the complex ethical issues emerging from newspaper photojournalism’s transition into multimedia journalism. Nor was the significance lost on me that the one-hour-and-13-minute audio recording was posted in its entirety – unedited.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Workflow for editing "Chalk"
Since no one has yet written a playbook for multimedia production, it seemed worthwhile to keep notes on the work flow that evolved in the production of “Chalk.”
By now I've viewed dozens upon dozens of sound/slide shows on the Internet and most of them are forgettable. I didn't even finish viewing a lot of them, brief as they were. Mostly it came down to the difference between an audio-driven slide show and slide shows with sound. The difference depended upon good editing, starting with audio. In fact, that seems to be the primary difference between newspaper work and multimedia work. With the slide show you start by thinking how you can tell the story, and THEN you think about what you are showing.
• Rough cuts – I began my audio editing by organizing the converted files into separate interviews (one per artist and one long interview with the chairman) and supporting files (registration and two different guitar numbers). The basic idea was to break up the long narrative interview with brief interludes from some of the artists. I then opened the chairman interview in Audacity and cut out everything I knew I would not go into the production, leaving silent gaps in between the usable material. I made similar cuts on the artist interviews and supporting files, eliminating some of the less promising interviews.
• Content tags – To the several Audacity files I added Label Tracks, noting the content topic under each audio segment. Once I figured out the editorial value of tagging, I stopped wasting time trying to transcribe audio during the editing process. Instead, I started tagging audio segments as part of the rough-cut process.
• Project file – Once all the audio resource material was prepared, I opened a blank project file and saved it with a working title.
• Assembly of story segments – I started the production by importing the registration segment. Even before beginning to edit the chalkfest material, I had both my opening and ending in mind, as I had for “School of Rock.” Knowing where you’re going to start and where you’re going to wind up makes story editing so much easier! I recorded several people registering for their sidewalk space as the obvious place to begin coverage on the day of the event, but not until the next day's rain did I have my ending. I knew the irony of the rain had to be covered in the follow-up interview, so I planned the interview questions accordingly. Switching from staff photographer to multimedia producer meant learning to think as an editor from the start of coverage to conclusion of the production.
• Story tags – I added a Label Track to the project file to keep track of the story development until the basic storyline was completed. Without the story tags in the development of “School of Rock,” I was constantly having to relisten to segments or refer to handwritten notes to remind myself where I was in the storyline development.
• Additional audio tracks – In the “School of Rock” audio story, I added a parallel track fading additional segments in and out of the main storyline, rolling from one to another. In “Chalk” I wanted more separation between the separate components. For continuity I used music recorded at the festival, which went on a separate Audio Track. Rather than use an identifiable song, I used melody-free music that could serve as background for the entire length of the production, fading down beneath the various speakers and back up between the segments.
• Trim & fine tuning – With “Chalk” it proved more expedient to wait until the basic storyline was assembled before making any serious effort to trim and fine tune individual audio segments. It was the trimming and fine-tuning decisions that proved most problematic in terms of the journalistic protocol involved in audio editing. As with the audio notes edited from the seminar, I had no firm guidelines for what was allowable within journalistic standards. (Perhaps specific instances can be addressed in a future blog entry.)
• Transcription – Unless the success of the production depends on precise coordination of visual content with the audio storyline, it shouldn’t be necessary to fully transcribe the audio before assembling images for a slide show. I felt this was necessary for “Chalk.” The best means I found was adding the transcription to the project story tags in the Label Track. I exported the expanded Label Track to a text file, which included the exact timing of each entry in the audio track, and then transferred the text file into an Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet gave me the advantage of calculating time segments. With this precise audio log I could start assembling my images.
• Assembly of images – Editing images for a slide show is quite different than for a photo layout. Instead of developing a visual story in terms of spatial relationships, you are assembling a linear progression complete with transitions. And then there is the sheer volume of images involved in producing a slide show. For “Chalk” I had nearly 300 images to edit. I started by separating the images into categories to correspond with the story segments, each divided by a blackout. I composed the title and credit frames in Photoshop, selecting a suitable typeface. The last step in assembly was to number the individual frames in their order of appearance and place them in one folder.
• Soundslides – The real value in this $40 program is its simplicity: Import the Audacity project saved as an mp3 file and then import the folder of numbered jpegs. The program presents a storyboard of your production that allows you to adjust the order and timing of individual images, as well as the type of transition between the images. For an additional $30 you can go “Pro” and add the spiffy Ken Burns movements, among other features.
• Final production format – Instead, I opted to buy the additional Video Plugin ($20) that allows you to Export a Soundslides production in the Quicktime format. Ironically, the video plugin can’t capture any of the additional Ken Burns movements you pay for in the Pro version of Soundslides, but the advantage of converting to one self-contained file in a widely popular format outweighed that limitation. [UPDATE: Since producing "Chalk" I actually read the entire manual for Soundslides. Not only does Exporting to the Soundslides publish_to_web preserve the integrity of your production (including the Pro features), the total files amount to less than half the size of the one Quicktime file and typically runs much more smoothly online.]
By now I've viewed dozens upon dozens of sound/slide shows on the Internet and most of them are forgettable. I didn't even finish viewing a lot of them, brief as they were. Mostly it came down to the difference between an audio-driven slide show and slide shows with sound. The difference depended upon good editing, starting with audio. In fact, that seems to be the primary difference between newspaper work and multimedia work. With the slide show you start by thinking how you can tell the story, and THEN you think about what you are showing.
• Rough cuts – I began my audio editing by organizing the converted files into separate interviews (one per artist and one long interview with the chairman) and supporting files (registration and two different guitar numbers). The basic idea was to break up the long narrative interview with brief interludes from some of the artists. I then opened the chairman interview in Audacity and cut out everything I knew I would not go into the production, leaving silent gaps in between the usable material. I made similar cuts on the artist interviews and supporting files, eliminating some of the less promising interviews.
• Content tags – To the several Audacity files I added Label Tracks, noting the content topic under each audio segment. Once I figured out the editorial value of tagging, I stopped wasting time trying to transcribe audio during the editing process. Instead, I started tagging audio segments as part of the rough-cut process.
• Project file – Once all the audio resource material was prepared, I opened a blank project file and saved it with a working title.
• Assembly of story segments – I started the production by importing the registration segment. Even before beginning to edit the chalkfest material, I had both my opening and ending in mind, as I had for “School of Rock.” Knowing where you’re going to start and where you’re going to wind up makes story editing so much easier! I recorded several people registering for their sidewalk space as the obvious place to begin coverage on the day of the event, but not until the next day's rain did I have my ending. I knew the irony of the rain had to be covered in the follow-up interview, so I planned the interview questions accordingly. Switching from staff photographer to multimedia producer meant learning to think as an editor from the start of coverage to conclusion of the production.
• Story tags – I added a Label Track to the project file to keep track of the story development until the basic storyline was completed. Without the story tags in the development of “School of Rock,” I was constantly having to relisten to segments or refer to handwritten notes to remind myself where I was in the storyline development.
• Additional audio tracks – In the “School of Rock” audio story, I added a parallel track fading additional segments in and out of the main storyline, rolling from one to another. In “Chalk” I wanted more separation between the separate components. For continuity I used music recorded at the festival, which went on a separate Audio Track. Rather than use an identifiable song, I used melody-free music that could serve as background for the entire length of the production, fading down beneath the various speakers and back up between the segments.
• Trim & fine tuning – With “Chalk” it proved more expedient to wait until the basic storyline was assembled before making any serious effort to trim and fine tune individual audio segments. It was the trimming and fine-tuning decisions that proved most problematic in terms of the journalistic protocol involved in audio editing. As with the audio notes edited from the seminar, I had no firm guidelines for what was allowable within journalistic standards. (Perhaps specific instances can be addressed in a future blog entry.)
• Transcription – Unless the success of the production depends on precise coordination of visual content with the audio storyline, it shouldn’t be necessary to fully transcribe the audio before assembling images for a slide show. I felt this was necessary for “Chalk.” The best means I found was adding the transcription to the project story tags in the Label Track. I exported the expanded Label Track to a text file, which included the exact timing of each entry in the audio track, and then transferred the text file into an Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet gave me the advantage of calculating time segments. With this precise audio log I could start assembling my images.
• Assembly of images – Editing images for a slide show is quite different than for a photo layout. Instead of developing a visual story in terms of spatial relationships, you are assembling a linear progression complete with transitions. And then there is the sheer volume of images involved in producing a slide show. For “Chalk” I had nearly 300 images to edit. I started by separating the images into categories to correspond with the story segments, each divided by a blackout. I composed the title and credit frames in Photoshop, selecting a suitable typeface. The last step in assembly was to number the individual frames in their order of appearance and place them in one folder.
• Soundslides – The real value in this $40 program is its simplicity: Import the Audacity project saved as an mp3 file and then import the folder of numbered jpegs. The program presents a storyboard of your production that allows you to adjust the order and timing of individual images, as well as the type of transition between the images. For an additional $30 you can go “Pro” and add the spiffy Ken Burns movements, among other features.
• Final production format – Instead, I opted to buy the additional Video Plugin ($20) that allows you to Export a Soundslides production in the Quicktime format. Ironically, the video plugin can’t capture any of the additional Ken Burns movements you pay for in the Pro version of Soundslides, but the advantage of converting to one self-contained file in a widely popular format outweighed that limitation. [UPDATE: Since producing "Chalk" I actually read the entire manual for Soundslides. Not only does Exporting to the Soundslides publish_to_web preserve the integrity of your production (including the Pro features), the total files amount to less than half the size of the one Quicktime file and typically runs much more smoothly online.]
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Chalk up my first audio-driven slide show
Imagine several city blocks of people – young and old – spending most of a day drawing something on a sidewalk square just for the sheer fun of it. No competition, no prizes, just the opportunity to take colored chalk and draw whatever they wanted.
My newspaper covered the annual Forest Grove sidewalk chalk art event for most of its previous 16 years, so when the time came around again, I got the inevitable photo assignment. Since we ran a front page centerpiece last year from the chalkfest, I knew there was little chance of getting similar page one display this year. No extra space was set aside in the coming issue for a photo package, so I knew our coverage this year would amount to one or two photos somewhere inside the ‘A’ section.
But what a visual feast for a photographer! Just add audio and I could have my first real slide show production, right?
I left the 35mm equipment at the office and used only the point-and-shoot Fuji. That alone enabled me to blend in with the casual spectators throughout the morning, rather than looking like a one-man walking media event. Normally I’d shoot an assignment only up to the point of knowing I had “something” worth publishing. That morning among the several hundred busy chalk artists, I got so involved in shooting that I was actually startled when the camera simply stopped recording images. For the first time in my career I had maxed out a one-gig card. Working with the little camera was so effortless and unobtrusive, it was like taking visual notes, instead of looking for one "best" photo.
Audio was a different matter.
My first inclination was to build the entire slide show production on a string of brief sidewalk interviews portraying the variety of artists, and maybe toss in a few spectator comments. However, after fumbling my way through the first few interviews, I had to back off for a cup of coffee and second thoughts.
The audio equipment wasn’t the problem. The Swiffer ‘handheld’ mic worked fine. I was getting good audio technically, despite the general murmur of the sidewalk crowd and the background music (local musicians set up on Main Street to play while the artists worked). The problem was my own awkwardness. On any typical photo assignment, I’d endeavor to establish a working rapport quickly with my subject to help the person forget about the camera. Small talk, a joke, pertinent questions – whatever it took to put the person at ease. I couldn’t seem to do that in the interview mode, and the uneasiness carried over to the interviewees.
By the end of my shoot, I had about eight or nine so-so interviews and a firm conviction that these interviews alone wouldn’t make a very good slide show. The interviews needed something more than a string of images to tie the production together. I stepped back into the street and recorded a guitarist picking through a delicate sprinkling of notes. This could provide musical continuity for the production. Still, the whole thing seemed disjointed and incomplete.
What was needed was a narrator to explain the event, and who better than the event chairman? I found her at the end of the day tired but willing to talk about her event. Instead, I scheduled an appointment for a sit-down interview the following week so she would be fresh. I went to that appointment prepared with an outline of questions and the resolve to relax and turn the interview into a conversation. The recorded interview lasted about 18 minutes, but both the preparation and the new mindset helped put me at ease enough to provide the narrative storyline for a two-and-a-half minute slide show – "Chalk."
Meanwhile, my newspaper wound up publishing one three-column-wide photo in black and white on page A5.
My newspaper covered the annual Forest Grove sidewalk chalk art event for most of its previous 16 years, so when the time came around again, I got the inevitable photo assignment. Since we ran a front page centerpiece last year from the chalkfest, I knew there was little chance of getting similar page one display this year. No extra space was set aside in the coming issue for a photo package, so I knew our coverage this year would amount to one or two photos somewhere inside the ‘A’ section.
But what a visual feast for a photographer! Just add audio and I could have my first real slide show production, right?
I left the 35mm equipment at the office and used only the point-and-shoot Fuji. That alone enabled me to blend in with the casual spectators throughout the morning, rather than looking like a one-man walking media event. Normally I’d shoot an assignment only up to the point of knowing I had “something” worth publishing. That morning among the several hundred busy chalk artists, I got so involved in shooting that I was actually startled when the camera simply stopped recording images. For the first time in my career I had maxed out a one-gig card. Working with the little camera was so effortless and unobtrusive, it was like taking visual notes, instead of looking for one "best" photo.
Audio was a different matter.
My first inclination was to build the entire slide show production on a string of brief sidewalk interviews portraying the variety of artists, and maybe toss in a few spectator comments. However, after fumbling my way through the first few interviews, I had to back off for a cup of coffee and second thoughts.
The audio equipment wasn’t the problem. The Swiffer ‘handheld’ mic worked fine. I was getting good audio technically, despite the general murmur of the sidewalk crowd and the background music (local musicians set up on Main Street to play while the artists worked). The problem was my own awkwardness. On any typical photo assignment, I’d endeavor to establish a working rapport quickly with my subject to help the person forget about the camera. Small talk, a joke, pertinent questions – whatever it took to put the person at ease. I couldn’t seem to do that in the interview mode, and the uneasiness carried over to the interviewees.
By the end of my shoot, I had about eight or nine so-so interviews and a firm conviction that these interviews alone wouldn’t make a very good slide show. The interviews needed something more than a string of images to tie the production together. I stepped back into the street and recorded a guitarist picking through a delicate sprinkling of notes. This could provide musical continuity for the production. Still, the whole thing seemed disjointed and incomplete.
What was needed was a narrator to explain the event, and who better than the event chairman? I found her at the end of the day tired but willing to talk about her event. Instead, I scheduled an appointment for a sit-down interview the following week so she would be fresh. I went to that appointment prepared with an outline of questions and the resolve to relax and turn the interview into a conversation. The recorded interview lasted about 18 minutes, but both the preparation and the new mindset helped put me at ease enough to provide the narrative storyline for a two-and-a-half minute slide show – "Chalk."
Meanwhile, my newspaper wound up publishing one three-column-wide photo in black and white on page A5.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Of shotguns & Swiffers
There is no substitute for a good shotgun mic. That said, I could neither afford a really good shotgun mic, nor did I want to pack around the equivalent of a walking stick. It contradicted the whole notion of minimalist gear.
My first thought was to find the smallest shotgun mic on the market. What I found was the Japanese TECT UEM-88, touted as the "world's smallest ultra-powerful shotgun mic system." Attributes of this "high quality miniature electret condenser microphone" included a 50dB acoustic gain and a 200-15 KHz frequency response, all powered by one standard AAA battery. The whole thing measured nine inches long. Unfortunately, it retailed at well over $100 on the Internet, and I could find no reviews on this bit of audio hardware to justify that sort of investment. Like anyone else on a budget I checked Ebay and found one available at the opening bid of 99 cents with no reserve limit. Imagine my astonishment several days later to discover that no one else placed a bid! I got the amazing micro shotgun mic for less than $12, including shipping, but that was the good news.
To make a long blind alley short, the little shotgun mic simply couldn't produce quality audio recording. The range-tuning device was difficult to operate and imprecise, at best, and any audio I could record came through a curtain of white noise.
In lieu of using a good shotgun mic, the only alternative was to get a microphone as close to the audio source as convenient. I had to find a way to extend the reach of the little microphone I was using with the Olympus recorder – something better than holding the mic out at arm's length.
Okay, I share house cleaning duties with my wife. She vacuums. I dust. I found myself extending the Swiffer duster handle to reach places a shorter-than-average man can't normally reach, and the solution came to me.
I removed the duster pad, trimmed off the long pad prongs and scraped off the "Swiffer" label (I mean, why invite wisecracks in the field, right?).
The two pieces came apart to fit nicely in my camera bag. Reassembled, with the lavaliere clamped to the end of the primary handle (reinforced with a rubber band), I could extend the reach of the little mic to more than four feet. Using the modified Swiffer handle alone gave me the equivalent of a handheld mic that could be folded and tucked into the front pocket of my pants when not in use, the extender stashed in a hip pocket.
Once I had weathered the derisive laughter of reporters at the newspaper office over such a humble improvisation, I felt compelled to try out the new audio accessories on my first attempt at a full-blown audio-driven slide show production: the 17th Annual Sidewalk Chalk Art Festival.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
School of Rock revisited – weaving a tapestry of audio
Having completed the project of editing the multimedia seminar recordings, I felt ready to attempt producing my first audio story. This meant either finding a new subject to record or trying to salvage an audio story from the material recorded at the rock and roll workshop. Family matters had prevented me from recording the concert at the end of the two-week workshop, so I knew I was missing the logical story ending. Upon listening again, however, I decided the material had possibilities, both for story and for exploring Audacity beyond Cut, Paste and variations on “Repair.”
Even though I had only captured half of the reporter’s interview with the two directors, I recognized that their easy banter provided material for the story’s narration. Finding the opening for the audio story was easy. One director recounted how he came up with the idea for a workshop on rock and roll for young would-be musicians, then casually mentioned the idea to the city parks and recreation department. I broke up the interview with cuts from the workshop, using the Envelope Tool on a second track to fade up audio of kids wailing on drums and piano, beneath the voice of the first director and down again under the voice of the second director talking about how they worked so well with each other. From there, I segued into one of the directors laughing over the absurdity their committing to a public rock concert at the end of such a brief workshop.
That set the premise for the whole story. One of the directors described the structure of a workshop day and the value of the program. Beneath his voice I ran the steady beat of his drilling a class on rhythm. The rest was filled in with various components of the workshop, including one director’s frustration over an apparent lack of progress with his young rockers in light of having to be ready for their concert the following week.
The whole point of the story was the iffy prospect of that concert, but I didn’t actually have any concert audio – and thus, no ending for my story.
It took three weeks of emailing, phoning and face-to-face pleading just to get a copy of the recorded concert, simply due to the nature of top quality high school teachers at the outset of another school year: They’re very busy!
One of their students finally came through with a CD of the 20-minute concert. I wound up using the greeting to the concert crowd, then cutting down a song by one of the workshop bands to just under 23 seconds. That alone was a great learning experience, trying to blend together various brief cuts from the song “We Got the Beat,” and still keep the beat intact.
I punctuated the entire piece with one of the directors speculating over the next year’s workshop.
The completed audio story ran about 30 seconds over my three-minute target length, but as a story, it seemed to hold together very well. [To listen to the MP3 file, click on the boldfaced title: "Hillsboro School of Rock"]
In the course of the hours and hours spent editing this story, I learned quite a lot – mostly about practical work flow and the eccentricities of Audacity. I learned not to waste time trying to transcribe in order to remember tracts of audio, but to save (Export) usable segments and sound bites as small, separate files – all well tagged for subject and length. I learned to end each editing session by Exporting a copy of the project as an uncompressed file to backup Audacity’s .aup files. I learned that moving Audacity project files off the desktop and into folders often produced an intractable “Error opening file” message when I tried to open them later. I learned to use the Envelope Tool only on secondary tracks and never on the primary track. For whatever reason, when the Envelope was applied to the primary track, it could not be undone. Any subsequent attempt to Cut a selection in the primary track would collapse the entire track. I also learned to make an Audacity project-in-progress more stable by Exporting and Importing segments rather than Cutting and Pasting.
Perhaps I was finally ready to move on to my first audio-driven slide show production.
Even though I had only captured half of the reporter’s interview with the two directors, I recognized that their easy banter provided material for the story’s narration. Finding the opening for the audio story was easy. One director recounted how he came up with the idea for a workshop on rock and roll for young would-be musicians, then casually mentioned the idea to the city parks and recreation department. I broke up the interview with cuts from the workshop, using the Envelope Tool on a second track to fade up audio of kids wailing on drums and piano, beneath the voice of the first director and down again under the voice of the second director talking about how they worked so well with each other. From there, I segued into one of the directors laughing over the absurdity their committing to a public rock concert at the end of such a brief workshop.
That set the premise for the whole story. One of the directors described the structure of a workshop day and the value of the program. Beneath his voice I ran the steady beat of his drilling a class on rhythm. The rest was filled in with various components of the workshop, including one director’s frustration over an apparent lack of progress with his young rockers in light of having to be ready for their concert the following week.
The whole point of the story was the iffy prospect of that concert, but I didn’t actually have any concert audio – and thus, no ending for my story.
It took three weeks of emailing, phoning and face-to-face pleading just to get a copy of the recorded concert, simply due to the nature of top quality high school teachers at the outset of another school year: They’re very busy!
One of their students finally came through with a CD of the 20-minute concert. I wound up using the greeting to the concert crowd, then cutting down a song by one of the workshop bands to just under 23 seconds. That alone was a great learning experience, trying to blend together various brief cuts from the song “We Got the Beat,” and still keep the beat intact.
I punctuated the entire piece with one of the directors speculating over the next year’s workshop.
The completed audio story ran about 30 seconds over my three-minute target length, but as a story, it seemed to hold together very well. [To listen to the MP3 file, click on the boldfaced title: "Hillsboro School of Rock"]
In the course of the hours and hours spent editing this story, I learned quite a lot – mostly about practical work flow and the eccentricities of Audacity. I learned not to waste time trying to transcribe in order to remember tracts of audio, but to save (Export) usable segments and sound bites as small, separate files – all well tagged for subject and length. I learned to end each editing session by Exporting a copy of the project as an uncompressed file to backup Audacity’s .aup files. I learned that moving Audacity project files off the desktop and into folders often produced an intractable “Error opening file” message when I tried to open them later. I learned to use the Envelope Tool only on secondary tracks and never on the primary track. For whatever reason, when the Envelope was applied to the primary track, it could not be undone. Any subsequent attempt to Cut a selection in the primary track would collapse the entire track. I also learned to make an Audacity project-in-progress more stable by Exporting and Importing segments rather than Cutting and Pasting.
Perhaps I was finally ready to move on to my first audio-driven slide show production.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Audio editing – cut for content, paste for continuity
The multimedia seminar presentations recorded back in June yielded eight packages of audio notes between two to three minutes each – the results of hours and hours of edit time spent listening and cutting and occasionally shuffling parts around for continuity.
I learned how to listen not only for content, but for the connective remarks that gave context to each sound bite. I also learned about the discipline needed to keep cutting and cutting in order to achieve the two- to three-minute standard advocated at the seminar. The cutting process turned out to be the easier aspect of editing. The harder task came with trying to assemble the bits of audio into a coherent, finished piece with an opening, a development and a conclusion – the basic components of any good essay or story.
The set of audio notes I wound up with varied considerably in technical quality, mostly due to my ineptitude at recording.
One object lesson rose quickly above the rest: There is no point in gathering audio of poor technical quality, no matter how good the content.
To listen to the audio notes, click on the boldfaced titles.
• Rich Beckman on the future of newspapers – University of North Carolina professor of multimedia journalism talks about who our future (young) readers are and how we aren’t likely to attract them in our present condition.
• Dirck Halstead on the future of newspapers – founder and editor of digitaljournalist.com makes a case for the imminent death of newsprint and the life hereafter available to those newspapers.
• Tom Kennedy on the future of newspapers – managing editor for online journalism at the Washington Post discusses how newspapers can and must prepare for the future.
• Seth Gitner on getting started in multimedia – chief organizer of the NPPA Multimedia Summit and multimedia editor for The Roanoke Times outlines how individuals can help get their newspaper started in multimedia journalism.
• Rich Beckman on the new tools of journalism – details the importance of learning how to use the various tools available to journalists online.
• Jim Seida on audio gathering techniques – multimedia producer for MSNBC covers some of the basics in audio skill building [ironically, my worst audio technically].
• Rich Beckman on the role of the multimedia producer – lists the duties of the newspaper multimedia producer.
• Dirck Halstead on becoming a multimedia producer – advocates photojournalists becoming video producers at their newspapers, whether large or small.
I learned how to listen not only for content, but for the connective remarks that gave context to each sound bite. I also learned about the discipline needed to keep cutting and cutting in order to achieve the two- to three-minute standard advocated at the seminar. The cutting process turned out to be the easier aspect of editing. The harder task came with trying to assemble the bits of audio into a coherent, finished piece with an opening, a development and a conclusion – the basic components of any good essay or story.
The set of audio notes I wound up with varied considerably in technical quality, mostly due to my ineptitude at recording.
One object lesson rose quickly above the rest: There is no point in gathering audio of poor technical quality, no matter how good the content.
To listen to the audio notes, click on the boldfaced titles.
• Rich Beckman on the future of newspapers – University of North Carolina professor of multimedia journalism talks about who our future (young) readers are and how we aren’t likely to attract them in our present condition.
• Dirck Halstead on the future of newspapers – founder and editor of digitaljournalist.com makes a case for the imminent death of newsprint and the life hereafter available to those newspapers.
• Tom Kennedy on the future of newspapers – managing editor for online journalism at the Washington Post discusses how newspapers can and must prepare for the future.
• Seth Gitner on getting started in multimedia – chief organizer of the NPPA Multimedia Summit and multimedia editor for The Roanoke Times outlines how individuals can help get their newspaper started in multimedia journalism.
• Rich Beckman on the new tools of journalism – details the importance of learning how to use the various tools available to journalists online.
• Jim Seida on audio gathering techniques – multimedia producer for MSNBC covers some of the basics in audio skill building [ironically, my worst audio technically].
• Rich Beckman on the role of the multimedia producer – lists the duties of the newspaper multimedia producer.
• Dirck Halstead on becoming a multimedia producer – advocates photojournalists becoming video producers at their newspapers, whether large or small.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Minimalist equipment revisited
I continued fumbling with my new audio gear at random, trying to get used to working as an audio journalist. I needed to find one a story project to get the feel of working with the equipment in a variety of changing situations and having to solve audio problems on the fly.
The opportunity for my first audio story came with a community workshop for youngsters wanting to learn how to play rock and roll music. I knew both the organizers, who gave me come-and-go access to the entire program, because they knew me, my role at the newspaper and my work habits. Even though I had explained my intentions, I drew questioning looks from both upon my arrival.
Instead of a Nikon and camera bag slung over one shoulder, I had only one small point-and-shoot camera either dangling from a strap on my left wrist or snugly bagged on my belt, along with an MP3-sized recorder wired from its own case on the other side of my belt. And then there were those over-the-ear headphones hanging around my neck. By the end of the first day, even I had second thoughts about those.
The whole point of minimizing gear – other than a tight budget – was to keep things simple enough to concentrate on learning the technical process of multimedia production. I wanted to think visually with only one camera and one lens – I mean, look what Henri Cartier-Bresson did with one camera and a 50mm lens! – and I didn't want to be encumbered with a conspicuous set of headphones that felt so awkward clasped around my neck when not in use.
I downsized.
What I wound up using was a high-quality set of ear buds [Philips SHE9500] with soft rubber caps (three sizes provided for a proper in-ear seal) and a fairly short cord, one of the strands being longer to stretch around the neck to the other ear. The shorter around-the-neck cording helped considerably to alleviate the cord tango I'd been dancing the day before. Not only that, but I could unplug one or both ear buds and just let them hang without looking like an out-of-work audio tech.
Two more days at covering the workshop left me convinced that I had at least one more piece of audio gear to acquire: a shotgun mic.
Moving from band room to small classroom to auditorium stage to hallway meant shifting tactics in order to gather decent audio. More than once I found myself holding my tiny Olympus microphone by its tie clasp at arm's length, straining to get better definition of different speakers involved in a group discussion.
The last straw came with my attempt to get a clean recording of both organizers in a sit-down interview with our reporter. This took place on the auditorium stage while a handful of staffers stood around somewhere upstage discussing the day's events. Without the ear buds I could hear both of the directors clearly. With the ear buds in place, I could also hear the upstage discussion, loud and clear. I wound up losing about half the interview for usable audio before clipping two separate lapel mics on the two interviewees, wiring them both into the recorder, and switching the recorder to "Dictation" mode.
That worked, but a shotgun mic might have been so much easier.
For the week's work I wound up with enough good images on the workshop to lay out a nice photo page for my newspaper, but I did not think I had the makings of an audio story, much less the images for a slide show production.
The opportunity for my first audio story came with a community workshop for youngsters wanting to learn how to play rock and roll music. I knew both the organizers, who gave me come-and-go access to the entire program, because they knew me, my role at the newspaper and my work habits. Even though I had explained my intentions, I drew questioning looks from both upon my arrival.
Instead of a Nikon and camera bag slung over one shoulder, I had only one small point-and-shoot camera either dangling from a strap on my left wrist or snugly bagged on my belt, along with an MP3-sized recorder wired from its own case on the other side of my belt. And then there were those over-the-ear headphones hanging around my neck. By the end of the first day, even I had second thoughts about those.
The whole point of minimizing gear – other than a tight budget – was to keep things simple enough to concentrate on learning the technical process of multimedia production. I wanted to think visually with only one camera and one lens – I mean, look what Henri Cartier-Bresson did with one camera and a 50mm lens! – and I didn't want to be encumbered with a conspicuous set of headphones that felt so awkward clasped around my neck when not in use.
I downsized.
What I wound up using was a high-quality set of ear buds [Philips SHE9500] with soft rubber caps (three sizes provided for a proper in-ear seal) and a fairly short cord, one of the strands being longer to stretch around the neck to the other ear. The shorter around-the-neck cording helped considerably to alleviate the cord tango I'd been dancing the day before. Not only that, but I could unplug one or both ear buds and just let them hang without looking like an out-of-work audio tech.
Two more days at covering the workshop left me convinced that I had at least one more piece of audio gear to acquire: a shotgun mic.
Moving from band room to small classroom to auditorium stage to hallway meant shifting tactics in order to gather decent audio. More than once I found myself holding my tiny Olympus microphone by its tie clasp at arm's length, straining to get better definition of different speakers involved in a group discussion.
The last straw came with my attempt to get a clean recording of both organizers in a sit-down interview with our reporter. This took place on the auditorium stage while a handful of staffers stood around somewhere upstage discussing the day's events. Without the ear buds I could hear both of the directors clearly. With the ear buds in place, I could also hear the upstage discussion, loud and clear. I wound up losing about half the interview for usable audio before clipping two separate lapel mics on the two interviewees, wiring them both into the recorder, and switching the recorder to "Dictation" mode.
That worked, but a shotgun mic might have been so much easier.
For the week's work I wound up with enough good images on the workshop to lay out a nice photo page for my newspaper, but I did not think I had the makings of an audio story, much less the images for a slide show production.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Audio editing
I’ve discovered that audio editing takes an enormous amount of time. Not just in terms of the learning curve involved in getting acquainted with new software, but in the sheer time and concentration required for listening and relistening.
In terms of choosing which audio editing software to use, I settled very quickly on Audacity 1.2.6. It was recommended at the NPPA Summit, and it was free. I also had a 2004 version of the iLife’s Garage Band – and that may come into play in the future – but the obvious place to begin learning about audio editing was Audacity.
Along with the software and a plug-in necessary for dealing with MP3 files, I downloaded the online manual and every tutorial I could find, then printed them off for a “text” book nearly an inch thick.
Since I already had digital recordings of various presentations from the multimedia seminar, this seemed like good material to help me learn the basics of audio editing. I wanted to convert the lectures into brief sets of audio notes that could be “reviewed” quickly to keep myself enthused and focused.
Almost immediately my aging G4 Mac announced that its “startup disk” was nearly full and I should do something about that. Audio editing, it seemed, required a lot of memory, not to mention adequate processor speed. How would my Mac react when I finally got ready to put audio together with visuals? How would my wife react if I announced that I’d have to invest in more RAM, a bigger hard drive, and perhaps even a new Mac?
Well into the night and my shortest lecture file, it became clear that I also needed to develop a systematic approach to an audio editing project.
First and foremost, I needed to SAVE my work frequently to avoid having a lot of work wiped out by a disastrous software crash. (Audacity is reported to be very stable, so I presumed the occasional crash was due to the inadequacies of my computer.)
As for an overall editing strategy, I divided the task into three parts: 1) a rapid rough cut to select the parts I liked, then 2) a trim down session to tighten the selections as much as possible, and finally, 3) the fine tuning edit to even out the audio quality and smooth transitions between cuts.
Without this basic strategy, I spent a couple of hours boiling down a 30-minute presentation by Seth Gitner on “How to get started in multimedia.” The audio track revealed two immediate problems with the tiny Olympus WS-300 recorder: generally uneven levels of recording throughout the talk, and little patches of dead silence between the audible parts. If the speaker paused, the level of recording seemed to drop out entirely, then over-adjust its volume level when the speaker resumed, occasionally also dipping the volume with the leveling adjustment. The little silent gaps were easy enough to remove with the Select and Cut procedure, but I had to "Normalize" each swing and dip in the volume level of the recorded audio in order to obtain a consistent level for playback.
At the end of the evening, though, I had less than three minutes of audio notes – a nice, tightly-edited summary of what I wanted to remember from Gitner's presentation – in his own voice.
The trade-off was an uneasy feeling that what I wound up with probably could not be termed “documentary audio journalism.” It sounded “of one piece,” but was not. Most of the natural pauses for breathing were removed, as were inevitable pauses for thought, and initial sentences broken mid-sentence to be rephrased.
I even shifted some parts of his talk out of sequence, perhaps even out of context, in order to make more sense to my own ear.
Clearly, software for audio editing offered as many opportunities for manipulative abuse as software for photo editing.
The basic rule for the use of photo-editing software has been based upon prior experience: Do nothing to an image that you would not normally have done in the darkroom.
I had no prior experience editing audio. Where were the lines that should not be crossed?
In terms of choosing which audio editing software to use, I settled very quickly on Audacity 1.2.6. It was recommended at the NPPA Summit, and it was free. I also had a 2004 version of the iLife’s Garage Band – and that may come into play in the future – but the obvious place to begin learning about audio editing was Audacity.
Along with the software and a plug-in necessary for dealing with MP3 files, I downloaded the online manual and every tutorial I could find, then printed them off for a “text” book nearly an inch thick.
Since I already had digital recordings of various presentations from the multimedia seminar, this seemed like good material to help me learn the basics of audio editing. I wanted to convert the lectures into brief sets of audio notes that could be “reviewed” quickly to keep myself enthused and focused.
Almost immediately my aging G4 Mac announced that its “startup disk” was nearly full and I should do something about that. Audio editing, it seemed, required a lot of memory, not to mention adequate processor speed. How would my Mac react when I finally got ready to put audio together with visuals? How would my wife react if I announced that I’d have to invest in more RAM, a bigger hard drive, and perhaps even a new Mac?
Well into the night and my shortest lecture file, it became clear that I also needed to develop a systematic approach to an audio editing project.
First and foremost, I needed to SAVE my work frequently to avoid having a lot of work wiped out by a disastrous software crash. (Audacity is reported to be very stable, so I presumed the occasional crash was due to the inadequacies of my computer.)
As for an overall editing strategy, I divided the task into three parts: 1) a rapid rough cut to select the parts I liked, then 2) a trim down session to tighten the selections as much as possible, and finally, 3) the fine tuning edit to even out the audio quality and smooth transitions between cuts.
Without this basic strategy, I spent a couple of hours boiling down a 30-minute presentation by Seth Gitner on “How to get started in multimedia.” The audio track revealed two immediate problems with the tiny Olympus WS-300 recorder: generally uneven levels of recording throughout the talk, and little patches of dead silence between the audible parts. If the speaker paused, the level of recording seemed to drop out entirely, then over-adjust its volume level when the speaker resumed, occasionally also dipping the volume with the leveling adjustment. The little silent gaps were easy enough to remove with the Select and Cut procedure, but I had to "Normalize" each swing and dip in the volume level of the recorded audio in order to obtain a consistent level for playback.
At the end of the evening, though, I had less than three minutes of audio notes – a nice, tightly-edited summary of what I wanted to remember from Gitner's presentation – in his own voice.
The trade-off was an uneasy feeling that what I wound up with probably could not be termed “documentary audio journalism.” It sounded “of one piece,” but was not. Most of the natural pauses for breathing were removed, as were inevitable pauses for thought, and initial sentences broken mid-sentence to be rephrased.
I even shifted some parts of his talk out of sequence, perhaps even out of context, in order to make more sense to my own ear.
Clearly, software for audio editing offered as many opportunities for manipulative abuse as software for photo editing.
The basic rule for the use of photo-editing software has been based upon prior experience: Do nothing to an image that you would not normally have done in the darkroom.
I had no prior experience editing audio. Where were the lines that should not be crossed?
Monday, July 16, 2007
Conversion from WMA (What, Me Accommodate?)
Even before learning how to use any audio editing software, I discovered yet another technical issue: Olympus WM 300 series recorders save audio files in the Windows proprietary WMA format, which can't be opened with any of the free- and shareware audio editing software available to Mac users.
The WMA files would have to be converted into a compatible file format before the audio files could be opened by editing software available to me, and saved in the mp3 format before they could be used by the Soundslides software. There seemed to be very few cheap and easy ways for a Mac user to convert WMA files.
Although Internet searches for WMA-to-MP3 converters for Macs turned up no freeware, I did find a few interesting prospects among the shareware and one free website-based service. I wound up comparing the cheapest shareware I could find, EasyWMA for $10, to the free file format conversion service offered at media-convert.com.
It took EasyWMA seven minutes to convert an eleven-minute WMA file (2.5Mb) into a MP3 file of the same size. The online converter took 2.5 minutes to convert the same WMA file into a 10.1Mb MP3 file. The online service took about one third as long to produce a file four times larger than the shareware.
I don't know what to make of the difference in the sizes of the MP3 files, but the savings in conversion time was significant.
The WMA files would have to be converted into a compatible file format before the audio files could be opened by editing software available to me, and saved in the mp3 format before they could be used by the Soundslides software. There seemed to be very few cheap and easy ways for a Mac user to convert WMA files.
Although Internet searches for WMA-to-MP3 converters for Macs turned up no freeware, I did find a few interesting prospects among the shareware and one free website-based service. I wound up comparing the cheapest shareware I could find, EasyWMA for $10, to the free file format conversion service offered at media-convert.com.
It took EasyWMA seven minutes to convert an eleven-minute WMA file (2.5Mb) into a MP3 file of the same size. The online converter took 2.5 minutes to convert the same WMA file into a 10.1Mb MP3 file. The online service took about one third as long to produce a file four times larger than the shareware.
I don't know what to make of the difference in the sizes of the MP3 files, but the savings in conversion time was significant.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Second thoughts from the weekend
Since I was going to be at the weekend Relay for Life event any way, I volunteered to shoot something for the newspaper. After more than 30 years in newspaper photography, I can usually walk into most situations and see the feature photo even before raising a camera to my eye.
I stepped outside the tent where my wife and her sorority sisters were encamped at the edge of the stadium track, and there was my page-one image: the long shadows of late afternoon cast by relay participants walking around the track. It was that easy. Later that evening I gathered a few more images for a small, three-picture layout: someone kneeling in the dark along a row of luminaria, a closeup of one luminaria sack bearing the words “my brother” (the candle inside highlighting the Relay for Life logo), and a third image of someone standing before the word “HOPE” spelled out in luminaria sacks arranged in the grandstands.
For years I’ve been parlaying one-picture assignments into photo packages – one strong image to go on the front page with the story (if a reporter has also been assigned), and another three or four photos to run inside, either with the story jump or as a related photo layout with captions only. Why? The extra work makes my job at a twice-weekly newspaper more interesting. I’ve become almost as facile at crafting these little photo clusters as I have at spotting stand-alone images. The point is, my job has become quite breezy: Either shoot for one good image and gather enough information to write a decent caption, or look for a few more supporting images and gather a little more information to put together a small layout.
That was my whole newsprint paradigm before attending the multimedia seminar.
What struck me from the past weekend is just how much sheer work would be involved in producing a decent two- to three-minute slide show.
I’ve studied a few good slide show productions found on the Internet and learned that they average about 12 images per minute – one image every five seconds. For a two- to three-minute production, that means having to gather between two and three dozen decent images . . . in addition to gathering enough clean audio material for story construction.
And that only amounted to the time spent in the field. There would also be a considerable amount of editing time needed to build the audio story and then assemble and coordinate the accompanying images.
What was I getting myself into here?
In the headlong rush to jump on the multimedia bandwagon, I don’t think newspaper photographers have paused to consider what a huge investment this promised to be in time and effort compared to routine newspaper photography.
I stepped outside the tent where my wife and her sorority sisters were encamped at the edge of the stadium track, and there was my page-one image: the long shadows of late afternoon cast by relay participants walking around the track. It was that easy. Later that evening I gathered a few more images for a small, three-picture layout: someone kneeling in the dark along a row of luminaria, a closeup of one luminaria sack bearing the words “my brother” (the candle inside highlighting the Relay for Life logo), and a third image of someone standing before the word “HOPE” spelled out in luminaria sacks arranged in the grandstands.
For years I’ve been parlaying one-picture assignments into photo packages – one strong image to go on the front page with the story (if a reporter has also been assigned), and another three or four photos to run inside, either with the story jump or as a related photo layout with captions only. Why? The extra work makes my job at a twice-weekly newspaper more interesting. I’ve become almost as facile at crafting these little photo clusters as I have at spotting stand-alone images. The point is, my job has become quite breezy: Either shoot for one good image and gather enough information to write a decent caption, or look for a few more supporting images and gather a little more information to put together a small layout.
That was my whole newsprint paradigm before attending the multimedia seminar.
What struck me from the past weekend is just how much sheer work would be involved in producing a decent two- to three-minute slide show.
I’ve studied a few good slide show productions found on the Internet and learned that they average about 12 images per minute – one image every five seconds. For a two- to three-minute production, that means having to gather between two and three dozen decent images . . . in addition to gathering enough clean audio material for story construction.
And that only amounted to the time spent in the field. There would also be a considerable amount of editing time needed to build the audio story and then assemble and coordinate the accompanying images.
What was I getting myself into here?
In the headlong rush to jump on the multimedia bandwagon, I don’t think newspaper photographers have paused to consider what a huge investment this promised to be in time and effort compared to routine newspaper photography.
The surges of silence, hmmmmm
For the past five years my community has staged an annual Relay for Life in our new stadium, 24 hours filled with team participants and individuals walking round and round the football field to raise funds for the American Cancer Society. For the past few years, my wife has served as a team captain, so I knew I’d be involved one way or another.
Why not bring the audio equipment and practice gathering good, clean audio – perhaps even enough to produce my first audio story? During the multimedia seminar, those of us just starting to learn these new skills were advised to start with audio. First learn the techniques of gathering good audio, then learn how to build a good audio story. Learn audio before trying to produce an audio-driven slide show.
The stadium setting with music blaring over its public address system proved to be a challenging environment for interviews. I was equipped with a decent set of headphones now, so I could detect audio problems. I found that the simple use of a lapel mic worked well to subordinate the blare of music, rendering crisp audio of the person being interviewed. I could hear that much over my headphones. What I could also hear, however, was the background music raging back at full volume each time the speaker paused, creating a seesaw effect with the recording levels.
By the third interview I realized the surging music was probably not a problem that could be edited away. The audio surge needed to be fixed in the field, but how?
Back home in bed for the evening (the overnight relay being my wife’s project, after all, not mine), I settled into re-reading the manual for the Olympus WS-300 series digital recorder and found there is no way to set a recording level manually. The little recorder does this automatically. All you can do is switch the microphone sensitivity between Conference and Dictation. I had the recorder set on Conference, making the microphone as sensitive as possible. With no up-front speaking voice to level during pauses, the little recorder was apparently switching over to the music in the background and re-leveling. Would the lapel mic set at the less sensitive Dictation solve the music surge problem?
Back at the stadium the next morning, I planned to test my theory: find someone to record twice, once at the Conference setting and again at the Dictation setting, to learn whether this resolved the surge.
Interviewee and headphones in place, I pressed Record.
Even before asking the first question, I noticed a steady, low buzz. Something was creating a hum, and I knew from experience that the hum would trump anything else I tried to record. The hum hadn’t been there the day before, and several attempts to relocate the interview within the stadium revealed there was going to be no escape. [I figured out much later after combing forums and tutorials on the Internet that the hum was most likely due to a poor connection with the 1/8” jack on the external microphone. Apparently these small jacks are notorious for imprecise connections that can produce an auditory hum.]
I put away my recording gear reluctantly – defeated again – and helped my wife pack up her sleeping bag and tent for the return home, all the while telling her about the problems I was having with recording.
The weekend left me wondering whether this was how my summer would go, tripping over one technical snag after another?
My wife, however, seemed oddly unsympathetic.
Why not bring the audio equipment and practice gathering good, clean audio – perhaps even enough to produce my first audio story? During the multimedia seminar, those of us just starting to learn these new skills were advised to start with audio. First learn the techniques of gathering good audio, then learn how to build a good audio story. Learn audio before trying to produce an audio-driven slide show.
The stadium setting with music blaring over its public address system proved to be a challenging environment for interviews. I was equipped with a decent set of headphones now, so I could detect audio problems. I found that the simple use of a lapel mic worked well to subordinate the blare of music, rendering crisp audio of the person being interviewed. I could hear that much over my headphones. What I could also hear, however, was the background music raging back at full volume each time the speaker paused, creating a seesaw effect with the recording levels.
By the third interview I realized the surging music was probably not a problem that could be edited away. The audio surge needed to be fixed in the field, but how?
Back home in bed for the evening (the overnight relay being my wife’s project, after all, not mine), I settled into re-reading the manual for the Olympus WS-300 series digital recorder and found there is no way to set a recording level manually. The little recorder does this automatically. All you can do is switch the microphone sensitivity between Conference and Dictation. I had the recorder set on Conference, making the microphone as sensitive as possible. With no up-front speaking voice to level during pauses, the little recorder was apparently switching over to the music in the background and re-leveling. Would the lapel mic set at the less sensitive Dictation solve the music surge problem?
Back at the stadium the next morning, I planned to test my theory: find someone to record twice, once at the Conference setting and again at the Dictation setting, to learn whether this resolved the surge.
Interviewee and headphones in place, I pressed Record.
Even before asking the first question, I noticed a steady, low buzz. Something was creating a hum, and I knew from experience that the hum would trump anything else I tried to record. The hum hadn’t been there the day before, and several attempts to relocate the interview within the stadium revealed there was going to be no escape. [I figured out much later after combing forums and tutorials on the Internet that the hum was most likely due to a poor connection with the 1/8” jack on the external microphone. Apparently these small jacks are notorious for imprecise connections that can produce an auditory hum.]
I put away my recording gear reluctantly – defeated again – and helped my wife pack up her sleeping bag and tent for the return home, all the while telling her about the problems I was having with recording.
The weekend left me wondering whether this was how my summer would go, tripping over one technical snag after another?
My wife, however, seemed oddly unsympathetic.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
About those headphones . . .
Just having an expert tell you how you should develop a new set of skills, doesn’t necessarily constitute a lesson learned.
Case in point: an early effort to get good, clean audio from a brief interview.
I gave myself a Father's Day photo assignment for the newspaper to cover a father and child enjoying an afternoon performance at a traveling circus in town. This could make a nice front page centerpiece for our next issue. I wound up getting a much stronger image of a circus performer juggling three lit torches, which became the centerpiece with the father-and-son image subordinated. I had caption information on the father and son, but none on the circus performer, which meant I had to return to the circus.
So why not take the opportunity to practice gathering good audio by interviewing the ringmaster, right?
Even before setting foot on the circus grounds, I decided that wearing the recommended over-the-ear headphones might look rude, if not a little weird for a newspaper guy, so I opted to wear ear buds, instead. Once face-to-face with the ringmaster, I lost nerve even to wear the ear buds. I simply used the little directional mic plugged directly into the recorder and hooked that over the top of my shirt pocket so both hands could be free to take notes. Why? I’ve been sabotaged too many times in the past, thinking that taking notes weren’t necessary as long as I was recording an interview.
I wrote the caption from my notes, as usual, then sat down that evening to listen to my audio recording. The interview itself took less than five minutes. At the time, I didn’t notice the light breeze blowing across an unshielded mic, nor the plane landing at the airport next to the fairgrounds, nor my occasional shifting from foot to foot apparently swinging the sensitive little mic away from the interviewee.
[heavy sigh here]
Okay, I get it now: headphones – the big, honking, over-the-ear kind.
Case in point: an early effort to get good, clean audio from a brief interview.
I gave myself a Father's Day photo assignment for the newspaper to cover a father and child enjoying an afternoon performance at a traveling circus in town. This could make a nice front page centerpiece for our next issue. I wound up getting a much stronger image of a circus performer juggling three lit torches, which became the centerpiece with the father-and-son image subordinated. I had caption information on the father and son, but none on the circus performer, which meant I had to return to the circus.
So why not take the opportunity to practice gathering good audio by interviewing the ringmaster, right?
Even before setting foot on the circus grounds, I decided that wearing the recommended over-the-ear headphones might look rude, if not a little weird for a newspaper guy, so I opted to wear ear buds, instead. Once face-to-face with the ringmaster, I lost nerve even to wear the ear buds. I simply used the little directional mic plugged directly into the recorder and hooked that over the top of my shirt pocket so both hands could be free to take notes. Why? I’ve been sabotaged too many times in the past, thinking that taking notes weren’t necessary as long as I was recording an interview.
I wrote the caption from my notes, as usual, then sat down that evening to listen to my audio recording. The interview itself took less than five minutes. At the time, I didn’t notice the light breeze blowing across an unshielded mic, nor the plane landing at the airport next to the fairgrounds, nor my occasional shifting from foot to foot apparently swinging the sensitive little mic away from the interviewee.
[heavy sigh here]
Okay, I get it now: headphones – the big, honking, over-the-ear kind.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Minimalist gear for multimedia
I was encouraged to find on the Multimedia Shooter website that the digital audio recorder recommended was the one I already had. Not only that, but I discovered the point-and-shoot camera I had was a distinct improvement (in my view) over their recommended camera.
In the section on getting started, the tiny Olympus digital voice recorder WS-300M is recommended for recording sound "on the cheap." For a digital recorder no bigger than most mp3 players, the audio quality is impressive. Last year I bought the Olympus WS-320M model with one gig of storage and added a tiny "noise-canceling" directional microphone (Olympus accessory ME52W) that can double as a lapel mic. Other than a problem with this digital recorder being more sensitive to interference than any other recorder I've used, the Olympus gear is the best I've come across for price and portability.
As for the camera, Multimedia Shooter recommends the Canon PowerShot SD500/digital ELPH at about $350. Months ago I bought the much less well marketed Fujifilm FinePix F30 for about $100 less. According to the Steve's Digicams website, the ELPH provides a little more pixel power (7MP compared to 6.3MP), but the F30 offers a far wider ISO range of exposure indices (100-3200 compared to 50-400), true macro capability rather than digital macro, twice the battery life, and even a larger monitor (2.5" compared to 2"), despite the F30 being only very slightly larger than the little ELPH. Of even greater significance to a photojournalist is the lack of aperture- or shutter-priority modes on the ELPH, much less manual control. The F30 has all three.
Although my first attraction to the F30 was its extreme ISO range, it was the design of its controls that endeared this camera to me. I started out in street photography back in the early 70s, making those grainy, off-the-hip grab shots in black and white. (My newspaper work has disciplined me over the years to shoot much more precisely.) Even though righthanded, I can fully operate the F30 with my left hand alone, giving me the kind of free-wheeling sense of discovery I used to enjoy. Setting the mode dial to Anti-blur, the F30 provides a suitably high shutter speed while optimizing the ISO for the lighting. This often results in the use of a higher ISO setting than I'd normally select, but the image quality and color rendition on the F30 are both quite acceptable. As for the inevitable digital noise in images in the ranges of 800 and above, that, too, is almost nostalgic.
I'm Old School. I actually like photojournalism with a little grit.
In the section on getting started, the tiny Olympus digital voice recorder WS-300M is recommended for recording sound "on the cheap." For a digital recorder no bigger than most mp3 players, the audio quality is impressive. Last year I bought the Olympus WS-320M model with one gig of storage and added a tiny "noise-canceling" directional microphone (Olympus accessory ME52W) that can double as a lapel mic. Other than a problem with this digital recorder being more sensitive to interference than any other recorder I've used, the Olympus gear is the best I've come across for price and portability.
As for the camera, Multimedia Shooter recommends the Canon PowerShot SD500/digital ELPH at about $350. Months ago I bought the much less well marketed Fujifilm FinePix F30 for about $100 less. According to the Steve's Digicams website, the ELPH provides a little more pixel power (7MP compared to 6.3MP), but the F30 offers a far wider ISO range of exposure indices (100-3200 compared to 50-400), true macro capability rather than digital macro, twice the battery life, and even a larger monitor (2.5" compared to 2"), despite the F30 being only very slightly larger than the little ELPH. Of even greater significance to a photojournalist is the lack of aperture- or shutter-priority modes on the ELPH, much less manual control. The F30 has all three.
Although my first attraction to the F30 was its extreme ISO range, it was the design of its controls that endeared this camera to me. I started out in street photography back in the early 70s, making those grainy, off-the-hip grab shots in black and white. (My newspaper work has disciplined me over the years to shoot much more precisely.) Even though righthanded, I can fully operate the F30 with my left hand alone, giving me the kind of free-wheeling sense of discovery I used to enjoy. Setting the mode dial to Anti-blur, the F30 provides a suitably high shutter speed while optimizing the ISO for the lighting. This often results in the use of a higher ISO setting than I'd normally select, but the image quality and color rendition on the F30 are both quite acceptable. As for the inevitable digital noise in images in the ranges of 800 and above, that, too, is almost nostalgic.
I'm Old School. I actually like photojournalism with a little grit.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
What I have in mind . . .
Individuals on the newspaper staff, its local management and, indeed, the corporate office, all have their own agendas, and my job at the paper is defined by those agendas.
My agenda here is to learn what I can about the future of community photojournalism and find some form of practical adaptation. I can neither afford the HD digital video equipment and software advocated at last weekend's seminar, nor do I think my small newspaper likely to employ such for the duration of my career. My format will have to be the audio-driven slide show, and I want to learn how to produce these slide show stories using the bare minimum of equipment: a Fujifilm Finepix digital camera and an Olympus WS-320M digital recorder.
Toward the end of the seminar, I mentioned this idea to an intern at the newspaper in Tacoma. She gave me a look of disgust. What she didn't understand is that sometimes you have to employ guerrilla tactics in order to bring about revolution.
Back in the late nineties I shot most of my daily assignments with a Nikon Coolpix for more than a year, simply to demonstrate to my newspaper the sheer efficiency and economy of going to all-digital photography.
The Fujifilm/Olympus gear might demonstrate the viability of the sound-slide format for community journalism and help hasten the development of our website into the inevitable alternative to newsprint.
My agenda here is to learn what I can about the future of community photojournalism and find some form of practical adaptation. I can neither afford the HD digital video equipment and software advocated at last weekend's seminar, nor do I think my small newspaper likely to employ such for the duration of my career. My format will have to be the audio-driven slide show, and I want to learn how to produce these slide show stories using the bare minimum of equipment: a Fujifilm Finepix digital camera and an Olympus WS-320M digital recorder.
Toward the end of the seminar, I mentioned this idea to an intern at the newspaper in Tacoma. She gave me a look of disgust. What she didn't understand is that sometimes you have to employ guerrilla tactics in order to bring about revolution.
Back in the late nineties I shot most of my daily assignments with a Nikon Coolpix for more than a year, simply to demonstrate to my newspaper the sheer efficiency and economy of going to all-digital photography.
The Fujifilm/Olympus gear might demonstrate the viability of the sound-slide format for community journalism and help hasten the development of our website into the inevitable alternative to newsprint.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
An introduction of sorts . . .
So here I am, 60 years old, 32 years into a career in community photojournalism – the last 26 years spent covering the same few communities for a twice-a-week newspaper. That's a long, long time to look at people and activities that remain essentially the same from one year to the next, and still retain a sense of mission.
This evening at an awards banquet I ran across an old acquaintance, someone I met the first year I joined my newspaper. He was the staff photographer – only a few years older – for a community newspaper in a nearby town. He told me he was retiring within the year. I replied that I couldn't afford to retire. I probably had another ten years of work ahead of me.
That, however, isn’t the real problem. I don't know whether my newspaper has the same amount of time to survive the rapid changes taking place in community journalism. I've spent the past two days at a seminar listening to one speaker after another forecast the end of traditional newspaper culture in general, and the imminent demise of newsprint in particular. I am convinced that the Internet offers the only future for community journalism.
This humble blog is my personal commitment to understand and embrace the changes taking place in my profession.
This evening at an awards banquet I ran across an old acquaintance, someone I met the first year I joined my newspaper. He was the staff photographer – only a few years older – for a community newspaper in a nearby town. He told me he was retiring within the year. I replied that I couldn't afford to retire. I probably had another ten years of work ahead of me.
That, however, isn’t the real problem. I don't know whether my newspaper has the same amount of time to survive the rapid changes taking place in community journalism. I've spent the past two days at a seminar listening to one speaker after another forecast the end of traditional newspaper culture in general, and the imminent demise of newsprint in particular. I am convinced that the Internet offers the only future for community journalism.
This humble blog is my personal commitment to understand and embrace the changes taking place in my profession.
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