Image sequencing for the Dual Language Program production went smoothly enough, but for the frustration of having shot hundreds of images and still coming up short on key shots for points made in the audio track. How could I cover three DLP classes and not shoot more images of Hispanic and non-Hispanic students working together? I wound up relying heavily on informational slides. That was a disappointment, but then again, the production was meant to be expository rather than tell a story. What was surprising was how much time it took to write and rewrite the copy for those information slides. I had to keep the flow of written material supplemental to the audio track without being too wordy or redundant.
For the entire four-minute production, I wound up using only 42 slides due to holding the info slides on screen a bit longer to provide reading time. For this production, I shot everything horizontally and matched the info slides in size to give the entire image sequence a consistent flow. I don’t know if there is an optimal file size for use on the Internet, since Soundslides automatically resizes everything, but I standardized on a 6x4.5-inch frame at 200 dpi.
As for the Soundslides process, I wasted a lot of time adjusting the image intervals, then making changes in the sequence, and then having to readjust the subsequent changes in image intervals. I should have nailed down a final sequence before fine-tuning the timing. What helped with recalibrating after each image shuffle was my project spreadsheet. I wound up using the numbered sequence for images in the first column (a pain to have to renumber with every change, but ultimately useful), then listing the time lapse for each transition, then transcribing each audio segment, and finally, noting the duration of each audio segment.
Here’s my final project spreadsheet in Excel.
Even so, it only took a week to finish the first edition of the slide show, from image sequencing to final image timing. I spent another week incorporating suggestions made by several key people who viewed the initial production, and delivered the final edition of my DLP slide show on March 14: “Learning en dos lenguas.”
A few follow-up thoughts on equipment and quality control . . .
During the lengthy process of repairing auto-leveled audio, I lamented over not having a more professional digital recorder. I even went shopping for the next step-up in audio gear, one that would justify an investment in a decent shotgun mic. I came up with three good candidates: the Zoom H-2 retailing for $200, the Edirol R-09 for $300 and the M-Audio MicroTrack II for $350. Any one of these might be worthy of attaching an Audio-Technica AT897 shotgun mic (another $275).
But then I looked at the quality of images produced with my little Fujifilm Finepix F30 and thought of the sharp, full-toned images I see in most of the slide show entries for the NPPA Monthly Multimedia Contest.
It makes no sense trying to optimize my audio quality when I marginalize the quality of my images with a point-and-shoot camera. I decided to stick with the minimalist gear.
My choice in gear may seem like reverse snobbery, but using equipment with such a low profile in the field is liberating. Rather than entering a story project laden with the heavy-duty slr and totebag of accouterments common to all media photographers, I can walk through a crowded room wearing all my equipment for a slide show project, and not even draw a glance. I can certainly work a room full of kindergarteners or fourth graders without disruption. Imagine trying to shoot with a 35mm camera only inches away from the ear of a five-year-old. The point-and-shoot is silent and the child doesn’t even look up. My “listening stick” draws more attention (Swiffer-mounted microphone – see Oct. 5 blog), and even that doesn’t hold much interest for long among kids.
No, the sense my minimalist gear makes is that all of this – equipment, software, early morning hours and even this blog – is for the sole purpose of providing an alternative to my work for the newspaper. It isn’t practice for freelance work because I don’t expect to earn any extra income from it. It isn’t self-development for the prospect of professional advancement – not at my newspaper, not at my age. It is simply for the hands-on challenge of teaching myself something new about a rapidly changing profession.
Okay, maybe there's just a little genuine snobbery in trying to get the most out of the least amount of “professional” gear.
Showing posts with label slide show production. Show all posts
Showing posts with label slide show production. Show all posts
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
New digs for an old prospector
Over the past week I've been slammed with a double work load at the newspaper due to the other staff photographer being on vacation for three weeks, my expectant daughter thinks she is due for delivery "any day," and I bought a new computer. The new computer is actually a used iMac, but one that runs at 1.25 GHz with an 80-gig hard drive, has the all-purpose CD/DVD Superdrive, the wireless Airport Extreme and a 20-inch flat screen. The seller even threw in the original OS 10.4 installation DVD and the iLife '06 DVD (including Garage Band), all for $475. Seems he was a young work-at-home graphic designer who had just replaced his two-year-old system with the latest thing Apple had to offer. I've been playing with his old system ever since and wondering why my newspaper remains entrenched in OS 9 software.
The distractions to my production schedule have been intense, but I managed to work up an outline of the first two stages for audio production. It is an outline that I will very likely come back and revise, as needed.
PRODUCTION OUTLINE – [Word file updated 3/16/08 to include slide show production]
The distractions to my production schedule have been intense, but I managed to work up an outline of the first two stages for audio production. It is an outline that I will very likely come back and revise, as needed.
PRODUCTION OUTLINE – [Word file updated 3/16/08 to include slide show production]
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.
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.
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