Monday morning I finished the rough audio edit on the English side of the Dual Language Program classes. I even sent email attachments of two brief MP3 files in Spanish to my daughter for translation at her convenience. Her baby, however, had other plans for her. That Monday evening was the first of three mostly sleepless nights spent waiting at the hospital for her delivery. Of course I took my little camera, strapped securely to my belt. It was during the early morning hours of that first night stretched out across one of those hard, undersized waiting room couches that I rolled over on my side. The best news of the week was that we eventually wound up with a healthy new grandson. The bad news was that the LCD screen on my camera was shattered.
No serious problem, I thought. Most point-and-shoot cameras aren’t worth repairing, and I’ve had the little camera for two years now. Maybe it was time to upgrade the camera, or more likely, replace the broken one with a more affordable used camera of the same make.
Several days of research on the Internet left me better informed about my dilemma, but no closer to a decision on whether to repair or replace.
It seemed the FujiFilm Finepix F30 had become something of a cult camera for its singular ability to render good images in low light. Two years ago I paid a little over $200 for the camera brand new. I could now find only three used F30s on Amazon.com, ranging from $440 for “refurbished” to $550 for “like new.” Ebay auctions for F30s started around $300.
For that kind of money, why not upgrade to the current incarnation of the F30, right? I discovered that the Finepix F50fd that retailed for more than $500 brand new, could now be had for as little as $220 on Amazon – and they offered no less than 30 used.
What?!!
Backtracking through the reviews on the successive generations of the F30 revealed that not only did FujiFilm fail to market a truly unique niche camera, they moved away from their innovative image sensing technology in pursuit of mass consumer point-and-shoot standards. They now trailed the pack, at best. The F30 begat the F31fd, adding a marginally useful “face detection” (fd) feature and a little extra internal memory. The F40fd boosted the 6.2 megapixel sensor to 8.3, but only for an effective ISO of 2,000 (compared to the F30’s ISO of 3200 at full resolution). The only significant improvement was allowing the use of the more popular SD memory card, but gone were the aperture and shutter controls, as well as the sturdy metal casing and the topside control design that worked so well for my left-handed operation. The F50fd continued the sensor expansion to 12 megapixels (now limited to an ISO of 1600) and an LCD screen size to 2.7 inches – current standards among point-and-shooters. The optical zoom range remained at 3x, however, while most other compact cameras now offer 4x zooms. Reviewers agreed that the F50fd was “nice but unexceptional.”
Back to the option of repair: The LCD screen would cost $127 for the part alone, plus $50 labor, but the part was backordered until “at least March.” Parts-only F30s were going on eBay for more than $70, but with no guarantee that the salvaged LCD screen would work at all.
All of which put me back at square one. I’ve been partial to FujiFilm color technology since clear back in the day of film, but their shift to pursue the mainstream consumer market will likely force me to search other camera lines for a suitable alternative.
Sunday, January 27, 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]
Sunday, January 13, 2008
For as long as it takes
Rather than start yet another slideshow project, I decided to continue working on the dual language program (DLP) production for as long as it takes for completion. I had already figured out that I didn’t want to pour considerable time and effort into another slideshow production only to have it sit largely unviewed on my humble blog. Each production would need a target website that could carry the slideshow as part of its content. This was an afterthought on the “Chalk” production, but when I offered the slideshow to the Valley Arts Association, sponsor of the chalk art event, they were delighted to have it for their website. I proposed the DLP slideshow project to Minter Bridge Elementary as something that could go on the school’s website to provide a brief introduction for parents who were considering enrolling their children in this program. Finding similar symbiotic relationships for future slideshow productions would lend a good deal more purpose to the hours and hours spent on editing, than mere practice.
The DLP production project quickly outgrew the single kindergarten classroom where it was being introduced at Minter Bridge Elementary. Had I confined it to that, it would have been relatively simple to pick out two kindergartners – one English-speaking and one Spanish-speaking – and develop parallel storylines. However, I thought the subject of DLP needed broader treatment to give the viewer a sense of direction for a program that expected at least a seven-year commitment of its participants. That meant not only covering the kindergarten class at Minter Bridge, but also covering one of the upper classes at the other school where the DLP program had been running for five years. It also meant having to find an appropriate person to interview for the narration to provide the production’s framework, similar to what was done for the production of “Chalk.”
I wound up going to the district office to interview the ‘executive director of school improvement’ – in charge of both the Dual Language Programs and English as a Second Language program. The interview went smoothly and the subsequent editing resulted in a narration track that ran just under two minutes, but it took well over a week to achieve. In the process of shuffling files from desktop computer to laptop and back – trying to edit at every chance I had during a day – files got lost, including the original recording of the interview. Not only the randomness of my work schedule worked against me, but the process of trying to edit audio without a clear step procedure left me disoriented each time I sat down to work. Editing the interview into narration under these terms was a challenge. Trying to edit the several recording sessions at two schools was a disaster.
Creating a specific schedule of work was my first breakthrough. I managed to stay on schedule over the past week – for the most part – although just getting into a productive daily routine was the high achievement for the week. It gave me a sense of progress, however tortoise-like. Five in the morning my alarm goes off. I get up, get dressed, get coffee, read the paper, feed the dogs and then sit down to my laptop by six and work until eight. That’s the schedule. I edit only on the laptop, transfer files to the desktop for backup, and then to the external hard drive for archiving. That’s the flow.
Working up a practical step procedure for editing will be the key to proficiency, and that is evolving. I keep a procedural outline handy, along with a scratch pad to note little efficiencies that come up in an editing session. For instance, I discovered this week:
• that the Mac operating system I use (OS 10.3.9) allows me to select the option “Show Item Info” under View on the Finder Menu, a feature that automatically posts the length of an audio file (all but the Windows files my little recorder produces, of course – these have to be converted to MP3 files). I don’t have to open the file to get this information.
• that the best way to open an MP3 file in Audacity is to first create a new, blank Audacity file and then Import the MP3 file. Actually, I knew this already. I just forgot.
• that the Audacity’s Label Track can have only one label open at any time. If you suddenly can’t add or edit a label to your Label Track, it’s because you have another label still open somewhere in the track. Go back and look for the label with the box around it and close that one before adding or opening another.
So at this point I’ve managed to go back over all the classroom audio in English, cataloging and screening for usable segments that can be worked into the narration track. The week(s) ahead will entail selecting and placing the English segments from both schools. That done, I’ll conscript my bilingual daughter into helping screen the classroom audio in Spanish for segments that can complement the English segments. After that, I can decide whether to include brief interviews with English-speaking and Spanish-speaking parents of upperclass DLP students about their experience over the years, and perhaps even prepare a parallel translation into Spanish (via my daughter) of the finished production for viewing by Spanish-speaking families.
And then I will look for a much, much simpler slideshow project for my next production.
The DLP production project quickly outgrew the single kindergarten classroom where it was being introduced at Minter Bridge Elementary. Had I confined it to that, it would have been relatively simple to pick out two kindergartners – one English-speaking and one Spanish-speaking – and develop parallel storylines. However, I thought the subject of DLP needed broader treatment to give the viewer a sense of direction for a program that expected at least a seven-year commitment of its participants. That meant not only covering the kindergarten class at Minter Bridge, but also covering one of the upper classes at the other school where the DLP program had been running for five years. It also meant having to find an appropriate person to interview for the narration to provide the production’s framework, similar to what was done for the production of “Chalk.”
I wound up going to the district office to interview the ‘executive director of school improvement’ – in charge of both the Dual Language Programs and English as a Second Language program. The interview went smoothly and the subsequent editing resulted in a narration track that ran just under two minutes, but it took well over a week to achieve. In the process of shuffling files from desktop computer to laptop and back – trying to edit at every chance I had during a day – files got lost, including the original recording of the interview. Not only the randomness of my work schedule worked against me, but the process of trying to edit audio without a clear step procedure left me disoriented each time I sat down to work. Editing the interview into narration under these terms was a challenge. Trying to edit the several recording sessions at two schools was a disaster.
Creating a specific schedule of work was my first breakthrough. I managed to stay on schedule over the past week – for the most part – although just getting into a productive daily routine was the high achievement for the week. It gave me a sense of progress, however tortoise-like. Five in the morning my alarm goes off. I get up, get dressed, get coffee, read the paper, feed the dogs and then sit down to my laptop by six and work until eight. That’s the schedule. I edit only on the laptop, transfer files to the desktop for backup, and then to the external hard drive for archiving. That’s the flow.
Working up a practical step procedure for editing will be the key to proficiency, and that is evolving. I keep a procedural outline handy, along with a scratch pad to note little efficiencies that come up in an editing session. For instance, I discovered this week:
• that the Mac operating system I use (OS 10.3.9) allows me to select the option “Show Item Info” under View on the Finder Menu, a feature that automatically posts the length of an audio file (all but the Windows files my little recorder produces, of course – these have to be converted to MP3 files). I don’t have to open the file to get this information.
• that the best way to open an MP3 file in Audacity is to first create a new, blank Audacity file and then Import the MP3 file. Actually, I knew this already. I just forgot.
• that the Audacity’s Label Track can have only one label open at any time. If you suddenly can’t add or edit a label to your Label Track, it’s because you have another label still open somewhere in the track. Go back and look for the label with the box around it and close that one before adding or opening another.
So at this point I’ve managed to go back over all the classroom audio in English, cataloging and screening for usable segments that can be worked into the narration track. The week(s) ahead will entail selecting and placing the English segments from both schools. That done, I’ll conscript my bilingual daughter into helping screen the classroom audio in Spanish for segments that can complement the English segments. After that, I can decide whether to include brief interviews with English-speaking and Spanish-speaking parents of upperclass DLP students about their experience over the years, and perhaps even prepare a parallel translation into Spanish (via my daughter) of the finished production for viewing by Spanish-speaking families.
And then I will look for a much, much simpler slideshow project for my next production.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Coping with a crisis in confidence
A hiatus has been necessary in order to regroup after a series of discouragements over project setbacks and distractions from the original purpose of my blog. The original idea was to teach myself how to produce good audio-driven slideshows about community life in my area. I got off to a good start by learning first how to produce a decent audio story ("Hillsboro School of Rock"), then by learning how to produce a fully-developed slideshow ("Chalk"). I kept good notes on both projects in the blog, but then I got distracted first by trying to stimulate discussion on the journalistic protocol involved in audio editing, then by soliciting exchange of views on entries in the NPPA Monthly Multimedia Contest. While these are both worthy blog projects in themselves, the silence was numbing.
Add the fact that I couldn't seem to produce another slideshow for more than two months, and the result amounted to a crisis in confidence over the whole endeavor. Of the two, the project setbacks have been most frustrating.
Hooked on Flies – Something as simple as a loose cable connection completely unnerved me during the initial interview of a man who spends most of his spare (indoor) time tying his own fishing flies –hundreds of them. The sound check revealed a steady hum in the recording, and I could not figure out the source. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting the microphone cable several times without results. We tried shutting down his computer, his wife’s computer, his son’s electric guitar and even their refrigerator, all without effect on the hum. I wound up recording an unusable, buzzy interview just to gather background information, but the technical snafu so thoroughly demoralized me that I couldn’t bring myself to reschedule another interview. It wasn’t until I did the sound check on my next production project that I realized the microphone-to-recorder cable connects at both the recorder AND the microphone. The hum was coming from a loose connection at the microphone end, not from the recorder end.
Dinner for 9,000 – One of our area communities has hosted an annual sausage and sauerkraut dinner for nearly 50 years. I made the mistake of trying to cover this one-day event on the same day I had to shoot no less than seven assignments for the newspaper. I just don’t have that sort of stamina any more. Besides, I had already missed a significant part of the story, the preparations for that dinner. Instead, I wound up simply hanging out for a couple of hours to practice working left-handed with the little camera while operating the ‘shotgun’ equipped recorder with my right hand. That was fun. In the end, I came up with a plan to cover their 49th dinner this coming fall in a two-part project. Part one would document the preparation leading up to the big day. Part two would portray how the entire community turns out to orchestrate the dinner, from the youngest school kids to the oldest seniors. The two slideshows could then be used to promote their 50th dinner the following year.
Expectant Fathers – A class for new fathers at the local hospital seemed like a good, straightforward subject. I cleared the hurdles of gaining permission for an audio-slideshow production from the hospital and the instructor, but decided at the last minute that I had a personal reason for not following through with the coverage. My own son-in-law was enrolled in the class. My presence as an observer would affect his participation. All I could do was interview the instructor and wait for the next time the course was scheduled. During the interview I realized that the course was entirely classroom-based, which would make dull visuals. Unless I could come up with a storyline to pursue outside of class, the production had little prospect of engaging viewers visually. I shelved it and moved on to the next project.
Dual Language Program – My own expectant daughter proposed the next project: a new dual language program started at the kindergarten level in the school where she teaches. This is now the second school in our district to develop what is also called two-way language immersion education. Half the day in the classroom is spent teaching in English and the other half is spent entirely in Spanish. I plunged into this project, interviewing two people at the administrative level for a narrative frame along with multiple visits to both schools for both the English and Spanish sessions. I managed to develop the narrative frame in short order but bogged down trying to sort through all the classroom material. I couldn’t seem to get organized even on the English sessions, never mind that my knowledge of Spanish is minimal. When a software glitch wiped out what little progress I had made on the production audio track, I hit the wall and shut down for the holiday season.
I am now refocusing the blog, developing a strict workflow for production, and establishing a disciplined work schedule.
The blog will be limited to accounting for my own production efforts, the production workflow will start with step procedures for processing audio and developing the audio story first, and the production schedule will consist of five to six two-hour sessions per week on mornings before leaving for the office. I’ll devote Sunday mornings to the blog.
If I can’t develop a reasonable amount of discipline and consistency, and still enjoy the challenge of learning new skills, then I’ll have to give up on multimedia and let the profession leave me behind along with my newspaper.
It’s that simple.
The worst part of being your own producer is being responsible for your own productivity. The second worst part is having to recognize and solve your own problems.
Add the fact that I couldn't seem to produce another slideshow for more than two months, and the result amounted to a crisis in confidence over the whole endeavor. Of the two, the project setbacks have been most frustrating.
Hooked on Flies – Something as simple as a loose cable connection completely unnerved me during the initial interview of a man who spends most of his spare (indoor) time tying his own fishing flies –hundreds of them. The sound check revealed a steady hum in the recording, and I could not figure out the source. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting the microphone cable several times without results. We tried shutting down his computer, his wife’s computer, his son’s electric guitar and even their refrigerator, all without effect on the hum. I wound up recording an unusable, buzzy interview just to gather background information, but the technical snafu so thoroughly demoralized me that I couldn’t bring myself to reschedule another interview. It wasn’t until I did the sound check on my next production project that I realized the microphone-to-recorder cable connects at both the recorder AND the microphone. The hum was coming from a loose connection at the microphone end, not from the recorder end.
Dinner for 9,000 – One of our area communities has hosted an annual sausage and sauerkraut dinner for nearly 50 years. I made the mistake of trying to cover this one-day event on the same day I had to shoot no less than seven assignments for the newspaper. I just don’t have that sort of stamina any more. Besides, I had already missed a significant part of the story, the preparations for that dinner. Instead, I wound up simply hanging out for a couple of hours to practice working left-handed with the little camera while operating the ‘shotgun’ equipped recorder with my right hand. That was fun. In the end, I came up with a plan to cover their 49th dinner this coming fall in a two-part project. Part one would document the preparation leading up to the big day. Part two would portray how the entire community turns out to orchestrate the dinner, from the youngest school kids to the oldest seniors. The two slideshows could then be used to promote their 50th dinner the following year.
Expectant Fathers – A class for new fathers at the local hospital seemed like a good, straightforward subject. I cleared the hurdles of gaining permission for an audio-slideshow production from the hospital and the instructor, but decided at the last minute that I had a personal reason for not following through with the coverage. My own son-in-law was enrolled in the class. My presence as an observer would affect his participation. All I could do was interview the instructor and wait for the next time the course was scheduled. During the interview I realized that the course was entirely classroom-based, which would make dull visuals. Unless I could come up with a storyline to pursue outside of class, the production had little prospect of engaging viewers visually. I shelved it and moved on to the next project.
Dual Language Program – My own expectant daughter proposed the next project: a new dual language program started at the kindergarten level in the school where she teaches. This is now the second school in our district to develop what is also called two-way language immersion education. Half the day in the classroom is spent teaching in English and the other half is spent entirely in Spanish. I plunged into this project, interviewing two people at the administrative level for a narrative frame along with multiple visits to both schools for both the English and Spanish sessions. I managed to develop the narrative frame in short order but bogged down trying to sort through all the classroom material. I couldn’t seem to get organized even on the English sessions, never mind that my knowledge of Spanish is minimal. When a software glitch wiped out what little progress I had made on the production audio track, I hit the wall and shut down for the holiday season.
I am now refocusing the blog, developing a strict workflow for production, and establishing a disciplined work schedule.
The blog will be limited to accounting for my own production efforts, the production workflow will start with step procedures for processing audio and developing the audio story first, and the production schedule will consist of five to six two-hour sessions per week on mornings before leaving for the office. I’ll devote Sunday mornings to the blog.
If I can’t develop a reasonable amount of discipline and consistency, and still enjoy the challenge of learning new skills, then I’ll have to give up on multimedia and let the profession leave me behind along with my newspaper.
It’s that simple.
The worst part of being your own producer is being responsible for your own productivity. The second worst part is having to recognize and solve your own problems.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Multimedia exchange
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.
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, 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.
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