Introduction to Multimedia Skills

Jour203, Fall 2012Week 1

What is a Multimedia Story?

 

A multimedia story is some combination of text, still photographs, video clips, audio, graphics and interactivity presented on a Web site in a nonlinear format in which the information in each medium is complementary, not redundant.

 

Knight Digital Media Center, U.C. Berkeley

What does that mean?“Nonlinear means that rather than reading a rigidly

structured single narrative, the user chooses how to navigate through the elements of a story.”

“Not redundant means that rather than having a text version of a story accompanied by a video clip that essentially tells the same story, different parts of a story are told using different media. The key is using the media form - video, audio, photos, text, animation - that will present a segment of a story in the most compelling and informative way.”

Knight Digital Media Center, U.C. Berkeley

What is Multimedia?

Kim Grinfeder, University of Miami School of Communication – “Multimedia journalism is journalism… it’s just got richer than it was before.”

Andrew deVigal, New York Times: “Let’s call it interactive narratives.”

More industry leadersBrian Storm, MediaStorm: “Some people say

multimedia is a way for one person to do the work of several… to me, that’s not a good direction for journalism. And I don’t think that’s really what we’re talking about.”

Keith Jenkins, NPR: It’s telling a good story with the tools that are right for telling that story.

What makes a good multimedia story?

Pamela Chen, Open Society Institute-NY: “The core of good multimedia is good content.”

Andrew deVigal, NYT: “Are there characters that people can relate to?”

Tom Kennedy, Ex-Washington Post: “The visual narrative can be constructed in some meaningful way to make the story compelling.”

Is this good multimedia?If you’re covering a breaking news story, you

might be asked by your editor to take a camera and audio recorder (DSLRs don’t get great audio) with you to gather multimedia.

Here’s an example of what you might produce as a multimedia clip for a rapidly evolving breaking news story.

Good multimedia?The paper updated the story as the news evolve

d.

Did multimedia enhance that story?

How could you improve it?

Did multimedia enhance that story?

How could you improve it?

Include B-roll.

Did multimedia enhance that story?

How could you improve it?

Include B-roll.

Interview a few passersby.

Did multimedia enhance that story?

How could you improve it?

Include B-roll.

Interview a few passersby.

When you have more time, you could add a graphic, such as a map of crime in the neighborhood, or do a timeline that includes the two audio interviews with the police officer.

Another day, another storyThis is another story that your editor might send

you out on. It’s not a breaking news story.

As you watch this, note down (mentally or on paper) some of this multimedia story’s features.

A few things about that story

There were sound glitches. It may have been shot on a DSLR with sound recorded separately. The journalist then has to match the two tracks (audio and video).

It’s a nat-sound video. No narration by the reporter.

Another thingThe text story is about customers at a bakery,

and the video is about how to make cannoli. The video does not repeat the same story as the text story, which is one of the rules of a good multimedia story. No redundancy.

Remember that during the semester.

Decide which media suits your story…

… and the tools you have to hand.

It might be a video, it might be a slideshow with audio, it might be an interactive graphic, it might be all of the above.

We’ll be focusing on producing the raw materials for multimedia storytelling or interactive narration – audio, video and photo – and on the basics of how to put them together to make a good multimedia story.

Award-winning multimediaThis audio slideshow won second prize in the

News Story – Multimedia category of the Pictures of the Year International competition in 2009.

This one was awarded the Prize of Excellence. Both are by the same NPR photographer.

The winner was a video.

Back in the dayTwelve years before those multimedia packages

were produced, this package was considered prize-winning multimedia.

Interactivity predates the Internet

The BBC launched Ceefax, a teletext news service, in 1974.

Teletext still exists today, even in developed countries like Singapore.

The future of interactive storytelling?

“It’s not some massive reinvention of the storytelling process… it’s more around the tools and distribution.

The big change is that we can all report and publish to a global audience with incredibly kickass tools.”

Brian Storm, MediaStorm

Mediastorm’s Crisis Guide to Pakistan