Quiz Time

The quiz will be in a short-answer format, probably 10-15 questions drawn from the following areas:

• Matched action
• Jump cuts
• Pans and zooms
• Steady shot, why it’s important
• Tripods
• Mics - shotgun, lavs and sticks
• Rollback
• Holding your shot
• Audio - getting it, setting it, why it’s important
• Long, medium and close-up shots
• Cover shots, B-roll
• Framing
• Interviewing techniques
• Benefits/downsides to amateur video
• Active interviews
• 10 second minimum
• Connecting/transitional shots
• Care of tapes
• Time code
• Autolock
• Autofocus - modes and when to use each
• Exposure and backlight
• Tags and folksonomy
• RSS
• FTP

Day One Slides

I've converted the Keynote presentation from the first day into a series of HTML pages, in case you want to sync your notes up with them. I'll post a list of terms you should have learned over the last few days early this afternoon. If you don't know what they mean, post a comment and I'll answer any put up before 8 p.m. tonight.

ASSIGNMENT: Reading for Day 3

Please read Chapter 7 for Thursday's class. And you'll need to read Chapter 10 and 11 eventually, so if the momentum's going ...

Also, here are the links to the videos we watched on the first day, in case you want to review them again.

The Globe and Mail, Surviving Katrina and A Shrimper's Storm
The Toronto Star, An Artist First
Northwest Herald, Bearing the Cross

ASSIGNMENT: Reading for Day 2

For tomorrow, please download the Journalism 2.0 text and read the introduction and chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 9. (It won't take that long, less than an hour.)

Lab Hours

Lab hours through the end of the semester:

• Wednesday, April 23 - 3:30 to 6:30 p.m.
• Thursday, April 24 - 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., 3:30 to 6:30 p.m.
• Friday, April 25 - 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Monday, April 28 - 3:30 to 6:30 p.m.
• Tuesday, April 29 - 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Wednesday, April 30 - 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Thursday, May 1 - 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Friday, May 2 - 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. (Lab will be open to 3610 students only after 1 p.m.)

Deadline for final multimedia pieces on Change are due by 1 p.m. on Friday, May 2. Be sure to leave plenty of time to export - you all know that can take a while. The clock on computer 0 will be used as the time standard and no project will be accepted after 1 p.m.

Lost and Found

Just wanted to let y'all know that I found some foam-covered ear buds on the desk in the corner. Anybody missing a pair?

~Jake

Slide Show Issues

Given how many emails and messages I've gotten, we'll go over the uploading and linking again on Tuesday.

Assignment: SoundSlides, readings

By Friday, please post your autobiographical SoundSlides piece to your web site. Link it off the resume page as a minimum, but it would make a nice "About" link that you could add to your template and have on all your pages.

Think about how you can use the site as a self-promotional piece, how you could use it to sell yourself for a job or internship.

Additionally, for next Tuesday, please read chapters 7, 9 and 10 in the Journalism 2.0 book.

I will be on campus from 8 to 4 or so on Thursday (disappearing around lunch), but will not be here on Friday and unreachable until Sunday afternoon. (Heading off to the boonies.) Stop by if you have issues or expect to.

Examples from Class

The first one on music teacher Nancy McClellan who is apparently retiring. This goes on too long, it is visually and audibly redundant after a while. Needs a tighter edit. Careful with the click - this is set to auto-play when the page loads. I hate that.

Up next, we watched a piece looking at a graphic designer turned sculptor. Pay close attention to the audio here - it has some issues, particularly with the frogs and/or crickets fading in and out. A quick solution to this would be to record a few minutes of just pure, natural sound to layer into the background. That would help take out the sudden fades.

Lastly, we have Kuni Takahashi's piece on poverty in Illinois. Twice as long as the music teacher presentation, this flows much better. Note the use of text slides to help advance the story and fill in details. It gives the reader more information without bogging down the flow. (And why are all poverty stories shot in black and white?)

... huffpuffhuff ...

Last post ... don't forget we'll have Dennis Dimick from National Geographic in the lab at 11 a.m. on Thursday, January 31. 

Assignment: All About You

For Tuesday, February 5:

Please record a series of short interviews with yourself answering the question, "Who am I?" This will form the basis for a digital autobiography. Please also collect about 10 digital images of things that represent you - pictures of yourself, things you like, etc. I'll do quick portraits of everyone in class next week from which we'll build some title/splash pages. Anything you can think of, bring it in. There are flatbed scanners in the glass lab across the hall from our lab if you need to scan anything. 

We'll be using SoundSlides to assemble these, it's become the standard for audio slideshows. Free demo is available on the site if you want to play with it. Forums have lots of good info in them, as well.  

Assignments: Web Posting, Audio Editing

Two things to have done by 5 p.m. Friday, February 1:

Web Site: Please have your web site posted to your UGA location. Your main page needs to be saved as "index.html" in order for it to work right. (Browsers will default to displaying it if the URL is incomplete.)  You should have two pages - a main/home page and a resume page, designed off a template with text handled by CSS.

Audio File: Email to me an MP3 file of your dining hall/restaurant sounds. Aim for 30-60 seconds in length. After doing your edits, go to File -> Export as MP3. Make sure you know when you're saving it to. 

A note on Audacity: It does not like to have the project files moved around, so try to get this all done in one sitting.

If you want to do this at home, you can download Audacity from the web. Please follow the instructions carefully - in addition to the main program, there is a "LAME" plug-in you need. Not only do you need to download that, but you also need to go into Audacity's preferences and tell it where the plug-in is. Info is on the site. (Click on "Other Downloads" to get to Windows versions.)

TEST your file before emailing it to me. Nothing is worse then sending out digital stuff that's busted.

Email me or drop by if you have questions or concerns, I'm around almost all the time.

ASSIGNMENT: Audio, Web Pages

Assignments for Tuesday:

AUDIO: Detail, natural sound from a restaurant. Change into a register, sizzle of a griddle - things that would help tell a listener where they are without being told that's where they are. Also look for some ambient, background noise - something you could run quietly throughout a piece.

WEB: Two web pages, designed using templates with editable regions. One should be a main (or home) page, the second a resume page. Think about the navigation scheme, how it would expand to cover other pages (stories, photos, videos, etc.)

Hit me with questions. I'll be in my office Friday after about 1 until 4:30 or so if you have issues.

Lab Hours

Please note this semester's lab hours:

Monday, 3:30 to 6:30
Tuesday, 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Thursday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Presentation Schedule

Sked for your presentations:

Feb. 5: Jared, Hanna
Feb. 12: Krista
Feb. 19: Rene, Adam
Feb. 26: Beth, Sara
March 4: Rusty, Anna
March 18: Becky, Allison
March 25: Jake, Jake
April 1: Matt, Priyom

Circulation Numbers

So, you've found your newspaper in one of your states, how do you check the circulation to make sure it's small enough? You can look on the site (areas for advertisers might list it), call the paper to ask or head to the Drewry Room and find a copy of the Editor & Publisher's International Yearbook - it lists all of the circulation numbers you'll need.

It's hidden on the wall with the windows - fourth bookcase over from the left, second shelf up from the bottom. There's a series of them with bright red bindings.

(Since I was there, I looked up my hometown newspaper that, when I worked for them, was a 35,000 daily ... they're down to 24,000 ... yikes.)

Oh yeah, the class web page ...

Some of you have found this, some of you haven't, but in addition to this blog there's also a class web page that has links to the syllabus, the Journalism 2.0 PDF and some of the presentations from class.

Guest Speaker Jim Stovall - Thursday, Jan. 24, 11 a.m.

I had hoped to have him here on a Tuesday, but Thursday is the best we can do. This will run from 11-12 on Jan. 24 in the lab, hopefully most of you will be free and able to drop by.

Professor Jim Stovall will describe the Tennessee Journalist, the student news web site he created at the University of Tennessee. Prof. Stovall was the brainchild behind Dateline Alabama and runs JProf.com, as well. He'll be here to talk with us about student news web sites and is a jack-of-all-codes, so to speak, and can help us think about what we're doing in the Multimedia Journalism class.

This will be open to all students so invite friends from other areas.

Journalism 2.0

Here's the link to the Journalism 2.0 "text book" we'll be using. The PDF is about 2.0 MB so it should download down pretty quick.

Please go through the introduction and chapters 1,2,3 and 5 for Tuesday. You can always read ahead if you want.

Welcome notes

You're going to get an invitation to join the jour5990 blog here in a few minutes. You'll need to have a Gmail account to do it. If you don't have one, let me know and I'll send you an invitation for one.

Once you've signed in, please work on making two posts by Friday at 9 a.m. The first is just an introductory piece - who are you, were are you from, why you're taking this class. Once you're in the create-a-post section, you'll have to give it a title and there will be a block to type in. At the bottom will be a section called "labels" - one of the important parts of blogging is labeling stuff. For your intro post, type in your last name to create a label for yourself. Then, on all of your future posts, make sure you use that label and any other appropriate ones. (Each post can have multiple labels.) That allows readers to sort by any of those labels.

On your second post, you'll need to have a link to another site - something relevant to things we'll be discussing in class. It can be great multimedia pieces, tech stories - whatever you think fits. If there isn't an obvious label there already, make a new one. (I'll probably fill in some basic ones on Wednesday.) (Or post this email on the blog as a reference piece.)

To link to another site, highlight the text you want to be the link and in the tool bar above where you're typing you'll see a piece of chain - click on that and you can paste in the URL for the web site. That's all you need to do to link.

For the Mac users, Firefox works a little better than Safari on some blogs. This one usually works okay with Safari, but if it does strange things (like not showing you the tool bar), try it in Firefox.

Happy blogging.

-mej