Al Tompkins Interviews WaPo's Travis Fox

The Washington Post's Travis Fox is one of the leaders in online video storytelling, and Poynter's Al Tompkins has a nice interview with him about his latest project and the state of video on the web. Not his predictions on the future.

Love and journalism

I realize that not everyone in the multimedia class is considering photojournalism as a career, but there are a couple of us, so I thought I'd just bring up the topic of relationships. In the documentary class, one of the final words of wisdom from Johnny was that relationships are hard to maintain as photojournalists. He said that any of us who intended on taking on the mantle should be prepared to miss those special occasions -- birthdays, anniversaries, date nights (but never, ever miss the birth of a child) -- should we choose to have a longterm significant other.

I'm not saying that it's impossible. I'm sure it is. But it's often quoted that journalism is a lonesome business:

• "Working as a photojournalist can be lonely and difficult." ~ Aidan Sullivan, vice president for for editorial photographer relations of Getty Images
• "The job can be lonely, and patience and perseverance are required to get the right shot, at the right time." ~Skillset.org

I'm not really trying to be a doom-and-gloom type, but I just always here about the solitary photographer, the lonesome and dogged photojournalist hauling around half a dozen cameras with a slightly bewildered and anti-social glaze in his or her eyes.

Just to show you it's not all dark and unhappy, I did find a short piece -- multimedia, in fact -- about maintaining relationships in hard places. I mean, a lot of it is general tips and hints, but it all pertains to the topic at hand. So take it all in, enjoy it all, and love makes the world go 'round. ... well, that and a couple of overbearing cosmic forces. Or God. Whichever. Anyway, here's the link.
Yes, I did all that just to lead up to a RickRoll'ing. Ha!
See y'all around.

ARG!

Fear not, the title isn't just an expression of frustration. Actually, it's a interesting way to relieve frustration and angst, and all you need to do is have some free time and an internet connection. ARG stands for Alternate Reality Game, a subject about which I've been intending to write for a couple months. I've waited until now, though, because I wanted to get something fresh to show y'all.

There's not really a better way to describe an Alternate Reality Game. If you take a dash of role playing, a pinch of mystery, a whole bunch of interactivity, a wholesome amount of acting, and pretty much every kind of multimedia you can get your hands on, mix 'em up and spread the concoction across the internet, you'll have yourself an ARG. Most games revolve around a core mystery -- someone's dead, someone's missing, something strange is happening, or something just plain doesn't make sense -- and the audience is left to discover the truth.

How? Multimedia -- once you find yourself tumbling like Alice down the proverbial Rabbithole (ARG terminology for an entry point into the game), you get to play detective. You look for clues in the text of Web sites, in posted videos, in phone messages (phone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses found on the sites are real; you actually get responses), and -- tricky bit here -- in the source code of the Web sites. These guys use every tidbit of tech they can to lead you to the truth, which, as of late, tends to be a new movie or game.

ARGs started back in the late 90s (as if that was a long time) when the San Francisco Chronicle supposedly ran a crude version of an ARG called Dreadnot in 1996. I say supposedly because, though it's mentioned in multiple sources as the first ARG, I haven't been able to find too much on the actual game. But it doesn't much matter as The Beast blew the doors off the genre in 2001 as a marketing ploy for the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Since then, ARGs have been used pretty heavily in marketing, including campaigns for the Halo series (I love bees) and, more recently, Cloverfield. These are both over, of course, but they've managed to wrangle a whole bunch of people who are willing to suspend their disbelief and play along.

The reason I decided to post this now: I think I've found a game currently running. I have no idea what the game is, but it seems pretty high budget, so I'd say it's probably a marketing gimmick. Which is cool; there's no shame in enjoying a decent mystery. So check out this Youtube site, watch some of the videos, question everything, suspect everyone, leave nothing unchecked, read anything you find, search out anything odd. I've already found a blog involving a retired missing persons detective.

Oh, yeah, and anytime you get a blank page, hit Crtl-A, or Cmd-A -- it selects everything on the page, so you can see any hidden text ... took me two weeks to figure that out ... happy hunting.
This is the sort of hidden text that Ctrl-A gets you.

Even The Simpsons Know the World is Changing

Pssst ... Another In-House Workshop

The Telecomm department runs an on-campus, in-building Bluejeans Workshop for students and small-market television photojournalists. It's cheap, local and a good way to get some more knowledge in your brain. 

It's $25 for a day's worth of education, not a bad deal at all.

Stuff to Look At

Seth Siditsky, Deputy Director of Photography at the Newark Star-Ledger, will be one of our editors next month. He's currently overseeing the multimedia work at his paper and sent along the following links, so you can see some of the things his staff has been up to.

The Littlest Victims: Violence and Innocence

Scott Winston's Quest for Another Title

A Wrestling Town

All out multimedia

This is a piece by the News & Observer out of North Carolina that talks about a serious issue through multiple venues. It starts out with a video, continues on with a photo gallery, and then moves into figures and research. I like the straightforward and direct design of the interface, and the sort of Soundslides-ish feel of it. It's easy to navigate, engaging and informative. I would give it my stamp of approval if such a thing meant anything at all.

Animated Editorial Cartoon

Flash Goddess Mindy McAdams pointed me towards this: The Detroit Free Press has posted an animated editorial cartoon. All done in Flash, they put it together in one day.

Thoughts?

What Goes Online, What Doesn't

Mindy McAdams, the Flash Goddess, posted a list of things to think about when deciding what to turn into a multimedia piece. Worth taking a look at as we'll be discussing this next week in class.

The flu

I have been sick all week, so I decided to look up multimedia about the flu. Unfortunately for Ole Miss, the youtube framing covers up the nameplates they made on the video (one disadvantage to using free video hosting).

Good Tips on Audio Slideshows

Colin Mulvany has posted a good round up of ways to improve your audio slideshows.

Soundslides

I have been looking at Soundslides presentations at various newspapers, and the Shelby County Reporter in Alabama has some kind of nice ones, but I thought they could use some improvements.

The Shelby Shufflers had some nice images, and some of the audio with the music is nice too. However, I think it gets too long and redundant.

The Blue Star Salute has some nice images and audio in parts, but the images do not always go along with the audio. The thing that bothered me most about this one was that all the pictures were up for the exact same amount of time and were not coordinated with the pauses or phrasing of the sentences in the audio. The part where the cannon is shot off is really nice though.

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?)

Just a Quickie

"No Mr. President, it's called a quiche."
This is just something I found that I really enjoyed. I liked the subject matter and I like the design of the site so much that I'm now semi-determined to learn Flash. Dear me.

Medals of Memory.

Cape Cod Times

I often find newspaper and other news websited cluttered. I find it difficult to focus on reading with dancing ads in the corners and too many things on the screen at once. I think the Cape Cod Times has a pretty clean, simple site that is easy to look at. The color scheme is subtle, and the site is easy to navigate.

They also have a pretty big multimedia section with videos, audio slideshows and photos.

Source to practice video publishing

I searched YouTube for multimedia journalism and I found a multimedia journalism project that students in Texas did. The video will make you a little seasick, but it reminded me of our discussion about how the Red & Black is not doing video journlism yet. If UGA adopts a Web site based on the Tennessee Journalist site, this would be a great means of training students to do video and other multimedia work for the Red & Black. It was mentioned in class that the Red & Black is really good for students in the job market, and I think that the volunteer-run, anybody-can-do-it site would allow students to practice these skills, post them, and be able to learn the skills to apply to the Red & Black (especially if the Red & Black is worried that posting badly done videos may hinder its reputation).

As our guest speaker, Jim Stoval, said, some of the video content on the Tennessee Journalist site is just students experimenting. He even admitted that not everything was good, but that it was great that the students were at least trying and experimenting and figuring things out for themselves. The example he showed really conveys this point.

Can't help me-self

Okay, so we haven't really started in with posting multimedia stuff, and I'm sorry if anybody wigs out about this, but I came across a Web site called Vuvox via Multimedia Shooter article. Though the article talks about the currently-in-beta-testing collage tool, I explored the rest of the site. It was interesting. You can basically produce little (hate to use this word, but it's the first that comes to mind) cutesy photo projects.

Anyway, here's an example of one of the simpler things you can do. Click the photos to get closer to them, click outside the photo to zoom out, and, yes, the photos move inside of the frames.



Fun stuff, right? Easy, too -- just create an account, and they'll take you through the process of uploading, editing and "publishing" your work. (I say "publishing" with quotations due to Tuesday's discussion.) Here's another version, a "photo tree" idea, which is more interesting virtually than in reality. In my opinion.



So far, I haven't found a way to edit any pieces post-publication, though that doesn't mean the ability isn't there. Accounts are free, by the way, so feel free to play.

Ciao, folks.

Blogging done right

I was interested in looking for blogs that dealt with technology related material. Last year, I remember the editor of Wired magazine toured the school so I checked out their website and they have about 12 different blogs dealing with technology. I found the blog entitled Danger Room was especially interesting. It deals with technology in the military. There's a video of the fighting in Somalia posted that has been created by Noah Shachtman, the creater of the blog. It's pretty detailed and intense.

Ada Web

Not long after the first multimedia web browser was introduced, artists began using the web to promote traditional forms of art like painting and sculpture. However, soon they began to use the web as a medium for new art. In May 1995 ada’web was released to the world. Ada’web was a site where artists worked with computer technicians to produce works of art online. It was run like a gallery with a curator for several years and has since been acquired by the Walker Art Center. It is interesting to see what has been done in the past with online media. The site can be a little confusing to navigate, but it was created as an art site, not a traditional, informational site.

Each time you enter the site the page looks different. If you click on the the a, you will get to the index page, and you can navigate from there.

In the index under projects, I think "loaded 5x" and "blindspot" are really interesting.

http://www.adaweb.com/

Yet another TNJN post...

As I'm sure everyone who attended the guest lecture today is already well aware, the TNJN website pretty much blew me away. All of the features it packs (multimedia support, clean and easily navigable interface, etc.) screams a certain level of professionalism most wouldn't expect of college students. This pic shows off one of my favorite features of the site-the photo gallery viewer. Though it may be fairly simplistic in design, I really haven't seen this type of photo viewing plug-in implemented in many other websites, particularly student-run websites. Click a photo to view, and it appears front-and-center in the middle of the screen while everything else behind it dims to provide emphasis. Simple...practical...genius...I'm liking it.