Closing Time

As this class has ended for the semester, I'm going to shutter this ... none of the info will go away, but posting and commenting will be turned off until we start up again.

Meantime, keep an eye on the UGA Photojournalism blog ... it's sparse through the summer, but will gear up again come mid-August.

Photsynth software, seemingly limitless

This is really cool. I want.

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.

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.)

OH MY GOD - Facebook not SAFE!

Hey guys,
I just came across this from BBC news. It's regarding Facebook, they are talking about different "applications" there have a program that can steal your information and perhaps even your identity, so please be carefull you all. Check out the video.

Priyom.

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.

Slow-motion, yeah!

At NAB this past month, one of the sessions I attended featured the new Phantom HD camera, a rather nifty (and of course ridiculously expensive!) little device capable of recording hi-def video footage at up to 1,000 frames per second. For a demonstration, they shot footage of a quarter spinning on a flat surface, as well as one of those children's toys that does back flips after you wind it up. While that might not sound all that amazing, it was simply incredible to see how much detail this camera is capable of recording, stuff that the human eye could never pick up on. And the really cool part is that the footage could be stopped at anytime to provide a perfect, hi-res, 10 megapixel frame (yup, a lot of storage space is needed...). Take that interlaced video! Anyway, I tried shopping around the web to see if I could find some sample video of the camera in action. This first site, called Vision Research, features a number of different videos, all shot exclusively with the Phantom (check out the water balloon one...absolutely ridiculous!). This other site, Lucid Movement, also has plenty of high-speed videos dealing with everything from explosions, to stuff with water and smoke, and of course, various things breaking. Hooray for slow-motion! Enjoy...

As promised, UWire

Here's the link to the site I was talking about in class. It's very similar to linkedin in that it provides a kind of social networking of sorts for professional journalists. The main difference between UWire and Linkedin is that UWire allows you to post stories, photos, etc.

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.

Well, this can't be good ...

Anybody ever heard of Orphan Works? I don't pretend to know much about copyright law, but, from what I've been reading, this stuff is a little worrisome. Apparently, there's a new bill going into Congress that should be hitting the floor in mid-May, and it looks like it could mean a lot more bills to pay and red tape to go through when you take a photo, make a video, or paint a picture. At least, if you're looking to actually own your own creative work.

This might just be artists acting a little sensational, but I got this article in one of my feeds this morning. The implications outlined on the Illustrator's Partnership of America site are a little scary. I checked out Picscout because they could stand to profit pretty heavily from this, and their prices are, I guess, reasonable but their numbers are a little low (I mean, $35 a month at most, okay, but only up to 2000 photos?). I'm not sure how an Orphan Works legislation passing in Congress would affect those of us who are in the sphere of journalism, but I figured I'd make mention.

I'm sort of out on the whole issue at the moment. As far I understand it, as long as you make sure the work is in a place where it's obvious who actually owns it (I imagine that Facebook, Flickr, and other such Web sites, where social contact is a big part of the allure, would be safe enough), you can always prove that you were available for contact so there's no way somebody could really call your stuff an orphan work.

Anyway, just figured I'd drop the line ...

Seth is the man

I thought this was a really good audio slideshow that I came across while getting ideas for my last mulitmedia assignment...It was done by the one and only Seth Siditsky. Are most people doing audio slideshows or video?

The hazards of our job

So I've always wanted to be a wartime journalist. Don't know why, never asked. It worries the hell out of my family and friends, and some have threatened to break my legs if I ever try to embed with a unit anywhere other than Antarctica. But the desire persists.

So here's a link to Reporters without Borders.

I was trying to find something specific on the site to write about, but the whole thing is interesting.

Use of Soundslides

Hey, I googled "multimedia journalism" today, and our blog comes up on the 4th page!

Anyway, I came across a set of soundslides by the Midland Daily News in Midland, MI. They have a lot of really great photos in these projects.

This project has an interesting use of black and white and color. What do you think about the usage?

Also, I found it interesting that the multimedia pages are very different in layout and design from the rest of the newspaper page. The layout for the multimedia is cleaner, but it doesn't really seem to connect to the homepage. What do you think of the different layouts?

It's Never too Late

As I was browsing The Star-Ledger's site, I came across this touching multimedia piece. It only runs about 2 and a half minutes, but it definitely shows that an audio soundslides project can be just as rewarding as a video project.

"Intel Vietname" at The San Jose Mercury News

"Intel Vietnam" is apparently the second-most recent video at the San Jose Mercury News' mercurynews.com, and it's worth a watch for a couple of reasons. First, the video opens with an informative detail shot, which reminded me of what Professor Johnson mentioned in class on Tuesday about being mindful of the opening shot when editing video footage; the video, which is about an Intel chipset factory in Vietnam, opens with a shot of an Intel name tag with a Vietnamese name on it. Secondly, the video integrates more stills (or possibly screen captures) than video, and it works well. The video also uses an interesting framing technique while presenting a typical video interview, wherein the video presents the interviewee in a small box to the left side of the screen and fills the rest of the screen with a black background with white text beside the interview box explaining who the person is. I thought that was a pretty simple way to avoid the usual boring straight-up video interview-with-text-box-at-bottom deal.

The video itself doesn't appear to be linkable, but you can find it by clicking on "browse more" on the video window, below the main story and photo.

little bitty podcast

it is called 60-second-science. ch ch ch check it out

Vicious Circle of Belly Fat

Abdominal fat cells produce a hormone that can make you hungrier, leading to more belly fat and so on. Steve Mirsky reports.

He returns...

Hey everyone. Just wanted to let you know I finally made it back from Vegas early this morning. The NAB conference was absolutely amazing, and I was fortunate enough to have been working as a room monitor for several different seminars that dealt with a number of topics relevant to the focus of our 5990 course. I attended a few sessions on video podcasting that featured a great number of tips and ideas for producing video geared for the web. I also got to sit in on a few courses on blogging, as well as some director of photography workshops. All in all it was a great trip and I can't wait to fill you in on everything.

For this week's post I figured I would share with you some of the great resources I came across while at the show. Here's a link to a website produced by Rich Harrington, one of speakers at the conference who devoted a number of his sessions to video production for the web. The site, called vidpodcaster.com, features a blog that is updated several times a week, and also provides a link to subscribe to the free podcast "Producing Video Podcasts" (which can also be done through iTunes as well). I have checked out a few episodes so far and, in addition to being fairly well produced, found them to be pretty informative. I also thumbed through the official book (which goes by the same name) at the NAB book store and am considering picking that up as well just to have on-hand for reference. I would definitely recommended looking into it.

I hope the weekend workshop went well for everyone and can't wait to see how everything turned out. Have a great weekend, and I'll see you all in class next Tuesday...