Update

After a fairly uneventful Thanksgiving break, I'm back to school and getting it going with the project. I have an interview set up for either tomorrow or Tuesday night (they'll let me know) and one for Wednesday night with photographs taking place on Thursday and Friday. Hopefully, this will all be sufficient to put together the final product I want to put out

Project

So far, the actual project has kind of been a struggle. I have interviews set up, but since the nature of my project (talk to people who work to get through college) means they have little time, it has been difficult to meet with them. I have had one person who keeps pushing it back and back, which is fine, but aggravating. The other interview is set up for later this week. As for the rest of it, I think I have some good ideas. I think that a set-up where it weaves between both person's stories would be best so that the viewer can see the connections between the two - where they struggle, where they succeed, what their respective situations are. I have taken some pictures, but without sound and being able to see them at work, it's tough.

Group Ideas on Projects

I think that my project is shaping up to be something that could be good, if I put in the time. My idea is to find either someone in the dining hall or someone on campus that has struggled to make it to where they are. Maybe its someone who has survived the holocaust and is filling the salad bar at Holloway (she actually does work there) or maybe someone who is working three jobs just to be able to make tuition. There is someone like that, and there is someone with a good story, I just need to put in the time, be delicate and get it. I think people liked my idea, of course contingent on the basis that I find a good story. They, being students who interact daily with the staff or their peers around them, would like to know more about someone who maybe got there a little differently or what their backstory is. I think at first I was just looking to find someone with an interesting story of how they got to UNH, but as I talked to people in class about it, I started to realize there was more. What about staff? What about these people would make it interesting to the person watching my final project? My thinking has definitely changed, in that I’ve expanded where I need to come from and where these opportunites may lay. I think that people definitely had some good ideas too. Cameron had a great idea about doing a self-story following he and his father running a marathon and I thought there were good opportunites there. Also, Amanda had a very intriguing idea about a bus system in the UNH area (Dover, Portsmouth, etc.) that helped homeless people and even provided healthcare for them; great opportunites could be found in that story as well. I think I’m excited about my project- I think it will be fun to put everything together and to make a final product that I can be proud of and it be something that I find to be truly interesting.

Shooting Video

Shooting video is something of a different animal to tackle than taking still pictures and something completely different than writing a news story. Still though, many of the underlying principles remain the same: it still needs to be interesting and it still needs to be a story that's well told. It's just something that is a little hard to take into account when you do the 5 w's and everything like that. In other words, it took a little time to figure out exactly how to translate that into video. Still though, it worked out pretty well I thought. Having people say things that answer these types of questions works well too, as well as giving clear visual indicators of where you are and what you're doing there. As for the video itself, I found it eerily similar to taking still pictures, and I don't think it's because I used the camera that I used for the point-and-shoot pictures. I think that many of the underlying principles of photography remain. After all, film is just a series of photo's and it tends to be easy to forget that. I had some issues with lighting but after a little while I figured out what started to make things look better and what didn't and, surprise, they were the same as what it is to take a good picture. I wouldn't say that I'm a great video person now, but with experience I think I could get better with it.

Alcoholic turned Bike Racer

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/index.html#steven_marmo

This story definitely is a good example of the principles of what photojournalism would be. It hits on the who, the what, the where and so on and while it skirts around the 'newsworthiness' aspect of things, it definitely connects with human interest. As for the style, it was very subtly done, but jarringly so. As the narrator tells his story, you see the blue-collar environment he surrounds himself in, not seeing his face that is always cast in shadows. As he progresses in his story, the audience begins to see a new man emerging, and the style shows that as the photos begin to almost lead the story themselves, becoming slightly brighter and brighter and more humanized as the man changes. Finally, when the audience and the narrator realizes that he has begun to finally overcome his alcohol and fighting problems, the picture finally reveals his full eyes, showing his full face for the first, and only, time. This part in particular was very striking in that just showing his eyes helped to elevate the overall story without the aid of the spoken or written word; it was just the picture itself.
The images presented help to set and move the story very well. At the beginning, when the narrator talks about the euphoria of fighting, the pictures are imposing, showing intimidating tattoos and a rugged construction worker. However, as he talks about coming out of fighting, the pictures show less of his tattoos, but more of what has changed him, namely his bike riding that he had become involved with after he lost his car. What this does is create a type of feeling in the audience that can’t be done with just a word on a page – the pictures themselves have transformed the man. Also, during one particular section that he begins riding his bike, he says ‘…and I kept riding and riding and riding…’ and the pictures both have quick movement in the shots and quick movement in the slideshow, creating a nice sense for the reader of not only speed, but a change in momentum and, in turn, this man’s lifestyle. The whole things is very intuitive – it follows not only the progression of his story but does so in a way that tells stories by itself. For example, in every picture in which he says things in a regretful fashion, the pictures reflect that.

Deanna Wood Interview Experience

Overall, doing this assignment was a very integral part to me understanding and interacting with sound. I found Audacity to be a great tool - you can do a lot of clever and interesting things with it and being able to manipulate it perfectly was both satisfying and helped to create a better overall project. It definitely took some getting used to as it was my first time even editing sound, but after a little it all clicked and everything worked great. As for the listening part of it, it was probably the thing I enjoyed most. Just walking around the library (where we held our interview) with headphones into the audio recorder, you could hear all kinds of things you would never notice before and I got excited to be able to put these little things into the background of the interview, and, using Audacity, we did that. I think working in a team in this situation was a little difficult in the post-production part of it. Only so many different things can happen at once with the computers. Overall, I think the biggest thing I learned was what is integral to the finished product and what might be throwaway things that might just clutter everything up. For example, a door closing might be a good ambient sound, but it doesn't exactly fit into an interview where you're trying to hear the words.

Introduction to Multimedia

Honestly, coming into the class, I really was not quite sure what exactly we would be doing in the class. However, after seeing some of the videos and slideshows and the like, I'm really excited for what is coming up. I've always been interested in doing these types of things, but never really had a venue to do things that were anything more than throwaway things that were making fun of my friends or pictures of my new car, so I'm excited to see what I might be able to do. I was really quite taken by the mediastorm website - it seemed like they really knew how to connect with a viewer and get them deeply involved and attached and I think it's definitely something I will continue looking at and studying as I go forward with the process. As for story ideas, I'm not really sure. It seems as though I still need to identify what I think would be a good multimedia story in the context of the university setting. The example shown in class was good, but since then I've been racking my brain and have found issues figuring out more to do.