I recently completed an hour-long phone interview for a Innovative Interactivity article I’m putting together. About a half hour in, the Marantz PMD-660 I was using suddenly stopped recording and I had to quickly put a halt to the questions. Strangely, the recorder was still recording information, but no sound was coming through the headphones (let that be a lesson to anyone who doesn’t monitor their audio). I asked my subject if I could call them back, checked the batteries, restarted the player and pressed record. The recorder seemed to be doing fine.
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I recently accepted a position as a regular contributor to Innovative Interactivity (II). As a contributor I’ll be writing twice monthly on multimedia journalism, with my first post coming up on the 22nd of June.
UPDATE: Since joining MediaStorm in August 2010, I’ve sadly had to stop writing for (II). It’s a wonderful resource and I wish them the best.
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The below pdf was a part of a presentation I gave to Maine Media College MFA students on web design. The material in this document lists a number of resources that make portfolio style web design easier to create and manage. Enjoy!
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02
Mar
Speech! Come see me at SPE…
This Thursday, March 4, I’ll be talking multimedia at the annual conference of the Society for Photographic Education in Philadelphia. My talk, which starts at 1:30, covers some of the educational considerations of teaching multimedia, the basics of multimedia storytelling, and some cheap or free resources for learning the craft.
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Ok, so I made it to only three of the four movies I planned to attend. Sorry Eyes Wide Open, Ruhr just took it out of me.
The first presentation I saw was a series of short films by New Yorker Jim Jennings. Of the seven or so films he showed, the first title Wall Street was perhaps most poignant. Shot sideways from a moving car, the shadows of figures walking down the street appeared to moving up to down, rather than left to right (or vice versa). This verticality was an interesting reminder of the importance of a filmic experience, one that reminded me of the playful ventures of early avant-garde filmmakers. There were moments where, because of the mid-day afternoon sun, certain shadows of men in suits slowed the speed of the film down from the constant blur of bodies and sidewalks. And though shot in the 1980′s, those moments were elegant reminders of the anonymous yet all important impact that Wall Street has on our financial system.
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In August 2009 I had the privilege of being the principal videographer/photographer on the recently finished film ‘Rwanda: Take Two’. The film, funded by the Rotterdam Film Festival as part of it’s ‘Where is Africa?’ series, is premiering this Tuesday in Rotterdam. Throughout the week I’ll post some thoughts on the inner workings of a large international film festival, some embarrassing attempts at film reviews as well as some personal anecdotes about my first film festival.
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The less than evil folks at Google recently released a new application for their android platform called Goggles. The application allows users to search the Internet using photographs as opposed to keywords or terms. Google’s complicated search algorithm can now be accessed via the visual.
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Teaching students to organize their time is often an up hill battle. But with multimedia it’s imperative that students understand the amount of time that’s involved. For that reason, I wrote up a one-week shooting/production schedule to create a multimedia project. I’d be interested to hear thoughts on what needs to be added or subtracted from the schedule, so if you have any ideas or suggestions, drop ‘em in the comments after the break!
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21
Nov
Liminal States
The following excerpts represent sections of my written thesis from the University of Florida’s masters program. As a documentarian, it was important for me to question the tenets of my practice. I would like to encourage feedback as a means to further grow an understanding of what it means to make documentaries.
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The good folks at Western Kentucky University just finished their 34th installment of the Mountain Workshops, one of the best week-long photojournalism workshops in the country. This year’s students were rewarded with their own slideshow on MSNBC! Congrats to all the 2009 students, faculty and staff. Great work guys.
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