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!
Project in a Week – Organizing Your Time
Day One -
Assignment given, call potential subjects.
Day Two -
Content Gathering – Confirm subject matter, set meeting for that day to introduce yourself. Initial audio interview if subject is willing.
Post-Production – If content is gathered, do an initial edit of audio.
Day Three -
Content Gathering – Meet and spend the day (or as long as subject allows) photographing and collecting audio. Use knowledge of previous day’s interview to guide shooting and audio gathering (if applicable).
Post-Production – Cut and edit audio after shoot is over with. Begin to construct a narrative with audio collected. Organize stills into categories (must use, maybes, close-ups, portraits…etc etc).
Day Four -
Content gathering – Again, use what you learned in the previous days take to guide your shooting and audio gathering. What do you need more of, stills or audio? Do you need ambient audio for a certain photograph? Do you need a visual of a certain sound? What questions do you want to follow up on with the subject?
Post-Production
Finish a rough-cut of a narrative based on interview material. Begin to drop in ambient audio underneath interview. Continue to organize stills.
Day Five -
Content Gathering – Last full day of content gathering. Concentrate on filling gaps in the narrative. What photographs do I still need (do I have enough moments, close-ups, portraits etc etc)? What audio do I need (what questions do I still have? what visuals do I have that need audio?)? Exit interview should be conducted on this day.
Post-Production – Complete a radio cut of audio. The audio should be mixed between ambient and interview content (please note that ambient is not simply a long track of general sounds. It is directed and focused sounds that illustrate a photograph, bolster or otherwise contribute to a statement or interview, or both). Continue to organize photographs.
Day Six -
Content Gathering – Last minute questions, photographs. This day should be used to fill in any holes left in the narrative, visuals.
Post-Production – Day six should be used mostly for post-production. Continue to fine tune radio edit. Drop stills in over narrative. Base your decisions for visuals on the radio cut you’ve created. There must be a connection between the two formats!
Day Seven -
Post-Production – Continue to fine tune audio narrative. Finish dropping stills into the timeline. Add any moves on photographs or transitions (there better be a good damn reason to use them!). Normalize your audio and export as a quicktime. Watch the quicktime all the way through, look for errors in the export, or in the piece which you hadn’t noticed before. Take a one hour break, then come back to the piece. Watch it again, fix any lingering mistakes or problems.
