Student multimedia tips, Part 1

Posted by briansingler on Dec 4, 2010 in Featured Articles, Storytelling, Thoughts, Video, Video Editing | 0 comments

(Read part 2 of the excerpt I wrote for the book “The Student Newspaper Survival Guide” here.)

Since I just finished my masters degree at the University of Missouri in multimedia production, I was asked by San Francisco State University journalism professor Rachele Kanigel to write an excerpt for an upcoming new edition of her book “The Student Newspaper Survival Guide.”

She also runs the Student Newspaper Survival blog.

Since it’s a little long, I am doing three questions for today and three for another day. For the direct application, skip to question three.

1. Tell me a bit about what prompted you to do The Maclin Project? Was the project initially for the Missourian or for a class? What kind of response did you get from readers?

In my first weeks at the Missourian, I was blown away by the web stats for stories about the football team. It (still) kills everything else. It didn’t take me long to realize that Jeremy Maclin, then a sophomore, was easily among the top skills players to ever come out of Missouri, with a legitimate shot at being an NFL superstar. Not many of those have come out of Missouri over the decades. So while I had done a lot of sports reporting in my career, I recognized that following his path to the NFL would likely be the best story I would be able to cover at MU, one that may not come around again for years. I felt like I had been preparing much of my career (through radio, TV, newspaper and online journalism) for a real in-depth multimedia story, and I did the best I could, given my skill set and other responsibilities at the time.

The idea for it churned around in my head for a while before I created an independent study for my master’s degree to be able to pursue it to the degree I wanted to. All projects evolve from concept to completion, and soon it became a 40-hour a week process for almost three months as the amount of footage and perfection I demand from every edit mounted.

The initial response was very favorable as it was easily the most ambitious multimedia project that had ever been done at the Missourian. It really took off though, when I put it on YouTube. Views poured in by the tens of thousands and comments flooded my email inbox from Missouri to Philadelphia, where he was drafted. What really surprised me though was the story’s staying power because the flood (almost 15 months later) hasn’t stopped, though it has ebbed a bit. This really cemented in my mind the value of in-depth multimedia projects, which many media organizations are wary of because of the time and expense involved. This story took place entirely at Mizzou, a place that is only a memory to Maclin now, but I think interest in his person, the crazy diet and the preparation he went through still resonate with people.

2. Please tell me about your collaboration with the writer for the project, Robert Mays III. Did you work together closely on this or did you each do your own thing and then package the story and video together? Did the project start with the video or the text story or did you plan from the beginning to work together?

We both came up with the idea around the same time and worked largely separately, though we bounced some things off each other. We also quickly realized this story was a chance to showcase how print and multimedia work together. I could tell the story of “now”, the diet, training, the family, the thought process. That was what I could show. Robert could tell you about the high school and PeeWee days and other aspects of the story without a strong visual component. Stories of this depth and magnitude are rare, but special. Much of journalism and what I have produced have been forgettable and no longer have much value. I felt The Maclin Project was not like that.

3. I saw on your blog some of your frustrations with the lack of story in some multimedia work put up on newspaper sites. I agree. Particularly on student sites I see a lot of video that doesn’t go anywhere. What advice do you have for student multimedia producers about telling stories?

1. Approach video and multimedia like a reporter does. Too often an editor just says “ooh, that would make great video” and sends a reporter out without thinking about the story itself. Video stories need narrative, thought, sources from all sides, structure and a compelling open and close among a host of other things. Does that sound like a newspaper article? It should because I think of great multimedia like an awesome print story that has come to life through images, graphics, video text and interactivity. Way, way too often (I think because good multimedia can have a high technical ceiling) there’s no story development or at best, a bunch of pretty shots strung together with audio filler. That’s not great storytelling, but surprisingly, a vast majority of multimedia and video, especially at the newspaper level, follows this same tired formula.
2. Script it out. I really believe in this, and you have to pick the right story (not breaking news). It can be as simple as making a Word document with two columns: one that has all audio (soundbites, nat, voiceover) on one side and all the video on the other. This allows you to match the video and audio, see your story as a whole, find the weak spots and present it to an editor. It also saves time in the long run because your story is laid out for you before you edit, and you don’t waste time endlessly swapping around shots and trying to figure things out as you go.
3. Use your own voice. I know this scares the hell out of people, but it’s not that bad. For many stories, it needs to be the video journalist who’s spelling out the context, relevance, and significance of a piece, not some source babbling on and on. In my opinion, soundbites in video serve the same purpose as a quote in a newspaper story, they provide emotion, say something you can’t say or in a way you wouldn’t say it (among a host of other things). What was the last newspaper or magazine story you read that was all quotes? Yet how much multimedia has no reporter voice in it or at least some explanatory text? You as the student are the reporter. You provide context. You can say the five W’s lots more succinctly that a source usually does. Please spare me from sources who say boring things.
4. Kill your babies. That means that that shot or soundbite that you think is great, but isn’t related to the story, needs to go. Make your stories as focused and tight as possible.
5. Show, don’t tell. That was the best advice given to me as a print reporter and applies just as much to multimedia. Think about what it means. If you’re doing a story about an athlete who’s motivated by his deceased father’s memory, don’t show me practice video and tell me about it. Take me into the dorm room, let me see the pictures on the wall, the tears running down the face, the special technique the Dad taught. Go the extra mile to make stories personal.