duckrabbit multimedia class at LCC
Written by duckrabbitduckrabbit are teaching a short module focusing multimedia storytelling on the Masters photojournalism degree course at LCC (starting tomorrow)
Paul Lowe, who heads up the course, is a great supporter and advocate of digital storytelling. The fact that he wants to prepare students for life after print is rare amongst university educators (nudge, nudge Newport).
Anyway I’m going to put up the links to the pieces that we’ll be discussing in lesson one here on the blog. Hopefully some of the students will leave comments as well (other readers feel free to comment).
The assessment for this unit has 2 parts
• Completion of a practical assignment of a multimedia piece of a maximum of 90
seconds duration using location recorded sound and a minimum of 12 images• A 750-1000 word report on an aspect of the application of sound and image
Week One:
Digital approaches to Storytelling (theory):
Please view the following multimedia features. They use very different methods to tell stories. Think about the different uses of photos, audio, text and music. What works and what leaves you cold?
CHUCKING OUT from duckrabbit on Vimeo.
Hungry: Living with Prader-Willi Syndrome – By Maisie Crow from liveBooks on Vimeo.
NPR in Gaza, A Photographer’s Journal from NPR on Vimeo.
The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.
INNOCENCE – Sri Lanka’s Child Soldiers from duckrabbit on Vimeo.
Directed Study for week two:
Go through the archives on Multimedia Muse. Pick one photo essay. In the comments section write a short pitch on how you would treat the photo essay if you were to work with the photographer on making a multimedia story from it.
Please return to the comments section regularly and feedback on other students treatments.
Author — duckrabbit
duckrabbit is a production company formed by radio producer/journalist Benjamin Chesterton and photographer David White. We specialize in digital storytelling.
Discussion (25 Comments)
What works for me is Sam O’Hare’s ‘The Sandpit’. It strikes me as a well-produced multimedia presentation and has that certain Hollywood look and feel to it. ‘Chucking Out’ is a pretty grim reminder of life in the UK, the noises, the twats that appear around 11pm (well not so much anymore anyway). I love the fact that in some frames you have two sets of background noise, it does give a feeling like you are up north and experiencing it.
What doesn’t work is NPR in Gaza’s attempt. If there was one word that summed it up, it would have to be boring. So much so, I turned it off after 40 seconds.
I love Hungry – it feels very intimate and has that incredible depth, which is something i’d like to achive in my work as I develop more.
Chucking Out is just hilarious – it reminds me very much of the small towns in England and north Wales where I started going out as a teenager. But Daniel – why do you think it makes you feel as if you’re “up north”? don’t you get this kind of drinking culture in the south-east? I’m not sure i believe that.
Not really in London, in fact I never really experienced that vibe whilst living in London but did when being back in Leicester or Nottingham. Maybe I was in the wrong establishments 🙂
ah, you see this may be a problem of geography. Only a southerner would call Nottingham and Leicester ‘up north’.
I have had the misfortune to go out a couple of times in Guildford and similar crap towns around there and they are really no different when it comes to this. ditto Scotland.
Is it past the protective ring we call the M25? yup then it’s up north….
Point of order … Chucking Out was recorded in Bristol …
1) Is quite a good presentation, I like the stillness of some of the night time images and the more surreal types, a captured moment in a time of hedonistic youth, we may all remember in some way (not all negative if you read into all the ambiguaties)
These image work with the supporting frenetic, chaotic and slurring dialouge.
My only crits are thatslideshow is sometimes let down by some weaker images, (but it is night time in a drunken town) some of the images I may have not used to give strength to the remaining images. I belive that sometimes in multimedia slideshows image sthat may not be used or stand up in a printed photo story can be used within a multimedia story, lesser pictures can be used to fill in and add to stories,but ultimately this will show up as a weakness as the photographs should still be as good as the story.
2) The same crits from no 1) still apply here, but this project has stronger emotional images for obviouse reasons; the photographer must be more closely involved and has built up some sort of empthatic realtionship, even if it was in one week or one year, this shows.
I can say that I didnt really like or appreciate the use of video within this work, the clock seemed contrived and the video often left me disjointed as I was becoming overtaken with the story and voices the sudden jump to video jarred away from the continuity of the story.
I did love the audio and some of the images were emotionally charged, I enjoyed the way the voices were supplemented at the right time by realting sounds and voices, this was done 50-50 subtley but still didnt feel over worked.
3)some good images, but too few to grab me, but an important story I did find the ome mans voice (photographer) patronsing like a charity video, and a bit anoying honestly I know not a polit corect thing to say but for me true. I didnt like the telephoto images, and lack of closeness and my impressions of this photographer just passing through without speaking to the tramatised citizens and recording there words albeit how hard that could have been. I guess it wasnt but felt that hed just chosen some work that he left out of hios daily work to make this slideshow?…
Maybe also I watched on large screen and the images were poorer res, for the compression of the video or copyright i dont know but is there a way to use higher res images without fear of copyright infringement or slowing doem the media?….Inocnce seems to use sharper images.
I’ll add comments for 5 & 6 tomorrow…I do enjoy 5) Innocence the best so far but this of course because the images for me are the best and the presentation the most original, I didnt like the music so much, but this proves if the images are powerful a multimedia presenattion becomes just a tool to show youre work in a new and original way without having to force and contrive a project to make it appear stronegr or more legitamate than it is…strength in photographic work comes from belief and persaverance, I often feel that some multimedia work is made from a collection of weaker images put together well, taking any music and sound to fool the public into beliveing this is a documentary…the best multimedi still comes from the best projects and photographs.
Innocnce is part-proof. If you have this just keep the multimedia part simple and the the images will do the rest..(to put it vulgarly ‘you cant polish a turd!’ although people do you shouldnt try and its gonna end up a mess!….
I need to improve my tech knowledge and sound editing, but ive seen great work on imovies so you dont always have to buy a D5, recording studio or final cut pro if you cant afford it.
5) Yep the sandpit is great, but is it a music video or mobile phone advert? or photographic story?…
less holywood and more Tate modern with tacky music….
I still not sure what its saying apart from mass culture, etc..or is that just it? and im loseing the plot
aaah Wales then…. :p
Sand pit was interesting for it’s time lapse and the tilt shift lens was very Vincent Laforet but it just seemed to go on a bit long and it didn’t hold my attention like Baraka did with all their time lapse story telling. Innocence was an interesting account and intriguing images but I felt that the soundtrack was too sentimental and the text was weak when it was trying to be clever. Chucking Out was good, I like the snippets of interviews in conjunction with the strong imagery, together they tell a clear story. Lastly Hungry has the best intro of the lot and is a very powerful and touching story using film, stills and a personal voice over narration. So drinking and eating were my favorites , I don’t know what that says about me?
I agree with Ciara about Hungry, it works brilliantly. Love the seamless use of stills with video, this really adds depth which arguably stills or video alone wouldn’t have achieved…
I think Chucking Out would be more powerful in colour. It is very real but lacks a connection with reality due to B&W imo…
NPR in Gaza highlighted some really pertinant issues but lacked depth I think. The voiceover was literally just describing the images on numerous occasions and I found this very unimaginative. Whilst the piece did inform, I felt there was material there which could have been edited differently to make it much stronger, likewise with the audio.
The Sandpit flowed well, had a surreal quality as if it was a make-believe children’s programme type-town (can’t think of the words to explain this any better at the moment!) I imagine this was due in part to long distance perspective and speeding up of time. I music in this piece really didn’t work for me though. Ultimately, although an enjoyable piece to watch I am left wondering what the point was?
Innocence-have to agree with Kirk-it engages with the strenghts of multimedia by choosing to show a subject matter in a new and engaging way. I thought it was an interesting use of making the photographer’s intentions tranparent by using his text extracts to explain motivations behind the work as well as explaining some of the scenarios. The music also added another layer on this occasion-perhaps because there was already another voice exposed in this peice. too often the audio becomes a background track adding nothing.
I found Hungry to incredibly evocative. I thought the quality of photography to be fantastic, and beautiful and communicative. It seemed to have been carefully constructed with the sound and video clips. It portrayed a careful balance between the three. The sandpit is hilarious and interesting, looking back at ourselves and everyday life through timelaps tilt shift. This was by far the most entertaining… but more than entertaining, it provided a positive look at ourselves and the music gave it an upbeat feel…
Chucking out was also brilliant, although i feel the other presentations were better produced, however, chucking out might have been grittier but did get the point across. My favorites are definitely sandbox and Hungary, they seem to have become more than the sum of there parts…
I liked Chucking Out because it made me feel a bit repulsed (not that I like to feel repulsed, but I like when a presentation makes me feel something different). I think the harsher lighting and B&W give the opposite effect of the beer goggles these people are wearing. The visual style mixed with drunken mumblings and howls make for a sobering view from the outside of the fun. The length is suitable. Great final image!
Hungry: Also made me feel. A good story told well. I love the beginning: “Hungry, hungry, hungry…” in the subject’s voice, with images changing each time. Really hooks me in and sets the stage early about the urgency this boy must feel himself. Little touches like the eating noises while the title appears in pieces are excellent use of audio and visual together. Great. The video breaks up the stills subtly – the clock works for me. I might change it so the second hand is paused like a still when we first see the picture, then suddenly it moves. I think it would have an interesting effect that way because most of the image is a still. Again great audio with the second hand ticking. Effective mix of informative caretaker voice alternating with subject’s voice (both tell the story in very different ways). Through the presentation I really sympathized with this family. The pictures and video of their interactions combined and well timed with revealing audio provide a touching portrayal of their relationship.
NPR in Gaza: I almost never like to hear a narration from the creator, but this worked for me. The spoken information added value and was obviously more journal-style. Sometimes a self-narrated approach leaves me wondering if the choice was made to focus more on the photographer than the images, but in this case it’s clearly reflective and felt very unobtrusive. Tomatoes, dog, man with stick, kid in car window. Nice. And no music – good choice for this one.
The Sandpit: While I like the small world macro feel of the time-lapse tilt-shift idea, I have to say that this one is pretty dry for me. The hook is that it definitely took me time to figure out what was going on. This brought me in (along with the colours) but then left me hanging. As with all gimmicky styles, I don’t think you should rely on the style too much. I’d shorten the piece (a lot of the daytime city stuff was repetitive) and have it as a portfolio piece to show potential commercial clients what is possible, but it was short of compelling after the first minute or so. I think the end was good with some sports and night time, but I didn’t even make it that far the first time I watched it. That said, he isn’t claiming more than, “A day in the life of New York City, in miniature.” Which he shows us in very very high quality. Music was good, but not a perfect fit. I wonder if sped up sounds from these places would have worked? Anyone have any experience with that kind of audio?
I think Innocence was a good idea, but doesn’t quite do it for me. I like the pictures, and the words. It’s the presentation as a whole that misses for me. But just barely. I’m not sure how I’d change it exactly. The text/font is not quite right for me (eg, in red text across the children’s faces). I can’t tell if I like all of the movement effects. Maybe a voice over could have worked? What I really liked: using different kinds of images, like screenshots; the mystery of not showing the full portraits until the end; the story, and the idea behind the photos; the honesty. I’ll have to think more about this one…
I’m leaving these comments somewhat belatedly as I didn’t have a chance to review this work before last week’s session.
The Sandpit: A clever, technically accomplished piece of filmmaking, nice lighting, and clearly pianstakingly crafted but it leaves me absolutely cold as a piece of storytelling. THat’s not to belittle the work. It took far mores skill to produce than I possess, and was a labour of love for the creator, but I have no wish to return to it and I think it belongs in a filmmmaking blog as opposed to multimedia. Now there are issues of pedantry and what constitutes multimedia, and I’m not going to address them, I feel it’s beautiful to look at but has no heart.
The Weegee inspired piece is quite effective, but I guess the subject matter puts me off. I have seen literally tons of programmes on Sky about boozy brits, the only reason we don’t have one about boozy Irish is because no-one’s bothered to make one. I get the thinking behind the unlinked audio and images and I certainly don’t believe that audio and pictures or text for that matter should be merely descriptive. The only real issue I have is the notion of Blasting people with flash to emulate Weegee, I don’t know what it actually tells us, but I don’t quite understand it as a rationale for image making, “laying the subject bare under the flash’s harsh unforgiving gaze”? I’m not trying to be hypercritical I just don’t understand it.
NPR Gaza left me completely cold, I found it unemotional and far too factual, a little like animating a newspaper story. It was just a little too literal for me.
Innocence I found very touching and effective, I really liked the text and didn’t mind the fact at all that it was more of an “art piece” than what we traditionally consider a multimedia piece, I guess our definition of multimedia changes by the week anyway. The soundtrack however was a little over the top, too loud, too unsubtle.
“Hunger” was my favourite piece, beautifully produced, seamless production values, I wasn’t at all surpried to hear in our first MM session that a huge amount of production time had been invested, and yet I wasn’t aware of the tricks of the trade or in anyway distracted by slickness of production. It had a huge emotional wallop for me, the piece was about Prader Willi syndrome and its effect on their lives but right at the centre was a wonderful touching study of father son relationship, I hardly noticed the transition to video, unlike the video muse piece I reviewed this week.
Hi Benjamin, two quick questions, how do you manage with the edirol in terms of tripod mounting, it has not got a thread no? Found your post on bad audio but had to run out the door before reviewing, vould you point me in the right direction? workhops great so far, ta, damian
Last question, what would be a scenario where you would use the edirol in place of your other machine, for capturing ambience etc?
I pretty much always use the Edirol … its a great machine and it records very high quality audio. In strong wind I would use an attacheble microphone.
Hi Damian, not sure about the post on bad audio. Could be anywhere on the blog. Sorry.
Damian
I can answer your first q. edirol are bastards in one way – you have to buy the other bits of kit (mic cover, recorder cover and special mini tripod) separately. I have the tripod but have never used it – I personally hold the recorder throughout every interview, and try to keep it close to their chest if i’m interviewing someone. there is a thread in the back of the edirol brand cover. in fact having just looked at the thread it might well fit an ordinary tripod
C
Thanks to Ciara and Benjamin, very useful, @Ciara I used to use my zoom handheld but there was terrible handling noise, presumably the edirol is better in that regard. I love the quality audio I get using a stand and mike but it adds to the load in terns of transporting gear (most of my interviews have been sit down, so far) my last interviewee said he found the boom arm and mike intimidating, but perhaps he was just a nervous interviewee, who knows?
@Benjamin, looking forward to the next session, cheers, Damian
Hi Damian,
I use the Edirol with a leather pouch and don’t have any handling issues … it is a problem in the Zoom though.
@ciara @benjamin thanks for the help, have decided on a sony pcm m10 based on reviews.
@ciara you are a duckrabbit trainee you lucky devil
@benjamin look forward to next session
Looks like a great choice … A Sony was used for out work in the Congo … good sound, just make sure you get that microphone close!
Hi Benjamin/David, had first post workshop attempt at MM piece yesterday, 3 hours of very concentrated shooting/recording. A few basic rookie mistakes, handholding AT8010 mike, arm got tired after few minutes and the proprietary foam windscreen was inadequate. Switched to cheaper mike with better windscreen on stand, worked fine but interviewee kept moving closer and further away. Think it came out ok though, should have allowed more time but he was keen to watch the 6 nations rugby. I found the transition from recording audio to shooting pics a bit strange (maybe a diff part of my brain engaged. I’m beginning to come around to the handheld recorder approach because while I was shooting some portraits and detail shots he was more relaxed and revealed some nice details. I could tell he was nervous for the first few minutes of the interview because there was a lot of hand wringing. The non-verbal encouragement worked fairly well though. A slightly pressured experience overall but one that I’m keen to try again, ciao, Damian