YES MM WPP 2011!
Written by David WhiteWow…that was quick…Michiel has responded, (see below post) and it’s good news for those who use multimedia to tell stories – some of them, anyway..
“While photography continues to play a significant part in the global media, we recognize the increasing importance of multimedia projects. This is why, from 2011, we will judge those too. Unlike our annual photography competition, which is open to all professional photojournalists, the multimedia contest will invite specific people to participate. We are currently working on a fair and representative nomination process. Further details about the multimedia contest, which will follow the 2011 photo contest, will be announced in mid-January.”
That is great news, but the obvious question is…how will they decide who is worthy of acceptance? ….Maybe that decision has been taken so as to make sure the foundation is not inundated with 1000’s of pieces, each minutes long, through which they have to sift. On average the images at WPP are looked at for less than a second each by the judges….that obviously cannot be done with multimedia.
I’m sure the WPP foundation will offer up a transparent selection/nomination system. If not then the validity of the whole exercise would be called into question. I look forward to finding out more…
Discussion (11 Comments)
Sounds great but how will they decide on the exalted ones to be invited to compete?
It will be 2011 … just make people upload their work to a website and let the public rate the work for the first round.
Simple.
I thought of that, but that system is open to abuse via lobbying, spamming etc…
Yeah … just for transparency though and debate … so that people can see all the work.
public vote sounds fair if it works, they’d better prepare for a deluge, many photographers still think adding music to pics makes it multimedia, they haven’t all had duckrabbit training after all!!!
Just to get through the first round.
Well, that would be ideal, and it may well work…transparency has to be key…but Damian makes a good point…
Maybe just one vote per i.p address or something simple…although that is still open to abuse…
well done on getting them to accept and recognize multimedia (photo-films) though, the entry process can always be tweaked, getting multimedia recognized as an artform(not sure if thats the right word) is in itself an achievement, kudos!!!
I don’t think my pestering of Michiel had owt to do with it, but you’re right…increasing recognition of the medium is of great importance.
As multimedia is a new form of story telling for WPP, who are they to decide which ones are allowed to submit?
Multimedia means looking at the magnificent work being done by people such as onedotzero, Bombay Flying Club, France5, the National film board of Canada, all the Ad agencies who use photo’s on their promotional material, film documentary makers who use photo’s…
If they just show a bunch of slideshows with music or someone speaking in the background or a short film with someone saying “I am a photojournalist and I took this shot because…” then the rest of the creative industry will just laugh out very loud indeed thus doing nobody a favour.
It has to embrace great photofilms with lovely audio, interactive documentary making, animation, data visualisation, well… all the creative paths out there that have real photographic potential.
Is this a real celebration of how photography is being liberated by the interactive community or enclosed by self interest by those who are sitting already responsible for an ailing industry – that is going to be really interesting to watch!!!!
I really hope they set the right standards for those out there to aspire to so good luck to WPP!!!
Great news if this is true. If creative industry were to judge this, they would look at the combination of creative photo content by the photographer and the platform used to deploy the message to reach the public. Interesting to see if WPP will be interested to see stat measurements (A bit of a grey area because theoretically journalism shouldn’t function like digital marketing – or should they, both are about propagating message en masse).
What an exciting challenge. A multimedia photographer is not only a visual storyteller, but also has to wear an art director’s hat. This is healthy because it would encourage them to be less passive and more involved in thinking about platforms and ways to market the photos content.