You are a World Press Multimedia judge. Congratulations.

Ok…here’s the challenge….watch the four pieces below, three of which took the top places in this years WPP multimedia awards:

Afrikaner Blood, above.

Half Lives, above.

America’s Dead Sea, above.

The monster under the water, above.

Now, you tell me which you think should have taken the top spot, using the poll below. No cheating – you have to watch all the pieces, consider all facets of production, journalism, storytelling, narrative, aesthetic, interest, novelty, length, audio and visual technical quality, context of the competition, etc etc….and obviously you must watch them all…Basically, you are now a World Press Multimedia judge. Well done, give yourself a pat on the back. Or you can lick your elbow.

You are probably aware that Afrikaner Blood won, but don’t let that swing your opinion. When I ran this past all my 2nd year Press and Editorial students not one group voted for it. This is not meant to be a criticism of the WPP judges, nor the piece. It is meant as an exercise in thought and critique. I do not envy the judges having to trawl through 300 or so multimedia pieces. No ‘one second an image’ judging there….

I put ‘The Monster under the Water’ in to mix it up a bit and make you and the students think, and a lot of them thought it should have taken top spot in the WPP MM awards. I don’t know whether Melanie put it into the awards.

None are perfect, that day may never come, not least because perfect to you is unlikely to be perfect to me. Every piece however has great strengths, and a fair few flaws. It is now up to you (or your class) to decide which piece ‘should’ have won:

[polldaddy poll=6191293]