Week 4 – Making the most of Multimedia
Text. Check. Graphics. Check. Photos, audio, video, user interaction. Check, check, check and…check. Gone are the days when journalists would get the scoop, write their story and file it away. Now stories must be packaged into a multimedia box complete with all the aforementioned features. Granted, journalists will be working more collaboratively with their colleagues to get the job done, but they will still need to know the basics in using these online media types.
It’s not only how to use these tools but when to use them that proves vital in effectively telling a story and attracting traffic to a site. This can seem a bit daunting for those of us who are not comfortable using all these technologies and would prefer the simplicity of a run-of-the-mill word processor. But by embracing multimedia we are able to engage audiences like never before and create a more fulfilling online experience – and let’s face it, who would say no to that?
I guess instead of thinking what words best convey the story, we need to be thinking ‘do words best convey this story and if not, what medium does?’
If using video, it is important to grasp the concept of sequencing, as Colin Mulvany stresses in his blog, Mastering Multimedia. Just like every word should serve a purpose in any news story, every frame in a video should be there to help move the story along. Sequencing is basically a form of editing that ‘compresses time’ within a video story. Real-time is not required in video, audiences have been conditioned to fill-in the space from one frame to another without having to see everything that has occurred in between. For example, we know that a shot of a sun rising signifies a new day without having to watch the character sleep for eight hours.
Being a ‘word person’ as Mulvany aptly puts it, it’s quite difficult for me to fully comprehend sequencing, when to shoot a tight/medium/long shot and even where to point the camera. Lucky I’m doing this subject…
