The Final Project

Our group’s final project was about a therapeutic riding center in Ponder, Texas, called Riding Unlimited. We spent a lot of time at the ranch; filming, shooting pictures, interviewing and getting to know and understand the people and the way the center functions. Filming was difficult, the lighting wasn’t great inside the barn and it was hard to shoot something that was constantly moving (i.e. a horse). Most of the time we were there it was early in the morning and bitterly cold and windy. But we worked hard, despite the conditions. 

We gathered a lot of information, and editing it down was a time-consuming process. I learned so much about flash, editing and storytelling working on this project. We had already learned about editing video and soundslides during the semester, but putting together a thorough multimedia package really helped bring together everything we learned. 

I am really happy about our final project. I’m proud of what we produced. Everyone in my group–Roberto, Carter, Whitney and Myself–contributed a lot to the project and did an amazing job. We got along very well and it was a great learning experience. 

Here it is, Riding Unlimited.

Choosing A President

The NY Times multimedia package “Choosing a President” is an amazingly thorough yet tightly edited analysis of the 2 year long presidential election. It is separated into four sections:  The Landscape, The Candidates, The Voters, and A President Chosen. It has voice-over narration, video clips, audio sound bites, natural sound, background music, still photographs and Flash animation. It was very well done. They combined all the multimedia aspects perfectly and made a 17-minute package that moves quickly and does not bore.

I think they somehow combined still photographs, audio slideshows, video clips and background music into the Flash program. What really blew my mind was the part toward the beginning where it has 11 small separate video clips playing at the same time, each video is one of the 11 candidates for president. The 3D map and the timeline at the beginning were very nice as well.

Search for political photos

This week we were sent out to take “political” pictures around Denton. I probably could have searched for something with more movement, all my photos are pretty static, but nonetheless still political. I mainly drove around looking for something interesting or out of the ordinary to photograph. I didn’t find too much going on, but I liked the Obama vs. McCain coffee cups at 7-11 and I thought the vandalized “Vote YES on athletic fee” sign was pretty interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Multimedia Critiques

The Halifax Explosion

The CBC’s website coverage about the 1917 Halifax harbor explosion does a great job of covering all the bases. It is extremely thorough in writing, photos, interactive features and graphics. They have links to all kinds of different stories with specific topics or angles or perspectives of the explosion. The web site is laid out pretty well, and even though there is a lot to look at, it doesn’t get too jumbled up or confusing on the page. They have a large selection of photos, which is very nice considering that in 1917 photographic technology was still very primitive. The interactive panoramic photo of the harbor is great because you can see from all sides what the harbor really looked like back then. I like how they broke up the story into the before, during and after and included all the details, including how much money all the explosives were worth that caused the massive explosion. I really enjoyed reading the first-hand account of the explosion by Thomas H. Raddall, who wrote about it in his memoir, “In My Time: A Memoir”. He is a very good writer and painted the day and following aftermath of the explosion extremely well. It was a very engrossing excerpt. A helpful tool is a link to a glossary on the left-hand side of the main site, where there are definitions for words and terms used in all features of the web site. I thought that was a really thorough addition.

 

 

Churchill Speech Interactive

The Winston Churchill Speeches website was very fascinating, with lots of little tidbits about Churchill’s life and legacy. I liked the Churchill Speech Interactive, it was neat to be able to listen and click on little interesting facts and information, although some of the interactive ones annoyingly interrupted the speech. Like the Halifax website, I thought it was very thorough in its coverage of the topic, this one being Churchill. For someone like me who knows very little about him I was able to learn a lot very quickly. There was very good use of interesting and topical photos in the timeline, and I really liked the pictures of Churchill’s speech notes. Overall the website was well written and creative with the way it was setup and forces the reader to interact.

 

The Fallen

In this NY times audio slideshow, “The Fallen”, photographer Paul Fusco describes photographing in 1968 while he rode with Robert Kennedy’s funeral train traveling between New York City and Washington D.C. The photographs are fascinating and moving. The color and clarity of the photos are amazing, and the range of different people that come to watch the train go by- from nuns to teenage boys in Ray-Ban sunglasses-are fascinating. The pictures are all from one perspective: a train window, yet they show so much of what the country was feeling in 1968. Fusco’s narrative adds to the emotion of the photographs, and the blurriness in many of the photos gives the story movement. This is definitely a story people want to see. I think even someone who was born many years after the turbulent year of 1968 like myself would be nonetheless drawn into such an emotional story. It is a part of the history of our country, and it is a very significant story from a very unique perspective.

My Goals for Photo J & The Web

For this class, I hope to learn how to shoot and edit video and audio, how to publish that to the web, and everything else that multimedia journalism entails. I want to learn these skills because I know how important it is to getting a job in today’s industry.