Final Project

Our final project was over the Emerald Eagle scholarship program. We chose to interivew two students and see how the project has affected their lives, as well as get an overview of the project.

The project itself consisted of a video, a soundslides componant, and a story. All three were put together in a flash shell. None of the componants were difficult, the hard part was putting it all together and making sure nothing was left out.

I was in charge of putting together the flash shell, and filming and editing the video. The flash was my favorite part, I wish we had more time to learn flash. The video was challenging because I thought we had enough video after the interview and shooting Elia at work, but we ended up needing more. Thankfully, Amber was able to get more video and we worked together to complete the piece.

High Expectations

New York Times 2008 Election Video

After watching the video the New York Times created entitled 2008 Election, the first thing I want to say is that I wish more clicking was involved.

The piece is very impressive visually, and I love the photographs they chose. However I want to be able to interact with the map at the beginning and the time line we see several times throughout the video. What other opinions do the people on the map have? What is the time line measuring? Can we see the photos used in the video on the time line according to when they were taken? Are these interactive pieces located somewhere else on the web site? I see the list of links at the bottom of the page, but only want the map and the time line.

Aside from the need to interact, the only other things I noticed were that two or three of the videos were louder than the rest of the piece, and the piece seemed slightly biased towards Obama. The bias is understandable because the NYT did endorse Obama, but it would be nice if they would at least pretend to be neutral.

Political Photography

Two political photos for you:

This sign sits next to a busy street in Carrollton, Texas. The sign has been knocked down and put back up several times this week, probably due to the amount of traffic on the street.

7-11 is running a promotion where they keep a tally of which candidate’s cup is most used to buy coffee, as an unofficial popular vote. Despite being in the middle of North Texas, Obama was winning at this gas station in Carrollton.

Greased Lightbox – Update available (v0.17) – Update available (v0.17) – Update available (v0.17)

→←+-↻

Loading image

Click anywhere to cancel

Image unavailable

Greased Lightbox

→←+-↻

Loading image

Click anywhere to cancel

Image unavailable

Greased Lightbox

→←+-↻

Loading image

Click anywhere to cancel

Image unavailable

Blog Assignment #2

Churchill Speech Interactive

My first thought upon visiting this site was how much I loved the colors. The use of color to distinguish timelines is clever, though I wonder if the colors are brigh enough to be distinguished by those who are colorblind.  Fortunately, the layout of the multiple timelines helps.

While I like the idea of listening to Churchill’s speech and watching the timeline scroll by, I found two problems with the concept. First, the sound on my computer is broken, and there is no way to scroll through the speech itself to read it. I had to find the speech on another website to read it, as trying to move the timeline itself required a frustratingly delicate touch. Secondly, I found myself stopping the speech to look up information on the events listed, only to find that I had completely forgotten what Churchill was saying when I came back to the site. While the site does have interesting background information about the events, I frequently went looking elsewhere for more information.

Halifax Explosion

The format of this website reminded me of a newspaper, not an interactive site. Too much text, not enough visuals. It took a little while to find anything interactive on the site. When I finally found the videos, they required a plug in my computer didn’t have. Why not use a more common format? Also, while I did like the photographs, the captions were lacking information.

The site is divided into too many sections to be useful for research, and is too complex to make me want to browse around for fun.

The Circus Come to Brooklyn

I originally read the print version of this story, but I was excited to find a video because of the strong visuals and movement involved. While there is no single person at the center of the story, this story works as a video for several reasons. A story with this many elements wouldn’t receive enough room in a traditional newspaper to do it justice. You could show a photograph of one of the stilt walkers, or a fire eater, or even the baloon guy, but the reader doesn’t understand the scope of the story until you see all the performers at the same party. In addition, part of what makes the story so compelling is the reaction of the party goers. Lastly, the subject is just off enough that it’s difficult to believe unless you see it in person or on video.

Weekend Transport

Our first soundslides assignment was over an aspect of student life. I chose the bus system, because it has always been my favorite part of the campus. This assignment was particularly challenging because the gentleman I interviewed gave very short answers.

Weekend Transport

Assignment #1

Our first assignment was to use a recorder to interview a friend who has an interesting hobby or personal history.  I chose to interview my twin sister on the topic of twindom. It was a good exercise to get familiar with the equipment and practice interviewing, but challenging because I was asking too many leading questions. Thankfully, my sister used to be a journalism major and is excellent at interviewing people, so she helped correct me. The interview is on the soft side, I set the sensitivity too low when recording.

Two Minutes on Twindom

Goals for this class.

My ultimate goal for this class is to learn to shoot, edit, and upload multimedia stories quickly and effectively. We attempted this in my time at the North Texas Daily, but didn’t have the tools or knowledge necessary to produce content effectively. I hope to be familiar enough with this process to be able to teach others by the end of the course.