Every Poynter seminar I’ve attended — from ethics to visual journalism — delivers at least one common message: the single-skilled journalist is obsolete.
Syracuse University’s college paper, The Daily Orange, welcomes the trend by trying alternative story forms using multimedia. Its “Light the Night” video, a still photo slideshow paired with audio, is a simple way for high school and college publications to converge media and keep the audience’s interest.
“Doing this kind of thing falls under new media, finding ways for newspaper to adapt to the Internet. Blogging and video podcasting, audio and moving pictures just can’t be done in print,” said creator of “Light the Night” Joey Baker.
Baker, a three-year photographer and one-year photo editor at The Daily Orange, recently assumed the role of new media editor for his final undergraduate year at SU. He created the piece to document a cancer awareness walk in Syracuse, and it shows just how easy it can be for high school and college papers to create the same effective work.
“We chose the still photo slideshow because a still picture gives you something a video will never give you. When you have to stop and stare at a frame for a couple seconds and just look at it, you get a feel you will never get with pure video,” Baker said.
Baker said that more than a little experimenting went into the creation of “Light the Night.”
“The work is a little bit unique. It’s the first video we’ve done using HD video, on deadline, kind of a one-man show.
I shot this video and edited it all myself, but the concept is to be able to do this with four or five people,” said Baker.
Baker said the video took about five hours to complete, but would take even less time if they had a better system for producing work. “If you have someone who is just dedicated to taking photos, someone doing audio, someone editing, then you can have people focusing on what they do best and complete the work even faster.”
Baker said that students can produce an audio slideshow using a decent set-up for less than $100. He said they shot everything on a Nikon D-3, recording the audio on a Marantz PMD660. “We used high-end equipment and edited using Final Cut Pro only because we could, but high school students could easily create the whole thing on iMovie using cheaper audio/visual equipment, without sacrificing quality.”
Your most important piece of equipment? A quality microphone.
“Your photos can be mediocre, because people will notice bad audio long before they notice bad photographs. Having a good shotgun microphone was the most important piece of hardware because your subject has to come though clearly,” said Baker. Baker also suggests matching audio and photography when editing, because “your pictures should be showing your viewers what the audio is telling them.”
“Just go out and try it,” said Baker, “you’ll be amazed at what you can come up with.”
