Hyper - Local Video

I really wanted to find some multimedia that was local - I mean really local. Where did I find it at a 236,000 circulation daily paper in San Antonio Texas. This is where Angela Grant used to work and you can see her influence. This piece by Melissa Rentera is well done for such a short video. She has a compelling comentary by the artist explaining his art and why he feels so strongly about his heritage. The photography is good not great with some nice b-roll, close ups etc. Well worth looking at.

These types of stories done by photographers are the next thing for what will be left of the photo departments at the surviving newspapers around the country. In my opinion we will see more and more of this with stills off the video to go with the written story. 

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Left Behind - The Mercury News

I've long been a fan of some of the multimedia work being done at the Mercury News. They stretch the boundry of what most of us consider the usual faire. Today I found a great piece by Dai Sugano on poverty in India. Great work told in images not a reporter commentary. As you know by reading this blog I'm not a fan of the reporter telling the story. If you don't get it watching this video you never will. The images are so powerful, the music so appropriate, and the titling just right that you can't help but wonder how people exist under such conditions.

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Portland Press Herald

It' s fun to look up papers from your old college days and the Press Herald is one of those papers I read in college so I thought I would drop by their site and take a look. After looking around their multimedia site for a bit and seeing some nice audio slide shows and a good video on the plight of lobstering in Maine I came upon a comprehensive piece on high school football. So I am highlighting it here. The photography is great as I would expect from veterans like John Ewing and Derek Davis. The video on the Chain Gang was good by Greg Rec but with some over modulation audio clipping evident in places. The only issues I really had were audio issues, over modulation clipping or wind noise. There were strange things going on with some of the images in the last slide show as well, some were stretched for some reason. Great stuff take a look.

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Brief Overview of Freep's New Documentary

I had an awful time with my cable connection tonight so viewing this outstanding project has been a chore. I was having buffering problems while viewing the first two videos so I gave up after seeing those two. Hopefully I will be able to look at the other three tomorrow.

From what I can tell this project is a combination of video and stills throughout but it is so seamless and appropriate that I never felt distracted. Music is put in at the right place through the whole piece to give some mood and feeling. The mix of short video interviews with outstanding animated stills is really well done. In one place several still frames of a kid jumping up and down in a hall way and then a three way split screen animation of still was super.

I hope to have more to add to this post tomorrow. So far I am really impressed.

The Freep does it again

Do you remember your childhood? Were they pleasant memories? For the boys at Christ Child House in Detroit their memories of childhood are varied. This well done documentary by the Free Press tells their story in photos, video, and the written word - extensive and well done. Check back here for a more comprehensive overview.

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Santa at the LA Times

This is a great video of the surfing Santa that I found at the LA Times site. Nice photography, pretty good audio (except for to much water gurgling at times), some good b-roll and an excellent ending shot. But overall it told the story. Some of the b-roll was shot from the water as well - nice. I think you will enjoy it. 

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Down South - The Miami Herald

During this time of year photojournalists cover the same mundane subjects over and over again. So I thought I would look for one of these subjects and see how the coverage came out. Miami Herald photographer Jose A. Iglesias has done a great job of covering something I'm sure he has done more than a few times. Great sound, good b-roll, and more than one interview helps move this piece along. This short video is packed with info and you come away with just enough to understand what the Mission does around this time of year. 

Click on the player below to view the video