Season's Greetings

Merry Christmas everyone! 

The Washington Post

Many years ago I did some free-lance work for The Post and was impressed with everyone there. Back in the mid 1980's the photographic story telling was truly outstanding. Things have not changed. Michael Williamson and others are still cranking out really nice work. I decided to wander on over to the Post's web site to see what they have been doing in the multimedia arena. I came across a project called "The Healing Fields". Really well done. It's presented in a Flash module with video's by Alexandra Garcia and Whitney Shefte, photo gallery by Williamson, and story by Mary Otto all done for the Washington Post Magazine which comes out weekly.

This piece tackles the problem of health care for the residents of Appalachia and how this one health care mission handles over 2,000 people in two days - a remarkble feat. The audio was perfect, the video was good not great but with plenty of good b-roll to keep you interested and of course Williamson's photos were well done. Otto has done a wonderful job giving the reader a mental picture of the people and feel of what is happening in Wise County Virginia every year.

Click Here to View "The Healing Fields"

The Dallas Morning News

This paper has always provided really good story telling with their images. With their video that same high quality is evident. This story of a four year old girl with Leukemia who wants to be a princess is wonderful, the images and audio do a great job of telling the story. I do have one issue though. The little girl has a HUGE lav mic attached to her. The windscreen on it looks like a giant bug. It's really distracting along with the wireless unit hanging off her back. The other downside is the other journalists crowded around when she receives her princess dress, I would have thought they could edit out the other photogs. Don't get me wrong, good story, well done except for the issues I have mentioned. Have a look - Click on the photo to see the video

The Freep

Today I went over to Freep.com to check out some of their latest videos and came away with a good impression of what they are doing. I am still dismayed at the way some of these larger papers want to look like TV. They had a nice little piece on a place called the Fridge which is a frozen toboggan run - but the reporter kept getting in the way of the story. If she let the people tell the story more, my feeling is that it would have been better. In my opinion let the photography staff do their job, tell stories with pictures and audio. 

They did have a nice little weather story that started out great but ended kind of weak. Good b-roll interesting audio (some nasty over modulation of the radio audio), and some split screen for some of the b-roll (I'm not a big fan of this). Some nice focus racking also thrown in. The shots were nice, steady, and well composed and overall it came off great and told the story of snow in Detroit. Click the link below for the Freep video page for Snow Scenes. 

Click Here to View the Video

The Changing Camera World

Recently, Canon introduced a new version of it's EOS 5D model the 5D MKll. A number of pros have tried it out not only for it's great image quality but for it's video capability. The first was done by Vincent LaForet and can be seen here. Since that first attempt a number of folks have taken a stab at it and have come away with different opinions. David Stephenson (of the Lexington, KY Herald - Leader) has put together a nice piece on a young boxer which shows the sound quality using a Sennheiser MK400 mini boom and a Sennheiser wireless lav mic setup. As expected from the previous attempts with this camera the video quality is stunning and the frame grabs awesome. David does a great job of explaining what he did and how the camera helped, hindered, etc. what he was trying to do. You can see his post on this here. Really stunning quality video.

 While I was visiting his site, mophojo.com I came across an audio slide show that he did on the Santa Train which runs through three states. Exceptional work and worthy of highlighting here. 

The Santa Train - David Stephenson.

The Day - New London CT

 I have always been a fan of the New London Day in CT. Yesterday I was tipped off to the new JW video viewer and flash setup over on their web site so I cruised by to take a look and was really impressed with what Peter Huoppi has done. It looks very much like the Brightcove viewer that we are used to on the large newspaper sites but I believe that Huoppi has customized the flash interface himself. Well done. My only thought was that I would like to see more of a galley between the thumbnails and the playing video, probably not an easy coding task.

While there I saw some great stuff. Tim Cook's storm video was appropriate for today's post so I highlight here. Great b-roll, nice sound with even a little music thrown in. The interviews were good although I'm not sure who the guy waiting for the bus is, great quote though "I'm lovin it". A nice short newspaper piece by Cook - show us people out and about in the storm. That's what community journalism is all about.  

Click on the picture below to see the video.

Interactive Multimedia - Roanoke Times

I finally was able to pull up and look at some of Gitner and staff's work at the Roanoke Times. I really like what they have done with this project. The interactive map of the Appalachian Trail as it winds through the Roanoke area has hotspots in it that when rolled over show the multimedia offered. A really cool way of presenting the piece. My only criticism is that the only embeded video is overly compressed and appears blocky. Now this could be old technology since this project was done in 2006. Things have really changed in the last two years. But since my bandwidth this morning was really slow I could not look at much else. I'll come back to this site again and look at the really cool stuff they have done lately. 

Click here to see the Interactive Appalachian Trail Project by the Roanoke Times.