For our next assignment, we will use multimedia reporting to get a sense of how first-time voters view the presidential election. Using photos and audio, we will collect a range of interviews with young voters representing a cross-section of society. That means we’ll want to consider things like gender, ethnicity, education, work experience, where they live when choosing who we interview. In class today, we will discuss what questions to ask.

For this assignment, I am asking each of you to collect interviews with TWO people who will be voting in a presidential election for the first time in November. Here are the things you must get from each subject:

REPORTING:

DETAILS: Full name, age, occupation (if they have one), name of college and major if a student, neighborhood or town where they live.

PHOTO: Using your smart phone again, take a nice portrait of each person you interview. You might consider take a few shots so you can pick the best one. Think about framing the subject (remember rule of thirds) and have him or her set in their world somehow. For example, you might photograph a student at his or her campus, or meet a person in his or her neighborhood and shoot the photo there (Think Humans of New York). What I don’t want to see are shots of people with nondescript walls behind them. That doesn’t mean you can’t do inside shots, just make sure there’s something in the background that adds context to who the people are.

AUDIO: We are going to use audio for the first time for this assignment. To keep it simple, you can use Voice Memos or other audio recording apps that you have on your phones. I’ll give you a few tips in class. You will ask the three or four questions that we come up with.

THIS SECTION IS DUE THURSDAY, SEPT. 22. BRING FILES TO CLASS.

EDITING:

In class on Sept. 22, you’ll get instructions on how to edit your photos and audio. By the end of class you will post your edited interviews (with photo, text intro and audio clip for each of your two interviews) to the class blog.

We will review all 48 interviews as a class and edit them down to a smaller number based on content, themes that emerge in their responses and to reflect different points of view.

In the end, we will produce a final multimedia package.