Hello, and introductions.
Let’s quickly go around the room—tell me what school you’re representing and what elements of multimedia you’re hoping to do more of at your publication. I’m also curious what equipment most of you will be working with—do you have cameras and recorders, or are you mostly using your phones?
Good photography/videography is more about the photographer/videographer than it is about the camera, so there’s no reason you should feel limited by shooting with a phone camera if that’s what you have to work with. And sometimes they even give you an advantage—people are more comfortable with having an iPhone right in their face than they are having a DSLR camera with a big lens right in their face.
How many of your publications have active social media accounts? This can be a great opportunity to show some behind the scenes of the stories you’re working on, or you can also do some stories and features that are explicitly for social. These can be a little easier to produce and more informal with faster turnaround.
What does “multimedia” journalism mean and how is it changing?
The old forms of traditional media still exist, but they have adapted to new methods of delivery and consumption.
Radio stories on the air –> downloadable/streamable podcasts and web versions of stories with photos
TV news –> online video (compositional framing changes, video length changes, formatting optimized for mobile)—and the bar for web video is getting higher and higher (cinema cameras, drones, higher production value, etc.)
Newspaper-style photography and landscape orientation –> Instagram and the rise of medium format (square) and portrait orientation (contains more information)
Traditional forms like writing, radio and broadcast have moved online and can complement each other when it comes to telling a complete, dynamic story.