Multimedia Immersion 2009 is well under way as we enter into day 3.  The students have learned a lot about storytelling methods and techniques for shooting video.

Today gets a little intense as we introduce most people to Final Cut Pro for the first time.

Of the roughly 50 students, most paid their own way in an effort to make themselves more competitive.  This seems to be a growing trend.  A friend of mine, Maya Alleruzzo, AP photographer in Baghdad, recently finished the Platypus video training course in Portland, Ore.  She had little experience with video before going in.  Digital Journalist did a story about her training in their latest issue, and you can see from the video, that she is definitely a threat with a video camera now.

DOWN AND OUT IN PORTLAND from Digital Journalist on Vimeo.

I’m off to Vegas today for a week of non-stop multimedia fun at the NPPA conference in Las Vegas.  I am one of 25 coaches for a Multimedia Immersion workshop. The other coaches are some of the top multimedia minds in the country.  Vegas hasn’t seen this much talent in one room since the Rat Pack last played the Sands.

Check out this cool documentary about the history of Vegas from the folks at the Las Vegas Sun.

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I’ll probably be posting often as the workshop develops, so check back often over the next week for nifty multimedia nuggets of knowledge, and inspirational work people involved in the workshop.

In the meantime, check out some of the really great work from other coaches at the conference.

Uprooted – San Jose Mercury News – Richard Koci Hernandez

Will Yurman – Round Rochester

Bill Kaufman – FREEP

Smiley Pool – time lapse for houston chronicle

Black Friday – Evelio Contreras

Tonight is game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals series between the Detroit Red Wings and the Pittsburgh Penguins and some of the video guys from the Detroit Free Press have put together a couple of fun videos during their visit to the ‘Burgh.

Speaking Pittsburghese – Free Press reporter Ben Schmitt learns the language of Pittsburgh

Squid hunting – Buying a squid in Pittsburgh is easier said than done.

And finally, Pittsburgh and Detroit share one thing in this heated rivalry – A real lousy economy

Doing a presentation on visual storytelling for our weekly staff meeting, and I thought I would post some links that correspond to some of the basic topics I am covering.

For starters, lets talk about the very core of storytelling, montage theory.  That’s right, welcome to film school 101.

Russian film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein (and a whole bunch of other Russians who didn’t get quite as much credit) believed that the juxtaposition of independent images will create a sum that is greater than those individual parts.  Confused yet?  Lets say we start with a shot of the sun, followed by a close up of beads of sweat streaming down a man’s forehead.  The viewer, taking these two images in succession, establishes for him or herself that a guy is sweating on a hot sunny day.  But lets think about this for a moment, the sun looks the same on a cool day or a hot day.  The associations between these images only exist in the imagination of the viewer because of the juxtaposition.  To not make an association, is to allow these images to exist unrelated in a chaotic void.  But we can’t help ourselves from trying to make order from chaos.  It’s in our nature.

This theory is often represented with the Kuleshov effect.  Kuleshov showed audiences images of a coffin, a plate of food, and a small child, all followed by the same neutral expression.  The audience then imposed their own emotional response on the protagonist, saying he was sad when viewing the coffin, hungry when looking at the food, and happy watching the child.  Hitchock demonstrates this theory here.

Knowing how this effect works should force you to put more thought into your shot choices.  Each shot should build on the shots that came before it, being consciously aware of the information you are giving to the viewer, and the emotional and narrative associations the viewer will impose.

Now that we have some theory under our belt, lets talk about telling stories.  A story is essentially conflict in search of resolution.  The subject of the story wants something, and the story concludes when that want is met (or tragically is not met).

In this video piece by the Detriot Free Press, it is established early on that former Steelers footballer Courtney Hawkins wants to reclaim the glory days of his football career.  The story then unfolds as he rebuilds the football program from his youth and provides those same opportunities to a new generation.

In this award-winning piece “Intended Consequences” by the folks at MediaStorm, the conflict is immediately apparent as a girl points out her dead relatives in a photo.  The conflict has been established, but it also raises a lot of questions.  Why are they dead? Who killed them?  How did the girl survive?  The storyteller then keeps you engaged by slowly unveiling these answers like tasty morsels to wanting baby birds.

As journalists we have a tendency to lay all our cards on the table.  We are trying to inform, and we want to get as much information on the table as quickly as possible.  Most important stuff first, followed by sequentially less important information.  Inverted Pyramid style.  All this information up front makes for pretty boring cinematic storytelling.  Why bother watching the entire story if the you get the gist of it in the first few seconds.

Check out this video from the academy-award winning director of “Born into Brothels.”  In the beginning, you know very little about what story is unfolding.  Only an intriguing title to guide you, but bit by bit the director reveals more information to help complete the picture, always leaving a reason to keep watching up until the final seconds.

And that is the big secret right there.  You need to find a way to engage your viewer.  You want people to be quietly cheering for your protagonist and feel invested in the outcome.  And don’t worry if your protagonist is a hardened criminal or a seedy politician.  If you tell your story well, and you are honest in your portrayal, your viewers wont be able to help but associate with the protagonist’s mission.

Here are a couple other good stories that utilize these principles.

LA Times – master calculus teacher

Getty Images – Coney Island

Hungry – Howard County Times

the Globe and Mail takes an interesting approach to the GM story here. A couple of text slides go by without enough time to read, but its an interesting backgrounder on a story, without a lot of time to turn it around.

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Don’t read anything about this story, just watch the video and let the mystery unfold.  It’s haunting and told with a sophisticated simplicity.  The video is from Ross Kaufman, the Academy Award winning director of “Born into Brothels.”

An incredible story about a father who loses his deaf son, but breathes life into his son’s music as a tribute.  The music helps bring the story together, and the reporter inserts himself to narrate only sparingly.  Just enough to convey some necessary information.

A nice use of graphics in this NYtimes video on the Mexican drug cartel. I particularly like the 3D movement of the video elements, treating them like another graphic assett.  If only there was an interactive option in addition to the linear experience.

Erik Olsen has posted another batch of videos worth watching.  I hope this becomes a weekly habit for him. I particulary liked the Boston Globe’s great piece on Ted Kennedy. It’s a fitting opening salvo for what will be a flood of multimedia coverage as the “lion of the Senate” winds down his storied career.

A bit jingoistic, but still a pretty cool idea with some skillful video work.  The crew of the US Abraham Lincoln recite the Gettysburg address on his 200th birthday.

A great study in natural sound by Ben Garvin and his coverage of the Fargo floods for the pioneer press.

Today I learned how to identify a claymore mine, stop an arterial bleed and manually clear my way out of a mine field.  (I don’t recommend ever getting stuck in a mine field.  It takes roughly 20 minutes to move 10 feet.)

I was hoping that while I wasn’t dodging pyro-technics and cow pies out on the training farm, I could be catching up on the news on my laptop in the hotel room.  No dice.  The Internet connection is roughly 56k and barely enough to support an animated GIF, so I’ve had to resort to reading the actual newspaper they put outside my hotel room door.  I’m at mid-90s news consumption levels here.

So there aren’t going to be a lot of posts this week, but check back next week.  I’ll have lots to post about as I prepare my presentations for the NPPA 2009 Multimedia Immersion workshop.

In the meantime, check out these great videos from NY Times video journalist Erik Olsen on the new LENS blog.  (If you aren’t following this blog, you are missing out)

MediaStorm has a new project, Driftless: Stories from Iowa, that is tied to a photography book by Danny Wilcox Frazier of the same name.  The entire project and its many chapters are in black and white, a choice I assume is meant to match the black and white photography of the book that is inter-cut throughout the pieces.  There are some places I wish there was a come to Oz moment where all the rich colors poured in. (but I guess that’s Kansas not Iowa.)

Another strong showing by MediaStorm.  Be forewarned, there is some nudity in the videos, so I would recommend against watching it in your office, unless you work in a place that doesn’t mind having a large phallus across your monitor.  Apparently Iowans really like to get naked when a photographer is around.

The opening line to this post on, Lens,  the NY Times’ new photo / video / multimedia blog is spot on in setting up this audio slideshow about Harlem.

Perhaps the most meaningful assignments for photojournalists are the ones they give themselves.

You can definitely tell the photographer had an intimate relationship with the neighborhood he covered for so many years.  excellent work.

Recently exchanged emails with radio reporter for Bauer media, Adam Westbrook, about his ambitious multimedia side-project oneweekinIraq.net.

He recounts a lot of his approach at Tracy Boyer’s Innovative Interactivity. Essentially, Adam was assigned to go to Iraq for a week to do radio reports on the final days of the deployment for British forces based in Baghdad in Basra.  While there, he shot video and gathered assets for a much larger multimedia endeavor on his own time.

The multimedia package is a rare glimpse into the lives of the British soldiers.  It struck me that while I tend to see a lot of multimedia on the lives of the U.S. troops in my job, I rarely see projects about coalition troops or other countries.

In Adam’s II post, I was struck by his candid acknowledgement of the struggles in putting together a full multimedia presentation on ones own.

“One Week In Iraq” is my first multimedia product and it’s been a real learning curve. From getting to grips with covering for several platforms, to learning how to build a collage; I even taught myself CSS. But at the end of this, I have to ask the difficult question: has attempting to cover the story in so many ways watered down the quality of the final product? If I’m honest I would say yes. In attempting to cover so much, I’ve ended up not covering that much; what’s really missing is a central character and a gripping plot, which sucks you in and spits you out: those ancient elements of storytelling which never change, even if the technology does.”

I can definitely sympathize with this.  Sometimes on deadline, I  go out on an assignment to gather  assets, and don’t always have a clear sense in my head of where the whole story or entire package will go.  Sometimes the story finds you, but it’s a crap shoot. Finding that narrative arc means taking some time to step back and take a thoughtful approach.  And often it means another set of eyes that can see your same story from a different angle.  For me, finding that powerful story arc while keeping so many balls in the air is always the hardest part, but it’s the part that gets me out of bed in the morning.