Deconstructing an audio slideshow

Our own Apex Cougars girl's soccer team won the state title recently, and the crack Cary News multimedia team (me...with [more than] a little help from my friends) was there to record it for posterity. [Click here to see the audio slideshow]

Sports editor Tim Candon and I decided that this was a perfect opportunity to make an audio slideshow that would generate some buzz on the Cary News website. (Actually, Tim thought it was a good idea. I just nodded and went back to the scramble on the comics page.) So, once that was decided, I had to come up with a game plan.

"A game plan?" I can hear your gasp of disbelief from here.

Yes, a game plan. It's an 80-minute game (high school rules), there are lots of players, coaches and parents, and I didn't want to find myself buried in pointless images or a mountain of meaningless sound clips when I got back to the office. So I started brainstorming exactly what I would need to make a comprehensive presentation.

(I hear the Rocky Mountain News takes six months, a staff of 12 and a golden-egg laying goose to put something like this together. [Not that I'm bitter. Or jealous. Heavens, no.] Me, I have...well, me, and a sports editor sent from heaven who's more than willing to dive in and help.)

I broke the problem into two areas: sound and images.

Sound would drive the slideshow, as it usually does for me. (Good, relevant audio is an absolute necessity for any multimedia production. People will forgive bad pictures, and jumpy video, but bad audio will send them clicking right off of the page.) Having covered more state championships than I like to think about, I knew that the PA announcer would give me the intro and explanatory clipss that I needed: "Welcome to the NCHSAA 4A state soccer finals, featuring the Apex Cougars and blah, blah, blah." I needed early sound of cheering fans. I needed to be in the team huddle before the start of the game. I would need the PA again for any Apex goals, and I would need the final score and announcement of Apex as the state champions. I'd like to have the ten-second countdown to end the game. I'd want crowd reaction from any Apex goals. I'd want team react as time expired. And I'd want post-game quotes from the MVP and seniors.

Images were easy to come up with. Fans. Team huddles. Sidelines. Game action. Goal reactions. More sidelines. More fans. Postgame reaction.

The only problem was that I had to do both, which meant I was (at least) two hands short.

Enter sports editor, stage left.

While I gathered most of the pregame audio, Tim took over the recorder for the pregame huddle, and stood guard on the sidelines for fan reaction and all of the other post-game necessities, freeing me up to shoot the pictures we would use in the paper, an online gallery and the slideshow itself.

Was it a perfect setup? No, and that's mostly my fault. I gave Tim the recorder tutorial as we were standing on the field. It honestly didn't occur to me to have him help me out until that very moment. (No, I'm not the brightest bulb.) He gathered a lot of repetitive stuff, and stuff that wasn't necessarily relevant to the slideshow, that took some extra time to edit through. And he was juggling a notebook and recorder during several of the postgame interviews, which was a challenge for him and made for some interesting extraneous sounds for me to edit around.

But by gosh and by golly, we DID IT. And we did it as a team.

It probably won't win any awards, but it tells the story, tells it creatively and well, and (judging by the feedback) the community likes it.

We helped ourselves out by shamelessly promoting the slideshow in print, and in several places on the website-but let's face it, what's the point of putting in that much effort if you're not going to give people every opportunity to find the darn thing?

What did I learn from this? As an avowed "lone wolf" who is very much used to doing this sort of thing on my own, it was a pleasant eye-opener to see how much more and how much better of a job I can do with help. And I learned that I might want to do the training a little bit earlier in the process. But mostly, I reinforced the idea that prior planning really does make a huge difference on the back end.

Could I have done it by myself? Yes...but it wouldn't have been as good, because I would have been forced to pick one or the other medium at any given moment, and I would have missed things.

So, what have we learned today?

• Plan ahead. Know what you need to have for both audio and images. (Especially key if you're working alone)

• Work tight. The less extra stuff you have to edit through, the faster you can get the finished product online. (Especially key if you're working on a "due 5 minutes ago" deadline)

• If you can spread the workload out, do it. But don't wait until the last minute to make that decision.

• In the long run, we do this for the community. Not for ourselves -- although that's certainly a part -- and not for our peers, FOR THE COMMUNITY. That's our job, in whatever medium we choose to work in. The final product may not be (and probably won't be) perfect, but as long as it tells the story, and tells it well and with respect, it will be more than good enough.

(Mostly) Free (but priceless) multimedia software

As promised several weeks ago...and just a few weeks late.

Blog Hosting:
Blogger
WordPress
TypePad

Audio Editing Software:
Audacity (Free, Mac and PC)
Garage Band (Mac only, part of Apple's iLife suite)
Switch (Free, Mac and PC, used for converting .wav files to .mp3)

Image Editing Software:
iPhoto (Mac only, part of Apple's iLife suite)
Adobe PhotoShop Elements ($99 new, Mac and PC)
GIMPshop (Open source, Mac and PC)
Picasa (Free, online, Windows only)

Audio Slideshow Software:
SoundSlides ($39, Mac and PC)

Video Editing Software:
iMovie (Mac only, part of Apple's iLife suite)
Windows Movie Maker (Free, bundled with Windows XP, Windows only)

Video Conversion Software
Riva VX (Haven't tried this one yet, but it looks good!)

A better job than I could ever do

Want the short form on how to get started producing your multimedia magnum opus?

Florida professor Mindy McAdams of has posted an one-page "No Fear Guide to Multimedia" tutorial on audio, video and Soundslides from a talk she gave at the National Writers Workshop in Witchita, Kansas, on May 19-20.

Have at, and enjoy!

Reality Check (or, Multimedia for the rest of us)

God bless Brian Storm (Mediastorm), Dirck Halstead (DigitalJournalist) and the other multimedia journalists who are showing the way into the future. They have unlimited skills, unlimited imagination and a seemingly unlimited budget. However...

Well, let put it this way. On Friday I spoke to a group of mainly community journalists from across North Carolina. I was the final presentation of the day. Earlier, in the first session, Mike Noe of the Rocky Mountain News spoke to us about his paper's multimedia commitment, and played excerpts from two absolutely mind-blowing series, Final Salute (a Pulitzer Prize winner in print), and The Crossing. Striking, stirring and everything you could ask for in an online feature. Mike talked about staffs of 10-15 people, months of planning and reporting, and budgets in the thousands of dollars. Truly, the stuff dreams are made of.

My multimedia staff at The Cary News? Me. My equipment budget? Don't ask. And I have to get up in front of a room full of people and follow that? Oy.

But you know what? YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEND A BAZILLION DOLLARS TO CREATE COMPELLING MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISM.

No, really. I know that you could make some rockin' projects with the kit listed above, but it's really not necessary.

(I should stop right here to thank David Hobby of Strobist.com fame for inspiring me to talk about this. David [who has no idea who I am] is a photographer at the Baltimore Sun who has created a cult cadre of photographers dedicated to proving that you can light like a pro without having to go bankrupt. I'd like to try to do the same thing for multimedia. Thanks, David!

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled blog.)

I could spend $400-$600 on a recorder, $1500-plus on a video camera, and who knows how much on the extra stuff that always sneaks up on you and kills your budget. But the reality is that this is going on the web. It's going to be crushed, crunched and compressed, and unless you're producing hi-def documentaries for PBS, the big kit is just overkill.

(Would I like to have the big kit? What do you think?)

Here's what I "make do" with:

Olympus WS-300M digital recorder, street price of about $80. Available online or at any electronics store such as Circuit City or Best Buy. Available in silver or pink for those who like to match their gear with their wardrobe.








Nady SP-4C microphone. $10. Really, $10, and according to Mindy McAdams, multimedia guru of the Teaching Online Journalism blog, a great quality mike for the price.




Canon PowerShot S3 IS, a hybrid still/video camera with stereo microphone pickups. I shot a concert with this camera and was amazed at the sound quality. Around $320.







The Flip: this must be the cheapest DV camera EVER. USB, comes in 30 minute ($139) or 60-minute ($169) flavors. I haven't even seen one, much less used it, but it seems to get the job done. As an added bonus, the video downloads directly to your computer, instead of importing, which can be a big time difference on deadline.







So go out, spend a (very) little cash, and see what you can do. Check back in a day or two and I'll share some information about free or inexpensive editing software. Or, if you're in an all-fired rush to start editing, check out the multimedia resource blog I created.

UNC/NCPA Newspaper Academy

Thanks to Louise Spieler, the UNC School of Journalism and the North Carolina Press Association for allowing me to come and speak during today's annual Newspaper Academy, a day-long training session for N.C. journalists.

My session was "Multimedia on a shoestring," geared to helping folks find the least expensive way to get the necessary hardware, software and training to start producing multimedia projects for their papers. You can download a QuickTime version of my presentation here (15MB). I've also created a blog listing of equipment and training resources.

I plan to blog on all of these topics individually in the coming weeks.