Find out more at www.eugenemasoniccemetery.org, or stop by and explore at the corner of 25th and University in Eugene.

Despite booming from a large town into a small city, Bend, Oregon keeps up it’s old time Fourth of July tradition: turning downtown into an all out pet extravaganza!

Celebrating Independence Day and Birthdays with the Gibson Family in Florence, Oregon. Small-town America at its finest.

Volunteers are at the heart of nonprofit organizations. Sara Asher, a volunteer for Ophelia’s Place, gave her time, energy and heart to a project to help girls feel good about themselves. The Feel Good Closet is the result of her continuing efforts. Asher holds Feel Good Closet events for girls at Ophelia’s Place, a local nonprofit organization that creates a safe community for girls ages 10-18.

The Feel Good Closet allows girls to choose fashionable clothes, regardless of size, and at no financial cost. For each event, the closet is stuffed with clothes donated by individuals and companies throughout the community.

Asher saw where she had more than she needed, and where some girls didn’t have enough. The closet plays into the social issues involving financial standings and personal appearance. The Feel Good Closet events allow girls to forget any financial struggles their families may be experiencing and gives them the opportunity to silence what the media says is beautiful or attractive. With Asher’s hard work and support from Ophelia’s Place, girls are encouraged to feel good about who they are, how they look, and what they have to offer the world.

The BlackBerry is one of the most popular smartphones, with 14 million users worldwide.
This film explores two of those users’ feelings about the device and what they’d do if forced to be without it.

The names RIM and BlackBerry are registered Trademarks of Research in Motion Limited.
This film is in No Way Affiliated with Research in Motion Limited.

Eugene Hardcourt Bike Polo from Ian M. Summers on Vimeo.

Framing is the most important aspect to imagery. What makes it into a frame (or what doesn’t) will make or break an image. The focus, colors, depth of field, iso, and any other components simply don’t matter if you haven’t framed an image correctly. Once the frame is there, all elements mentioned above will help contribute to making an image stronger.

Angles play a big roll too. An interesting angle or a variety of angles will help to diversify a project and keep it interesting. Even a single image or shot, with a unique angle, will make that shot worth looking it. It will also making it more impactful.

Sound is can help images, especially in a multimedia piece. Take for example this close up slide show my Martin Schoeller. http://www.mediastorm.org/0002.htm

The music that goes along with helps keep the viewer interested and gives them a rhythm to move through the piece with. If there had been narration or a different kind of music, it may have distracted from the piece.

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Tweet off:

What the hell is going on with twitter? This is getting out of hand – this is like an overwhelming stream of Facebook updates, which is already obscene.

Twitter attempts to serve the role of instant updates for information, but it ends up further over saturating the public with unconfirmed information. Twitter, like blogging, gives everybody a voice – but that voice isn’t necessarily  a good thing. News it fact checked, or so it should be, and twitter is not. But twitter begs for news agencies to jump on board with a story based on twitter.

It’s too much – it requires too much time and it’s scary how much influence Twitter has gained. But it won’t last – it can’t. It’s retention rate is less than 40% and that will continue to drop. It influences us to sit on our phones or computers more so than we already do – and that’s honestly a scary thing. Reporting the news should require seeking information, investigating stories, delving into things – not having info virtually texted to you.

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/brandnewday/archives/2009/04/twitter_is_a_fa_1.html

This multimedia piece not only tells an interesting story, but it’s editing techniques, while subtle, are equally interesting.

The introduction does a great job combining still imagery with video. It’s actually heavily weighted towards still imagery at the beginning. The pictures include drinking and nudity while profane voice over’s frame the photos. This does a great job to set the tone for the film, which delves into drug and drinking problems.

Towards the middle of the end, the still imagery represents itself – this time with more nudity. But then it shifts into a military side – also using all still imagery. Now the imagery focuses on family and veterans.

The piece ends on a man back flipping into the water – it’s an interesting conclusion.

http://www.mediastorm.org/0025.htm

In the end, all good news reporting, and storytelling, really, comes down to
perspective.

Everything we’ve watched so far in this class has gone a step beyond the simple act of written, textual information and brought us (the viewers) into the story’s world – into a place where we, as active consumers, can interpret a story’s message based on visual cues. More often than not, these visual cues do a world of good at showing how a story plays out, rather than relying on words alone. And since “a picture is worth a thousand words,” imagine how many words must be packed into a multimedia clip…

Here are some of my favorite clips off of YouTube that I’ve found that show a distinct point of view, or intent. All were created to persuade audiences of a certain truth about the subjects in question – and each of these clips shows truth, but presented in such a way that some might disagree with the final conclusion. One is more serious and clearly persuasive, and the other is just a fun twist on an old favorite. BOTH videos make VERY GOOD POINTS about the subjects they focus on, and show views and perspectives that are absolutely true, but that (from our limited worldviews) we may never have considered.

(And yeah, the second one…Mary Poppins IS a pret-ty scary movie at times. Admit it.)

Either way, it’s all about the editing! Think about how the combination of images and sound in each equates to an overall meaning – you might be surprised.

Prop 8 & Civil Rights

Scary Mary

MediaStorm – Intended Consequences

I also watched the media package Intended Consequences, and really enjoyed all the little nuances of the production process, even if the topics themselves were horrifying. I thought it was most interesting how the music specifically punctuated the video throughout at specific times: the tolling of bells as faces went by, the punctuation of the eye movement at the sound, and the background sounds that made the voices all the more cavernous and hollow when the faces disappeared.

I also thought it was interesting that there were so few natural sounds.

Sometimes media packages like this (even if they’re talking about events from the past) come all the more alive when there are the sounds from the actual event setting the backdrop. Even though it was eerily silent throughout, the silence and the quiet music in the background gave the viewer all the more prerogative to imagine the sounds that must have occurred during the event. Perhaps the creator’s choice of relative silence throughout the peace was supposed to emphasize the calm after the storm – which is definitely what it did for me.

The most moving part out of the entire thing was the part where there was just text describing the woman’s request for a glass of water, and receiving blood instead. While it would have been powerful in spoken words, the shift to absolute silence (and contrast, as opposed to relative silence) made the words that were printed all the more terrifying.

It was just..nicely done. It’s tough to say anymore than that. But the mark of a good multimedia package is that the viewer gets lost in the storytelling and forgets to pay attention to the editing…and so even though I was supposed to be paying attention to the editing, I definitely forgot anyway.

What can you do.

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6/22

Multimedia storytelling is as simple – and as difficult – as the words that create the term: ‘multi’ and ‘media.’ Most of us know the ‘media’ half of this, hearing the evils of mass media and all the chaos and lies that it seems to perpetuate, all while being blamed and labeled ‘horribly biased’ by everyone and their mother, when of course in reality it is almost completely impossible to not have some sort of bias in every form of media….but I digress.

It’s the ‘multi’ bit of multimedia that throws most people off.

You see, blending together the photo, audio, and video (and sometimes Flash) that multimedia often requires is no easy task. It requires not only writing and scripting finesse, but an understanding of how to tell a good visual story. In a sense, it’s the most literal opportunity most journalists have to really ‘show’ instead of just ‘tell.’

Multimedia packages can tell stories without necessarily following a set sequence, jumping around in time and space while sticking to a central theme. Sometimes words come into play, and sometimes they don’t. It all depends on the message trying to be conveyed.

I really like this piece – fun visuals, one particular message, and something you don’t see every day.

The Best Peace Sign

Of course, journalism-related educational institutions have a different take on the traditional elementary-school notion of showing and telling. Their conclusion? Show something instead of just telling it.

Josh Tyrangiel, Time.com’s chief editor, points out that while telling a story is good, showing the story can be even better, because the interpretation of how something happened is left to the viewer…because they can see it!

Audiences know that wars occur, that great elections and overthrows take place, that national disasters strike…. It is straightforward enough to get the facts. But add a photo of someone salvaging the remains of their home, or a new leader in front of a triumphant crowd, and the emotion is left in, while keeping the facts in the story at the same time.

While a story can be told, gleaning the experiences that interview subjects have, once again, weave the feeling back into the facts. Especially in cases of stories that are over-hyped or very rich in emotion, pausing to describe some of the feelings in the story can slow down the momentum and give new light to an old report.

Tyrangiel’s example relates to a story about a massage spa in Israel that uses snakes as their means of relaxation. Although many people would be interested reading about how it came about and how much it is, a good video of the subject itself is a surefire way to draw people in.

My favorite, and probably my favorite movie, is Best in Show. Christopher Guest makes great movies.

Here is one of my favorite clips.

-One for designersx and it is just and ad to get you to visit their site and hire them.

and http://www.designers-x.com/

Marketing SRL:

Marketing Studio:

and it goes on and on and on!

The story that I found on MediaStorm is called The Party. I have to say that it’s a very strange and actually kind of disturbing 10-minute story. Not something I would have ever expected to find on MediaStorm. Despite this story’s strange/disturbing qualities, it’s still interesting to see how multimedia is used here. There’s the video, there’s a brief written piece by the writer/director, and there’s room for comments (of which there are plenty, both praising the video and criticizing MediaStorm for its presence there). It was kind of nice to see multimedia used in a creative, fictitious way even though I have to say I didn’t care for the story as much.