Soundslides Project

DEADLINE: April 7th, 10am.
ASSIGNMENT: You will divide up in groups of three people to complete one audio-visual slideshow, telling a story through pictures and sound. The subject should be some issue or event related to Hong Kong’s environment. (Examples of professional and student soundslides projects below.) For audio can use narration or interviews, or a combination – it’s up to your team to decide what works best for the subject.

The project will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

  • journalistic merit
  • coherence of storytelling
  • quality of photos (understanding limits on equipment)
  • quality of audio recording (with existing equipment)
  • quality of audio editing
  • how well the pictures and audio fit together
  • meaningful, appropriate, and accurate use of captions
  • attention to detail (avoidance of spelling mistakes and choppy editing)

EXAMPLES OF SOUNDSLIDES STORYTELLING:

Some good professional examples (courtesy of Mindy McAdams):

  • Guitar Lessons at the Central Area Senior Center: An 81-year-old Seattle woman loves taking guitar lessons. No narration, nice story, several interviews skillfully edited together.
  • Cockfighting in Puerto Rico: Awesome photos, wonderful audio that puts you at the scene.
  • Nutcracker: A fresh photojournalism grad tells us the story of a production of the Nutcracker ballet. She produced this while on an internship at The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun. Notice the variety in shots, scenes, lenses, etc. Notice too the excellent editing of the pictures to match the content of the audio. (Update, Jan. 29, 2008: Sorry, but the newspaper has apparently moved or removed this Soundslides. You can see the original photo story on the photographer’s bog here.)
  • After the Riots: A Soundslides about the housing projects in Paris, by the British newspaper The Guardian. Exceptional storytelling and great use of sound.

JMSC student examples:

Below is the basic schedule of key learning and work necessary to be able to complete your soundslides projects by the due date.

Weeks 3 and 4: You learned the basics of photography, photoshop, and photographic storytelling needed for this assignment.

Week 5 (Feb.18): Based on the ideas you have proposed in Assignment 4, we will divide into teams of three. Beginning soon thereafter, your team should start collaborating to research and plan the elements you will photograph and record for the audio-visual slideshow.

Week 6 (Feb 25): You learn the audio recording and editing skills needed for this project, with an assignment to reinforce what you learned.

Week 7: (March 10) You will learn some key web skills including how to use FTP to transfer media files onto the web, which is essential for getting your Soundslides project online.

Week 8 (March 17): Learn how to use the Soundslides software to combine your pictures and audio into a slideshow. (Your team should hopefully be far along in taking the photographs and recording the audio that you need.)

Week 10 (April 7): Soundslides projects due, embedded in your blogs (as instructed on Week 8).