Get your copy of 6×6: advice for multimedia journalists
My e-book 6×6: advice for multimedia journalists is now available for download.
I put it together after the popularity of the blog series of the same name back in August. It sums up the advice in that series and updates it. It’s also packed with bonus tips which you won’t find in the series itself, plus a page of resources and links to help you on your way.
The six chapters cover the technical skills, like video, audio & storytelling, plus the non-technical skills, like branding & business.
Best of all, this 32 page e-book is 100% free – you won’t need to register or anything – just click on the big download button below to get it!
And please hit me with feedback, good or bad. What did it miss out? What would you put in?
6×6: audio
The fifth in a series of 6 blogs, each with 6 tips for the next generation of freelance multimedia journalists.
audio
Audio is one of the most powerful mediums available to the multimedia journalist. Whether its radio, podcasts, on video or audio slideshows, audio brings a piece to life. So why is it almost always an afterthought? Too many good films and audio slideshows have been let down by bad quality audio. Here’s 6 tips to make sure that doesn’t happen to you!
01. let sound breathe
…as soon as a voice comes out of the speakers, the listener attempts to visualise what he hears to create in the mind’s eye the owner of the voice…unlike where the pictures are limited to the size of the screen, radio pictures are any size you care to make them.
Robert McLeish, Radio Production
In other words, with audio your limit is the size of the imagination. Last time I checked, that was pretty big.
So for the love of God, show audio some respect. First off a piece of audio does not have to consist entirely of voices with no gaps in between. In fact that sucks. When you’re out recording, take a moment to listen for sounds – in radio it’s called actuality and it is a key ingredient in bringing sound to life. Doing a story about some people on a boat? We want to hear the water lapping up against the bow. Is your scene in a cafe? Let’s hear the cups clinking, the chatter of everyday conversation, the whoosh! of the coffee machine in action.
This more often than not recorded as wildtrack. After filming, taking photos, interviewing, whatever, record at least 60 seconds of actuality. It’ll make editing a lot easier too.
Let the audio breathe. Give it a few seconds just to play in your listeners imagination and don’t talk over it. It’ll do more to paint a picture than overladen voice over will.
Marantz PMD620
Marantz PMD620
02. invest in a good microphone
Audio is so often an afterthought for video and photo journalists alike. This is mostly manifested in using a crap microphone. VJs – don’t use your camera’s onboard mic unless you’re lucky to have something nice like a Canon XL2, Sony EX3, Z1 etc. If you can, buy an external microphone to attach to your cameras horseshoe. For interviews, it is worth investing in a lapel mic.
Rodemic do some pretty decent offers, including a camera mic for under £100 ($180). For radio journalists, or photo journalists doing audio slideshows, there are a good range of digital audio recorders you can look at. The Marantz PMD620 is small, easy to use and so reliable you’d let it babysit your kids. I took it out to Iraq earlier this year and it was great. It starts at around £300/$500.
The Edirol R-09HR (£211/$349) has had produced some great sounding audio for freelancer Ciara Leeming and journalists are raving about the Olympus DS-40(£82/$135)
03. get the mic in close
Microphones do not have selective hearing like our ears do: they won’t pick out the voice across the room you’re pointing them at. So get in close to your interviewee – really close – like a little under their chin (if they’re ok with that). It eliminates a lot of background noise, like air conditioning, traffic, squeaks of chairs and all that. And more often than not it gives the recording a richness and an intimacy.
Compare, for example, the effect of these two recordings: the first with a mic held too far away in a large room, the other with it right in close.
Another great tip I picked up: if you can, record your interviews outside – it eliminates that shallow echo you get in peoples’ offices and living rooms.
04. let the characters talk
A bit of a personal bugbear this, but often the temptation with multimedia projects is to talk all over them, y’know, like they do on the TV and that. But new media means new ways of doing things. And I think one of the great new trends emerging is the silencing of the journalist/reporter voice over.
If you’ve recorded some great audio for your story, let it breathe – let the characters tell their own story. We don’t need to hear you saying “Angie is a mum of three struggling to make ends meet” when we can hear Angie saying “things are really hard right now, tryin’ to support three kids, y’know, payin’ the bills…every days a struggle.”
This takes some planning in the interview stages – most of all, you need to ask open questions, so your interviewees answers start as full sentences. It has been industry practice for many years to ask interviewees to include your question in their answer:
Why are you finding it so hard to make ends meet?
I’m finding it so hard to make ends meet because….etc.
05. use pauses
If you’re new to using audio, especially if you’re moving from print or photo journalism, the first thing you will notice when you listen back to your interviews is yourself. Going “uhuh, yeah, hmmmm, sure…” all over their answers.
Ask a question – then keep shtum. This pays dividends in some interviews – especially emotional ones – where your interviewee finishes their point. There’s a pause…you would normally fill it by asking a question…but don’t. Stay silent – and let the interviewee fill the pause. It’s a bit mean, but it gets them to reiterate their point, and in the process show what they’re really thinking.
And then keep those pauses in your piece. They are a natural part of speech and often reveal more about your character than their words.
06. take them on a journey
There are times when it’s right to bring yourself into the piece. But try not to use it just for dry voice overs recorded in a studio. Your voice is best when you’re somewhere your audience wants to be, and you can show them what it’s like.
To achieve this, you’ll need to be very descriptive in your writing. Tell people where you are and what you’re doing in vivid detail.
For the best examples, we have to go way back, to the first broadcast journalists:
I began to see what was happening to Berlin. The small incendiaries were going down like a fistful of white rice thrown on a piece of black velvet. The cookies-the four thousand pound high explosives-were bursting below like great sunflowers gone mad.
And then, as we started down again still held in the light, I remembered that the Dog still had one of those cookies and a whole basket of incendiaries in his belly. And the light still held it, and I was very frightened. I looked down, and the white fires had turned red. They were beginning to merge and spread, just like butter does on a hot plate.
Ed Murrow, on a boming raid over Berlin, 1944
Richard Dimbleby
There were perhaps a 150 of them, all so thin that their skin glistened like stretched rubber on their bones. Some of the poor starved creatures whose bodies were there looked so utterly unreal and inhuman that I could have imagined that they’d never lived at all. They were like polished skeletons, the skeletons that medical students like to play practical jokes with.
At one end of the pile a cluster of men and women were gathered round a small fire. They were using rags and old shoes taken from the bodies to keep it alight.
Richard Dimbleby at Bergen Belsen, 1945
The BBC’s Alan Little is one of the finest radio writers, still alive – here’s his advice:
Try to use old words, words that reach into the very core, the very oldest part of the language. They have the most impact….beware of adjectives. This is a rule I keep breaking and I have to exercise great vigilance to rein myself in. Adjectives are fine in moderation and when they genuinely add to the meaning or clarity of the image being conveyed.
The final word…
From award-winning multimedia producers Duckrabbit, the combo of a great photographer and a great audio producer:
Many great photographers make really bad audio slideshows because they treat audio as afterthought, or they try to do a voiceover without having any presentation skills. They might as well not bother.
Actually I’d go further then that. When you put your photos together with poor audio you actually diminish the value of your photos. Good audio is like a bad dog. It gets its teeth into you and won’t let go.
Next time: making things happen!
6×6: starting next week
The walls of the debate are shifting. People don’t want to be reminded how bad the newspaper/journalism sector is right now; they don’t want to read more introductions to articles reeling off the various nails in the coffin.
In the last couple of months we’ve started to see more articles looking forward. And that’s a positive thing.
A piece I wrote last month on what the journalist of the future might look like sparked a lot of debate – and got me working on something which I’m launching on Monday:
Six articles, each with six tips for the journalist of the future. They’re going to be focused on the down to earth practical stuff, and cover six broad areas the next generation freelance journalist will need to be familiar with:
- Video
- Branding
- Storytelling
- Audio
- Business skills
- Making things happen
Some of them are new skills, which are just emerging; others are some of the oldest. And that last one isn’t a journalism skill, but I think it’s vital for freelancers if they’re not to end up sitting at home staring at their computer screen.
It starts on Monday with Branding – and as always, it’s never a complete list so feel free to add your advice in the comments!
Choose your multimedia, wisely
"He chose, poorly"
Video, audio, pictures, timelines, slideshows, maps….multimedia’s great isn’t it? As a journalist it gives you an amazing choice of how to treat a story.
But how many journalists use that choice? And how many chose wisely?
In order to know which medium to use for which story, you must know its strengths and weaknesses; not of the software or the content – but of the very medium itself. Because some mediums are only good for some things.
Video
With so much talk about video journalism, it’s not surprising so many journalists take a camera out and shoot whatever they can. I rarely see a big multimedia project without any video in it. And that’s a shame, because video, really, is only good at a couple of things. And bad for some others.
Video/Film/TV whatever you want to call it, is great for showing action. For evoking an emotional response. For creating atmosphere….so use it for this.
But video is bad, really bad, for getting across facts, figures, and complicated arguments. That’s why overloaded documentaries and TV reports are so dull.
Writing about online video’s older, more glamorous sister, television news, BBC journalist Vin Ray says:
“The problem for television news is that it is at once both an immensely powerful medium, and yet an inadequate way of explaining complicated issues in a comprehensive way.
“Academics, sociologists and newspaper columnists the world over have criticised the shortcomings of television news for years, but they have rarely – if ever – come up with a realistic, practical alternative.”
So whatever your story, save the complicated bit for another type of medium. Use video to show us something happening, or make us angry or sad. Video is the ultimate medium though in many ways because – done correctly – it is totally engrossing. We surrender ourselves to it and you can make an impact with video. It’s great to use as an opening gambit to suck your audience in.
Audio
In a world where pictures dominate, the power of radio is often underestimated. This is a mistake though because audio’s power to penetrate the mind is very strong. And don’t forget, while in the US, UK and Europe we may prefer to watch films on our laptops, in the developing world, millions upon millions of people live with a radio by their side.
Still unsure of audio’s power? Robert McLeish sums it up perfectly in Radio Production:
“It is a blind medium but one which can stimulate the imagination so as soon as a voice comes out of the loudspeaker, the listener attempts to visualise what they hear and to create in he mind’s eye the owner of the voice.
“Unlike (video) where the pictures are limited by the size of the screen, radio’s pictures are any size you care to make them”
With the size of most web video players that should hit home even harder. So think: if you haven’t got or can’t get the amazing pictures which show your audience what you want, some good audio interviews and vivid writing can let the audience do the work inside their own head.
And audio’s other strength is the fact it is uni-sensory: you can listen to audio, while doing something else.
Audio weaknesses though are the same as videos: as a temporal medium it is exceptionally bad at explaining complicated issues comprehensively. So again, save it for the emotional/action/umbrella elements of your piece. And it is very reliant on good quality sound – and good voices. This piece by the New York Times is excellent…but weakened by the monotonous drone of the voice over.
If you’re going to use sound, please make sure it’s high quality!
Images
The renaissance in photography thanks to the internet reminds us of how powerful the still image can be. Of course it’s cheaper and quicker to produce photos for your multimedia project than video or audio; but don’t mistake that with easier. If you’re going to take photographs which have an impact you’re going to need a good SLR, and you’re going to need to know your f-stop from your shutter speed (and, indeed, how they are related!)
So when should you use photographs and slideshows in your work? It’s weaknesses are the same as video – but then you would never use a photograph to convey information. The photo is about that one moment in time, and because of that it is about smacking your audience across the face with some emotional trout. Use it to make them feel something about your story.
And some great advice from multimedia experts Duckrabbit:
“The point about a still photo is that your eye explores it. When you put too much motion into a slideshow you’re removing the viewers ability to pause and reflect, to explore.
“Slow pans on a big screen look great … but at the small size the images are reduced to on our computer screens the panning looks as rough as a dogs dinner that even the dog refuses to eat.”
Give your audience time to explore your photographs.
Text (and quotes, maps, graphics)
Poor text. The original medium, it’s kind of been given a back seat by those of us too excited by the glitz and glamour of the video camera and the audio recorder.
But text covers the other media’s ass – because it’s the one which can get across all these details, background, statistics; all the things the audio visual mediums are rather poor at.
There’s no escaping it: if you’re going to be a multimedia journalist, you need to be damn good writer; being a great editor, or good voice don’t cut it. So use text to convey the nuts and bolts of your story, but make sure you don’t bore them while you’re doing it.
Maps, tables and graphs are great assistants to this: they can brighten up a page of text and add an element of interactivity. And text too becomes interactive, the moment you put in a hyperlink.
So remember: as a multimedia journalist you have a choice. So use it!
G20: multimedia experiments
Protests are always a magnet for the media. Scuffles make great pictures for TV, chants make great sound for radio; the mass of people suggesting some great social movement.
Why should multimedia be any different?
It was no surprise all the big news organisations were employing blogs, twitter, online audio and video for today’s G20 protests. They’ve used them on news stories several times over the past few months.
What I think makes today different is this is the first time newsrooms have had significant warning of a news event, to flex their multimedia muscle and see what it’s capable of.
They had time to think ideas, get creative and explore. So, how’d they do? Here are some UK media examples:
BBC News: interactive map
Immediately popular was BBC News’ interactive map which appeared mid morning.
The movable image covered central London, and as reports from the ground were filed, they appeared on the map.
The stories were multimedia; everything from text, audio, video and images.
Guardian: audio boo uploads
The Guardian were out in force at the protests, with journalists employing all sorts of technology to help them in their quest.
One of the favourites was the new audio sharing site Audioboo, unique from places like Soundcloud and Mixcloud in that it only really works if you have an iPhone.
So excited were Guardian journalists by this new technology it seemed they were happy to upload all and every interview they conducted, including the one pictured, with Rory O’Driscoll.
“Sorry, were you expecting some a little more, err, involved?” he told the reporter, clearly not at all bothered about what was going on.
Guardian: twitter reporters
Someone (on Twitter in fact) commented, on seeing this image, that there must have been more journalists on the streets than protestors.
What these provide though, were unfiltered, immediate dispatches from the scene.
Stuck in an office, those of us in Web 1.0 world were forced to watch Dermot Murgnahan and the rest of the Sky News reporters stumble their way through the protest.
“Oh look, a policeman’s fallen over” was just one remark, along with a car-crash interview with Russell Brand, the comedian who’d clearly taken the wrong turning on his way out to get some milk.
These Guardian dispatches though – raw, mispelt, abbreviated into 140 characters, gave you the very latest – and of course they’ve not been through an editor.
Who said any story couldn’t be told in 140 characters or less?
The BBC had a similar live update system with similar benefits.
This one though included chosen comments from viewers/listeners as well as BBC correspondents (and in some cases media students) on the ground. It looked good, and continued until 2100…but I’d wager cost a lot more than any other news organisation would manage.
So lots going on, and it felt – for once – there was more to be seen online than on TV. Has this set a precedent? I hope so. Throughout today, no-one was tweeting/blogging about the G20 coverage they heard on the radio or seen on TV. They were sharing links to sites like the above ones.
The key benefits: immediacy, raw information, and interactivity.
But for that, do I feel the coverage of the protests was any better than the old media? Hmmm, that’s not so clear cut.
Shooting multimedia: a lot to juggle
They say multimedia journalism is the way forward; hell, it is the way forward. But sitting on a moving helicopter, flying over the rooftops of Baghdad, camera in hand trying to get a shot out the side, while also checking your audio recorder is working, with your seatbelt barely fastened….well it’s not easy.
That was the challenge I faced during my week with the First Batallion the Yorkshire Regiment in Iraq. On assignment for my employer – a radio station – I was also armed with a DV Camera and digital camera, hoping, desperately to come back with high quality video, audio and pictures.
Juggling kit
Now the obvious question, looking at the picture (right) is why didn’t I just use the audio from my video pictures? A good question, but I felt seeing as my primary reason for going out to Iraq was for radio, I needed to make good rich quality audio my priority. I just didn’t trust the quality from my DV Cam. I think though, in future projects, perhaps not just for radio, I will use onboard audio.
Juggling content
But juggling equipment isn’t the only problem for a multimedia shooter, I learned. The big challenge is juggling content.
It might be easy to say ‘just take a camera out and use the on board mic for sound and freezeframes for images’ but that ignores the fact that all three mediums – audio, video, pictures – have their own methods and priorities. Your video demands clean white balanced shots and considered visual sequences of something happening. Your audio demands to have clear sounds of that something happening. And your pictures want to be well framed and capture a split second, not a moving image.
Voice overs or pieces to camera have to be written differently for video than audio as they demand different styles. The former is written as a slave to pictures, while the latter must cope without any pictures at all.
So, in short, it’s a bit of a mindfuck.
But then if it’s not worth having, it’s not easy to get, right?
So how should the journalist approach multimedia stories?
01. with a good knowledge of each medium
02. with a plan of what the final products will be
03. with a variety of treatments: do some stories in just video, do others in just audio, rather than repeating the same content in different mediums
04. with a good bag which can carry all your equipment, and a notebook for logging everything and planning the final product
05. with a small digital camera- take a photo of everyone you interview in audio, for audio slide shows
06. smaller and lighter is better
07. when you arrive somewhere new, think over your video first of all, as getting the right shots is more complicated than getting the right audio or stills
08. and don’t just think in terms of audio, video or still images..what about interactive timelines, potted histories and discussion boards? If your final platform is online then all these are options you can bear in mind.
All I will say is it was a lot more challenging than I had anticipated-if anyone has any other practical tips then please, add them below!
Adam Westbrook // ideas on digital storytelling and publishing 
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