30 free ideas for multimedia producers and digital storytellers
One of the first and best bits of advice I’ve ever been given has been this: write everything down.
Writing an idea down – making it physical on the page – engages your brain in imaging how that idea might happen. As the words form on the page, you think about logistics, treatments, audiences.
It also gives you the ability to vocalise and understand a problem. If a film you’re making isn’t working for some reason, try and write down why: if you can put your problem into words, you have power over it.
So for the last three years I’ve written ideas down as a matter of routine. I’ve got notebooks upon notebooks, as well as a 50 page Word document on my hard drive full of them. Many of the ideas are now redundant as I’ve moved onto other things, and following last week’s confessional, I thought I’d give some them away for free.
You never know, one person’s trash might be another person’s treasure.
A couple of disclaimers: I am fully aware most of these ideas are either lame or not original – that’s partly why I never pursued them. So I won’t be taking criticism in the comments about the quality or originality of the ideas, thank you. However, even if you don’t find any directly useful, they might fire off a spark into something else.
I’m publishing these under a Creative Commons Licence I’m calling the Call-Your-Mum-Licence (CYML 1.0). You don’t have to give any credit or anything, but if you do find a use for them, promise you’ll give your mum (or equivalent) a ring.
Right, let’s get on!
30 free ideas for digital producers
- Amazing real life stories that emerged solely from data on a spreadsheet
- Stories about items (typewriter/kodachrome) going extinct
- Stories of the glamour days of air travel (PanAm etc)
- Missed connections on Gumtree
- Profiles of people who make a living pretending to be someone else
- “My first…” directors/writers/painters talk about the pain of getting the first film/book/painting done
- “Journeys that almost killed me”
- “Scene of the crime” – take people back the place where something major happened in their life
- Is Britain tilting? (apparently it is)
- Elderly people share one piece of advice they’ve learned in their many years
- Investigate how easy it is to plant a tree in a public place (apparently not very)
- Run for MP in the next election and make a documentary about it.
- Visit every World Heritage Site in the country and document
- A website/magazine about people for whom ‘OK isn’t good enough’
- A collaborative piece where people across the country find out where their waste goes
- A website where people can fill in a box to say sorry for something they’ve done (anonymously)
- An app that lets people photograph potholes/graffiti and sends it, plus location, to their local authority. The LA can then text them directly when the problem has been fixed.
- Competitions to bring people from around the world together to solve a big problem – crowd sourcing problem solving
- A platform to show news packages from around the world..how have different countries covered the same event?
- Films about people who do a dying trade (blacksmith/wood turner etc)
- If we could build the internet from scratch, with everything we’ve learned, what would it look like?
- Repackage out-of-copyright books in a more visual and engaging way
- An app that makes it really clear what food is in season and local to you for when you go shopping
- Use splitscreen/tallscreen to show two sides to an argument
- A simple, non-technical description of how web sites are made
- A celebration of unconventional solutions to problems
- A visual rundown of all the different types of material and how long they take to decompose
- Take someone who’s in a bad place in their life on a creative journey (How to look good naked but with creativity not clothes)
- Get 15 brilliant people from completely different industries together to try and solve a problem in a weekend. Document it.
- A repository for unwanted ideas that other people can use and take inspiration from. In fact, let’s start it right now – share yours in the comments box!
UPDATE: Journalist Ben Whitelaw has added some of his spare ideas on his blog. Let me know if you do the same and I’ll link to them too.
Great free apps for multimedia journalists
The great thing about multimedia journalism is that it provides so much choice for treating stories. Do I write a straight article? Upload an mp3 interview? Produce a video package? An audio slideshow? An interactive map? Even a timeline?
I’ve been experimenting with most of the above for both work and in my own time, and discovered there are more and more free web based applications which let you do many of these without too much technical know-how.
Here then is a list of great free resources for multimedia journo’s hoping to get things done on the cheap. It’s by no means comprehensive…if you know of a better one, then stick it in the comments box!
Great apps for multimedia journalists
AUDIO
Soundcloud is what’s been inexplicably missing for a long time: an audio version of Youtube. Quick uploads allow you to embed a very attractive audio player into any webpage. Best of all, the player is customisable, and means, for example, my radio station Viking FM can embed it in branded colours. The people at Soundcloud are very helpful too.
Cost: free (or paid subscription)
Downsides: the free subscription only allows 5 uploads a month.
Lots of noise about this 4iP funded startup, which allows you to upload audio from your iPhone direct to the Audioboo server and thus any website you chose. Has the benefits for a multimedia journalist in that you can upload audio from location, as Guardian journalists did during the G20 protests.
Cost: free (registration required)
Downsides: no iPhone, no boo.
Still in beta, this is yet to be available to everyone, but looks like a more speech orientated alternative to Soundcloud.
Cost: free
Downsides: not yet in operation
Jamendo was a very happy find for me: a copyright free music site – where the music is actually quality! Record producers should be hunting Jamendo’s ripe jungle for new talent: it’s all unsigned artists (mostly electronic, and mostly French) who put up their music for free use under the Creative Commons Licence.
Cost: free (registration required)
Downside: it’ll take some time to find the perfect soundtrack to your piece.
VIDEO/PICTURES
This is the film makers Youtube. It allows HD uploading, has a smart player and quick streaming. A big benefit is an excellent web 2.0 set up and talented community. Your video might get more passing views on Youtube, but it’ll get less “fuk dis shit innit rofl lol” comments. In fact, almost all the comments I have had have been useful, constructive criticism of the technicalities of the piece.
Cost: basic registration is free. You have to pay for Vimeo Plus HD uploads.
Downsides: smaller audience, but as a video host to embed, it’s fine.
Already leading the charge from traditional media, Al-Jazeera has broken new ground by putting stock footage available for download under the creative commons licence. It’s so called ‘repository’ currently holds plentiful (and harrowing) footage of December’s conflict in Gaza. A useful practice tool, if anything, in the art of knowing what distressing images to include and what to leave out.
Cost: free, with CC restrictions, although it does allow it’s content to be used for commercial purposes (see comments, below)
Downsides: until Al-Jazeera expand the repository it just contains Gaza content.
Here’s a little gem: a flickr library, searchable by colour. You choose up to 10 colours from a palette and it automatically brings up all photos containing those colours. 
It’s fantastic for finding generic images to match the design of your website (you’ll see a few on this site). All images are released under creative commons.
Cost: free to use
Downsides: you can’t search for the subject of images; frustrating when you want a black and white image of that something.
SLIDESHOWS
Soundslide seems to be the market leader in creating professional audio slide shows at a low cost. It allows greater control and manipulation of images, captioning and music/narration control. On the other hand though, it doesn’t finish in an easy flash window for you to embed. Oh and it’s not free.
Cost: $69.95 (~£50.00)
Downsides: The finished slideshow is turned into several files which you then need to upload to your own webspace. A bit cumbersome.
TIMELINES
This is one I’ve been getting to know a little recently, in an overly ambitious attempt to create an interactive timeline of every Hull FC v Hull KR match since 1899. Sadly the sheer number matches put paid to that. And that’s a difficulty with X-timeline. You can input events individually if there aren’t many. Or you can use an excel spreadsheet, and upload it as a .csv file. Despite this it is still the most user friendly way to create and embed timelines I’ve found yet.
Cost: free
Downsides: the timeline design is un modifiable. No matter the design of your site, you’re stuck with an odd camouflage green colour.
MAPS
I’m yet to use this, but from the outset it appears to be a pretty easy to use platform, with a slick final product. You can create global maps on any subject and highlight stats by colour.
Cost: Free
Downside: limited to world maps.
SOURCING/DATA
There’s nothing to say about Twitter which hasn’t already been said in 140 characters or less. Except to say it’s a great free tool for both finding contacts and stories and publicising your own work, and building a community of followers.
Ditto.
Responding to the rise in homemade mashups and APIs, the Guardian recently opened a site publishing statistical data on various subjects. The rather nice idea being they put the leg work in and give you the stats for free. Great to plug into applications of all kinds. Such as…
A very clever way of collecting information from all sorts of sources and publishing it in allsorts of ways. The cleverest thing has to be the user interface, which has you dragging a coloured pipe from one thing to another like a digital playdo set. With a bit of practice, this could be a great way to present detailed information, or even several newsfeeds through one aggregated embed.
Links to all these sites, and others not featured here, have now appeared in the Multimedia Tools links section to the right hand side of this site. If you have any better suggestions, suggest them!
Adam Westbrook // ideas on digital storytelling and publishing 
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