Technical Exercise No. 4: Video Storytelling

This week, I learned about the power of having and honing creativity on the fly.

The video I ended up with wasn’t my first, second, or even third choice when I was brainstorming ideas for this project. However, after having “the worst upper respiratory infection I’ve seen all winter” according to my doctor, I was too sick to leave my apartment to film anything. I needed to rework all of my ideas into something that could be done without leaving my home. After spending about a week watching nothing but HGTV and Food Network, an idea for a “cooking show” was born.

Thankfully, my boyfriend was more than willing to star in my project when I pitched him the idea. We had no clue how to make pizza, but I knew it was a food that would look good on camera. I’m happy to report that the pizza was in fact delicious.

Considering this was a rather “on the fly” idea, I’m happy with the final result. Some of the cuts are rough, and I learned a lot about directing someone. (If I could do this again, I’d have him pause between transitions to make editing easier. However, one pizza = one take.) The biggest thing I learned was there are a million different ways to be creative. Life may get in the way of an idea, but it can’t get in the way of creativity.

WRP No. 6: Video of Emma Gonzalez’s speech at the March For Our Lives

Published by The Guardian, this video shows Emma Gonzalez’s full speech at the March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C. on March 24. While the video was published by The Guardian, it was shot live during the march and broadcast both on live TV and on the large screens set up along the National Mall.

Emma is a Parkland shooting survivor and founding member of the Never Again movement. She stood on stage for six minutes and 20 seconds, which is roughly the same amount of time it took the shooter to murder 17 people at her high school. It was a powerful, moving message, and it was delivered mostly in silence. After speaking for about two minutes and reading the names of those killed at her school, Emma stood on the stage in silence. People cheered her name as she cried on stage, and some in the crowed cried along with her.

The silence is uncomfortable. Suddenly, just four minutes of silence feels like 44 minutes. However, that’s the point Emma wanted to make. If just watching someone cry on stage for six minutes and 20 seconds feels like an eternity, imagine how long six minutes and 20 seconds feels when a gunman is in a building with you.

It’s a powerful message, but translating that power from an in-person moment, where everyone is feeding off the energy of being at the march, to video, where people are watching from their couches, beds, or offices, can be much more difficult. I think the way in which this video is edited allows those emotions to flow through the video and leave a memorable mark on the viewer.

The video begins showing a rather nervous looking Emma walk on stage and force a small little smile. The video then displays a wide shot of the crowd. Hundreds of thousands of people attended the march on D.C. That wide shot does two things: it lets the viewer know just how many people are listening to Emma’s and it helps to explain why she may look a little nervous.

As Emma begins her speech, the camera is kept mostly on her. Emma’s voice is shaking, and she wipes tears off her race as she reads her speech. It occasionally shows people in the crowd who are as emotional as Emma is. Some of these people smile because they’re on the big screens on the march, which does kill the emotional mood a bit for those of us watching afterward at home. However, this is a drawback of live editing/filming.

Around the 2:10 mark, Emma begins her silence. The camera remains on her for about 30 seconds when someone yells out, “Go Emma!,” and then it switches to a wide shot behind her. We see her facing a crowd that is giving her their full attention. The video then cuts between various wide shots of the crowd mixed with close up shots of people’s faces. Meanwhile, you can hear Emma heavily breathing into the microphone, trying to stop herself from crying.

It cuts back to Emma as she grimaces, reminding the viewer of the emotional heartache of this moment. This is an 18-year-old high school girl, who just lost friends in a mass shooting, standing on stage crying in front of hundreds of thousands of people. Seeing her face as she stares out into the crowd — seeing the emotion, the bravery, the fear, the pain — is what gives this video it’s emotional punch. If the camera kept flashing to different people in the crowd and chose to not show Emma because she wasn’t speaking, it wouldn’t have the same emotional weight that it does.

WRP Exercise No. 5: Audio Case Study

NPR’s All Things Considered program ran a news report detailing the story of a Parkland family who lost their daughter, Carmen, in the mass shooting at her high school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Reporters Melissa Block and Marisa Penaloza lead the segment, but the real heroes of this news report are parents Philip and April Schentrup.

Audio’s true power is it’s ability to transmit emotion through airwaves. Reading about someone crying doesn’t have the same emotional impact as hearing someone’s voice crack as they fight back tears while telling their story. I believe stories like this one — parents speaking out about their daughters death for the first time publicly — should be told on an audio format in order to properly convey the emotional weight of the situation.

After the shooting, so many incredible, inspiring students spoke out about the need for gun control legislation. The Schentrups, however, remained silent and grieved for their daughter and sister. This news report, released a month after the shooting, was the first time this family spoke to the media about their loss. They did so because they felt they could no longer be silent about the urgent need for gun control.

Penaloza’s introduction sets up the news report in a way that provides context for the report — its about a family from Parkland that lost a loved one in the shooting — without giving us all of the details. We want to keep listening to learn more. It’s simple, it briefly talks about the shooting, who Carmen was, and how her parents reached out to tell their story. Block’s transition of “It’s been one month, or an eon, sometimes it’s hard to tell which…” perfectly brings the listened in to the life of a family that experienced an unimaginable loss.

That “unimaginable” concept is something the news report keeps cycling back to. At 1:58, Phillip tells the listeners that we’ve become “immune to tragedy” in order to guard ourselves from the pain and suffering of others.

Block then paints a grim picture of what the Schetrups went through. They heard there was a shooting at their daughters’ school. They heard from one daughter, but not their oldest. They searched hospitals for 12 hours, only for an FBI agent to tell them their daughter was killed in her classroom.

Immediately after Block tells their story, we hear April’s voice. She’s crying, her voice is cracking, and you can feel her pain. Personally, I began to tear up when I heard her crying the first time I listened to this report. The way the reporter and editor structured the story, you put yourself in their shoes and felt their pain. This wasn’t just done to get our attention or keep us listening, it was done because it’s why the family did the interview in the first place. They need people to not just hear their story, but to understand what happened to them and why.

At 3:20, Phillip tells people they should try to comprehend what they’ve gone through. His voice is trembling (you can tell he’s crying) as he tells listeners they need to imagine what a loss like this feels like. The more people understand how tragic this is, maybe then more people will fight to stop it from happening again.

The ending of this piece summed it up perfectly, while packing one last emotional punch to the gut. April talks about how speaking out against gun violence has been hard because they still miss their daughter. However, “missing her doesn’t feel like enough anymore.”

We’re living in an incredibly strange timeline, a timeline where people ignore facts that don’t fit their own narrative. This has enabled people to learn 17 people were gunned down a school, shrug their shoulders or send a prayer, and then just move on with their day. Too many people have died from gun violence in America. From mass shootings in schools and concert venues to violence in poorer, urban areas, something needs to change.

I don’t know where my future will take me, but I want to spend my career helping people better understand the world around them. The world around isn’t always ideal, but the only way to make it better is to first understand it. News reports like this one are a great first step to helping people understand what its like to be at the center of a national tragedy. If more people know how hard it is to lose a family member to gun violence, the harder it will be for the masses to ignore this horrific reality.

Audio Storytelling: a father and daughter reflect on a trip to Mets spring training

After years of wanting to go down to Florida for Mets spring training games, my father surprised my family and I with a trip to Port St. Lucie in 2014. My family doesn’t get to travel together that often, and this was the first vacation we went on since my brother and I were in middle school. Every aspect of this vacation, from the ballgames to the weather, was ideal. Finally, after years of watching the games on TV from cold New Jersey, we were watching the games live, basking in the Florida sun.

That vacation was special for so many reasons. Not only was it the perfect vacation, but we knew it would probably be the last vacation we’d be able to go on for many more years.

Earlier this year, as my family and I were talking about the vacation, I realized there is something special about how Mets baseball ultimately brought our family together and gave us an unforgettable experience. After talking to my friends who have also made the trip down to Florida to watch Mets games, I realized they also share their own unique Mets spring training experience with their family. Traveling to a warm climate to watch your favorite athletes up close is what draws you in, but spending time together as a family is what makes the trip so special.

I wanted to capture that experience and family bond in my audio project. My project is a part of a recorded conversation between me and my dad about our trip. While I do hope people enjoy the audio, I’m happy that my family will have this short clip to add to our collection of nostalgic memories and feelings.

Writing, Research, and Presentations Exercise No. 4: Visual Identity

The Daily Show Presents: The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library

The Daily Show’s The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library is an interactive transmedia project that displayed Trump’s tweets in a formal, museum setting.

The project was created by the show’s host, Trevor Noah, and team of comedy writers, and it was funded by Comedy Central. The temporary pop-up exhibit first ran for a weekend in New York City, and another pop-up exhibit was launched later in Chicago. The exhibits were free, and Comedy Central created a virtual tour of the exhibit on their website for anyone who couldn’t attend in person. They also created a welcome video, which features Trevor Noah giving a brief explanation of the exhibit.

The exhibit was set up in a similar fashion to any other exhibit you’d find in a traditional museum, like the the American History Museum. Trump’s tweets were printed on large canvases and hung on the walls in specific locations — tweets from before he was president, Hillary tweets, “holiday cheer,” etc. Video boards displayed .gifs he tweeted — like the infamous .gif of him “beating CNN” — and facts about how much he’s tweeted from year-to-year. Artwork was hung between the sections. The artwork was often ironic, adding Trump tweeting into famous moments in history.

(USA Today.)

The exhibit also had interactive elements. A giant magnetic wall allowed visitors to build their own Trump tweet. People could also sit on a golden toilet and pretend to Tweet from the bathroom. The overall visual design was clean, organized, and sleek. Tweets were arranged in specific patterns on the walls and white space was used to draw people’s attention toward the actual tweets.

The Daily Show promoted the exhibit on air in the weeks leading up to the pop-up’s launch, and they also used their social media to do additional promotion. Their target demographic was their audience — a young, mostly millennial, liberal-leaning audience. However, as word about the exhibit took off and news outlets began to cover it, people who dislike Trump or dislike politics in general began to take notice if the exhibit as well. At one point, they extended the hours of the New York City pop-up exhibit to accommodate the demand.

A screenshot of the virtual tour, which includes a dig at Trump’s tiny hands (a running gag from The Daily Show.)

While the visual design didn’t help grab an initial audience for the exhibit, this project wouldn’t have worked without the specific visual design elements. Aside from further promoting the brand of The Daily Show, the goal of the exhibit was to point out how absurd these tweets are coming from the president of the United States. The exhibit was able to successfully highlight the absurdity by taking these untraditional tweets away from their online platform and put them into a setting that is typically reserved for traditionally, historically important information and artifacts. In this settings, it’s easy to see Trump’s tweets as representations of the American president, which is equally upsetting and horrifying.

Huffington Post Highline: Millennials Are Screwed

MILLENNIALS ARE SCREWED

Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression.
by Michael Hobbes

This transmedia project combines longform, investigative journalism with video graphics to create an engaging and informative article.

This article was published by Huffington Post Highline, a “magazine that only runs cover stories.” Highline was launched in 2015 to run in-depth articles that aim to change how people see the world. They have two executive editors — Greg Veis and Rachel Morris — a deputy editor and creative director. The editorial team partners with freelance journalists who have a background in feature and hard news reporting — reporters from New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, GQ, Politico, among others — as well as videographers and designers.

The Columbia Journalism Review perfectly summed up what makes the Highline stand out against Huffington Post’s other content:

It’s the latest coup for Huffington Post Highline, the digital giant’s self-contained magazine initiative chasing a narrowly focused goal: a single, nuanced, big-picture feature each week… Its site is sleek and uncluttered, the antithesis of that of its mothership. Through this format, to say nothing of rigorous reporting, Highline breaks through the noise. And it’s already been a dynamic addition to The Huffington Post’s seemingly endless stream of content…

While new media’s talk of such in-depth storytelling often reaches the point of cliche, Highline has so far delivered on that promise, providing something decidedly different than The Huffington Post’s traditional fare.

The idea of running 4,000- to 10,000-word articles about complex policy or social issues isn’t a new concept. However, the way in which Highline presents these articles is innovative and effective. In an increasingly fragmented media landscape, people are overloaded with content. How can journalists get readers with too much to do and short attention spans to actually read their stories? Adding video graphics and engaging images into longform articles is Highline’s answer to this problem. Few articles demonstrate the efficacy of this better than Millennials are screwed by Michael Hobbes.

Michael Hobbes is a contributing writer at Highline and a videographer. He teamed up with graphic designer Jason Wong to not just report on the complex issues facing my generation, but to present his findings in a way that keeps readers scrolling — literally.

This article is more than 8,000 words, and it covers all aspects of how millennials are facing an uncertain financial future. As you read the article, Becky — an 8-bit millennial — follows you, asks questions, and tries to be successful in a world that was built to keep her down. You control Becky by scrolling. Each time you scroll down, Becky takes another step.

Becky battles an old lady at the end of the article.

Aside from having an 8-bit person follow you as you read the story, this article features other design changes that catch your eye and keep you scrolling. Graphics move, background colors change for each section, and cities are built as you scroll down the page. Because your scrolling controls the movement of the graphics, you’re encouraged to keep scrolling further and further down the story.

Right away, you know you’re not reading any old news article when you click on this story. The giant “FML” sets the tone for the rest of the piece — moving colorful graphics that capture, reflect, and sum up the surrounding text. These graphics and 8-bit designs work as the story’s “pullquotes.”

The article itself is broken up into five different sections:

1. The Introduction: Explains how most millennials are “waiting for adulthood to kick in,” which is a feeling we’re all familiar with. Provides a juxtaposition of what other generations say about us (we’re lazy, killing things, etc.) with stats about what we’re actually facing (more debt, more poverty, etc.)
2. Never Ending Job Insecurity: This is section breaks down how the recession had a lasting impact on millennials.
3. Broken Safety Net and Racial Inequality: This section separates the myths from the facts regarding poverty, and how easily it can be to slip into it. The systems put in place to pull us out of poverty now often keep people in it, and people of color are at an extreme disadvantage.
4. Housing Inequality: This section provides an overview of the current housing situation for millennials, as Becky asks questions about how it began so expensive to buy a home. A breakdown of zoning regulations is presented through incredible graphics.
5. Fixing the Future: This is where the article’s main point really hits home — all of these sections are connected, and if we ever want to address one we must address them all. It encourages people to act locally to enact change.

The entire point of this article is that all of these issues are connected, and you can’t really fix one without addressing all of them. If this article left out one section to make it shorter or more appealing for readers, it would be doing a disservice and it wouldn’t be as thorough or have the same impact. The design element is key, because it enabled the reporter to write 8,000 words about complex policy issues that actually kept people interested until the end.

Now more than ever, I believe journalism needs to explain complex issues for readers. People need to understand the problems facing their society if they’re ever going to begin to change them. In-depth journalism is so important for our society, and I’d love to see more writers take on large scale projects like this one to really inform their readers.