Students + Full on commitment + No other distractions = great results
There’s no way around it. There more I do it, the more it’s confirmed. Project based classes are the best way for students to learn multimedia. Period. One full week, in the field. Gathering content, then editing. Having formal and informal meetings on their scripts and planning. That’s what we did in Valparaíso with my [...]
What have we been doing?
What have we been doing? Where have we been? I left La Tercera in June. I spent the US summer/ the Chilean winter in New York, New York. Responding to a call from Mohawk Street and The Daily’s Mike Schmidt, I went to shoot and edit a video documenting the experience of a group of [...]
Putting subtitles on Youtube
Last year I coached a project called Historias de Terromoto about the recovery situation 6 months after Chile’s massive Feb. 2010 earthquake. It was conducted by the Universidad del Desarrollo, bringing from Santiago location of the university to it’s Concepción location to produce the documentary project. This year’s project is bringing the Concepción communications students [...]
Bubble Map Formula
There has been a great deal of protest activity surrounding the recent approval of a massive hydroelectric project in Patagonia. Hearing the crowd size numbers made me wonder how these protests compared with other massive worldwide manifestations. The largest of the protests was predicted to have 50,000 attendees. The number I had remembered reading for [...]
Audio setups and traveling light
My La Tercera gear is a Canon Rebel 2ti with a kit lens (28-70 f3.5-5.6) with one battery and a 4gb normal speed memory card. I purchased for myself an 8gb 30mb/s card, because the video needs memory and quick memory at that. I have access to a Sony HDR-SR7 avchd (a camera available in [...]
Tension in the Middle East: Interactive
This project was a heap of documents 2 inches high. Each piece of paper was a report – one article about something that had happened in these waves of protests/revolutions in different countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In most circumstances, I only used the articles that were published in the print edition [...]
Thoughts on video, its future and my teaching
This was a great exercise. To look back and analyze what you’re doing should be a requirement of every journalist, especially the educators. I invite you to do the same, it will take you just a bit of time. It’ll be worth it, believe me. Everyday and at every moment we are exposed – either [...]
Teaching Multimedia all over Latin America
I have begun working with SIP – IAPA (the Interamerican Press Association), producing intensive multimedia (audiovisual storytelling) workshops throughout Latin America. The first one was in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The next one will be in March in Lima, Perú. The workshop in Guayaquil was hosted by El Universo, one of the largest daily newspapers in Ecuador. 22 [...]
Ethics in Multimedia
Not long ago, Nacho and I were asked to work with a woman from a television station. The individuals involved were looking to try out this new media, multimedia thing. We agreed. The problem was, she kept wanting to set up shots, scenes, give directions to the participants. She took audio from the projects of [...]
Examples of video principles
Nacho and I have been doing a fair amount of teaching/coaching over the past few months. We spent the summer coaching UNC’s News21 contribution, Powering a Nation. Upon return to Chile, I accompanied and assisted Nacho teaching multimedia (audiovisual) techniques to the faculty of the Department of Communications, Universidad de Montevideo. The first week of [...]
Preparing your images for the Web – quick and dirty
Toning All images need to have a true black and a true white. If printing in a dark room, this is one of the first elements you will be searching for. All digital images require toning. A big reason for this is the digital photography does not have the tonal range of film. Until we [...]
Teamwork in Multimedia Production – AARP Bike Path Video
In June, Nacho was asked to shoot a story about a bike path in a charming town in Maine called Brunswick. The purpose of the video piece was to show people enjoying the bike path. The written piece talked about the 89 year old woman who spearheaded the initiative to bring the bike path to [...]
Stock: What I Know
My experience entering the world of stock photography, an examination of the elements necessary, limitations of the exchange and the possible financial benefits.
Video Compression: How
The above is from the project I referenced before about the damage to Chile’s architectural heritage. It is set to be live today. Marcelo Bravo, an architect with the University of Chile, pauses to bless himself with holy water, as he passes the sanctuary during his inspection of Santa Filomena in the Patronato neighborhood of [...]
On music and fonts
The above photos are from a project I did about the beginning of school in Santiago – how both children and parents are coping. It has nothing to do with the rest of the post, but is fulfilling our always visuals rule. The post itself talks about an unpublished piece, which will not appear in [...]
Chile Earthquake 4 – what the ocean took
This is the video that breaks my heart. This was the most destruction I saw of all the earthquake. The earthquake left much standing. The ocean was merciless. And these people, in this secluded town, did not receive any governmental help until Thursday – a load of clothing and food. They had 5 days of [...]
Chile Earthquake, 3 – Day 2
We finished editing, as I noted in my previous post, at 7am. We returned to the wireless point Nacho had found at 3am. It no longer existed. We drove around a little looking for wireless, and, not finding any, we went to Radio Paloma – the only radio station in Talca. Radio Paloma was Talca’s [...]
Reporting in disaster zones – Part 2
When communications fail it’s really hard to deliver your material to your contractors. Yes, digital media helps in capturing and editing material far faster than traditional media, but also consumes an enormous amount of power (laptop and camera batteries) and requires a steady data connection in order to transmit, which was non-existent at the time. [...]
The Chilean Earthquake, 1 – Challenges of a Disaster Zone
Last Saturday, at 3.37am, Chile was struck by a terrible earthquake. At the epicenter, the quake registered 8.8 on the Richter Scale, one of the 5 strongest earthquakes at least since 1922. By noon, Nacho and I had been flooded with requests for photos and or video. I was hired by the AP to shoot [...]
Result: Flipbooks Galore
So, what happened? Nicolás Alcalde, from my second presidential project, and I met at the paper at 7, and arrived at the bus stop at 7.30. We began to search for someone going from there to the end of the future metro. We found an individual to follow fairly quickly – a middle aged woman. [...]
Laying Multimedia Plans
Santiago’s Metro is expanding. The government opened three new stations (conveniently, days before a tight presidential election) and announced about a week and a half ago that they would begin building an entirely new line, which will connect a heavily working class area of the city with a heavily middle and upper class section. I [...]
La Tercera: Project 2 – The Challenges the Candidates Face
I have a new project published in La Tercera. It is part two in my exploration of issues in the presidential elections in Chile. In this part, I examined access for people with disabilities, public transportation and access to affordable housing (vivienda). All of these stories were done with the production help of my collegue [...]
Master vs. Jack… Who am I?
And why is that title not SEO optimized? The photo is from the third story in my next La Tercera series. The story is about living conditions or housing. This was taken in a small campamento in an area of Santiago called Renca. I will discuss the campamento and the story in a later post. [...]
On the bus, with the gear
I am doing another series on issues in the upcoming presidential elections. This time, the issues are people with disabilities(Nacho’s killer photo from yesterday,) living conditions, and transportation. Today I went to a bus depot at the far end of town. With a colleague, Nicolás Alcalde, I interviewed a bus driver. Then we rode with [...]