Three weeks of brainstorming, taking pictures, gathering audio clips and spending hours with Audacity and Final Cut Pro were definitely worth it.
Each student in News Reporting must work with another to create a multimedia project for the Missourian’s website. Unfortunately, my partner and I had the first deadline. Fortunately, my partner was Caroline, a fellow education reporter with whom I’d worked on multiple projects at the Missourian and The Maneater.
One of the most challenging parts of the project, in my opinion, was coming up with a project idea, one that would be visually appealing, allow us easy access to sources and could be completed in a few weeks. The first few ideas fell through, but I’m so glad we ended up covering the Columbia Aeronautics and Space Association, a student-run space simulation program celebrating its 25th year.
In a previous blog post, I gushed about just how cool this program is, which made our jobs as reporters and photographers easy and fun. When we sat down to write the article and create the audio slideshow, we had roughly 400 photos and 30 minutes of audio to choose from.
We decided to focus on the “past” (its history) and the “future” (where the program might go) in the article and the “present” (what occurred during this year’s mission) in the multimedia piece. We wanted the pieces to be complementary, not carbon copies of each other.
I focused more on the multimedia piece, so I reintroduced myself to my buddies Audacity and Final Cut Pro from Journalism 2150 (and boy, did we spend a lot of time together last semester). The first draft of the audio slideshow was a bit rough — I didn’t remember a lot of the Final Cut Pro features, and the order was a bit awkward. Thankfully, our multimedia TA gave us some great feedback, so I was able to revise the piece a second time, then a third, then put finishing touches on it to create the final product. Watch it below:
The piece was released in a package with the story, and I think it turned out really well. I won’t be switching emphasis areas to convergence journalism anytime soon, but I’m glad I got to better my multimedia skills (and get a solid clip in the process).