RadioLab is a brilliant show about science, told in an extremely clever non-traditional way. I’m always struggling with the line between good ethics and bad storytelling in new media. Many of the sounds on the show are created and the editing is extensive. But rather than being bad journalism, its brilliant storytelling and it just won a Peabody Award for…..
Immersive and boundlessly imaginative, the series uses pithy prose and state-of-the-art sound to illuminate complicated scientific and philosophical subjects.

Here’s a great quote from the NYTimes story written by Rob Walker:

“I asked Abumrad what a traditional radio producer would make of his meticulously constructed bruup bruup fhewm fhewm. “They would say it’s insane,” he said. Early on, he had to deal with “radio people” who thought he was wasting time on “artsy-fartsy namby-pampy” technical distractions. “But do you want to know why ‘Radiolab’ has worked beyond public radio?” he asked. “Because it sounds like life. You watch TV, and someone has labored over the feel. Look at ‘Mad Men’ or ‘The Sopranos’: the mood, the pacing, the richness of it, comes from those fine, quote-unquote technical choices.”

and even better, another quote on why it’s important to make things that last, not just things that are fast.

I lit and shot the interviews and also shot video and stills in the field but the most fun was shooting and editing the small piece in the middle the this great story where Mary O’Connor and her team try to serve 10,000 cups of hot coffee to every one of the partners in the audience at the same time. Phew, what a race that was.

I had spent a year in New Orleans (pre Katrina) working on a story for National Geographic Magazine so I was thrilled to go back with my MediaStorm colleagues in 2008 to shoot, interview and record this multimedia piece for Starbucks.

The Eddie Adams Barnstorm Workshop, now in its 20th year, is one of the best in America for photojournalism. Every year 100 students come to the farm of the late Pulitzer Prize winning photographer in upstate New York to shoot a photo story and listen to the greats of photojournalism talk and show their work.

This year I was lucky enough to be asked by Brian Storm (Mediastorm) and Tom Kennedy (WashingtonPost.com) to be a member of their multimedia team. I was then assigned to the Blue Team with photographer Chris Hondros and picture editor Pancho Bernasconi, both of Getty Images News and producer Leah Latella. Chris chose Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man as the theme for our team of 10 photographers. I tagged along with talented team member Brian Sokol who shot the images. I recorded and edited the audio and his images to produce this piece.

Our multimedia team was amazing in its breath and talent. Check out the rest of the multimedia presentations.

Two days later we got together again and this time he recorded our conversation for his great series of podcasts. We spoke about photography, new media, films, audio and where this might all be going. It was a fascinating and enlightening conversation for me plus I got to wear a very cool and amazingly efficient microphone on my ear, just like a popstar.

Have a listen.

The nine students ranged from professional photographers to fine artists to teachers to advanced amateurs. It was a great group and they worked long hours using the Zoom H4 recorder and AudioTechnica mics, Audacity, IView Media Pro and Soundslides Plus in addition to their digital still cameras.

In a single day, each student recorded, photographed, edited, mixed and output a multimedia show. On the second day they found a new story and recorded, photographed, edited, mixed and output a new multimedia show. Then on the third day created another new multimedia piece from scratch. Their heads must have been spinning but each piece got better and better.

While you can see the entire show below –and everyone did extremely well– here these are two of my favorite Visual Storytelling with Audio pieces:

Rick Scibelli: Last Spring

Julie Skarratt: In This Moment

Visual Storytelling with Audio 2007 class

This is the final show with everyone’s work from the class, including Julie and Rick’s piece. It’s 14.53 long.

Please remember that before this class, no one had ever recorded much audio or produced a multimedia show by themselves. I think they did a fantastic job.

(Thanks to Joe Weiss for letting us use SoundSlides Plus, his new supercharged –and very cool– version of the classic media production tool that makes slide shows simple and now creates work that looks more and more like you’ve slaved away in Final Cut Pro )

Why did I do it? Well, to create work like The Soul Of Athens which launched today. I produced the content for the creativity section.

I shot and edited The Art of Coal Country about how Nelsonville, Ohio was saved by art. It’s my vision of how a typical newspaper feature story can look on the web.

Soul of Athens is our attempt to look at where “merlot meets moonshine,” an multimedia examination of Athens County and our small University town in the foot hills of Appalachia.

This is a class project, totally created by students but the brainchild of the amazing Zach Wise , the 29-year-old visiting professional who has guided it, kept us on track and constantly tweaked and prodded us into the best we could do in 8 weeks.

Zach pretty much allowed us to generate and create and build every bit, from concept to design to code to content to text to viral marketing. Another web guru, Brian Storm flew in from NYC to be our second guiding light.

What was most interesting for me was to be involved as a producer and generate pieces that I did not shoot myself (though I did edit them all.)

For Harmony in Two Parts , a story on the creative process between 2 musicians, I generated the idea and worked with M.K.Smith, who photographed and recorded the piece. I made the edit

For PassionWorks a story about an eye-opening art studio for developmentally disadvantaged adults, and The Carver of Coolville Ridge, a story about David Hostetler, an internationally recognized sculptor who lives nearby, I found work already in progress and matched it to ideas I generated. So I have now also learned the fine art of begging and pleading for rights and cooperation. I re-edited the pieces for the web.

And it’s pretty much what I came here to learn. I couldn’t be happier. Love to hear what you think.

I shot the video here and Chad Stevens did the great edit on deadline.

I’ve been an alternate judge this weekend for BOP, so I’ve stepped in when one of the judges has a conflict in the form of pages from their publication rising to the top of the list. Thus far that’s been Elizabeth Krist, a picture editor at National Geographic or William Snyder, the former Director of Photography (and 4 time Pulitzer prize winner) at the Dallas Morning News. The other two judges are Bonnie Jo Mount from Hampton University and John Glen from the Atlanta Constitution.

When I wasn’t not judging, I was shooting shooting video and bothering the judges to see what they’re thinking.