bob sacha » storytelling

Teaching Multimedia, part 2

bob sacha — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 16:08:32 +0000

Hannele Lahti is somehow able to get people to tell her the most amazing stories. She reported and shot this story as part of the week long MultiMedia Masterclass with me at the Maine Media Workshops in August 2010

A birthday brings Teisha Jones face to face with an important date in her family’s past.

Camera, Sound and editing by Hannele Lahti in a week in August 2010 as part of Bob Sacha’s Multimedia Master Class at the Maine Media Workshops.

digital dreamscape

bob sacha — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:15:22 +0000

This is an interactive portfolio, click on the arrows to cycle through the images (and my dreams).

Every Sunday I’m left as an internet widow by my partner, who writes the wildly popular website Gastropoda. So while she was ranting online about food and politics, I was posting pictures. The site was designed by Audrey Chen and Billie Mandle, making a site that reflected both my dreams and photography in an even cleaner and more clever mode than what I imagined.

Luz, a new photo agency

bob sacha — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:05:12 +0000

Grazia Neri Agency was the best European photo agency I worked with: they sold every story I sent them. So I was sad when they called it quits. But now there’s Luz, born from the ashes of Grazia Neri and with an eye toward new media also.

I’m also a big fan of it’s founders, especially Alberto Giuliani, an amazing young photographer. Great to be in such good company.

On Thinner Ice

bob sacha — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:56:25 +0000

The news about what we’re doing to our planet keeps getting worse and worse.

My latest multimedia story was a collaboration from MediaStorm and the Asia Society, is On Thinner Ice“ a look at how we’re losing glaciers and what that means to the earth’s “bank account.”

This piece features some amazing photos by mountaineer and film maker David Breashears.

Artist in Residence

bob sacha — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:24:44 +0000

Just finished a three day artist-in-residence in the School of Design at Stevenson University, a small private university outside Baltimore. It was a lot of fun to be teaching students who were interested and motivated and willing to listen, pitch in with all their energy, and try new things.

The final stories are on the blog. I think they’re really good, especially for a group of undergrads who had never recorded any audio and never created a multimedia story before. Oh, and they produced them under deadline too.

Hats off to Stevenson University student Mike Jett for creating the awesome poster too!

Times of Crisis: a year in the life of the financial meltdown

bob sacha — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:03:48 +0000

I’ve been living the financial crisis for the past several months from the safety of my desk at MediaStorm. Working together with Reuters on a multimedia story bringing together the past year of their reporting in words, pictures and video, we tried to explain what went wrong.

The result is the introduction, which I edited and produced, plus a very cool timeline of the year of financial meltdown. See it at Reuters Times of Crisis.

Here’s the YouTube trailer.

Wow, what a day!

bob sacha — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:44:19 +0000

Found out today that I’m nominated for two Emmy awards. Holy Toledo!

In the Category NEW APPROACHES TO NEWS & DOCUMENTARY PROGRAMMING: CURRENT NEWS COVERAGE, I was nominated for Reuters Bearing Witness, 5 Years of the Iraq War which I produced and edited.

And in the category, NEW APPROACHES TO NEWS & DOCUMENTARY PROGRAMMING: DOCUMENTARIES, I helped out on Intended Consequences, shot and reported by Jonathan Torgovnik and Jules Shell and produced and edited by my dear friend Chad Stevens. I shot the Photographers interviews at the end of the piece, a small part but I’m so happy to be a part of such a powerful project!

Poverty in the Face of Resource Wealth

bob sacha — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:14:06 +0000

I know what “transparency” is but mostly from my days as a photojournalist working with color slide film. So when the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) came to MediaStorm to create a multimedia piece explaining what they did, it took me a while to figure it out. In the process, I learned a lot more.

For this story, I had the pleasure of traveling to London. Berlin and Washington to interview 6 people that represented all sides of the issue. Fifty or more countries in the world are rich in resources: gold, silver & oil but more than half of their population lives below the poverty line. This projects looks at why.

Maybe the new paradigm is someone like me traveling with 2 HDV cameras, tripods and mic stands plus my laptop. In each country, I worked with a camera person (Kimberley Williams in Washington, DC, Karveh Shirdell in London and Bjorn Forster in Berlin. We used a single light for the interviews. I edited the transcripts and pictures and cut the piece.

Of course, none of this would be possible without all the amazing photographers bravely working in these countries.

Thanks to all for teaching me so much.

Do 1 Thing

bob sacha — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:39:37 +0000

Do 1 Thing is an initiative started by Najlah Fenny Hicks and Pim Van Hemmen to help homeless teens. Over 25,000 adolescents age out of the foster care system each year in the United States. 40% of these teens will become homeless.

On Valentine’s Day 2009 they organized a massive photoshoot at the Covenant House in several states. Here’s Shaniqua, one girl I met at Covenant House in New York City.

This is also my first very humbling attempt to create a soundtrack using garage band.

10,000 Cups

bob sacha — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:42:56 +0000

Starbucks brought their “partners” to New Orleans, 10,000 strong, for a management conference but also to pitch in for 4 hours each of community service. Yes, that’s 40,000 hours of community service. It was a wonderful thing to see.

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.