{"id":52,"date":"2014-02-13T09:37:15","date_gmt":"2014-02-13T09:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/rdm\/?p=52"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:20:02","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:20:02","slug":"visual-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/rdm\/2014\/02\/13\/visual-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Visual Brilliance vs. Storytelling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Covent<\/a><\/p>\n

I achieved a moment of quiet satisfaction this week having, several months after the event, revisited and completed work I started during a three day photofilm course.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

During the course a photographer, a journalist and myself (slightly different skill sets there) where dropped (not literally) into a drizzly Covent Garden with the mission of capturing the raw materials to generate an effective photofilm.\u00a0 This was to be a 3-4 minute production, based on a) an interesting subject with an interesting story to tell, and b) using photographic images, local sounds, and interview recording.\u00a0 Approaching someone on a busy, wet London street and convincing them to give up their time and privacy was a challenge in itself.\u00a0 Without any pre-planning the question was then, why a particular person, what was the story, why would anyone listening be engaged?\u00a0 That was before any of the technical stuff.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our subject was the story of a charity fundraiser \u2013 a much maligned Chugger.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

During the course I really enjoyed turning my hand to photography (with advice from the professional photographer), and then to audio editing \u2013 using a 25 minute interview as a basis for a much shorter, story, and then both layering on ambient sounds, and removing what wasn\u2019t needed etc.\u00a0 It was a challenge as due to circumstance all the images had to be produced before we could do any interviewing and learn something about the subject.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The result we produced during the course was a one minute version of the film and it received a really positive reaction.\u00a0 That was particularly satisfying as the room was full of professional journalists, photographers and film makers (one of whom worked on Avatar etc.).\u00a0 Our approach had been to take no posed photographs and instead focus on \u201clive action\u201d \u2013 detail, scene setting shots, human interaction, emotion etc. – a difficult approach.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This week starting from scratch I set about producing a four minute version of the photofilm.\u00a0 This resulted in a different story, different audio editing and images, sequencing etc.\u00a0 In itself that was interesting, finding out how different the two exercises were i.e. a one minute film versus a four minute film.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unfortunately I can\u2019t share the film openly \u2013 we agreed that it wouldn\u2019t be for broadcast as a condition of involvement (the charity wouldn\u2019t allow it), but if anyone wants to view it then let me know.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

However yesterday I came across a blog post by the company who ran the course (Duckrabbit) where there was discussion about the contrast in styles and effect between a couple of films.\u00a0 One is based on visual brilliance and all things slick – http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=SJn64kkpOSc<\/a> (8m hits on YouTube).\u00a0 Another is a film (using video rather than images) which tells a story – http:\/\/vimeo.com\/82587657<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The latter is the sort of approach we learnt with the intention of bringing into our work. In my case I think it is a technique for effective communication about research – demonstrating some of the passion that goes into it, which you can’t pick up from a report.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I achieved a moment of quiet satisfaction this week having, several months after the event, revisited and completed work I started during a three day photofilm course.   During the course a photographer, a journalist and myself (slightly different skill sets there) where dropped (not literally) into a drizzly Covent Garden with the mission of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/rdm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/rdm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/rdm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/rdm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/rdm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/rdm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/rdm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/rdm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/rdm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/rdm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}