Michael Bazeley of the San Jose Mercury News says he is ‘Bored with SoundSlides’ in a recent blog entry and notes that there does not seem to be a lot of variety right now with how newspapers are using Soundslides. And, he’s right.
The bigger issue is viral (and social)
This is not an attack on photogs, web producers or fans of SoundSlides. Please read further.
The bigger picture here is to meet the demands for media portability, interactivity, stickiness.
If you don’t make your digital content sticky, portable and interactive then what does it matter if your ’still frame photos with audio overdub projects’ are produced using SoundSlides or made with iMovie, iPhoto, Still life or Keynote?
How portable are your visual packages?
It is easier for a publisher to repurpose a video asset across many web sites, blogs, and also push it to mobile phones, cable TV partners, et al.
The hard, closed Web containers that newspapers tend to present SoundSlide content in are just that - fixed. What is good for print is nor always best for digital. Interactivity, portability and user control are the criteria that define the new era of multimedia journalism.
Share your viral visuals
I am looking for examples of newspaper SoundSlide shows that have gone viral, are embeddable, portable offer social bookmarks, or allow users to comment in the same pane.
Please post up your SoundSlide links to share.
To go full force with slide shows audio is to commit yourself to being yet again one step behind.
It’s a YouTube/iFilm world, people. The expectation of web users is video. That’s what we should give ‘em.
Only one person gets a pass on this and he’s not producing for the web: Ken Burns…
I think it is important to treat Soundslides as one of may tools for presenting content. There are times where the images and sound are far more powerful than the video could ever be.
While I agree with the need to take this content to the next level, I do not want my staff to be burdened with the technical aspects. The simplicity of Soundslides for the publisher and the viewer is currently hard to beat.
The important thing is to find the best way to tell each story. Photographers are often still shooting a story for print first, then adding audio and a slideshow to turn it into a pseudo-video.
Soon, if the company hasn’t locked itself into a vendor of slideshows as its only multimedia means, the photographers will be thinking video first. But there are times when I’m watching a video of something that’s not moving, and I’ll think; “Stop that camera for a moment so i can really look at that beautiful classic car.” A well-composed still photo is often the best way to tell some stories.
I also hope that news staffs will welcome the spontaneous moment captured by a reporter with a lower-tech digital camera, and the even more spontaneous photos and videos from citizens and their cell phone cameras.
Most of all, let’s not lock ourselves into one way to tell a story.
The reaction I have had from our readers and reporters to our soundslide productions has been overwhelingly good. At the moment we are just starting to shoot video and i think it is important to use each media correctly. A blazing house will always look better in video but at this time, the quality just isn’t there to take grabs.
At a car crash this morning with a reporter and it was plain to see that the reporter needs to report and the photographer needs to photograph. I did’nt grab the video camera but could have taken it and struggled with the tripod too but first I would have shot the still to satisfy our print edition.
you can see our soundslides at
http://www.sitbonzo.com