Multimedia journalism: not as easy as you think

I have never considered myself a shy person. Being involved in high school journalism gave me the confidence to call or approach sources, interview them and write the information into a story. So when I came to Mizzou, I had no problem interviewing and writing stories in my pre-sequence journalism courses. Although I chose to study strategic communication for my undergraduate emphasis, I took an introductory class that teaches the basics of video editing, audio reporting and photojournalism. And it was probably the most difficult class I took in college.

The class required pitching story ideas, reporting on one story all semester through each medium (photo, audio, video) and a final project that combined all of this. At the beginning of the semester, I followed a children's theater group and my final project, with two other students, explores private deer hunting reserves.

While learning about both of these unknown territories, I got some great material. There were excellent sources, awesome stories and excellent background they had to share. But this became a problem...because I couldn't just write about it. In multimedia reporting, they can have the greatest story in the world and be the perfect source, but if you don't have good b-roll, interview framing, sound levels or detail photographs, it means absolutely nothing. I had a hard time looking at the children's theater group and admitting - although you're letting me observe and test this equipment here, mind if I stand three feet behind your actors and students while they practice so I can get photos? Mind if I rerecord this so I can have this sound?

It's an uncomfortable thing to do, and really required a lot for me to step out of the safe zone. Different settings, angles, interviews, etc were not easy to obtain. By the end of the semester, I can happily say I know what is needed for multimedia stories and to always have a reason WHY a story is being reported visually and with audio - which will help the journalist be more comfortable getting up close. The group project with me and two other graduate students, from St. Petersburg, Russia & Hong Kong, spent all of deer hunting season tracking down private reserve and produced the following website:

Private Deer Hunting Reserves in Missouri

We went out at least four times to report, edited all the audio, video and photos and one of our group members built the website from scratch. Check it out! All in all, this convergence course added a lot to my graduate studies that I hadn't received prior in the Missouri School of Journalism and I am more than excited to apply what I know to manual cameras, DSLRs, recorders and video cameras!