This week, we'll combine visuals with your audio storytelling skills via the exploration and creation of audio-narrated slideshows. In this assignment, students will create their own audio-narrated photo slideshow that covers a newsworthy or noteworthy event, issue or individual. The end result will be a captioned 60-second audio narrated photo slideshow using Soundslides or an equivalent program (such as Windows Movie Maker) that allows you to synchronize audio to pictures.
GUIDELINES:
- If you have a digital camera or smartphone with camera, you can use it to take pictures that document an event or tell a story.
- The student should take original photos for use in the production. Do not use photos from other sources!
- Seek out strong visual stories and pay attention to the aesthetics and composition of each shot.
- Each photo should include a well-constructed caption.
- This project can be completed on your home computer.
- The content of this project should be focused on the theme of your genre-specific team blog.
- Sources: For our reporting assignments, there are rules and guidelines on who you can/should interview. For this assignment, you are required to interview and include audio from at least two human sources. Citing other publications and/or media is not considered a source. Also, please avoid anonymous sources and do not use friends, roommates or family for your interview subjects.
- Duration: 60 seconds minimum
- Technologies: This project can be completed using PowerPoint, SoundSlides or any other format that supports audio-narrated slides/photos. A link to the final web-hosted production should be placed on your blog. (Note: Whatever program you use must support exporting and uploading to the Web. I am officially only supporting SoundSlides, so I may not be able to help you in depth if you select other programs).
- To turn this assignment in, please post a link and/or embed your final photojournalism production on your blog.
DUE DATE:
Please finish by Thursday, Nov. 17
ABOUT SOUNDSLIDES:
Soundslides is a free downloadable program that is used by several mainstream and independent news organizations, as well as by citizen bloggers. Over the next couple of weeks, you will use SoundSlides to create an original news story that includes both original audio and pictures.
FREE TRIAL OF SOUNDSLIDES:
To complete the audio-narrated photo slideshow assignment, you will want to grab a free trial version of SoundSlides using one of the links below:
Please note that there are also alternative programs that some students may be familiar with and/or choose to use. However, please note that your instructor may not be able to provide any support for other programs if you encounter difficulties. The final version of your audio-narrated production must be hosted on the web so that the instructor (and other students) can click the link to play back the production.
EXAMPLES OF COMPLETED SOUNDSLIDES PRODUCTIONS:
HOW TO USE SOUNDSLIDES:
Watch this tutorial to learn the basics of how to use SoundSlides to complete your production.
Note that SoundSlides does not support audio editing! You must first record and edit your minute-long audio production and then mix it/encode it into an .mp3 file. Then, you can import that .mp3 file into the program.
For images, please make sure that your photos are in the .jpg format before importing into SoundSlides.
HOW TO TURN IN THE ASSIGNMENT:
After you have completed the assignment, you should upload it to a Web host service, such as SoundSlides Hosting and then embed it in your Web site.
