New Hampshire Media makers is a monthly meet up for media enthusiasts in the Granite State. At the meet up on October 9, in Crack Skulls coffee shop in Newmarket, NH, I caught up with Dan Freund a digital media specialist and host of My Friend Dan.
Monthly Archives: October 2011
Scrapertown
Scrapertown tells the story of a movement to get Oakland kids off the streets and onto their bikes.
The “Scraper Bikes,” which are decorated with spray paint and flashy rimmed spokes, was a project started up by Baby Champ “Scraper Bike King” as a hobby, but has become a grass roots effort to get kids to feel like they’re a part of something. Champs says that his big dream is to make a bike shop that also functions as a “fresh” facility for kids to do homework on new Apple computers. For now, scraper bikes provide a positive environment for kids that could be skipping school and stealing cars instead, Champ says.
One part street art project, one part after school program, scraper bikes are an innovation of going green in the hood. The video represents that through music and photos, which are huge in conveying the kids and their culture. The footage of 30 plus teenagers biking in a line through the streets of East Oakland on a rainbow of wheels, sun shining of the metal, is what makes this piece of online journalism. That, and the super tight shots of the teens faces and bicycles. The blend of Champ’s interview with b-roll of wheels spinning, colors, and kids biking mixed with the new age hip hop sound creates a multimedia that feels less like news and more like pop culture – I have to say, I love it.
The clip is from the series “California is a place,” which is a project that documents stories from the Golden State and is produced, directed, and shot by Drea Cooper & Zackary Canepari.
Intended Consequences
This is pretty heavy, but an amazing piece of multimedia and digital storytelling.
Intended Consequences is a narrative not about the 1 million people who perished in the Rwandan genocide, but the women who survived. The accounts of 30 Tutsi women are told through photographs, videos, and interviews by Jonathan Torgovnik of MediaStorm.
This media is so powerful undoubtedly because the stories are so powerful. The women recount their memories of watching their families being murdered, thrown into mass graves, being raped, and watching after their children now, who are not really theirs.
Some parts of the narrative are simply told in text, which flash on the screen. It is clear that these are things that are too hard for the women to say. Some words are emphasized as the women recount their memories.
The photographs that accompany the interviews are gripping because of how personal they are. In some the images the women are crying, in others they are holding their faces, and you can see their scars, external and invisible. The varying between video and images is almost indistinguishable because of how vivid the pictures are.
I was so impressed by the compilation of multimedia that I checked the credits for contributers. Aside from a primary photographer/interviewer, there was also a producer, executive producer, on-location videographer, a graphic designer, translator, and studio videographer who put together this piece of online journalism This attention to the production process is not uncommon for MediaStorm, which is an award-winning multimedia production studio that works with visual storytellers, interactive designers and global organizations. They are self described “next generation journalists” who create “cinematic narratives that speak to the heart of the human condition.”
