In assessing the eight submissions for the “In-Depth” category, the judges talked a lot about the presentation of the package, not just the individual components. From their discussion I learned the importance of balance in a video. For example, the judges talked about how pairing a heavy story with dramatic music was a bad choice because it felt too overdone. “It felt like a war video game,” one of the judges said about an entry.
Because the judges were looking at presentation as a whole, they looked at the different aspects of the presentation and clicked around on the available tabs and features. One of the initial things they reacted to was the project’s accessibility.
For example, some entries in the “In-Depth” category were tossed out because the way in which different types of media were combined fragmented the project. Regarding a submission that ran a story in one column and an audio clip in the other, a judge said, “You can’t read and listen. It’s too hard.” Accessibility was also an issue if the initial interface was confusing. The judges wanted to know where to go first in viewing the project. Or, if not first, at least not be overwhelmed by where to start. Projects lost points with the judges if some parts seemed underdeveloped. For example, one package included a map that the judges felt was underutilized. They wanted more features than the ability to zoom in and out.
When it came to judging video, what the judges definitely didn’t want was cross dissolves. I’m not sure how I feel about that. It seemed more like a collective pet peeve among the judges than something the journalists had done wrong. Their logic was that people see in “blinks” which is a hard cut, not a dissolve. Though I haven’t taken the video class, I’m not convinced that cross dissolves are really as bad as they were made to seem by the judges.
I’m not surprised with the three winners of this category. I think the projects chosen were clearly the strongest because they incorporated several types of media in a way that was compelling and easy to navigate. The Washington Post’s “Hidden Life of Guns” project was particularly interesting to hear the judges discuss because they described it as “file stuff made interesting.” I had seen this project before, when it originally went live, but I had not realized that about it. Essentially, this was an affecting and compelling multimedia package created from a trend the reporters uncovered by digging through databases and documents.
I was pretty pleased to be able to have the experience of hearing professionals assess other professional work. From watching the “In-Depth” category I got an understanding of how to look at online work as a whole, and to understand that even if each individual part of a package is great, the project’s navigability and interface are crucial to its success.
Judging the “Innovation” category was a lot more complicated than judging the “In-Depth” category. First was the issue of definition: What, exactly, is “innovation” in multimedia? Is it using media in a new way? Is it making the viewer think in a new way? The judges were constantly coming back to the category definition, which read, “This work recognizes vision and creative thinking as well as technological innovation in telling a story.”
One piece, to which the judges gave “Special Recognition,” caused a particularly hot debate. For this piece, called “Words,” the presence of innovation was agreed upon by all of the judges; all of them thought it made the viewer think in a new way. However, they debated the ethics of the piece because some of the scenes appeared staged. In the end, after consulting the rules and mission of the contest, they decided it did not fit the parameters of the contest and could not place. This was particularly disappointing because, of all of the pieces in the category, this seemed like the only one that was truly original. However, I understand the consideration the judges had to make because the piece did fall closer to film than journalism. While this wasn’t good for the contest, the judges said its film-like qualities are what documentary makers should strive to achieve.
The winning piece, “Planet Money’s Toxic Asset,” won because it was a unique way of presenting a complex subject. This piece took the financial crisis and personified it through “Toxie,” a toxic asset turned animated character. The piece won because it took a different approach to telling a widely known – but often misunderstood – story. However, the idea of personifying something isn’t “innovative” and this was something the judges grappled with.
This category seemed particularly hard to judge because while it was easy to say if a piece was creative and had vision, a unique technical execution was much harder to come by. All of the “Innovation” winners were interesting and good pieces, but none of them were groundbreaking. From this category I learned just how hard it is to be “innovative,” but also that innovation is not always necessary.
“If the story is powerful as it is, being innovative will take away from the story and focus on technique,” one of the judges said.
Me and judge Chad Stevens at WHNPA.
Chad Stevens and Eric Maierson wait for Sue Morrow to return from break before beginning the "Innovation" category judging.
No comments:
Post a Comment