Soundslides Part 2: Instructions

The Soundslides assignment has four parts. You have completed Part 1, and you will NOT use any of those photos for the remaining three parts.

1. Shoot 30 photos for one story; submit them unedited.
2. Different story: Shoot all the photos and gather all the audio for your slideshow. Submit 200 photos, unedited. Submit audio, unedited.
3. Edit the best 25 photos from the 200 and submit for grading.
4. Produce a finished Soundslides, including edited audio and a PROPER CAPTION FOR EVERY PHOTO.

Follow these instructions for shooting photos for Part 2 of this assignment:

• Choose one journalistic story that is INTERESTING and has a STRONG VISUAL element.
• Shoot 200 photos for that one story.
• It is very smart to shoot five, 10 or 20 photos of one thing -- remember what you learned about "Shoot 20 to get 1." So I am not asking you to shoot 200 completely different pictures. However, I do expect to see plenty of VARIETY (angles and distances).
• Remember to shoot some detail shots. These are extreme close-ups. They really help A LOT to add variety in a slideshow.
• IMPORTANT: Before you shoot, make sure the settings on your camera are for a high resolution. This is often a number such as 2345 x 1000. Check your camera's manual if you don't know how to check or set this.
• Apply the principles of photo composition (from Module 6) to compose your shots while you are shooting.

Choose a suitable story

The criteria are the same as what I told you in Soundslides Part 1 -- only this time, you will really need to TELL A STORY with these photos!

This assignment will be so much easier (and the end result will be so much better) if you simply choose a story that is GOOD for this medium. What makes a slideshow interesting? Good pictures and good audio. But if you don't have a story, good pictures and good audio will not do the job on their own.

Photos should show people doing things (and not only talking). The example I linked for you in Module 7 under the heading "Gathering Assets for Soundslides" was a great choice of story for an audio slideshow:

Misty Morning Hounds

Why was it a good choice? Action. Color. A variety of evocative sounds. Something you don't see every day. Chances to get some great action shots. Lots of variety.

Your photos

It is NOT acceptable to use any photos you shot in the past.

All 200 photos must be clearly and obviously part of THIS story.

Do not upload more than 200 to Dropbox. You may certainly SHOOT more than 200, but do not upload more than that. I hope you will not hit the limit of your Dropbox account! (You may need to delete you old audio files to make room.)

These photos will be UNEDITED.

Make sure the TIME and DATE (including the YEAR) are set correctly on your camera before you shoot your photos for this assignment.

Your photos will look best if they are shot outdoors. If you are indoors, DO NOT use flash! This is explained in Module 6, "Change Settings on Your Camera."

DO NOT choose a story that takes place in darkness (e.g., bars, music venues, performance halls or theaters, game arcades).

DO NOT shoot in a house, apartment or dorm. The light is almost always bad in these places, and you must not use flash.

In other words, select a story that will HELP YOU SUCCEED in this assignment. If it's not a story for Reporting, that is okay. However, it must be recognizable as a real story with some kind of news value. It must not be a collection of random photos. The STORY must be obvious.

Detail shots

You will be able to make the slideshow more interesting, visually, if you have a good selection of detail shots to choose from when you are producing the Soundslides.

What is a detail shot? Most simply, it is an extreme close-up of something that you would not normally see as a stand-alone photo. For example, if your story is about mud wrestling, one detail shot might be a close-up of one person's very muddy bare feet, standing on the sidewalk. If your story is about cake decorating, one detail shot might be an extreme close-up of the icing being pressed out of the pastry bag onto the top of a cake.

Most point-and-shoot cameras have a "macro" setting that is great for very extreme close-ups (not a face -- think more like a single eye when you are considering using "macro"). You might feel like learning more about macro photography: Macro Photography Tips for Point and Shoot Digital Cameras.

These detail shots are often kind of unusual. That's what helps to make your slideshow more interesting to the viewers.

Caption information

Do not forget to gather all the information you will need for your photo captions in the slideshow.

Every photo will need to have a complete and accurate caption.

(Caption information and writing captions is covered in Module 7.)

Your audio

At minimum, you need one complete, high quality interview to submit for this assignment. It will be UNEDITED. The length is up to you.

The interview must be clearly and obviously part of the stories that your photos are telling. It must be complete, conducted in a professional journalistic manner, and it must include a complete ID of the subject.

HINT: Don't just have the person talking about facts. Ask questions that encourage the person to elaborate on his or her feelings and emotions, hopes or fears, and so on. Text is good for conveying facts -- audio is good for conveying emotion!

You may interview more than one person.

You SHOULD gather lots of great natural sound!

Writing the summary

The summary of your story will be typed directly into the Sakai assignment form. It should be one or two complete sentences, and it must CLEARLY STATE what the STORY is.

Bad summary: Joe Johnson is a member of the UF fencing team.

Good summary: Joe Johnson, of the UF fencing team, practices every day in hopes of making it to the 2012 Olympics.

Bad summary: Gainesville March of Dimes fund-raiser at O-Dome.

Good summary: Jane Jackson and other volunteers transformed the O-Dome into an indoor bazaar to raise money for the Gainesville March of Dimes.

Notice how a good summary has a character, action, and accomplishment.

Here's a BIG HINT: If you can't write a good summary, then you don't have a good STORY.

Naming your files and folder

The photos must all have the camera filenames (usually some letters and then several numbers). Example: IMG_0458.JPG (your camera may have a different style; that's okay).

ALL PHOTO FILES MUST BE IN THE JPG FORMAT.

The folder name (on Dropbox) for this assignment must match this style:

Your last name, your first initial, an underscore, and soundslides2.

For example, if your name is Maria Jones, your folder name would be:

jonesm_soundslides2

For your audio file or files, use this style:

Your last name, your first initial, an underscore, and audio_ss2.

For example, if your name is Maria Jones, your audio filename would be:

jonesm_audio_ss2.wma

If you have more than one audio file, add the letters b, c, etc., like this:

jonesm_audio_ss2b.wma

(Of course, your audio files might be WAV format instead of WMA.)

PLEASE NOTE that it is VERY IMPORTANT in this course that you name files and folders EXACTLY as instructed for every assignment. Failure to do so will result in zero points for assignments, because a misnamed file is a file that will be LOST.

Questions?

If you have questions about any part of this assignment, post them in the Course Questions discussion in Sakai.

This assignment is part of an online course offered to students enrolled at the University of Florida. It was written by Mindy McAdams and is available for re-use under a Creative Commons license.