Nothing runs like a Deere.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
An audio slideshow show I shot and produced: The John Deere Shuttle
And a few thoughts:
A recent assignment had me camping at a musical festival called Floyd Fest. It was the kind of story I love to work on. You know the kind where you’re asked to focus on everything but the main stage? One of my photographic inspirations, William Allard, (a MN native) states that the best photographs often happen on the perimeter of an event. I couldn’t agree more.
Away I went, with my eyes chasing the light and ears on full alert. Shortly after the sounds of a bullhorn drew me in.
I was talking to the writer minutes earlier about wanting to find something different for the audio slideshow. My hope was to find something more than the standard soundbites of “Floyd Fest is great because and I love camping because and so on.”
The man behind the bullhorn was my ticket to just that.
Here’s the audio slideshow.
On a side note the assignment became another lesson in finding a balance between life and work.
Being an intern I feel there’s a lot I have to prove. (The list is long and worthy of a separate post.) I’m sure all interns feel that way. As an intern you need to be working harder than anyone on staff. If you’re not you should be. Not all that hard to do considering when you’re interning you’re only there for a brief time and came there with a very defined purpose.
I was out in San Fran all weekend for a wedding. Earlier in the month my girlfriend and I talked about the importance of finding a balance between work, our relationship and life.
Here was I was zippin across the country trying to get this piece produced in-between connections and overpriced smoothies, while working against the seconds ticking away on my MacBook’s battery.
The battery won out.
I was able to get a decent amount of the audio clips logged and an edit of the tracks done, but still needed to sequence the story.
Back on the ground in SF I spent what was suppose to be a night with my girlfriend and her friends throwing together my story. I felt bad knowing my work was getting in the way of us spending time with each other for the first time all summer.
By 6am, my time, I had the piece finished. For you OU grads it felt like another all-nighter down at the grad lab. Except instead of sleeping on the grad lab floor I was able to fall asleep next to a very understanding girlfriend.
Thanks Jenn. 
A couple images:
Tags: audio, internship, photojournalism, Uncategorized
A few links.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
A few links I’ve enjoyed this week:
Working with images and sound from Ben Shapiro on Transom:
Notice that when a shot hits, especially in a new setting, there is a beat before the voice starts. This gives the viewer a chance to register the image before having to pay attention to the voiceover. Again, like a person entering a room, the viewer needs a moment to orient themselves—otherwise they literally won’t hear what is being said to them.
As one filmmaker (I cannot recall who) said “I don’t know how the film or even the story will turn out. Why make a film at all if I already know the answer?”
In fact, the voice-over made it hard to focus on what we were seeing—one could listen or watch, but not both. To fix matters, I radically trimmed back the voice, leaving only the bare essentials that I felt were needed to guide the viewer through the images
I love the work of Alec Soth and he’s also from MN so what isn’t there to love, but hear him share a few thoughts on working editorial assignments and portraits:
Ken Burns himself talks about the effect named after him and its use in this Poynter article by Regina McCombs who’s also from MN working at the Star Tribune.
Tags: audio, journalism, photojournalism, Uncategorized, video
Alternatives to “How Do You Feel?”
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
National Public Radio’s Audie Cornish, throws out some alternatives to the usual “How Do you Feel?” when you’re interviewing your subjects.
- What happened?
- What happens next?
- What did you do?
- What do you make of this?
- How do you explain what has happened to other people?
- When it first happened, what did you think — and what do you think now?
- What surprised you about how others reacted?
- What are you worried about?
- What are you telling your children/family?
- What does this make you think about your own community?
- Why do you still live here?
Also helpful is a pdf of how to record and work with active sound. It closes with the 10 commandments of recording audio.
Tags: audio, journalism, Uncategorized
