Anna’s Blog

I guess this chart doesn’t really work with the Bubble Graph (I actually tried out other graphs, and they all didn’t look so good, probably because the numbers are too close together?), but I get the main idea of how to use Many Eyes.

I’m starting to really like soundslides. These two stories (I watched the hound story and the Kabul story) made a really big impression on me.

I really enjoyed the hound story. The images and sounds kept me really captivated, even though I wasn’t particularly interested in the story itself. They were the ones that kept me watching. The images were vibrant, interesting, great quality and colour, and relevant to what the journalist was saying. The sound was also relevant to the pictures, so although there was no actual video, I really felt the flow of the story. The whole story had a fast pace, I found.

As for the Kabul piece, it was very different from the hound story. The pace was slower, there was less ambient noise, the pictures were in black in white, but I think it really works for the topic covered. All of this creates a solemn, sad mood, which is very relevant to the theme of the story. Even though the photos were black and white, they were still very powerful and great quality.

onlinemagstory

Alejandro Martinez, new manager of O.Noir, talks about O.Noir, and what it’s like working with waiters who are visually impaired.

Imagine waking up one morning, and not being able to see the deep red of your bedside carpet. Or the light coming in through your window. Not seeing your cat rubbing against your arm, although feeling it. For over 2, 500 people in Montreal (MAB), this is reality.
Some people are born blind, but others lose their sight later on in life due to conditions such as diabetes, macular degenerations, glaucoma, and cataracts (MAB). The Action for Blind People (ABP) charity organization in the UK urges people to have eye examinations done “at least every two years”, since this could prevent infections and diseases that could cause you to lose your vision. They also suggest simple daily tasks such as not looking directly at the sun, reading and working in good light, and rubbing your eyes (Action for Blind People).
Computers are another serious cause for blindness and eye disease, according to the ABP. In November 2004, BBC News published a story linking excessive computer use to glaucoma (BBC) – an eye disease that increases pressure in the eye (CNIB). The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) state that glaucoma alone “affects 250,000 Canadians” (CNIB). For this reason, the Prevent Blindness America organization recommends sitting between 20 to 26 inches away from the computer screen, avoiding glares from the screen, and using a document holder on the side the computer screen to avoid moving your head back and forth too often (Prevent Blindness America).
The Action for Blind People writes on their website that people who lose their sight “struggle with a range of emotions from shock, anger, sadness and frustration, to depression and grief” (Action for Blind people). This is understandable, of course, because recreating your life is hard. Yet for others, living without sight is all they have known.
Nineteen-year-old Stephanie has been visually impaired almost since birth, after the nurses put her in an incubator with too much oxygen, she says in one of her YouTube posts. She says she can only see blurry shapes of things that are close, but mostly shadows. But she doesn’t let that stop her from going to school, reading books (although in Braille) and playing with her dog, Bella (Living Blind You Tube site).
Just because you’re blind, it doesn’t mean that some jobs are closed to you. The Montreal Association for the Blind says that blind people can have most of the same jobs as people with sight. It all depends on their level of vision loss. For example, in order to work as an airplane pilot, you may only be hired if you have perfect, or 20/20, vision (MAB).
Other professions that at first glance seem like they are impossible to do without sight have shown quite the opposite.
O.Noir is a renowned restaurant in Montreal where clients eat in complete darkness, not even able to see their hands in front of them. Moe Alemaddine, the owner and general manager of the restaurant, says this is to give clients the sense of being blind. On top of that, all of the waiters are visually impaired, using their sense of space to maneuver (Montreal Gazette). Some Metblogs users posted that they were nervous about eating at O.Noir. “That sounds really cool but I think I’d be nervous eating something I can’t see. I guess that really drives home the point since visually impaired people have to eat every single meal like that,” posted Laiya (Metblogs).

Prevent Blindness America – http://preventblindness.org/eye_problems/computers.html

Overall, this News U course really helped me, because it gave me some ideas of how I can make sound more interesting in my story. I also learned some tips for the basics of sound storytelling (like how to do a good voice over, ambient sound vs natural sound, how to be super prepared for an interview)
I think the hardest part of telling stories with sound (for me, anyways) is choosing the ambient sound. It needs to be something relevant to the piece, and not overpowering, so for stories that happen in “sound sterile” environments, I think it’s going to be especially hard finding something that fits.
As for the actual interviewing process, I found the idea of “pre-interviews” very useful. It helps brainstorm new ideas I may otherwise not have thought of, and put a tighter focus on my story. Although, I think that the pre-interview is always possible. When journalists are on a tight schedule, they may not have time to always do pre-interviews.
In the ‘gear’ section of the course, they wrote that the “two most important pieces of equipment in your gear bag are your microphone and your recorder”. However, I must also add batteries! One of the worst things that could happen is if your recorder runs out of battery power in the middle of the interview, and you don’t have a spare. Something I have never heard of before this course is the “cardioid”. I haven’t ever used one or even been introduced to using one, but I think that it’s something to consider if radio or sound reporting is something that interests me.
Something I didn’t like about the course were the audio clips. I found that some of them were quite irrelevant; one of them wasn’t even in English. For example, in the ‘ambient sound’ section, two short stories that show the difference between good ambient sound and bad. On the other hand, the ‘Mic Use Activity’ was very useful. It illustrated the types of microphones very well. Something like this is what the other sections should have had as well.

I just thought of a new angle I can take with my story (yesterday evening, so I really didn’t have time to contact anyone). I really liked your idea of going a little further than just blind (for example, blind and gay, as you suggested) so I thought of blind and a waiter. I heard of a restaurant O.Noir in downtown Montreal, where basically people eat in complete darkness in order to really taste their food, and the wait staff is all blind. I did some research, and there are tons of stories about the restaurant itself, but the staff isn’t really gone into detail about. So the angle I’d take is not a focus so much on the restaurant, but on one of the staff – get his personal life story, and his professional working at a restaurant story.

- my main interview subject: a blind waiter at O.Noir, who I will approach this week sometime
– owner of O.NOIR Moe Alemaddine OR manger of O.Noir Ian Martinez (514-937-9727)
- Montreal Association for the Blind 514-488-0043
- optometrist Bergman Harold & Associés 514-488-6391
- the STM about safety for blind people, related to this (http://stm.info/English/info/comm-08/a-co081103.htm) article I found
- a family member or someone close to my main interview subject

3 primary sources
- http://www.blindsecondlife.blogspot.com/
- http://www.escwa.un.org/nfb/index.asp
- http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/hurovitz_1999a.html

3 secondary sources
-http://www2.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=1efe724a-e75d-4dad-b693-2228b0987098
-http://0-proquest.umi.com.mercury.concordia.ca/pqdweb?index=1&did=1641165241&SrchMode=2&sid=2&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1234271176&clientId=10306
- http://www.nfb.org/Images/nfb/Publications/bm/bm04/bm0405/bm040504.htm

     I found the Las Vegas Sun’s story to be a top-notch multimedia piece. It just had so much packed into it. I really loved the little gadgets that weren’t VITAL to the story, but just gave it that little extra something, for example the Microsoft Virtual Earth map at the bottom of the video, showing a map of the area talked about in the video, the number box of when Las Vegas will run out of water, and the mini ‘contect’ box below the video on the right hand side. Another gadget I liked was when someone was speaking, in the bottom left-hand corner, we had their name and relevance to the story, and if we wanted a more in-depth biography, we could press on the arrow and read it. I like this because the main screen isn’t bogged down with extra information - the option is there if you’re interested, but the main video screen is crisp and without distractions.
     I also really liked what they did with the map in the very beginning. It’s helpful for the people unknown to the area; it easily shows them exactly where the area in question is.
     As for the story content, the video shots were very well chosen – they were both appealing to the eye (something I think is vital to a video story, whether it is online or on tv) and also relevant to what was being discussed.
     However, I wasn’t very interested in the story itself for a couple of reasons – i’m not directly affected, I don’t live anywhere near the area in question, i’m just so far away from where this story is happening that this isn’t a story I would watch/read all the way through, if not for it being a class assignment. But don’t get me wrong – i DO think it’s newsworthy, and that it’s quite an important topic, but mostly for people living in Nevada and the areas surrounding the city of Los Angeles. As someone living in Montreal, I’d like to know the key facts of what’s going on, but as a basic, shorter news story.
     The fact that the story was separated into 5 little parts was nice, because it’s much less intimidating thinking of a story in terms of five 4-ish minute parts than one of a whole 20 minutes. And lastly, as always, I really love all the links to similar stories – news stories, letters to the editor, editorials, slidewhows, etc.

     The Dallas Morning’s story had a much more interesting storyline, I find, but was weaker on the multimedia aspect. This story was told mostly through photos, rather than video (and that’s understandable, considering they’re telling the story that has happened in the past), kind of like a slideshow with audio. I didn’t find that I was bored with this, though. On the contrary, I really felt a flow of the story from one scene/point of Yolanda’s life to the next. The subtitles were a bit annoying, though. I’m really not a fan of them, and I find it really bothersome to try to read the subtitles and at the same time look at the picture, but maybe Yolanda doesn’t speak any english, and therefore they didn’t have a choice. I must say, I would have liked a voice over – a young female’s voice with a slight hispanic accent.
     As for the navigation, whereas in the Las Vegas story I found it easy and well done, in this story, I think it would have been better if we didn’t have to keep going back to the main page to start the next part. There should have been a menu on the bottom or side or something.
     Since the link that was posted on Edublogs brought us to the video, I watched the video first, and then read the rest of the story. However, I think it would have been better to read the story first, and then watch the clip; it would have given more context and background to the clip.
     Both the Dallas Morning and Las Vegas Sun told a story through the interviews. What I mean to say is that the reporter never made an appearance (except in the Las Vegas story, where she acted as a narrator). In the Las Vegas story, it was the flow from interview to interview that made up the storyline, the context, told the conflict, expressed the points of view, etc, unlike the Talking to the Taliban piece, for example, where the reporter set up the context for the following interviews, etc. And in Yolanda’s piece, the interview was only her; it was as if a reporter was not even present. I hope I expressed what I mean well. But then again, in Talking to the Taliban, I really don’t think that this method would have worked. It was successful in these two particular stories, but it’s important to keep in mind that it works for some, and not for others.