Magzalez’s eyes on media

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My latest non-journalism fascination has been the Sandhill crane. These birds are big, graceful and beautiful. So beautiful, I can even overlook their deafening squawks.

Thousands of these birds migrate south for the winter and settle just blocks away from my Gainesville, Fla. apartment. I enjoy looking at them fly in huge formations as I wait for a bus to go to school.

The Gainesville Sun’s Doug Finger made a very cool, very well done video about these interesting birds. The quality of the sound is impeccable, and the narrator/source used made it both interesting and educational. The video and pictures used are also of excellent quality.

The actual editing could have used some work. The zooming in and out of photos could have been a little better. There is an strange lack of symmetry when the photos are used. There are also a couple of awkward audio transitions when you listen closely.

But aside from some of the editing, this really is a cool video about a cool subject. I’d say the clean, clear audio is what keeps it interesting. Visual stimulation is easy, but the audio is what makes or breaks a video or audio slideshow.

I’ve updated my YouTube Channel today. I should have seven videos up by days end.

For now, this is how I am putting my videos out there. Unfortunately, they have a shelf life at a newspaper. Chances are, a video on a news Web site, unless immensely popular–take Andrew Meyer for instance–will stay up a max of two weeks. YouTube will keep these videos online for a lot longer. As for these videos, they were up and down sometime during the summer of 2007.

My main concern is the dramatic loss of picture quality after uploading the newest videos, most of which are videos I took/edited while at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

I am going to ask around and see what the best service is for streaming videos on a personal Web site. Check back for updates.

Well, it’s good to back from vacation. Two 16-hour drives and a bout with food poisoning later, I’m glad to be getting back to my school/work routine.

Tomorrow I will start what is probably my second-to-last semester at the University of Florida. I will also be returning to my job with the university Web administration office.

I will be taking five classes:

1. Intro to Public Speaking
2. Tennis 2
3. The Literature of Jorge Amado (Brazil) and Bahia in Translation
4. Law of Mass Communication
5. Applied Interactive Newspapers

Applied Interactive Newspapers is what the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications calls a “capstone” course. It is the most advanced online-journalism class offered at the school. The course is taught by Prof. David Carlson and Dave Stanton.

The class is both a new chance to learn as well as a chance to get some hands-on experience in the college’s Interactive Media Lab. Under Carlson and Stanton’s watch and with support from The Gainesville Sun, my peers and I will produce a Gainesville Sun publication, Newszine, described as a “dynamic news publication intended to represent typical systems used in newsrooms throughout the world.”

The Newszine Web site features full-length stories as well as multimedia ranging from videos, video podcasts, slideshows and more.

Aside from the publication, there are a couple of other interesting things scheduled. We will be going over the principles of XML, RSS, PHP, ASP, MySQL and others. There will be individual projects, group projects, video projects and weekly quizzes to keep us sharp on our knowledge of the AP Stylebook.

It is going to be an interesting semester with plenty of work and learning to do. Combining everything I learn from my job and my Applied Interactive Newspapers class, I hope to be ready for a job with a publication’s online team by the year’s end.

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A lot of people become journalists because they want to do something different everyday. They want to drive to work not knowing what is going to go on that day. But the truth is journalism can get monotonous and most of the time we’re reporting on day-to-day life. So why not try to spice things up?

One thing I’ve always thought is that journalism needs to become more creative. In the newspaper, the everyday story could be peppered up with a creative lead, interesting quotes, etc. Photographs could convey what they need to convey with the bonus elements. Video could take some techniques from the movies and try something new from time to time.

One newspaper that just gets it is The San Jose Mercury News. I mean, really, these guys get it.

Just take a look at this video, “Friday Night: Custodian.” The visuals, the sound, the characters, they’re all perfect. What is really an uninteresting idea–a story about a woman who has been a custodian in the same place for more than 15 years–kept my attention because of the masterful video and audio techniques implored by the journalists at the the Mercury News. Dai Sugano’s name keeps coming up when I see a good video.

Some newspapers need to stop taking my viewership for granted and take a page out of the Mercury News’ book and start making more interesting, intricate, in-depth video.

Here are a couple more interesting multimedia pieces from the SJ Mercury News and others:

• “Long Snapper,” a look at San Francisco 49’s long snapper Brian Jennings’ pre-snap run down (SJ Mercury News)
• “Spring Glow,” made for spring fashion 2007, awesome, uses stop motion and many other cool techniques (SJ Mercury News)
• “Becoming a zombie,” out-of-the-ordinary good for The Gainesville Sun.
• “The Vault of Terror: Davie family transforms home into haunted house,” (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)