Storytelling advice from three different mediums

The Minnesota News Photographers Association held their 2010 convention this weekend highlighting some of the best in photojournalism. The convention has always been an interesting place to reflect on some of the changes in visual journalism with many of the attendees coming from a traditional newspaper background.

For the final presentation at this year’s conference, the organization hosted a panel with three of the finest storytellers in their respective forms. I wanted to share some of their collective thoughts on the future of storytelling as the various mediums converge into one.

Creating an ‘audio illusion’

Sasha Aslanian, Youth Radio Series and special projects producer for Minnesota Public Radio, represented the radio producers on the panel. Aslanian argued that radio was the most visual medium because of the elements that you cannot see in a story. She used a couple examples to demonstrate how effective audio can create stronger visual stories.

Animal Minds
The full story from WNYC is available here.

Constant Crisis
The full story from American RadioWorks is available here.

Aslanian described the two most important elements of storytelling to be the story’s scene and characters, which were highlighted by the previous two clips. The biggest takeaway was making sure that audio does not take your listener away from the experience. Every bad edit reminds the audience that they are listening to the radio, rather than becoming part of the illusion.

Strong audio is about creating an illusion, she said, and one bad edit can pull listeners out of the illusion. If you limit those mistakes, it will help carry people to the end of your story and make audio storytelling a much more visual experience.

Building the story

Kare11’s Jonathan Malat, who is one of the most talented news videographers in the country, represented the TV perspective on the panel. Malat focused on the importance of storytelling to engage users with a particular story.

“TV used to be the only place where you could get this visual news and we were very spoiled for many years. Whatever crap we would put in the box for you – you would watch. There’s a lot of people putting crap in a box now… so we’ve had to up our game.” – Jonathan Malat

Malat stressed the importance of “staying in the moment” with news stories. That means using material from the scene to help limit distractions and allow viewers to feel like they are there. To highlight his point, Malat showed the piece he produced with Kare11 reporter Boyd Huppert during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

(Also, here’s a link to the live interview with Jonathan Malat shortly after he was released from police custody.)

Spot News: KARE 11, Jonathan Malat, “Freedom Met its Limits” from Poynter Institute on Vimeo.

Rather than using sound from public officials and breaking up the story, the sound bytes reacted to the current situation. Adding interviews from police officers after the fact would have broken up the story. By keeping the story active, it kept viewers in the moment and provided a much more rewarding experience.

Second, Malat emphasized the importance of keeping stories the appropriate length. Most television packages are under two minutes, but he said having longer stories doesn’t necessarily make them better stories. He used this as a criticism for all video, not just online video, which could be shortened to make for stronger stories.

“You have all this stuff and you feel like you need to use it… but sometimes less is more,” he said.

Malat helps produce the 10,000 Stories series, which is consistently some of the best feature reporting in the country. To do so, he stressed the importance of vision and focus with his work, rather than collecting a “bunch of stuff,” and how he constantly thinks about story structure to make for a complete story.

“We talk about the public’s right to know, but as storytellers, it’s the public’s right to know when I tell you so.”

Lastly, Malat highlighted the importance of rewarding viewers by adding surprises along the way. He described a lot of video stories as having “Fred Flintstone feet” because the subject keeps running and story doesn’t go anywhere. “You say the same thing 20 different ways and that isn’t rewarding to the viewer,” he said.

One of my favorite examples of story structure was “Crash for Clunkers” by Joe Fryer, which won the feature category for NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism. Malat didn’t show this story, but I wanted to include it because it’s full of awesome and exciting surprises. When I watched this story, I immediately thought about how other mediums would try to tell this story. It’s simply not the same story without the narration setting it up.

Waiting for the moment

Star Tribune photographer Jim Gehrz has a unique ability to capture human emotion. He was previously named NPPA’s Photographer of the Year and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Gehrz showed three audio slideshows during his presentation, including The Wonder of Flight, Locked in Limbo and A Prayer for Father Tim (pictured below). I have worked with Gehrz at the Star Tribune and always admired his ability to photograph intimate moments in people’s lives.

There were several notable things about Gehrz’s presentation that can be applied directly to other mediums. To begin with, Gehrz said this is one of the most exciting times of his career because of the new opportunities to tell stronger stories. He can use new storytelling tools, such as the Canon 5D, to experiment with new storytelling techniques that he had never tried before.

“After being in still photography all of my life, it’s now like I’ve opened the window,” – Jim Gehrz.

Gehrz said the new technology has also led to an added level of intimation for journalists and their subjects. He recalled a story earlier in his career where he put a wireless mic on a subject and asked for permission to visit a different part of the exhibit. When the subject asked permission from her supervisor, she added, “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” She was right, Gehrz said. The added technology destroyed his rapport and ability to work with them. As a still photographer, he would never have had a problem, he said.

Gehrz had one comment that I found particularly interesting:

“As we get more and more into these new mediums, these stories are really a process of discovery. I don’t know what the story’s going to be. [The story] is kind of telling itself. If you leave yourself open and try not to go in with preconceived notions, some pretty amazing things can happen.”

I found the comment interesting in contrast to Malat’s comments from earlier in the presentation where he was always thinking about story structure as a means to focus the story in a particular direction. It was a very subtle difference, but I think it leads to an interesting discussion about the direction of visual journalism.

To produce packages like Kare11′s Crash for Clunkers, there is a certain level of involvement from the reporter and photographer that is necessary to shape the story. Certain questions have to be asked to push the piece in a particular direction. That involvement can be great for storytelling as long as the journalist does not shape the story into something it is not.

On the other hand, the multimedia from newspaper photographers often has a raw feel like there was no journalist involvement at all. Subjects can take the story in any direction, but it becomes much more difficult to advance the story without the narrative track. If the story is not moving forward, especially online, then viewers are not going to stay.

To see a good example of a newspaper moving a natural sound story forward, check out the Washington Post’s In The Moment or MediaStorm’s Leveling Appalachia.

Final Thoughts

The three panelists helped highlight some very significant differences between the mediums. However, at the core, everyone appeared to agree on the importance of basic elements of storytelling. Stories need a beginning, middle and end. They need characters, conflict and surprises. Most importantly, they need to move forward and reward the viewer along the way. These elements, regardless of their format, can turn any medium into a powerful story.