Photojournalism From A Student’s Eye

At my newspaper, it is not uncommon for a reporter to gather audio and give it to me to edit down, only for me to find that the audio is unusable. Unfortunately, because reporters are not yet editing their own raw audio, they do not hear the mistakes they make and then do not correct them.

This video is meant to address one of the most common of mistakes, placement of the audio recorder. When out on assignment with reporters, I have seen audio recorders set down on tables, held at the hip and placed under notepads, when where they really should be is a few inches from the interviewee’s mouth. The video below shows how audio sounds when the recorder is used properly, and what the audio sounds like when used improperly.

Adding transitions and audio/video fade in/outs in Final Cut Pro and Express. I recommend watching this in full screen and HD, as I do not zoom in at any point as I have done with the other screencasts.

In my last multimedia meeting, it was suggested that reporters could benefit from a few basic photoshop tutorials. The following is the first in a series of screencasts on basic photoshop techniques for reporters, this one covering the use of the Color Balance tool to color correct images.

Below I have included links to the playlists for the screencasts I have completed so far. I expect to add a new photoshop tutorial at least once a week, and hope to finish my intro to Final Cut screencasts next week.

Photoshop for Reporters
Final Cut Tutorials
GarageBand Tutorials

More screencast tutorials made for my staff. This time on the basics of Final Cut.

Importing into Final Cut

General Layout and Tools

Creating subclips

Importing to the timeline