As i have been asked about that a couple of times in the last weeks, i decided to do a short tutorial about the techniques i use for putting together my multmedia stories. There might be other ways, i believe, and as always trying out different ways is the best way to find out what works for you. But here is how i work with it right now.
1. Preparation:This might be the most important part, even when it is sometimes not the most loved one or the one you have time for. But if it is possible, gain as much information about the story you wanna cover. There is no way in covering a story about climate change for example when you don’t know what to look for. So gain information! Another very important part is the preparation in general. Load batterys, clean cards, make sure the equipment works. And then prepare questions, try to get information about locations, all that has just one major reason: You will save a lot of time while shooting, time you can use on concentrating on the work itself - doing the pictures or video. I always try to be as prepared as possible, also because it gives my mind more freedom to react on circumstances. For example new questions that are poping up in your mind. It gives you a lot of freedom. Another important point is that you are working way more precise. You know what you are looking for and also here, you have more time and space to check stuff, find out what you are missing.
Ok, now you’ve done your homework. Just go there and scroll down your list of questions, pictures you wanna have and so on, you might think? Photography is always based on interaktion. You apply your view on your subject and your subject is giving something back to you. So use that. Stay open for new ideas, thoughts or images. You will never have the chance to be 100% prepared and that is good. Everything else would also be boring, right? Use the preparation more as kind of a support what helps you to stay open for other things. You might have a context you wanna tell the story in or you have clear guidelines in your mind how the stry should look like at the end. Always question yourself and your view on it. There are thousand ways to tell each story. see you prep more as a tool what helps you to find out the best way to tell it. I know, it’s frustating sometimes, but it works for sure.
Now you had this intensive day or days shooting, doing interviews, filming, interacting. You filled all your cards, you have seen that there are some amazing pictures. Job done? No, maybe not. First of all, you wanna tell a story, so it might be difficult to know what you have only by looking at some pictures. And yes, you will need more than one picture, videofile. This is a totally annoying part, but it’s worth it. You had a long day shooting and the only thing you wanna have is a cold beer and some food and relax for the rest of the evening. BUT doing the back-up and a first look at the material you shot during the day has some advances you don’t wanna miss. First, you have your stuff save! And second, you get to know what you have and at that point you have a better understanding what you might need than in the prep. And this will help you a lot to see if you are lacking something in your material. And as long as you are on location you have the chance to go back and shoot the missing bits and pieces. Especially when you shoot your story far away from your hometown, like i did in the last weeks in Rwanda, this is essential.
You’ve done everything right. The material is amazing and you can’t wait to put it together. You jump on your computer, open final cut and here we go. Mh, the annoying part isn’t over i guess. One of the big disadvantages of the digital age is that you gain so much material that it is close to impossible to keep an overview. What i do is slowing down. The first step with the interviews is to write them down. For sure there is nothing nice about it. It takes a lot of time, time you would way more like to spent differently. And it’s totally boring. But at the same time it is the only way to get a clear understanding of what you have.
The next step for me is then printing it all out, the written down interviews, the pictures you selected (print more than you need), even frames of the videofiles, maybe if you are very acurate with the length written on it. I have this metal lanes on my wall back at home where i then start to put together all this pictures, textfiles and so on. It easily gives you a visual understanding how you story will look like and it is also a great way to arrange things fast. Way faster than in Final Cut or any other editing program.
And now, after i’ve done all that and have my storyline ready on my wall, it’s time for the final postprocessing. Photoshop the pictures, edit the videofiles, cut the interviews. If you have all that done, it is only a short way left. You now know exactly what you wanna do and you just have to put all those files in your planned order. As all of you who have worked with videoediting software might know, also that takes some time, but at least it is way more precise and you miss all the try and error you normally have in there. And after some time you have a wonderful multimediapiece with you story.
As i said in the beginning, this is my way how i work with it and what works out for me the best. There are in my opinion no real shortcuts to it if you wanna do it serious. It’s always easy to gain some stuff and put something together out of it afterwards (i’ve also done that in earlier work.), but it could never be so precise. But no one said it’s gonna be easy, right?
thanks for sharing your workflow