Bjarke Myrthu
This is the third and final part of a multi-part article series on the work of Magnum's multimedia department. The first part of this series was entitled "The philosophy behind the story", the second part "The importance of sound". Bjarke Myrthu, the executive editor of Magnum In Motion, grants us a view behind the scenes and shows us how the Magnum In Motion team brings life to static photographs on the web.
While the Internet sometimes limits the possibilities of storytelling, it has also made it possible to post stories to the entire world from almost any location. Last week the Magnum In Motion team sought new inspiration by moving the office to Tea Lounge in Brooklyn for a few hours. © Stephen Taylor, Magnum In Motion intern
After a month and a half of hard work we are at last screening the final edit of "Libera Me", the latest Magnum In Motion essay. Everything is received well by Alex Majoli and the rest of the people that watch it. However having a movie that plays merrily on the computer is not the same as having a finalized online piece. Some hard work still lies ahead. We need to make the movie run smoothly online, making it viewable on a reasonable fast internet connection without loosing too much quality, and we need to add the extra features and chapters that make this story different from an offline video.
Naturally the most important thing is the content and the story. But the online platform holds certain technical limitations that inadvertently influence the stories. However having certain technical boundaries is nothing new to storytellers. The old day moviemakers had to stay within twenty-minute sections, because this was all a camera reel could hold, which, newspaper and broadcast journalists have time and space limitations and so on. The important thing is how you play with the creativity and use these limits to form your storytelling.
The challenge online is that the better and bigger the visuals look, and the better the audio sounds, the more data has to be pushed through the internet pipeline, which often means that the viewer in the other end will experience a jagged and slow playback. To be sure that the story plays well it has to be compressed, but then the images risk becoming small and pixilated and the audio will sound canny and chopped. One of the ways to avoid this has been to chop the story into smaller elements, giving the end user less to load through the internet.
Screenshot from the Magnum In Motion essay "Revolution" by Burt Glinn
This fragmented way of telling stories can, however, work nicely if you either use it to give the viewer control of the navigation, or you trick the viewer into thinking it is one long story, because certain parts are loaded while the others are being watched. A story like "Revolution" is actually build from small pieces of photos, graphics and audio, but they load in a sequence that makes it look like one long movie. In "Libera Me" we choose to chop the story into several different chapters. This gives the viewer a better overview and leaves a choice to watch certain parts of the story separately, which I think makes sense in this story (other stories are more suited to be kept as one entire piece), but technically it also ensures a better playback.
Continue reading 'Magnum In Motion: Getting the story online'
Bjarke Myrthu
This is the second part of a multi-part article series about the work of Magnum's multimedia department. The first part of this series is entitled "The philosophy behind the story". Bjarke Myrthu, the executive editor of Magnum In Motion, grants us a view behind the scenes and shows us how the Magnum In Motion team brings life to static photographs on the web.
The first question when we decide to make a Magnum In Motion essay is what kind of images we have, and how they could be edited. But right after this we ask ourselves about the sound. While Magnum is all about the images, sound is actually a very important part of what we do at Magnum In Motion. If you are asking yourself why, just try and turn off the volume the next time you are watching a good movie. Even if there is no dialogue, audio plays a huge role in setting the mood and driving the story, even in driving the visuals. Two stories that are identical visually can be completely different if the sound tracks are different. And when I talk about sound I also mean the exclusion of sound. Silence can be just as important as noise can be.
Tools like Soundslides, iView and iPhoto have made it very easy to put together a slideshow of images and add a piece of music or other audio behind the images. While this kind of slideshow does change the experience of the photographic story, it does not really make use of sound as a powerful driver of the story. If you want to create an experience that is a powerful alternative to books, exhibitions and good magazine photography, you have to work on creating an entire soundscape that blends in with the visuals and creates a rhythm between images and sound.
One way to do this is to very literally make the photographs appear and change to the beat of the sound. Thomas Dworzak's story about the medical teams in Iraq is an example of a project where we worked this way. The blend of TV-shots and photographs from the field somehow seemed to work well with an abrupt and very rhythmic edit of sound and visuals.
Another way is to use the sound as a more subtle driver, that sets the mood under the visuals. This can be a very powerful way to increase and decrease the tension in the storyline and drive the viewer through the narrative. This is common knowledge in the world of filmmaking, but somehow we tend to forget it in the world of photography. An example for this would be Larry Towell's "Land and Identity" which was one of the first Magnum In Motion productions.
Screenshot from the Magnum In Motion essay "Libera Me" by Alex Majoli
Using sound as a mood-setter and tension-maker, was how we approached Alex Majoli's "Libera Me" essay, that we recently published. But before we found the final method we went through a lot of experimentation. We started out by interviewing Majoli, which is something we do with a lot of photographers when we help them create an essay. It often make sense, because the Magnum photographers usually create very personal projects, with a personal voice - so what we do is simply to extend this voice and give it an actual form that reaches beyond the photographs. However this also proves a serious challenge, because adding interview or voice over easily ends up taking away from the experience of the images instead of adding something extra to the story. A photograph can be a magic catalyst for feelings and emotions, but if it is explained too much the magic disappears.
Continue reading 'Magnum In Motion: The importance of sound'
Bjarke Myrthu
This is the first part of a multi-part article series about the work of Magnum's multimedia department. Bjarke Myrthu, the executive editor of Magnum In Motion, grants us a view behind the scenes and shows us how the Magnum In Motion team brings life to static photographs on the web.
Latvia. Riga. 2004. Photograph from "Libera Me". © Alex Majoli/Magnum Photos
"This is not a slideshow, we want to do something more," says photographer Alex Majoli. He is sitting next to me and Adrian who is a producer at Magnum In Motion. We are discussing how to do an online version of "Libera Me", which is a personal story about identity, loss, heaven, and hell that started out as an exhibition in Rome. Alex is expressing exactly the same ambition I have for Magnum In Motion. We want to create a new language for photography. Something that can only be done online and not just a new way of distributing old-fashioned slideshows. Are we reaching our goals? Not to the extent that I would like to, but I think we are moving in the right direction. However, we need to take the storytelling and the use of interactivity to another level, if we really want to live up to our mission and the ambitions I have for Magnum In Motion.
Screenshot from the Magnum In Motion essay "Chernobyl Legacy" by Paul Fusco
When I started doing online storytelling eight years ago, my mission was to create something that could give the same kind of experience as watching a good documentary or reading a nice narrative story - an experience that could speak to the heart and stir emotions, and not only be a factual news story. In my opinion one of the stories where we succeed with is Paul Fusco's "Chernobyl Legacy". This is a solid, factual documentation of an issue, but at the same time a larger story of what happens when humans play too much with nature - all driven by Paul's incredible passion and sensitivity.
Secondly, I wanted to create a new kind of storytelling using interactivity and multimedia - instead of just transferring existing broadcast and print journalism to the online world. It became clear to me that the way to do this was to make the stories very visual and auditory. This seems a bit banal now, but in 1999 a lot of online content was either text, single images, or sound clips.
Continue reading 'Magnum In Motion: The philosophy behind the story'
