The Workshop

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This is a Master Class Workshop, meaning there are only 12 participants and that learning will take place through generative dialogue and real life practice. It is targeted to the next generation of journalists and storytellers.  It will teach them to harness the power of still images and sound to provoke inspiration and engagement of its audience..

The Master Class workshop is delivered by duckrabbit founder Benjamin Chesterton and is suitable for accomplished photographers. The methodology is entirely experiential (learning-by-doing), meaning that over the duration of the course, participants will produce their own two-minute multimedia feature as part of a small team.

The course will focus on the complete chain of production, from identifying a suitable story to planning the steps needed to gather the audio and pictures, as well as the final completion of the project. The course will cover practical and technical aspects of recording and editing in the context of telling powerful stories.

Through a considerable amount of discussion, participants will learn:

  • How to hook an audience with a story
  • Recording audio for multimedia
  • New approaches to shooting photos for photofilms
  • Interview skills
  • Editorial approaches to creating photofilms
  • Using photofilm software: Audacity/Audition & Soundslides/iMovie


Schedule

DAY 1

Saturday May 19th

 DAY 2

Sunday May 20th

 DAY 3

Monday May 21st

 DAY 4 (Bonus!)

Tuesday May 22nd
AM
  • Introductions/Icebreaker
  • Explanation of training and the setting of the group task: to produce a multimedia featuring at least two voices and no less than fifteen photographs.
  • Group discussion on how to approach task.
  • Training in use of audio recorders.
  • Introduction to audio editing for photofilms, which should culminate in each group reaching a rough edit of the audio they recorded the previous day.
  • Introduction to picture editing for photofilms, which will culminate in each group selecting an edit of the shots they want to use for the new media feature.
  • Introduction to Soundslides (production software)
 An extra day for continued conversation and post-processing for all those who can attend.
LUNCH
PM
  • On location recording/shooting.
  • Meet at the end of the day for a debrief.
  • On location recording/shooting.
  • Teams produce their multimedia features supported by Benjamin.
  • At the end of the day each team will present their features.
  • The official end of the Master Class workshop.


Advanced Learning

A successful training is where participants go away inspired and thinking totally differently about the way they approach their work. This means a limited amount of time is spent teaching software that can be easily learned in advance.  Because of this we strongly advise students to teach themselves basic audio editing before attending the workshop.  Google is a great resource for how-to videos.


Required Equipment

  • Audio
    • An audio recorder. No dictaphones!
    • Over ear headphones.
    • Card reader
  • Photography
    • Your regular camera kit: camera (ideally a DSLR), lenses, flashcards, batteries, chargers, etc…
    • Laptop or desktop computer (don’t forget your charger & required cables)
    • Software:  Adobe Audition (free demo for MAC & PC) OR Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) (free for MAC & PC)
    • iMovie 09 or 10 (if MAC) OR Movie Maker (if PC)
    • Soundslides (you can download a demo version)
  • Other useful stuff
    • Wet weather gear in case of rain
    • Suitable footwear for trekking around the city
    • A sense of humour.