Soundslides assignment

Important updates:

Remaining work time: You will get one hour of class time today and one hour of class time on Wednesday.  At the end of that hour on Wednesday, your project must be copied to the folder named below or it will be considered late.

Sizing: The standard output size for Soundslides is too big for a Blogger blog.  Follow menu commands Modify > Output Size to make the output size of your show 380 wide and 285 high.  This must be done before you export.

Finishing and exporting: When your project is the way you want it, you need to carefully follow the "Publishing basics" instructions in the Soundslides manual for how to export - you will be following "Someone else will be uploading the files to a server."  The place to put those files is explained in the next note here.

Turning it in:  When you are finishing your slideshow, you will create a "publish-to-web" folder. Rename that folder to your name (no spaces, all small letters) and put in the JRN320 Liss folder on the journalism drive in a folder called "Soundslides folders here." Paul will be moving all those folders to webspace he controls and he will give us the URL for obtaining the embed code.

Due date: Wed., March 12, end of one-hour work period.  Late work will be penalized two letter grades.

Value: 10% of your grade for the course

Turn-in method: Post it to the class blog; link to it from your blog.  Instructions for posting to a Blogger blog, like ours are in the Soundslides manual. (You will need to size the slideshow to the right dimensions for a Blogger blog.)

Objective: In this assignment, you will create a Soundslides presentation of at least 3 minutes, including at least 40 images (more on image-to-time ratio below).  The presentation should be on a local, national or international news event, trend or personality of significance.  If you have any doubt that your topic is appropriate, please discuss with me.

Additional notes:

• Your photos can be from any source, but understand that unless you have the rights to the photos (most likely because they're either your shots or they're AP shots) this presentation cannot be submitted for publication.  Except for your own images, you must include the source of your images in your credits. Use some style to attribute photo source (MLA, Chicago, etc. Here's a useful link).  
• For shooting your own images, there are nice digital cameras available for sign-out. See Paul in the newsroom.
• Your music can be from any source, but, again, in order to be publishable outside class, you must obtain the web rebroadcast rights. You must cite your source here in one of the accepted styles.
• You will need some Web space for this assignment.  There will be a solution for the class that will be detailed here.  For anyone who wants to work independently on this, you may open your own free account on webng.com.  Soundslides offers tips and a demonstration for how to export your slideshow to webng. This is a very good solution and it may become the class solution, so you are encouraged to explore this option.  Update (March 5).  Webng is presenting some problems - Uploading files from the newsroom seems to not be happening.  Our webspace solution is going to be some help from Paul.  When you are finishing your slideshow, you will create a "publish-to-web" folder. Rename that folder when it's been created to your name and put in the JRN320 Liss folder on the journalism drive in a folder called "Soundslides folders here."  Paul will be moving all those folders to some webspace he controls and he will give us the URL for obtaining the embed code.
• Your presentation should include panning movement in a high percentage of your images.  The image movement and flow should be "choreographed" to the music to some degree. The better the image movement and music work together, the better.
• Your topic should be something of significance in the very local world of SBU (a campus incident, a basketball game, a guest lecture, etc.) or of some news significance in the larger world.  Your selection of topics will have to be determined to some degree on the availability of images.  Some of your images can be multiple crops of the same image, keeping in mind that the tighter the crop, the more important it is to have a somewhat hi-res version of the image. We will spend some time brainstorming topics.
• Your music should be appropriate to the topic. Length must be at least three minutes, but as you go longer, you should look to include more images.  You shouldn't dip below an average of one image every six seconds.   Soundslides will import an MP3 or several other audio types, but you cannot edit sound for length or anything else inside the program - once it's imported, other than killing a song and trying a new one, that's it. Follow instructions here for shortening an MP3 file using applications available in the Newsroom.