Dana Carroll's Production Memo

By Dana Carroll

The process of building and creating my final online story about the future of housing and quality of life in the Village of Hempstead was an experience from which I learned a lot about the issue at hand, technologies involved in online journalism, and myself as a student journalist.

The beginning stages of brainstorming for my story were difficult at first because I was limited to the Hempstead area and, knowing very little about the area, I was more interested in issues outside of Hempstead Village. However, when I discovered what was going on with the Mayor's plans for re-development, I was immediately interested. As a student living in the Hempstead area, I was curious about any effort that was being made to improve the poor conditions.

In my research, I found many articles in The New York Times and Newsday about the Mayor's plan and his subsequent obstacles he was facing from opponents within the community. I also discovered blogs and business commentary about the situation and various points of view from residents and community members.

For the video portion of my story, I collected footage of Hempstead Village in the Main Street area. I also took photos to use in a slide show to show the poor conditions all over Hempstead and not just on Main Street. I paired that footage with videos of interviews with Hempstead residents as well as with Mayor Wayne Hall. I found it interesting to see the difference between how residents felt about their own community and the way it was described by the mayor. Most residents I spoke with would not allow me to film or quote them; however all of them said that more affordable housing needed to be built in Hempstead. Yet, Mayor Hall felt that Hempstead already had enough low-income housing and that by building more, it would add to the poor conditions and worsen the problem. Both sides did agree on the fact that conditions of living in Hempstead Village needed improvement and that it was necessary to take action in some way.

The next step was to put the pieces together to create a cohesive multimedia representation of my story. I decided to post all pieces of my story onto a Tumblr page because it was a central location where the story could come together. I found it easy to use Flickr.com to post my pictures and create a slideshow, however it was more difficult to create and edit video because I had no prior experience with video editing. After exploring Kaltura for some time, I decided to try JumpCut instead, and found it easier to use and navigate. I thought the process of editing video clips was overwhelming and tedious at first, however once I got started I was able to cut a large amount of video into only the crucial parts needed to tell the story. Adding voiceover created another obstacle because Jump Cut does not allow the user to use sound for separate parts of a video, but only as one constant audio track. This created problems with timing the audio to the video exactly. I resolved this by adding still shots to fill time during the audio story. Other problems I had with the Jump Cut program that I was unable to resolve were my final movie freezing at a certain part every time it played, and sometimes parts that I had edited would not save after I published it, so that when it played it would play a previously unedited clip instead. I was not sure how to fix these problems without risking loosing my video or starting all over from scratch. When I went to the help section of the site, it stated that these were common complaints of Jump Cut users and the site was working to fix these problems. Although I embedded the video onto my Tumblr.com page, it does not play the whole way through and can be viewed better by clicking the "remix" button in the lower corner of the video screen.

After creating video and photos, I wrote text to accompany the visuals and embedded links to pertinent information using html code. I also created a poll using Snappoll.com for readers to vote on what they think is the best direction for the Village of Hempstead, and linked to a message board for Long Island residents where readers can add comments about the plan.

After each piece of my story was in placed on my Tumblr, it was rewarding to see how my work had come together to tell a full story from many angles. I also overcame many personal obstacles as well while creating this story. I was able to learn more about an issue and the people which it affects, and I also learned to navigate unfamiliar people and surroundings. Also unfamiliar was the media technologies being used to create this story, and I was able to teach myself how to navigate video and blog programs as well as how to create an interactive poll online. Throughout the entire process, I was able to see the differences between print and online journalism. While print journalism will always be relevant and credible, sometimes a story needs to be shown through different visual and interactive perspectives in order to make the strongest impact.





Links Used

1) http://www.villageofhempstead.org/

2) http://acorn.org/index.php?id=7926

3) http://www.villageofhempstead.org/government/mayor.htm

4) http://www.urbanamerica.com/

5) http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=LIRR+Hempstead+Station,+Hempstead,+NY&sll=17.476432,-66.796875&sspn=72.007237,163.476563&ie=UTF8&ll=40.712703,-73.624449&spn=0.007449,0.019956&t=h&z=16&om=1

6) http://www.policylink.org/EDTK/AH101/policy.html

7) http://thecommunityalliance.blogspot.com/2007/02/can-urbanamerica-save-suburban-long.html

8) http://www.topix.net/forum/city/garden-city-ny/TIQEJK2L83A0D49A5

9) http://libizblog.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/say-goodbye-to-urbanamerica-so-whos-next/

10) http://www.flickr.com/photos/14697042@N03/sets/72157603235077671/show/

11) http://snappoll.com/poll/239250.php

12) http://www.jumpcut.com/create/edit?movie_id=861470CAA34E11DC8F2F000423CF381C (VIDEO LINK)

13) http://dcarroll.tumblr.com/post/21211257 (STORY IN TEXT)

14) http://dcarroll.tumblr.com/ (Entire story with links)