Reacting to Climate Change (view this story)

Details

Category: Feature
Media: Project
Turnaround time: More than a week but less than a month

Description of story

Reacting to Climate Change was a joint project between China Daily and the Asia Center for Journalism in Manila. It is a multi chapter interactive feature that seeks to tell the stories of ordinary people across Asia who are reacting in some way to the environmental changes that are happening in their communities.

Feedback requested

Any comments welcome. This was a very rushed job with most of the videos shot and edited in one day. Will be posting a more complex feature in the coming weeks I have been working on this month.

Gear used in production

All shot on a
5DMKII, 24-105 F4 lens,
tripod and zoom H4 sound recorder.

3 comments - Login to comment

Reviewer
Michael Lloyd Sept. 4, 2010, 12:08 p.m. permalink

It's hard to believe that the videos were "rushed" and produced in only a day (each?) they are nicely done. I really like your voice in the narration, too.


But some thoughts on interactive, Flash-based projects like this. I usually don't like them for one reason, they are hard to navigate. This one, for example, stared at me with an equally divided window where video played on the left and I stared at a related still on the right. When I got slightly bored with the video I moused over the corner of the still and got an incomplete page peel effect and noticed a very small number. I clicked and saw a big, beautiful still (that then covered the video). Not good.

Directories to video and related multimedia that tell a big story are wonderful. This one only confused and frustrated me. We need to rethink Flash projects. With the rise of mobile devices, they are rapidly becoming obsolete. And this one had structural flaws that really interrupted my attention from the massive amount of good work in it.

Submitter
DJ Clark Sept. 4, 2010, 5:46 p.m. permalink

Thanks Michael for taking the time to comment. I agree entirely about the need to move away from flash and simplify the presentation. We had a meeting last week about developing the new series of interactive features in HTML5 but there are some serious challenges in doing so. Will keep this site posted on how this develops.

Reviewer
Mike De Sisti Sept. 7, 2010, 10:22 p.m. permalink

The photography and editing is really nice. You've got that nailed. But it appeared you had a script or a written component that was simply translated over Broll of the video. Regardless if that's the case or not, you had some really great characters in the you stories that could have played a bigger role in strengthening your work. I wanted to hear more description from Clifford, the architect in Manila. And how the parishioners felt about the climate change in the church. Or Rajendra, the water God. What an amazing character! But I only heard a few quotes from him. He could have driven your story in a much more effective way than the voice over provided. 

A few thoughts on the presentation:
The page flipping thing was awesome! But I figured it out by accident. You need to have a director, cursor, or something to let folks know that this is an option. 
-You need a time stamp on the video player. I know I'm not alone in wondering how long a video is.
-When I paused and returned, it took me to the beginning of the video. Kinda frustrating.

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