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Jun 2nd 2008 10:02AM
Interview with Lucy Nicholson
- Posted by: Rachel Been
- Tags: Interview
I interviewed Lucy Nicholson, Reuters photographer extraordinaire and recent attendee of the first MediaStorm workshop in NYC, about her experience at the workshop and multimedia in general.
--- What was a basic workshop day like?
Hmmm, a basic workshop day... for our team it was wake up late-ish, enjoy NY coffee shop, work all day, eat pizza, work all evening, find a good restaurant & rush there for dinner before they close, get to sleep around midnight - 2 am, repeat the next day... If we were still working when all the restaurants closed at night, it would be my job to sprint to the wine store to buy a good bottle to have with our takeout pizza...
The MediaStorm Advanced Multimedia Reporting Workshop was really focused. The first few mornings we had very concise lectures on the essentials of video, audio, photography for multimedia packages and Final Cut Pro, and then went straight into the field as a team to apply the techniques. There were only 4 people on the course learning (2 photogs & 2 editors) and 5 people teaching. The time on the course was superbly budgeted - classroom learning was kept to a minimum; it was all about learning-by-doing supplemented by notes you could read in more detail at a later point.
---What was it like making the switch from just shooting stills to working with audio and video?
Journalism is journalism. I started as a print reporter & interviewing is not alien to me. I've always loved movies, documentaries & cinematography, so that's another exciting aspect to bring to web multimedia journalism.
The hard part is suddenly learning a lot of new equipment and having to make choices on the fly which are far from instinctive yet. I also am finding it hard to visualize the edit, and shoot what I need for it, when I haven't done that much Final Cut Pro editing.
It seems to work way better when you plan, decide whether you're going to do audio, video or photos for a specific interview or shot and then just concentrate on that one thing. The 2 most obvious mistakes I kept making in the beginning were: (a) not using a tripod with video, and (b) not asking questions which required the interviewee to respond with a full sentence in audio interviews.
Practice is everything. It's the same as when we all first picked up a still camera.
---How did you develop the narrative for your piece? How did you originally think of the concept of the piece?
Reuters wanted us to make the piece in a place in New York which was recognizable internationally; somewhere like Times Square or the New York stock exchange. So we made Times Square our location, read about the history, and then went out to talk to people there in an effort to find a story we could focus on.
---What was it like working with a multimedia producer versus a photo editor? Was the collaboration vastly different/similar?
On the MediaStorm course, I worked with editor Jassim Ahmad, Reuters' Head of Visual Projects in London, and MediaStorm producer Bob Sacha. Both were awesome to work with - full of ideas and very encouraging and collaborative. Bob was teaching us as well as being our producer. He put in as much time as we needed & stayed working with us at night till we all couldn't stay awake, which is probably not a typical working relationship!
I think MediaStorm is creating some of the best multimedia out there, so just picking up their way of doing things was valuable in itself. There's no correct formula with mixing audio, stills & video for the web, so it's good to have people who really know what they're doing give you a formula to start with. The course gave me a lot of confidence - I have a lot to learn, but at least I feel like I'm going in the right direction.
Learning audio & video is making me think of photography in a whole new way. It helps clarify why & when a still photo has more power.
---How did you develop the narrative for your piece? How did you originally think of the concept of the piece?
Reuters wanted us to make the piece in a place in New York which was recognizable internationally; somewhere like Times Square or the New York stock exchange. So we made Times Square our location, read about the history, and then went out to talk to people there in an effort to find a story we could focus on.
Originally the concept was that we would see Times Square through the eyes of some of the regulars - a hot dog vendor who had been there for decades, a cop, the Naked Cowboy, an immigrant pedi-cab driver etc. But once we started interviewing & filming all these people (& then transcribing the interviews), we realized we weren't able to spend enough time to do any one of them in depth. And that it would be complex to weave their stories into our Times Square location visually.
When we met the Naked Cowboy and he invited us to his home in New Jersey and we then happened upon his girlfriend, who was able to talk about another side to him, we realized it would make more sense to just concentrate on him, as an icon of Times Square, and have him as the prism through which our viewers would see the place.
---What was it like working with a multimedia producer versus a photo editor? Was the collaboration vastly different/similar?
On the MediaStorm course, I worked with editor Jassim Ahmad, Reuters' Head of Visual Projects in London, and MediaStorm producer Bob Sacha. Both were awesome to work with - full of ideas and very encouraging and collaborative. Bob was teaching us as well as being our producer. He put in as much time as we needed & stayed working with us at night till we all couldn't stay awake, which is probably not a typical working relationship!
Jassim and Bob helped shoot and gather audio, and I helped transcribe and edit - there was a lot of overlap. That's perhaps the difference with multimedia projects - it's a complete collaboration or it doesn't work. I needed to keep going back to them to ask what the story was becoming & what was missing, so I could go look for those pieces out in the field.
In my daily wire service work, deadlines are such that there is not much time for feedback. We go out & take the photos, and at bigger events where we have editors, the editors edit without our comments. Maybe they'll tell us we did a nice job or ask for what they think is a missing shot. But less collaboration than with multimedia.
That said, when you're working with a good photo editor/multimedia producer, the feeling is the same - you know the end result will be greater than what you are personally contributing, which is a cool feeling...
---What were some of the most important things the workshop taught you?
---What were some of the most important things the workshop taught you?
I think MediaStorm is creating some of the best multimedia out there, so just picking up their way of doing things was valuable in itself. There's no correct formula with mixing audio, stills & video for the web, so it's good to have people who really know what they're doing give you a formula to start with. The course gave me a lot of confidence - I have a lot to learn, but at least I feel like I'm going in the right direction.
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