Teaching Multimedia to Tell a River's Story

After getting our hands and feet literally dirty down @ the river, our next job was to teach the students how to master the multimedia tools that would allow them to tell the story of Los Angeles' concrete waterway.

We set up an intensive workshop broken down into the three sections, each covering one of the media components in the Departures series.

First up was video, lead by KCET web video producer and media educator Matthew Williams and Suzette Brillantes.

Use this player for the full episode, showcase and related chapters.

Then came photography, lead by a duo of designers from Art Center College of Design, Justin Cram and Alex Cerrilla.

And finally, audio, led by Shereen Meraji who has produced great stories for us and for the now defunct NPR radio show, Day to Day.

After a bit of theoretical education the students went out into the field with an assignment; to interview, photograph and video tape each other and discuss the ways their school could become environmentally sustainable.

Here's Eod and crew taping the bell sound of their school - a visual noise according to them:

Kiara, Mo and Ellie show me some pix they've taken with different camera formats and learn how to embrace accidents as Alex astutely suggests:

Jesus, with Suzette's assistance, frames a shot to capture some construction workers behind a plastic curtain:
We played musical chairs moving from audio, video and photography until each student got to experience producing interviews, video portraits and photography. Next stop, post!