Principles of Multimedia Blog Post 1

While working on my audit project for Ethics class tonight, I stumbled upon an interesting journalist. Franz Strasser is a reporter and videojournalist with BBC News. His work has been nominated for Emmys.

Based out of Washington, D.C. he spends a lot of his time traveling across the United States and reporting on stories he encounters.

The one that I liked in particular is called ‘Crossing a St. Louis line that divides communities.’

The element that stood out for me in this video was his use of graphics and text to help tell the story of how this street symbolizes a distinct racial and economic separation for that community.

I thought the graphics displaying the differences in median home value and median household income across Delmar were very effective in illustrating the economic differences between the neighborhoods with straight facts. I also liked the moment where Strasser took some straight on footage of Delmar, drew a line down the screen and showed the statistics for how many people on either side of the street had bachelors degrees.

There were some instances, however, where for a few seconds the side by side videos weren’t cohesive together and the transitions were a little awkward. It did work in some parts with images matching up to illustrate what a person was talking about but I think it might’ve flowed more smoothly if he’d simply cut to the B roll footage while the audio of the interview played in the background.