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Due by the start of the March 14 class meeting
1. Read “Life Inside the Aaron Swartz Investigation,” by friend and independent journalist Quinn Norton. (You can also read this editor’s note, if you want some context.) Then come up with at least 1 question about the article and be prepared to discuss it in class.
2. Find 2 more sources of your choice (ideally, not classmates, friends or family members) and conduct an audio interview with each source. The goal of the interview is to have someone share a single, true story, told as a series of anecdotes and reflections.
3. Upload your 2 new unedited interviews to Google Drive and share them with me. (mp3 files only, please. If your audio file is not an mp3, you can try converting it here.)
4. Keep reading the tweets in your stream daily, and tweet at least once a day, on average. Click on links and hashtags that interest you. Keep saving searches for hashtags relevant to your interests or beat. Seek out and follow new people as you go.
Feb. 26 ~ Students in Montreal fight back against raising the price of higher education. Video by Pascal Marchand, whom I hope was wearing a helmet.
Due by the start of the March 6 class meeting
1. Read “Life Inside the Aaron Swartz Investigation,” by friend and independent journalist Quinn Norton.
2. Keep reading the tweets in your stream daily, and tweet at least once a day, on average. Click on links and hashtags that interest you. Keep saving searches for hashtags relevant to your interests or beat. Seek out and follow new people as you go.
I started out at SFSU as an English major with an emphasis in Creative Writing. It was fine and dandy for a few months but that soon crumbled away when I realized my career-lacking options… Then I journaled ridiculous amounts and contemplated my future. What about writing is it that I truly admire?
I came to this fragment: the ability to express feelings, moments, stories through my words.
I clearly needed to be in a major that involved writing lest I wanted my heart to turn black and shrivel away from a more mechanical major… (i.e. civil engineering… *shudder*) At that moment it dawned on me that I needed to become a journalist. I like people, I like talking to people, I like stories, and I like writing. It was a simple formula.
Due by the start of the March 7 class meeting
1. Listen to the practice interview that you conducted in class. Use headphones, if you can. (Guess what? Your voice sounds just fine.)
2. Re-read pages 10-14 in “Radio: An Illustrated Guide” by Jessica Abel and Ira Glass. By now you should own the ebook (PDF) version of the comic book. If you haven’t read it yet, read the whole thing.
3. Review the slides from the Feb. 28 class, and read the grading rubric for audio interviews.
4. Find 2 sources of your choice (ideally, not classmates, friends or family members) and conduct an audio interview with each source. The goal of the interview is to have someone share a single, true story, told as a series of anecdotes and reflections.
5. Upload your unedited interviews to Google Drive and share them with me. (mp3 files only, please. If your audio file is not an mp3, you can try converting it here.)
6. Continue reading the tweets in your stream daily, and tweet at least once a day, on average. Click on links and hashtags that interest you. Seek out and follow new people as you go.
7. If you have them, bring a pair of headphones and a mostly-or-fully-charged smartphone to every class from now on.
Due by the start of the Wednesday, March 6 Monday, March 11 class meeting
1. Review the slides from the Feb. 27 class, and read the grading rubric for audio interviews.
2. Find 2 sources of your choice (ideally, not classmates, friends or family members) and conduct an audio interview with each source. The goal of the interview is to have someone share a single, true story, told as a series of anecdotes and reflections.
3. Upload your unedited interviews to Google Drive and share them with me. (mp3 files only, please. If your audio file is not an mp3, you can try converting it here.)
4. Continue reading the tweets in your stream daily, and tweet at least once a day, on average. Click on links and hashtags that interest you. Seek out and follow new people as you go.
5. If you have them, bring a pair of headphones and a mostly-or-fully-charged smartphone to every class from now on.
Due by the start of the Feb. 27 class meeting
1. Re-read pages 10-14 in “Radio: An Illustrated Guide” by Jessica Abel and Ira Glass. By now you should own the ebook (PDF) version of the comic book. If you haven’t read it yet, read the whole thing.
2. Read:
3. Continue reading the tweets in your stream daily, and tweet at least once a day, on average. Click on links and hashtags that interest you. Save a couple of searches that are relevant to your beat or your interests. Seek out and follow new people as you go.
4. If you have them, bring a pair of headphones and a mostly-or-fully-charged smartphone to every class from now on.
One way to make your livestreams more appealing? You could try being more like director Alfonso Cuarón. His 2006 film Children of Men featured many of what movie people call a long take. In the compilation I’ve shared here (which has scenes of graphic violence), although none of the shots has any edits, not a single frame gets wasted.
Livestreams often go long, sometimes for many hours in a row, and it can be a challenge to keep them interesting. Sure there’s more to a successful livestream than just the visual composition, but it’s important that it look good. So, I try to be more like Cuarón, go for the long take and make every frame count.
On June 19 of last year I streamed from Lakeview Elementary school in Oakland, on the fourth day of the sit-in. I was mostly happy with how the video turned out, and I was especially pleased with the part where the cops did a walk-through of the school building, along with the scenes just before and after. More and more I’ve been thinking about a livestream as a single, long shot, and so I hope I was able to express that idea to some extent.
Side note: In Children of Men, Michael Caine plays a political cartoonist! (Sadly, his character gets murdered.)
-Justin
Update: Thanks to Richard for recommending Alexander Sokurov. Check out Russian Ark from 2002 (one very long take that’s cut into several pieces on YouTube, unfortunately).
A version of this post originally appeared on the Commie J-School blog.
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