In Multimedia, Audio Comes Before Pictures
[by Paula Lerner]
One thing that many still photographers may not realize when creating a narrative audio slide show is that the audio comes before the pictures. I recently had the opportunity to spend time with friends and colleagues at the annual meeting of Aurora Photos, my agency, where I had many interesting conversations about multimedia. I noticed that some photographers new to multimedia didn’t realize the importance of audio, and that this is in fact where you start the workflow, not end it.
Unless I am creating a simple slideshow accompanied by music, or am doing something non-narrative that uses ambient sound together with images, when developing a narrative multimedia piece I start with the audio. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: the audio drives the story, not the pictures. This doesn’t mean that the photos are unimportant. But it does mean that you must start with the audio to create the narrative script.
When I am developing a 2-3 minute profile feature, the first thing I do is record an audio interview with the subject, which typically lasts about an hour. I have that interview transcribed for reference, and then edit that hour down to 2-3 minutes. Once that is completed, I send it off to the client for approval. If needed at that point I will do additional iterations, but only after the audio line is approved do I begin to photograph. Once the audio track is laid down, I know exactly what scenes and topics I need to visually illustrate. Trying to photograph before I have this completed is a much less efficient way of working, and usually results in much more time wasted producing photos that will end up on the proverbial cutting room floor.
There have been occasions when the logistics of a project required me to photograph before the edited audio was completed, but even in those situations I always tried to at least do the interview prior to photographing. That way I knew the overall content of the subject’s story, and thus knew what I would need to illustrate. So just because we are photographers and are focused on the visuals, we can’t forget that the audio is critical. Get the audio first, and then go get some killer pictures to bring it to life.
10 Responses to 'In Multimedia, Audio Comes Before Pictures'
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Thanks for pointing this out, Paula. Indeed, the audio creates the bed that supports the pace and flow, as well as the main story line. Jose
Great info, Paula. Question. I would presume that a client has a specific feel or message they want to get across in the MM piece. Do you craft the question to get the necessary response or does the client do this?
Best…SK
Certainly having an audio interview “in the can” might make life easier for a photographer, but this is not always necessary nor practical.
In documentary film work, which is much like “multimedia” production, we often use voiceovers and interview segments to augment or “space” the visual story being told by the visual imagery. But it is often NOT the audio that drives the story. In a visual medium, *visuals* are most often the driving force.
Images and sound both support each other, and it’s true that lousy sound can cause more damage to a story than lousy images. Bad sound calls attention to itself. Good sound can help make up for bad photography, while good photography can do very little to make up for bad sound. An audience will be annoyed by bad sound, no matter how great the images are.
But good sound can be just as easily created after the photography, as before it. You can shoot a visual story, and then supplement it with interview material, voice over narration, and most importantly, wild sound (ambient backgrounds) and FX, to create a complete and blended audio track for your visual story.
No one method is better than another, and we each will have our own preferences in our work flows. But keep in mind that most documentary and feature films (original “multimedia”) involve recording images and sound at the same time, editing these together, and THEN supplementing and pacing the material with additional sound, voice overs, etc. later on.
If you do enough multimedia or film production, you’ll eventually discover that your best laid initial plans for pacing and story flow must change dramatically in order to balance the respective strengths of both audio and visual content you actually wind up with.
That’s where you have to be willing to let the story guide your decisions.
Enjoy each journey, and thanks for your post.
Scott Highton
Hi Stan,
Before I sit down to do an audio interview with the subject, I have a meeting with the client to discuss the content. At that time I try to gather as much pertinent information as I can about the person I’m going to interview, and thoroughly discuss with the client the message they want to convey with the piece, and the points they want this particular subject to highlight. I then work up a question list that will hopefully evoke appropriate responses from the subject.
The above applies to commercial or institutional clients, rather than to journalism clients. Both involve storytelling in a journalistic “style”, but the former involves telling the client’s story and starting with the client’s message, and finding ways to support that. For a journalism client, on the other hand, you start with the subject’s story and point of view, and let the story develop forward. Both require good preparation, research and good interview techniques. But I will leave those topics for another post on another day.
Best,
Paula Lerner
Dear Scott,
Thanks for your post and sharing your thoughts. Just by way of background, I am producing short, audio slide shows (or series of them in chapter form) for clients, not feature films or documentaries. Distribution is intended for the internet on computer screens. My typical “profile” piece is 2-3 minutes.
A few things I have learned after spending the last couple of years of my working time producing multimedia:
1. A viewer will tolerate mediocre visuals, but not bad sound. If the sound is bad, or even mediocre, they will turn it off. That doesn’t mean we should aspire to mediocre visuals, it just means that the audio is more important than many of us who come from a visual background realize.
2. Some methods and work flows are more efficient than others. In creating narrative pieces which are driven by a script, I have found the most efficient method is to first edit the base audio interview to get the story line down, and then go out and get pictures to illustrate it. Ambient sound (which I love, by the way — also known as nat sound or wild sound) is added at the end to create richness.
My personal experience is on those occasions when I have had to shoot before editing the audio or before even doing an interview, I have invariably wasted much time, energy and resources creating images I don’t use, simply because I don’t know what the story is going to be yet. In these days of tight budgets, the more efficiently I can work, the better, and the happier the client is.
FWIW my workflow looks like this:
- Meet with client to discuss content
- Record audio interview with subject
- Edit interview and send to client for review.
- Do additional iterations or changes if necessary
- Get client approval
- Shoot photos to illustrate narrative and gather ambient sound to accompany it.
- Assemble feature in Final Cut.
- Send to client for approval.
- Make changes or additional iterations until client signs off.
There have been times when I have started with the visuals, but those tend to be more conceptual pieces that I do on my own rather than narrative features that I am hired to do. Both routes are valid, they are just accomplishing different goals. And yes, as you say, you do need to let the story guide your decisions.
Best,
Paula Lerner
“In the beginning was the WORD (Script)and the WORD was made FLESH (Visual Content). . . I John 1:1
One can’t improve on the perfect Production – Life.
The all time leading Producer created the best featured documentary with endless multi-media versions.
It’s hard to debate its memorable qualities.
Words . . . all of life begin with them.
“So let it be written . . . so let it be done.”
Focused,
Ronald
Hi Paula, do you leave tactical pauses in the interview process to make the sound editing easier for you?
Ed Carreon
Hi Paula,
I’m new to multimedia and have just created a slideshow of my photographs accompanied by music from my cd collection. I have already paid for the cd but before I go public (i.e. Facebook, etc.) will it be necessary for me to get permission from the artist to use his music or is listing him in the credits sufficient? How about quotations that I found on the internet and included in the slideshow?
Thanks,
Karen
You need permission from the musician. If the CD was not independently produced, permission is also needed from the recording studio that published the work. Purchasing the CD only gives you the license to listen to the music.
Hi Karen,
Susan is right that you need permission from both the musician who wrote the music, as well as from the person who performed it (if that person is different from who wrote it). As far as the quotations go, I’m not sure how that would work, and my guess is the answer would be different if it were a contemporary person or a historical one. You might want to run it by an attorney if you’re going to publish your feature.
Hope that helps.
Paula