Taking first steps into multimedia with audio slideshows

For any journalist who has spent most of their career working only in one medium, be it in radio, print or photography, taking your first steps into multimedia can be exciting but also a little daunting.

One of the tools that many journalists in our workshops get really excited about is Soundslides. It's a programme that produces audio slideshows by combining photos and audio. For radio and print journalists it's a new way to add images to their storytelling, and for photo journalists to add narration and sound to their photos. Plus it’s affordable and very easy to use.

In Ouagadougou last year we conducted a multimedia workshop on micro-finance. Online journalism and blogging were some of the many topics we covered and you can browse some of the results on the French blog  we produced. But the tool the journalists from Burkina Faso, Niger and Benin probably liked best was Soundslides.

Here is what Ali Abdou from Radio Garkuwa in Maradi, Niger had to say about his first experience producing an audio slideshow.

"I have very much enjoyed working with Soundslides. I think it’s a good programme – a great tool and a welcome opportunity to explore new ways to work online. The only downside is the difficulty I encountered to upload and host the audio slide show, as you have to have your own web server."

When Soundslides was launched in 2005 a lot of media houses gave it a try and the programme quickly rose to become an industry standard for audio slideshows. Interestingly it’s been the newspapers – such as the New York Times or the Guardian – who’ve made the biggest use of it.

Audio slideshows using Soundslides are basically produced in three easy steps.

1. Shoot and select your photos, always bearing in mind that what counts is telling a story. Try to have a variety of angles (close-ups, mid range and wide shots) and sequences.
2. Record and mix the audio track. This can be based on interviews, ambiance sound, music, narration or a mix of any of those. When you're gathering your material of course you might ask: “what should I do first: pictures or sound?” That really depends on your story and its context. You might have great sound that has to be recorded immediately, in that case start recording audio first. Or, if the light is quickly fading take your photographs and record later. It's difficult to do both at the same time, so it will always be a trade off.
3. Now that you have collected all your material, it’s time to upload your pictures (jpg) and audio (mp3) and assemble them to tell your story. You’ll see it’s an incredibly simple to use interface with easy drag and drop functions. And it was built for journalists, so Soundslides allows storytellers to concentrate on the story, rather than the application.

For a comprehensive guide on how to use Soundslides I suggest you check out Mindy McAdam’s tutorial. Do also check out her Do’s and Don’ts for Slideshows.

And if you still have questions or are running into trouble, Soundlsides has an active help forum that is worthwhile checking out.

Reuters photographer Finbarr O’Reilly produced a simple, but compelling audio slideshow entitled “Congo Chic” for the Global Post. It describes how Congolese women revel in their hairstyle, despite all the suffering they are facing on a daily basis in the war-torn nation.

And if you're working in African media and are producing audio slideshows we'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you used the Soundslides? How useful do you find it for journalism? Or do you produce slideshows with other programs?

Of course, as Ali Abdou from Radio Garkuwa in Niger  pointed out, there are some drawbacks. You can’t integrate video and can't rework the audio nor the photos once they've been uploaded to Soundslides. Plus you need to have your own web server to host an audio slideshow.

True. But as many journalists on our workshops have found out, Soundslides is still worth exploring because it is a useful first step towards multimedia and understanding how to adapt to visual storytelling. And, it's simply fun checking out something new.

Author: Barbara Gruber