Rain from Markham Nolan on Vimeo.
Marooned as my garden office temporarily became an island, I got out the camera and started shooting out the door in frustration.
Good thing I didn’t have a gun to hand. Nerdy details over the fold.
Rain from Markham Nolan on Vimeo.
Marooned as my garden office temporarily became an island, I got out the camera and started shooting out the door in frustration.
Good thing I didn’t have a gun to hand. Nerdy details over the fold.
YOU ARE: A small NGO or non-profit organisation. Maybe you’re based in Dublin and work in the community here, or maybe you focus on sustainable development projects in Africa or elsewhere and partner with organisations in the field. You have a track record of getting things done and have proven success on the ground. You’re looking to produce some online audiovisual material that will tell your story but you don’t know where to start.
You need someone who can take your ideas, build them, polish them and produce something stirring that you can easily embed on your website and disperse online. And you want them to do it for free, because you have no money.
HE IS: Someone who’s looking to further build his own multimedia portfolio, a journalist who has a history of storytelling ability, and started his journalism career in photography before pursuing print. He’s someone who’s got a qualification in development studies and will understand your point of view.
He’s only recently turned to multimedia, but he’s been taking photos for more than 13 years, and so he’s got a good eye for framing a shot. And as he’s been turning out podcasts, he’s au fait with audio. He’s just looking for some good, interesting stories on which to put it all to use.
Does it sound like we have a match? Well then, we should meet.
For the next two weeks, I’ll take submissions from NGOs or community groups that want their story told in a new and creative way to help them promote themselves, cheer an achievement or particular success, or to thank someone that’s made a difference. And on June 24, I’ll sit down with the submissions and pick two, one Dublin-based and one that works overseas.
For those two organisations, I’m offering a once-off freebie, a film or audio slideshow of up to five minutes in length that I’ll produce in HD quality and give to your organisation to use as you see fit, for ZERO COST. We’ll collaborate on the storyboard and work together with a mix of whatever materials you might already have and new ones I’ll create. I’ll include your graphics to the best of my ability and to your spec. I’ll put every creative faculty I have at your disposal (within reason) in order to make something that will really stand out for you and your organisation, and in the interests of sustainability, I’ll show you exactly how I did it so that you can replicate it yourselves in the future and we’ll learn together. I’ll blog and tweet the process to give the project extra legs and promote it as widely as I can.
Interested?
Here’s what I want from you:
One creative story idea from your organisation.
That’s it. Just your best idea. Hit me with some background details, some suggestions on filming/photography locations, and how you think it might work. Email me at markham [dot] nolan [at] gmail [dot] com
I’ll pick the two winners based on feasibility, how interesting they sound, and we’ll take it from there.
I solicited some advice via Twitter a few days back on what radio producers look for when it comes to audio file types and the like. Conn O’Muineacháin of Edgecast media was kind enough to spend about ten minutes chatting to me on the phone about the radio milieu and was hugely helpful, and complimentary. Benjamin Chesterton of Duckrabbit was another.
I’ve mentioned the Duckrabbit crowd before. They do some great value multimedia training and produce some lovely material. Largely thanks to them, and other similar groups I’ve found through them, I’m really digging audio slideshows and video at the moment. Check out, for example, Slowcoast, and go meet Hans the Cyclist.
Benjamin sent three emphatic tweets about radio production (The most emphatic saying: NEVER MP3 .. NEVER EVER EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!”) This one made the most immediate difference to my own output so far:![]()
I’ll be doing a lot more of this stuff, and what’s clear is that while the photos have to be good, the audio just has to be crisp and clear. I’m not gonna go into detail about the ins and outs of this recording below, but I love how the full richness of my grandfather’s voice comes across. It takes over the whole thing. (I recorded it in .wav, Benjamin)
I’ve been putting together more and more podcasts recently, and I’ve found inspiration for that from the RadioLab podcasts from New York’s WNYC. Theirs are without compare the most exquisitely edited podcasts and radio documentaries out there. If you haven’t listened to them, seek them out on iTunes. After that, if you want to know a little more about how they layer up their podcasts, look in particular for one entitled ‘Making the Hippo Dance‘. It’s awesome.
In the video below, I sought out some nice ambient noise to warm things up. My first love is pictures and so audio slideshows rather than plain audio will always make more sense to me. And although I tried hard with pictures, Granda’s voice just takes this over. I blame Benjamin.
In total I spent an hour with Granda, nothing more. When I arrived, he was half an hour from finishing up in the garden, so I had to be quick with the camera. I’d been up in his house a while back and seen the light in his potting shed when the idea struck me to put this together. Granda’s Garden is his sanctuary. It’s what keeps him looking about ten years younger than he is. His lawn is like a thick, rich carpet. When you walk on it you want to just kick off your shoes and feel the satiny green scuff between your toes.
So here it is, anyway, Granda’s Garden. Enjoy.
Granda’s Garden from Markham Nolan on Vimeo.
My ‘custom message’ on Gmail of late has been ‘multimediocre’, the thinking being that a lot of the time, if you’re trying to be a jack of all trades, you end up being a master of none. The same goes for trying to produce material across several different media.
I reckon I’m getting to grips with it. I’m no master, though. That’s for sure.
I’ll tell you the story behind the filming some other time, but for now, enjoy this intro piece I edited together last night for Mark Pollock, Mick Liddy and the rest of Team Daft, challengers for this year’s Round Ireland Yacht Race.