Week 5

1. Review: Commute Photo Exercise
   • Chloe
   • Jennifer
   • Taylor
   • Ritika
   • Allie
   • Tyler
   • Penelope
   • KC
2. Discuss Midterm & Pitches
3. Next Week: Video and Motion (weekly critique).

Midterm: Next Steps

Refine your pitch based on feedback in class and begin to draft an outline and storyboard of your explainer. Consider how you might integrate photography, video and data visualization. Coordinate with your partner on how you’ll divvy up the work and sync up your calendars between now and the final deadline of March 15 (three weeks away).

Start reporting, researching, contacting sources and thinking about the elements of your story.

Interim Deadline #2 — Wednesday, March 1:

• As a team, submit a revised pitch and the outline/storyboard of your project. Your outline and storyboard should sketch out the key sections of your explainer to help serve as a blueprint as you work. It can and should evolve as you compile material, but it should be refined enough to guide you.

• (Mini-Exercise) Individually, research and collect data related to your topic. Submit a simple data visualization of at least one dataset using Google Spreadsheets and Charts, Datawrapper or another tool of your choice. This chart does not need to be included with your midterm, it’s merely an exercise to better acquiant you with finding and using data.

  • Resources for finding data: Data.gov, NYC Open Data, Data is Plural, data.world, Census Reporter, Pew Research, NICAR and (of course!) The New School Libraries

Weekly Critique:

Select one of the stories below to critique — focus on the use of video and motion as a storytelling device.

1. NSA Files Decoded
2. Serengeti Lion
3. Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt
4. The Fine Line: Simone Biles
5. Lesbos: The Waypoint
6. Vox: Obama Conversation
7. My Visit to the ISIS Front Line
8. Justin Bieber, Diplo and Skrillex Make a Hit

Before next class, submit a critique that generally answers the following questions about each piece (fewer than 300 words).

• Substance: What story was this project attempting to tell? Was it successful? Was the narrative compelling? What scenes or characters most resonated?
• Form: What decisions did the authors and filmmakers make about what to show and how to sequence the story? Were they effective? Was video necessary to tellingi this story — did it add or subtract to the experience? Compare the experience on a desktop or laptop computer and a phone and highlight any differences and explain if one version was stronger.

Deadline: Submit your critiques on Canvas by midnight on Wednesday, March 1.