An Experiment in Multimedia

This trip through Malawi has also been about exploring new ways to tell people’s stories—through narrated slide shows, video, geocoding photos and other multimedia. There’s a lot of equipment wrangling involved. Good thing I like gadgets.

Here’s a photo Eileen took of me in full multimedia regalia at the Emazwini mobile clinic on July 4.

I have learned you definitely can’t do everything at once. Even if you’re part of a two-person team, you have to do things sequentially. For example, I can’t record background sound while Eileen is photographing because I pick up the sound of the mirror clicking inside her camera.

The other big thing is data management. Audio, video and high-quality photos take up a lot of space on a card. Unless you bring lots and lots of cards, you have to download your stuff to computer, external hard drives, DVDs. Of course, you should be backing your stuff up anyway.
Keeping track of everything and remembering where you are in the process requires discipline and a good file-naming system. After every recording or photography session I back up the files to the computer and to the hard drive. Have also backed up some of the most critical work to DVDs.

Which reminds me. I need to back up the interview I did yesterday with Wadana Mkandawire. He is a nurse midwife technician who is upgrading his qualifications at the Kamuzu College of Nursing.