Sound Slides

Sound slides are a great way to share a story visual without having to use a video camera.  You can still show the visuals you want the viewer to see, and have them hear the soundbites that they need to hear in order to create feelings for the story.  Sound slides can share a different story in ways that a video cannot.

The first one I viewed was found when I typed in award winning sound slides.  It can be found at http://www.brianmanzullo.com/home/bmanzullo/multimedia/soundslides/paralympic/

This sound slide was a little different than some, and it was amazing.  It was an all natural sound piece where there was no tracking by a reporter.  The sights and sounds were great, and you could feel like you were there.  There were also some soundbites that gave you a better feel of what it would have been like to be there.  This sound slide is one of the best I have ever seen.

The second sound slide project that I found was not as serious of a sound slide but was still very good.  It can be found at http://www.roanoke.com/multimedia/soundslides/hokie_bird/gallery.html

This one used all tracking, mainly because it would be difficult to interview a mascot.  They could have added people's thoughts on the Hokie bird.  What they did do great is matched action shots where they matched what the person tracking was saying with a photo of what the Hokie bird doing.  Sometimes a goofy and funny sound slide project can be used this way, and it can still be good, like this one.

The last one that I found to critique was on a girls basketball game done by ESPN.  It can be found at http://www2.hoopgurlz.com/slide25/index.html

This one used only soundbites to talk to some of the girls from an all-star high school girls basketball game.  They used pictures of the girls who played in this game to match with their voices when they were talking.  This one could have used some tracking becauuse I was a bit confused as to what it was about in the beginning.

One photo gallery I found was on the Miami Herald website.  It can be found at http://www.miamiherald.com/photogalleries/#navlink=navbar

The photo gallery usually has many pictures from almost all of the stories that go onto their website.  They take all of the photos and put them up in their gallery for everyone to see.  There are captions for each photo that describe what is going on.  Each photo can not only be purchased, but shared on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google +.  Sharing the pictures is another way people can spread the word about their photo gallery and it is a great tool to use if you need photos.

One last sound slide that I found was one without any audio.  It can be found at http://vimeo.com/12643770

This one was interesting because it involved more reading instead of listening.  The pictures were not all self explanatory and it was difficult to understand what the project was about.  Almost every time there was a new picture, I would have to pause the sound slide and read what the caption said in order to understand what was going on in the photo.  There's a reason they are called "sound" slides, and that's because they are a lot easier to understand with sound.