Neil Arun didn’t want to miss a rare but risky opportunity to embed with an Iraqi police unit, hunting members of al Qaeda. But his employers -- responsible for Neil’s security -- weren’t happy. This film by Richard Pendry nvestigates how a frontline journalist balances risk and reward.
Life story
I want you to create a Flash multimedia feature presentation based on the story of somebody’s life.
Your subject can be anybody you like, except for close members of your family – parents, siblings, grandparents. Look for people who have interesting, dramatic, emotionally-involving stories to tell. Or people whose experiences over the span of their lives can put wider issues of social change into human perspective.
Your feature must contain some video. It can also contain still images, audio and text.
You must not use music unless you are clear that there are no copyright issues affecting its use for a public audience.
You will be using Adobe Flash to create an interactive narrative structure for your piece. This means you give the end user some control over the order in which the story is told. Your Flash presentation should be 550 pixels wide if you want it to play within the main story area of the CfJ web site. If you'd like it to be wider, come and talk to me. I will happily help with any technical issues if you don't leave it too late to ask.
There are no rules governing the overall length of the piece – or of individual elements within it. But you should take into account a web audience’s likely attention span.
Marks will be awarded for:
your choice of subject – have you identified an interesting person that will hold the attention of a broad audience?
your ability to get them to tell their story in a compelling way
the technical quality of your video and audio
the style and grammar of your text
the way you have used Flash to construct a user-friendly and accessible narrative structure
Specifically, the marking structure will be:
Overall content: 10
Journalism skills: 30
Technical qualities: 20
Narrative structure: 20
Grammar and style: 10
Understanding of principles: 10
The deadline is 5pm on Monday 21 February.
Make sure you identify and establish contact with your subject as early as possible. I'm happy to chat with you individually about ideas etc.
