Presentation feedback : Presentation Strategies and Objectivity

Our presentation at the New Media Consortium was generally well-received, but there were two criticisms that deserve attention here. Both involve the slide show of images from Elder Nancybelle's childhood, and they were leveled by James W. Brown, Executive Associate Dean and Professor at the School of Journalism at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. It was an honor to get such close attention from a veteran educator and visual journalist.

Dean Brown's first criticism is one with which I agree wholeheartedly -- that I should not have had text on top of the images. I edited the video using Adobe Premiere Elements, which is basically for home videos. I'm just learning to use Final Cut Pro, which is what we have in the lab at work. I was trying to keep the captions off the images as much as possible. Dean Brown told me I should have set up the slideshow in Flash, to give people time to examine the images. He also noted that Flash is superior to video when it comes to image reproduction. Again, I think he has a point, and I will come up with a version of the slideshow in Flash.

However, Dean Brown's biggest criticism was of my choice to run the soundtrack with Caruso singing in the background. He asked whether Elder was listening to Caruso when we looked at the pictures. I said she was not; however, I chose the aria because:

• these were images from her childhood;


• I wanted to evoke aspects of her childhood experiences in this section of the story;


• she had told me that she often listed to opera as a child; she had heard Caruso recordings as a child, and "La Boheme" was her favorite opera. (Not surprisingly, she's also a Rent fan.

Dean Brown said it would have been more journalistic to have Nancybelle talk about the images, or to have a photgraphhy scholar analyze them. I explained that I do have a separate Flash presentation created by Eve Roytshteyn, in which TCNJ Art professor Ken Kaplowitz analyzes several of the Vanderzee photos, in particular.

In choosing to combine the musical selection with the images, I was trying to create an evocative setpiece which will have layers of meaning in each of the narrative threads.

One level of meaning is, as I said earlier, to associate the images with sounds that she heard during her childhood. My intention, in fact, is to find appropriate places to use all of the genres of music that Elder Nancybelle loves -- opera, jazz, spirituals and gospel -- at appropriate points in the narratives. I concede that in this, I am thinking more like a documentary maker than like a traditional journalist.

Another level of meaning comes from the analytic lens through which I am viewing the images, as well as the cultural politics of Nancybelle's upbringing. This particular set of images, which date from 1917 to the mid-1940s, show a family presenting itself as proud and upwardly mobile, despite the perjorative images of African Americans that were ingrained in popular culture.

More later.