Documentary multimedia

Multimedia Round Table | Bombay Flying Club’s “Streetlight”

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There is a great discussion going on over at Duckrabbit about Bombay Flying Club’s latest documentary, “Streetlight.” Issues over Flash, sound, video length, and black&white photo choice were brought up in relation to this piece. I think very highly of BFC producers Poul Madsen and Brent Foster, so I wanted to give my two cents.

First, let me get you caught up on the dialogue:

Blogger Adam Westbrook noted that their “trademark use of rich black and white photographs, while stunning, perhaps steals something from the overall piece.”

Photographer Daniel Cuthbert kicked off the Flash debate with his comment that “Flash had a use back in the early days of the web, but it’s starting to look dated.”

Duckrabbit creative director Benjamin Chesterton wrote, “To be honest I was pretty disappointed with the Wasteland Video by BFC (it didn’t really look to me like there was much depth to the relationship between the people in the video and the producers) but I think this is a stunning piece of work that I’d really like to pay tribute to.”

Matt Kirwan of MediaGatherers.com commented that “11 minutes is far too long” and that he tends to lose interest around the three-minute mark.

UK freelance journalist Ciara Leeming agreed with Matt, mentioning that “that kind of length is a very big ask of an audience.”

I watched the video from beginning to end, but I would be lying if I didn’t mention that at some points I wondered how much was left. Now, this may be largely because their full-screen Flash player does not provide the basic player controls with a timer that we all have become so accustomed to. They did, however, implement a function that enables users to jump to different spots in the story from a thumbnail photo gallery, but the corresponding caption only tells the viewer an image number and the image credit, rather than more context to give the user more indication to click on one photo over another.

Personally, I appreciate when a photo is synced to the corresponding natural sound. The end result is a pleasant and natural combination of two senses that enables my brain to make an easy connection. A commenter noted that “this too can be overdone,” which I would have to disagree with because I frankly don’t understand why syncing audio and photos together is too much when that is what is always done in video.

Madsen and Foster are extremely talented photographers, and I thought this was a great storyline. Their video player allows me to become immersed in their story, but the heavy file size is definitely a huge deterrent. To compensate, BFC created a second, low-res version for the non-profit who commissioned the project, but let’s be honest: What paying client is OK with less quality for an optimal end product?

I’ll leave the color vs. black and white photo debate to the photographers out there, but I will say that I was curious to see the natural colors within this story.

Lastly, what do we think about this video length debate? How is it that people are complaining about 11 minutes here, but I have NEVER heard complaints for the length of MediaStorm’s videos, with Intended Consequences run time at 14:45, and The Marlboro Marine at 16:07? So, is it really a matter of time, or an issue of compelling content?

Personally, I think it’s a great idea that they implement a new player for their stories. While they do get creative credit for building this unique player rather than sticking their content into Soundslides, there just aren’t enough benefits to doing so.

Your thoughts?

UPDATE: Producer Poul Madsen followed up this discussion on BFC’s blog with some excellent comments:

” … I actually think this whole discussion about Streetlight leads up to a more general (and much needed!) discussion about clients, audience, expectations and target groups. When you choose to do work for a client – whether that be an NGO, a company, a newspaper … or the Pope – you agree on a set of rules before hand. And then you stick to the agreement.

… The storyline was something that we had more or less agreed upon with the NGO before travelling abroad. We new that the story wouldn’t be an innovative piece in any way but instead an informative piece that would be perfect for a well defined target audience. In other words – the story was never intended for the general public. We still chose to publish it on our own site because we feel it is an important story.”

Other posts that might interest you:

• Bombay Flying Club launches Wasteland
• Duckrabbit documents Congo conflict for Médecins Sans Frontières’ “Condition: Critical” project
• “A Developing Story” aggregates international philanthropic multimedia

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