Advice & inspiration

20 educational (and free!) multimedia resources

This post is also available in: Spanish

Today II guest blogger Tim McLaughlin reveals 20 of his most favorite resources for multimedia education – spanning audio, photography, videography, multimedia post production, and web design. Tim also provided a printable PDF of his list so that you can freely share it with others. I hope that once you read through his list you add your own favorites in the comments. I was impressed to see some unfamiliar sites amongst his list, and I hope to learn of even more inspirational resources from all of you!

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It’s both a blessing and a curse, but it’s undeniable that our industry shifts at a rapid pace. Keeping up with those changes requires resources, and fortunately there are people out there invested in tracking and educating those changes for us. In that vein, below are a few of my favorite educational resources broken up into the categories of disciplines related to multimedia. No list like this is complete, so if you have a website that you think deserves inclusion, just leave it in the comments section of this post. Happy learning!

Audio

Third Coast Festival

A HUGE repository of audio documentaries from the now independent non-profit, Third Coast Festival. There are endless hours of radio docs to be heard in their library. Additionally, for audio educators, Third Coast offers a free ($5 for shipping) curriculum, teacher’s handbook and cds of work.

Transom

My absolute favorite website for information regarding radio style audio documentaries. Transom regularly interviews the big names in public radio, and is a fantastic resource for gear reviews and software tutorials.

This American Life – Make Radio

Unless you live under a rock you’ve probably heard WBEZs radio series This American Life. However, buried in their newly designed website is a treasure trove of information about how to make compelling documentary audio. Click on the ‘Make Radio’ link and find videos from Ira Glass about storytelling, links to essays about radio from the TAL staff, and a number of additional educational resources. I’d strongly suggest picking up their $5 comic book written by Ira and Jessica Glass.

Photography

Photojournalism Links

Photojournalism. Links. Awesome.

Social Documentary

An online gallery for social documentarians and photojournalists. Check the submissions guidelines for information on how to include your work in their archive.

foto8.com

An archive of heady documentary photography and discussions about that photography. FOTO8 has a number of audio interviews and debates about subjects concerning photojournalists and documentary work.

aphotoeditor.com

The personal blog of Rob Haggart, former Director of Photography at Men’s Journal and Outside Magazine, A Photo Editor is an interesting look at the legal and marketing discussions that often determine how photography is used. Be sure to check out the Media Phonebook wiki that Rob links to in his sidebar: it’s absolutely full of media contacts.

iheartphotograph.blogspot.com

A blog for user submitted fine art photography, it’s a great place to check up on how young artists are using the photograph.

notifbutwhen.com/blog

The blog of photographer and recent Guggenheim grant winner Brian Ulrich, NotIfButWhen is full of thoughtful sentiments about the state of contemporary photography.

Video and Post-Production

kenstone.net

Stone is an expert at all things Final Cut Suite. From Final Cut Pro to Compressor, Stone shares his significant knowledge in easy-to-understand step-based tutorials. Don’t be fooled by the simple-looking website; this is one of the best free resources out there.

larryjordan.biz

You might recognize Larry if you’ve done some of Lynda.com’s Final Cut Tutorials. His personal website is full of information regarding the FCP suite. I’m particularly fond of his Editing Library which breaks down the vast amount of information that can be found on his site into nicely organized categories.

creativecow.net

A fantastic resource for help with video editing, CreativeCow’s forums are a thing of beauty. If you have a technical question about editing related software it’s probably got an answer somewhere in these forums.

ericmaierson.com

Maierson, a multimedia producer for MediaStorm, is great at sharing practical information about multimedia production, Final Cut Pro and the creative process.

mediastorm.org/blog, mediastorm.org/submissions

MediaStorm’s blog regularly highlights inspiring work, jobs in journalism as well as workflow suggestions from the team. Additionally, the submissions page is a treasure trove of information related to content gathering techniques, video and HDSLR workflow as well as equipment suggestions. Download them all for free.

videocopilot.net

Adobe After Effects is becoming an increasingly important part of many multimedia producers workflow. Video Copilot offers over one hundred absolutely free After Effects video tutorials. Some of the tutorials are on the advanced side, but a worthwhile resource nonetheless.

blog.planet5d.com

A great place to find inspiration and technical tutorials regarding video on Canon’s HDSLRs.

Web Design

kirupa.com

Despite all the hubbub recently, Flash is still a commonly used platform for developing interactive websites. Kirupa offers a wealth of information for Flash designers in their forums.

smashingmagazine.com

A daily updated blog with a wealth of free information regarding web design, coding (in just about any language you desire), and creative inspiration.

catswhocode.com/blog

A resource-heavy website dedicated to web developers and designers. This site has tons of tutorials and posts regarding coding best practices.

wprecipes.com

For those of you out there using the increasingly popular WordPress.org, WpRecipes offers daily posts on coding and customizing your WP site.

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Currently the Director of Multimedia at the Maine Media Workshops and Maine Media College, Tim McLaughlin is a photographer, multimedia documentarian and educator located in Rockport, ME. Originally from Louisville KY., Tim has his masters of fine arts from the University of Florida and a bachelors from Centre College, but owes a great deal to the two years he spent at Western Kentucky University.

Tim has worked with MediaStorm, the Eddie Adams Workshop, the Rocky Mountain News, the Mountain Workshops and most recently shot a film for the Rotterdam Film Festival.

Other posts that might interest you:

• Seven interactive tools to strengthen your next multimedia package
• UX for news content: Designing news to be usable
• Top 50 multimedia packages of 2010

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