“When capturing motion and stills for use in multimedia it is essential to record all subjects in wide, medium and close-up shots,” Mary Lynn Price told me recently. As a video journalist focusing on “one-man-band” reporting, Price uses all three perspectives to carefully construct rich reporting experiences. One great example is her “Conserving Shackleton’s Historic Hut in Antarctica,” which she produced in 2008 for “Women Working in Antarctica.”
“The wide shot is the establishing shot, the medium shot clearly shows the subject, and the close-ups give us the ‘wow’ factor,” Price explains. She uses all of these to her storytelling advantage throughout “Shackleton’s Historic Hut.”
Even though it’s only five minutes, “Shackleton’s Historic Hut” asks a lot from Web viewers with short, fickle attention spans. Price holds our interest by presenting as much information as many, slower-paced TV documentaries would in a half hour.
“The way I approach multimedia is to think about each project as a storyteller and then to think about what tools I will need to best tell the story,” says Mary Lynn Price, who since retiring from practicing trial law in 2003 has dedicated herself to video journalism, with specific interest in natural history stories that support conservation efforts. Just as Ralph Clevenger told me, Price explained to me than nothing matters more than thinking about story when putting together “music videos” — her name for multimedia projects that tell stories without narration or even graphics, but just smart use of images and music.
Price proves her music-video storytelling prowess in “C-17 Flight to McMurdo Antarctica.” In less than two minutes, she takes us from baggage security scanning and flight boarding to landing on “The Ice,” having shown us tons of interesting close-ups during this famous, windowless flight.
“Famous” is, um, definitely too strong a word for this particular flight that takes scientists and support staff to the McMurdo Station. But I’m an Antarctic exploration junkie so I’ve sure heard about it plenty, although I could never really imagine what it would be like — until I got taken for a ride with Price’s great documentary vision.
What does it mean that I’m an Antarctic (and Arctic) exploration junkie? It means that I’ve read Alfred Lansing’s“Endurance”three times, twice read “Shackleton’s Forgotten Men” (by the brilliant Lennard Bickel) and at least once just about all of the other classic books about frostbite and suffering in pursuit of knowledge at the southernmost (and northernmost) tip of the world.
