Multimedia from the Boys’ Sweet 16

Herald-Leader reporter Todd VanCampen and Helena Hau, from our imaging desk, (pictured above in a photo by Charles Bertram) have been working hard behind the scenes of the Boys’ Sweet 16 basketball tournament at Rupp Arena this week to bring our internet viewers something they have never had before in our basketball coverage - sound. We’ve mentioned multimedia frequently in our blog posts, and we felt like this coverage deserves a mention here as well. We’ve been getting a few questions about how we are producing it, so here’s a technical behind-the-scenes, how-it’s-done explanation.

As the photographers (David Stephenson, Charles Bertram, Frank Anderson, and freelancer Jo Rey Au - also in the picture above) are shooting the game. Helena and Todd are gathering ambient sound of fans or other arena noises. Between games, Helena begins to assemble the sound in Soundtrack Pro while Todd writes up a brief game wrap-up. Todd records himself reading the game notes and Helena incorporates that into her edit.

We primarily use two pieces of software for our online galleries: Soundslides and Slideshowpro. Soundslides is a great application for pairing audio with images, but we decided to stick with our usual way of displaying our game albums since Slideshowpro gives us the option of having sound or not.

Within an hour or two after a game when the sound and images are completely edited to a predetermined length and number, the show is uploaded to the internet for the fans to enjoy. In addition to our first-ever multimedia coverage of the Sweet 16, reporter Mike Fields is blogging all through the tournament.

-David Stephenson

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