Athens has a Soul
A multimedia look at the culture of Athens
By Sarah Beth Hensley, Staff Writer
May 29, 2007 | 4:08 a.m.
What is Athens, Ohio? To many it may seem to be just a college town; however, this is a place where every rolling hill, rutted brick path, and unfamiliar face has a story -- a story central to the culture of Athens.
This search to identify and demonstrate the culture of Athens will come alive through Soul of Athens, a project conducted predominately by the School of Visual Communications with the help of Brian Storm and Zach Wise. A number of journalism students also contributed with this project by blogging and applying multimedia expertise. Soul of Athens will take a multimedia look at this city, exposing the guts, glam, and groups through about 20 photo/video/animation stories, eight character portrait/audio profiles, four interactive info graphics, an interactive "dawn2dusk" photo section, and an interactive user-contributed photo section. This collection is scheduled to debut on May 28th on www.soulofathens.com.
Storm and Wise have been partnering as the leaders and teachers of a class tied to the project. "My job is to help inspire them, show them possibilities, and give feedback," Storm said.
Storm, of MediaStorm.org, has worked on similar projects at different schools although this is his first year on this project. Storm has founded an outlet for multimedia storytelling through MediaStorm.org and has given students an opportunity to showcase their talents. When Terry Eiler, the Director of the School of Visual Communications, approached him about collaborating with the project, Storm decided to get involved.
"We wanted to focus on the story and the technology used in telling the story," Storm stated. "There is a revolution in tools that can be used to collect data and distribute that data so the fact that we can make great stories and distribute them to anyone in the world is revolutionary."
Wise, Executive Producer, has been involved with this project in the past under its former name, Dawn2Dusk. With a new year comes great ambitions and goals for the project.
"We are hoping to accomplish a new benchmark in multimedia journalism storytelling, and to showcase what can happen when great talent collaborates as a team," Wise said.
Storm's objective for this project was to respect the talents of others he was working with while learning more about the community of Athens. He also hopes to share this project and have it be used as a model for other journalism schools in leverage.
When great talent collaborates there certainly can be amazing results. The staff of nearly 50 students working on this project included graduate and undergraduate students all working toward a common goal. While there were fewer undergraduate students, they put in whatever time they could to help with the overall project.
Nicole Davis, a junior Visual Communications major; Carley Heslin, a junior publication design major; and Amy King, a junior Visual Communications major; were all some of the undergrads that participated. These students worked on a layout, or "info graphics" that will appear in the Athens News. While Davis noted that this project was "something for her to do" and a way to "help out the graduate students involved," Heslin looked at this as an opportunity to "bring awareness about the school's budget problems."
"It is an important issue to recognize and learn more about and this can help lead to change," Heslin added.
King saw this as a project for the audience.
"The concept overall is really cool. It was difficult to pick just 30 pictures for the Athens News layout because there are so many more things to see," King stated.
These undergraduate students put in around five hours of work each week or crammed their responsibilities into one late night.
"The project was easy to fit into my schedule; we came in on one Sunday and worked on the spread and just worked all day. It was one long day of work," King mentioned.
Heslin, however, said, "It was definitely a project I had to make time for. You also had to be efficient with that time."
Wise and Storm have certainly put their time into this quarter-long effort. When asked how much time Wise was putting into Soul of Athens he responded with, "All of it.... seriously, above and beyond what would be expected as a professor. The last two weeks have been until about 3 in the morning."
All of the work won't go unnoticed. This collaborative multimedia project will certainly tell the tale of Athens, exposing its soul and intricacies in a new light.