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The Ethics of Mixing Music and Videojournalism Regina McCombs, a Poynter Institute visual journalism instructor, has created a powerful illustration of how soundtracks can affect a video story -- illuminating the debate as to whether they have a proper place in videojournalism. In her article, "See How Music Changes a Story," she shows three versions of the same video story, "Mom Goes to War" (featuring a pilot preparing for her second Iraq deployment and her young son). The first is with natural sound. The second adds a slow, somber keyboard track. The third features an upbeat guitar/percussion track. (Both scores are GarageBand loops -- demonstrating how easy and accessible it is for even someone with a tin ear to provide professional sounding music background.) McCombs poses the all-important question: how do the alternate versions change the way you react to, and feel about, the story?

Here are three slightly different versions of the same story, "Mom Goes to War," which I photographed last summer with reporter Mark Brunswick while working at The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune. In the story, Maj. Patricia Baker, a helicopter pilot in the Minnesota National Guard, prepares to go to Iraq for her second deployment, and her son Zach talks about his mother leaving. The first version uses only natural sound, while the other two use loops from GarageBand. I did a limited amount of music editing to fit it to the video.

Tips and Tricks for the 5D MKII - PART II - Audio Monday December 08th 2008, 2:10 am Filed under: Articles, Hardware One of the most common questions that I get relates to audio and the Canon 5D MKII. My first recommendation is always to record your audio independently - i.e. with a separate device. This gives you much greater freedom with your edit when you have a continuous sound recording - and are now free to cut between shots even if they weren't sequential. If you want to shoot stills and video - an independent audio recording device allows you to cut between stills and video - shot with the same camera.