Magnum in Motion:
Photography Finds a Voice
Building the Multimedia Essay
Once all the assets were transferred onto hard drives, Boeglin and her team gathered around their Macs at the table and began assembling the essay.
From “Tour de France,” Rue de Rivoli, Paris. Photo by Martine Franck.
Boeglin had already drafted a rough storyboard and sequenced the still images using iPhoto. Crosignani made video and audio selects, brought them into Final Cut Pro for editing, and exported segments out to QuickTime periodically for approval and adjustments. Nick Marwell, Magnum in Motion’s business developer who negotiated the partnership with Slate, wrote intro texts.
The final file went to intern Flash producer Thomas Nielsen, who embedded images and sound in small Flash animations, added captions, integrated the Flash animations into the web template, and compressed the video in several formats to test balance between quality and accessibility. In the meantime, content producer Martin Fuchs converted the file to a podcast.
“We’re still experimenting with the video format,” Boeglin points out. “I’m not yet totally happy with the result; we need to find the right balance between format, image quality, and accessibility.”
Playing Rugby with Lions
Magnum in Motion is “like a rugby team in an arena filled with lions,” Boeglin says. “Although we are part of Magnum, we need to feel editorially free from the photographers. To work around a table as a team gives us the feeling of a newsroom or collective.” Mixing fast decisions and scripting with humor, she says, adds to the team spirit.
In addition to creating the essays, Magnum in Motion creates galleries of still images taken by Magnum photographers for Slate.com. Picture editor Zena Koo creates the galleries based on Magnum Photos archives; they sometimes focus on historical events, sometimes on specific world issues, sometimes on simply great photography.
“We’ve basically created a mini Magnum site on Slate that allows us to reach a whole new demographic of people,” says Boeglin. “They might not have known Magnum previously or haven’t been exposed to the kind of photography we do.”
Immersion Photography
Boeglin and Myrthu plan to display Magnum in Motion essays at events that will “change the perception of Magnum as prints behind glass on a wall,” Boeglin says. “In an event with live music, for example, they suddenly become immersive content.” They are planning to make an appearance at Visa Pour L’Image, photojournalism’s equivalent of the Cannes film festival.
“When Magnum started, it was about authorship and independent storytelling,” Boeglin stresses. “Now, using Apple technology and editing tools with the web, we can express the entire meaning behind the photographer’s content. We can ask ‘What was the intention of the author? What was the perception of reality that the author could eventually report? Why was the photographer in a location for a longer time than any other photographer? Why was it important?’”
