As I have said in the past, practical journalism is about a 90/10 game. A lot of what I do is basically normal work, a normal job. But 10% of time, my job is awesome. I meet awesome people. I see awesome things. And frankly, even if my job was only 1% complete awesomeness, it would still be worth it. I had one of those 10% assignments last week.
The Cincinnati Art Museum has a new exhibit called “Roaring Tigers, Leaping Carp.” It’s all about Chinese animal paintings and the symbolism the specific animals carry. I was fortunate enough to get a personal tour from the curator of the exhibit. Hou-Mei Sung was obviously very passionate about this topic, after all it is her life’s work.
The paintings and sculptures were beautiful, but the stories behind the art was what really grabbed me. It was amazing how the symbolism of certain animals evolved over time. I just wish that I was able to include more of it in the multimedia piece. Anyway, it was really fun. I hope you enjoy the piece.
On the tech side, there was a great imbalance between photos and audio. Her verbal explanations required a lot of time to get through and she would be talking about specific things. So I even though the piece is over four minutes long (which is REALLY long for me), there are only 18 photos in it. I’m usually not a big motion person, but I saw no other choice. I chose to let the viewer experience the small details of the art works by panning around them. It turns the piece into more a video than a slideshow. I think it turned out well, and I hope that conhesiveness and intention of the motion lends itself to a great understand rather than making itself a big distraction.










