Crazy Horse: Two (multimedia) Views

A few weeks ago I joined about 250 American Indian high school and college students, their advisers, bus drivers and journalism mentors at Crazy Horse Memorial near Custer, South Dakota for the 9th Annual Native American Journalism Career Conference.
The highlight of the conference is always the trip up the mountain to face the spirit of Crazy Horse carved in stone. Students snapped pictures, recorded sound and video all the way to the top. Fellow mentor and Des Moines Register photojournalist Justin Hayworth and I joined in the visual frenzy. Between the two of us we came down the mountain with hundreds of photographs and about 30 minutes of sound.
When it came time to edit the photos and sound into a multimedia piece we took very different approaches. Justin edited his sound together using Audacity, as did I. Justin used Soundslides to put together his sound and photos, I used Final Cut Pro. Working with the same material the two of us came away with similar, yet different stories.
Who is right? Well the Guru of course, I’m older and wiser.
It isn’t really that simple. Both Soundslides and FCP are fine production products. Soundslides is quick and easy, allows you to add lower thirds, transitions and adjust the timing of the photos. Final Cut Pro is more time consuming but allows you to have greater control over the transitions, text, lower thirds and pacing of your story.
Here are both stories, you be the judge.

(Produced by Val Hoeppner, photographs and audio by Justin Hayworth)

(Soundslide by Justin Hayworth)