Sean Blanda

Whenever I travel it’s not so much about the destination, but the people. I always hope to meet an unforgettable character and bring a story home.

Nashville didn’t let me down.

It was there the Center for Innovation in College Media held its 2008 hands on training conference. Most conferences have the students hop from presentation to presentation like sheep, while grabbing pamphlets and paying for overpriced food.

CICM worked differently. On day one, we were given a story topic (or you could choose your own), camera, tripod, iBook, and audio recorder and were sent out into the streets of Nashville to gather the content. The second day we came back and edited. The third day we showed off our work and received awards.

I’m glad the conference took a hands approach, as I hear people talk abstractly about journalism all of the time. It was nice to finally get out there and get our hands dirty.

The Sad Six-Stringer

For our story topic, we were going to do a piece on the fame of Tennessee barbecue. We were going to frame it as three boys from Philly who put down the cheesesteak and tried something new. That was until we spoke to a local, who said BBQ wasn’t really a Nashville thing. This left us searching for a new idea, which we found in Mr. Brent Cunningham.

Cunningham was a street performer who had fallen on hard times. He didn’t have a home, his girlfriend had died, and he seemed to just wander the Nashville streets making friends along the way. In a way, a great story fell into our lap. So Saturday, we took video of him playing as well as conducted an interview. He was a mix of friendly and guarded during the whole process. When I originally approached him to ask for an interview he responded “Man, I’m workin’ here.”

After some cajoling he agreed to speak with us, and slowly opened up. After we were done, my parter, Brian James Kirk, asked him for one more song. He looked straight into the camera and played a seemingly auto-biographical tune about a “Sad Six-Stringer”. We didn’t realize this until we viewed the tape later that night, and it gave me the same chilling feeling I had when Johnny Cash performed “Hurt”. You knew there was an underlying message to the song selection. I regretted not getting more of the story out of him, but brushed it off as Brian and I cleaned up and left to hit the town.

Brian and I eventually settled in at a country bar. We ordered our drinks, talking about our story and how we would approach it. At that moment, I turned to my left, and there sat Brent Cunningham. He recognized us, and began to tell us more stories about how he built the very bar we were drinking on, how he could name every musician and their hometown who was playing that night, and even showed us his autographed picture behind him hanging on the wall.

I had no camera, no tape recorder, and not even a pen. Instead, I asked him questions out of simple curiosity.

The next day Brian and I sat down and put the whole package together. After he made the graphics and wrote the text, I whipped up a Web site and helped edit the video. It took us a few hours, but I present to you our submission. I’m really happy with the way things came out, and I’m glad the CICM gave us the chance to do this.

What did I learn?

I must say the most useful part of the convention is not the tutorials on how to use the equipment or software, but having the industry’s best guide you and critique your work. Seth Gitner, Angela Grant, and Bryan Murley dissected everyone’s videos and offered great advice to everyone. If they can give you a “good job” then it makes you feel a little more confident about taking your skills into the market. They also provided an inside look at some of the more forward thinking papers.

But the key points that were made were:

• You have half a second to get people’s attention in online video, make sure your opening shot is an attention getter
• Cut every 2-4 seconds
• Your equipment WILL mess up, and editing WILL be hard. Deal with it.
• Most videos won’t be longer than two minutes
• We have the opportunity to “take video back” from broadcast
• You must learn to edit quickly
• It’s still about telling stories
• It never snows in Nashville, and when it does, people panic

Another perk was the ability to compare skills with fellow journalists. My favorite videos were:

• Who put the Na in Nashville (a great risk that paid off)
  
• Artsy Cafe picks up diverse crowd
• Sole Man (done by three professors)
• Rocky Top (my pick for best of show)
• Check out all of the rest

There’s something different about being surrounded journalists talking about the state of the business and multimedia. It really got my gears spinning in ways that going to class never did. It also really got me thinking about the economics of a shift to multimedia, but that is another post for another day.

So would I recommend the conference?

Absolutely. To be surrounded by fellow students as well as those in the industry in a working environment was well worth it. I would advise, however, that if you are an adviser, you send students who are just adamantly opposed to the concept of multimedia. This conference forced everyone, regardless of background, to come together and produce a great story.

Many thanks to the CICM and all of the presenters, as well as the students who helped us out. A special thanks to Brent Cunningham who, although will probably never read this, made my trip to Nashville one I won’t soon forget and I wish him all the luck in the world (if you’re bored, listen to one of his songs).