F.R. “Fritz” Nordengren (beta)

Behind the scenes at POY

Interactive categories went over big at 58th Annual Pictures of the Year competition.

There were a combined 51 entries in the two interactive categories at this year’s POY judging in Columbia, Missouri.

As a new media producer, and someone who has seen the high quality work that typically wins this award, I was curious about the judging process and when given the chance to watch part of the judging, I made the trek to Columbia last month.

How is it done? Web entrants are asked to send in a CD or other hard media version of their site, along with the web address of the project. One of the most striking things about judging was the presentation of projects. The judges then sit and watch a large screen projection of the project as an assistant navigates the mouse and their collective direction. The judges toss out links to “click” like captains barking orders to navigate ships into a harbor.

The other most striking thing was that the projects were viewed on one OS (Mac) and only in one browser (Netscape 4.7) and through a large multimedia projector, which makes the screen taller than the judges.

As a producer, I know two things about the web. First, it’s a one-to-one medium. Unlike television where several people can sit across the room and watch a linear program together, the web is one person in front of a screen, making choices about what to read or see or hear next.

The other thing I know is that web browsers show web sites differently. We typically test our projects in a number of web browsers (The Netscapes [4.05, 4.5, 4.7, 6 and 6.01] both on Mac, PC, and Linux) and the Internet Explorers (4.0 5.0, 5.5 again, on Mac and PC) and a few others like Opera. And also, 3 or 4 flavors of AOL’s built in browser on Mac’ and PC’s.

But for this judging, POY chose to limit the experience to Mac and Netscape 4.7. Which really reinforces the fact that on the web, it is an audience of one that matters most. In this case, the “one” is one system viewed by 5 judges.

The judges had a range of new media experience. Some had build multimedia projects, others had not. But really impressed me was the time they spent with each entry. Even if a site didn’t immediately grab their attention, they dug deeper to explore and review it. However, it usually was true that if a project didn’t capture the judges immediately, the deeper site was just as un-interesting.

The judging was kind. In most cases, the occasional broken link was assumed to be functional by the judges. During first round judging, any judge who felt strongly about a project could request that it be included in the second round, even in the other judges had voted it “out”. As a result, here are some things I came away with as general reactions:

1) Big media houses have finally embraced new media. As you look at the list of winners, it accurately reflects the number of entrants from large media organizations. It’s odd to me that a media so easy to publish in, in a contest essentially made up of entries submitted by individuals, lacked a majority of projects entered by individuals. I know from my own surfing, lots of quality sites did not enter the contest.

2) In general, judges disliked technology for technology’s sake. Two projects, judged back to back, included panoramic interactive photos. The judges universally disliked the one of photos only, but enjoyed one which included other story telling elements. As one of the judges commented, ” (if there are) lots of bells and whistles there better be a tune.”

3) Flash is universal. The use of Macromedia’s Flash technology in web projects is everywhere. The projects used flash seamlessly and in most cases, the use of Flash added to a project’s liability.

4) A universal dislike seemed to be Flash interactions that completely removed control from the user. A note to remember, make sure there is some way to navigate and control flash presentations including: stop, back to beginning, or jump specific images.

5) Judges seem to really like flash presentations that teased  in an almost television style - the subject or content of the story. Usually 10  15 seconds in length, these “attract sequences” pulled judges into the project and gave them an overture to the story.

6) Unlike Flash, the use of video is still a hodge podge of interfaces, and technology. One large media company had several entries, and each one used a different metaphor and interface for video. Even accounting for different delivery of video (Real, QuickTime and Windows media) video applications were clumsier than Flash. As interactive sites use more video, producers will need to have developers take care of video details behind the scenes in server based scripts to determine the appropriate format of video, and then show it to the user consistently.

Some of the projects were photography for photography’s sake. Online portfolios of amazing images caught the judges eyes even when there was a lack of a story other than “here’s my work on line.” Others were photo packages designed to supplement on-line reporting. Audio seems to be thought of as an add-on, rather than an integral part of the project. One of the projects I watched had the depth of audio experience of good public radio reporting, Some used audio effects to give feed back on mouse clicks (clicks, music notes, or the over used shutter-motordrive sound), the judges were split on whether this helped or hurt a project.

The winners are good projects. The content was interesting. If more individuals would enter their private stories, next year’s POY could be a very interesting contest.