Snow Fall is a multimodal project put together by the New York Times. The article itself is about an avalanche in the Washington Cascades that occurred in February of 2012. 16 people were involved, 13 survived.
What separates this article from most is the presentation. Unlike standard news stories that include block text occasionally sprinkled with a photo or two, this article was written using HTML5 technologies including audio and video. But it goes beyond merely adding a few pictures and videos. Animated images are used as headers for each page, highlighting the main themes of each part of the article. Videos are placed alongside of the text, adding additional insight to key sections of the story. Images within the article are actually slideshows. Clicking on them creates an overlay over the article, allowing the reader to click through a larger version of each image. Captions run across the bottom of each image adding additional information on what the reader is viewing.
In some sections of the article, images and videos are used to explain concepts. For instance, the article talks about new safety equipment such as air bags :
Similar advances in safety gear, such as easy-to-use digital beacons and air bags, have helped make the backcountry feel less dangerous. Beacons help rescuers find people buried under the snow, while air bags deploy a large balloon meant to help keep the skier closer to the surface of an avalanche. A leading American manufacturer of safety gear is named, appropriately, Backcountry Access.
That explanation, however, doesn’t really convey what these air bags are. What kind of a balloon? Are we talking about a typical balloon we see at birthday parties? Maybe they mean a weather balloon. How does the balloon deploy? Is the skier encased inside of it? Does it surround them?
All of these questions can be answered in the text, but it may take a lengthy explanation. Instead, the writers inserted a video, clearly showing the reader what is meant. In fact, it not only shows what is meant by “air bag,” but also shows a typical deployment of the air bag. This simple video, displayed off to the side, provides an immense amount of insight without having to read pages of explanation. That video can be accessed at the following URL : http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/multimedia/bundles/projects/2012/AvalancheDeploy/airbag_final.webm
Other elements used throughout the article add other insights. Images and audio of the victims let the reader see and hear that the victims are real flesh and blood as opposed to just a written name in an article. Images of the mountain, both static and animated, grant the reader a view of the terrain the victims were navigating. Additional interactive pieces change as the reader scrolls through the text, offering a visual representation of the commentary within the article.
While the text itself contains the majority of the information for the piece, it uses related visual elements for additional explanation and immersion. Links within the text are used to indicate related visual elements as well as activate those elements when the links are clicked. This brings the textual and visual elements together to reinforce concepts and build a more complete picture of the overall story.
As a whole, this is a pretty amazing article. The combination of technologies used helps to immerse the user in the story. It’s both an informative story as well as a work of art. I imagine we’ll see more articles like this moving forward, though I don’t believe these will be created as a normal course of daily reporting. The immense amount of effort required for each article is prohibitive.
This made me think about the Kress article and how he talks about writing making things “general” for us; it leaves out details of specificity that images must deal with. The air bag was a good example; when we read it in text we have a general idea of what it must be like, but that left you with quite a few unanswered questions. You write that “All of these questions can be answered in the text, but it may take a lengthy explanation.” Is that really the case? Would it require detail so immense that it would for practical purposes be impossible to achieve the spatial accuracy of images? For Kress, this leaves us with the same question: What kind of relationship do I want to achieve with the audience and what mode is best suited for this? This might be an example where tasks traditionally relegated to writing are going to move to visual elements for the sake of efficiency, if that is what we desire.