In Anders Fagerjord’s, Multimodal Polyphony, he discusses the importance and use of multimodal polyphony on the world wide web. We are constantly surrounded by different mediums: writing, images, music, and videos.
One way that all these mediums were combined was in Flash Documentaries that became popular on the internet in 2000 and 2001. As Fagerjord describes, “Using media’s Flash software, Web authors were able to create documentary films of still images and voice-over commentary, and distribute them as files small enough for Web download. These are narrated, timed slideshows, where still images are ‘made moving’ by moving the frame in panning, tilting, or zooming the image” (Fagerjord, p. 2). Until this article, I had never really heard of these Flash Documentaries, but these are very similar to what we are doing with our slideshows presently. We are taking our still image pictures and combining them with commentary.
These flash documentaries do three important things for us as viewers:
- We can take in the experience by looking and listening.
- The language and photos are both dynamic, so rhythm and time become an important factor.
- We isolate different devices that are inspired by rhetoric and can be used again by other people.
In order to be able to make a flash documentary effective and meaningful for viewers, the writing, photography (images), music, sound effects, and narration must all come together in a symbiotic way. Everything must be timed correctly, arranged correctly, and communicated correctly in order to effectively convey the narrative of the documentary. These are all important things to keep in mind while working on our next project in class!
Here is an example of a flash documentary I found online:
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