Time out Tuesdays: The Shock Doctrine

Welcome back to Time out Tuesdays.

In a continuing effort to share the stories that resonate with me and to keep myself constantly spelunking for the very best in photojournalism week after week, I've decided to start this new feature.

Every week, I'll post up a new photo story, video, picture or multimedia piece that I think gets it right and is worth taking a look at for study, ideas, appreciation and inspiration.

I hope you guys (both of you) enjoy it.

This week take a look at "The Shock Doctrine," a short film by Alfonso Cuarón (if you haven't see "Children of Men" yet, go see it, if only for the technical skill of film making) and Jonás Cuarón on disasters and the government, corporate and social response to such events, inspired by author Naomi Klein's book of the same name.



Aside from the topic and the discussions that come out of it (I've already made plans to pick up the book), from a technical stand point their is much going on here.

The audio is in many ways more essential than the visuals, just try watching it without the sound and see how different the experience is. Not to say the visuals are not worthy of their own merits. I like the inter-cutting of graphic elements with archival footage to create a sense of new and old, coming together to make it fresh yet familiar.

For photojournalist, this piece reminds us that multimedia isn't only about the images. Yes, the images are important, after all that is why 99.9% of us decided to commit ourselves to poverty to do this with our lives, but I find that sometimes with multimedia, some of us forget the 'multi' part.

Sound, graphics and text are important tools for a good multimedia presentation, having seen this short film today, it's hard to image if any one of these elements were removed, that it would be better for it.