The Well Told Story – SNOW FALL

For this assignment I found a website sponsored by the New York Times to be quite fascinating: Snow Fall The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek by John Branch.

When you first hit enter on the web link you are taken to a landing page that shows the title of the work over-layed on a looping video of snow. The effect is immediate and brings excitement for what’s to come next.

Landing Page of Snowfall

As you scroll down the looping video slides easily into a narrative text. The next visual element is a 45 second video of a skier describing her experience on the mountain. What’s awesome is that you can click on the text and it immediately plays the video.

About an inch below, there is a section entitled Tunnel Creek that has an interactive map displaying the slopes of the mountain and tracks which skiers took. It provides you with an arial view of the landscape as well as text to distinguish different areas.

After this, pictures are then placed side by side within the text as well as other videos describing the ordeal. This various media employments keep one invested in the story. Which is divided into six tabs at the top of the page.

I myself have never been skiing before, but I can feel myself physically occupying this space through the combination of graphic imagery, video, sound recordings, slideshows, and effects the website provides. It’s like you become a part of someone else’s trauma, which is a privilege to be able to visualize and study it while being removed from the actual experience. I appreciate the last tab: “Word Spreads.” This one seems to fully engage with the people involved in the story. The slideshows of each of them within their homes and with their loved ones or the people they left behind let me know what the progression of their life has been. Since the mountain where they’ve moved and the spaces they occupy and the people they impacted.

Visit the site: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek