Samuel Hargress Jr. is the owner and manager of the Paris Blues bar in Harlem, New York. Paris Blues is one of the few remaining old bars in the neighborhood. On Saturday nights, the bar attracts a cast of characters that could have come from Cheers, Harlem-style. Customers don their godfather hats, snakeskin leather shoes, and 1940's styled zoot suits. From 20's jazz to 90's funk, the customers get down on the small dance floor.

The regulars consider themselves family. Enrique "Henry" Justiniano is a fixture at the bar from where he watches the action on the dance floor, goblet of rose wine stacked with ice in hand. A former shoe shine and repair man, Enrique has been Sam's close friend for 35 years.

Sue Kelly, the bar manager, keeps customers in line when they try to take advantage of Sam's good nature. Sam's "adopted daughter," Gilda Courtney always attracts a large crowd to the bar. You'll have to watch to see why.

In a neighborhood where rapid development is underway and condos now sell for $2 and $3 million dollars, Paris Blues is one of the few places to weather the change. Sam's personal history parallels many of the changes throughout the past 50 years. Growing up in Hale County, Alabama, he witnessed everything from the civil rights movement to the looting and rioting in Harlem after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot.

While experiencing dramatic changes around him, Sam created a timeless place where people could seek refuge and unwind amongst friends. That's why they call him Mr. Blues.

Mr. Blues is a product of the MediaStorm Storytelling Workshop, where participants work alongside MediaStorm staff to create an intimate, character-driven documentary in just one week. Learn more about upcoming MediaStorm workshops and online training at mediastorm.com/train.

Mariana Bazo, Photography and Additional Video

It was great to spend a whole week shooting a more personal story, working with a team of professionals with different skills and experiences, but all sharing the same desire: to produce a perfect final product.

Despite the long nights editing, traveling by subway, crossing New York City every day to get to MediaStorm, walking through Harlem and talking with the characters in the bar, the whole week was a wonderful experience.

I preferred the night at the bar, where everyone was very generous letting us be part of their lives for a moment and allowing me to portray them. I specially enjoyed my conversations with Enrique.

Always a pleasure to make a stop in our daily routines and dedicate a week to learn. Here we learned, not only from the characters portrayed, but from all the people who work at MediaStorm. Everyone had time to share during a week dedicated to think, produce, make and view multimedia work.

Benjamin Norman, Video, Audio and Additional Interviews

I think the most helpful component of the workshop is that it's a product-focused. Yeah you could sit around their conference room for a week tinkering with gear and going back and forth about multimedia shooting strategies and techniques and you'd still learn a lot, but we all know practice, and learning from your own mistakes, makes perfect. And trust me, you're going to make pretty much every mistake in the book during the workshop week.

But because of that pressure to create a piece in seven days, you'll be amazed how quickly the gear issues fade away and how storytelling becomes the main topic of conversation. And this is what makes the workshop, and MediaStorm, so damn good. It's not the latest HDSLR that sucks you in to their work, its the storytelling, and the knowledge and experience you gain working with the best of the best is what'll make those 3am nights worth it.

I think I summed it up best to my friends when they asked me how the workshop went, "It took a few days out of my life, but it added many years to my career.

J. Pinkley, Interview & Reporting

The advanced multimedia workshop really allowed our team of five to dissect elements of storytelling as we proceeded day-to-day. While our preview cut ended up feeling like a profile because our subject didn't really open up to us in the week we spent with him, we got valuable feedback from the group at week's end to rework the piece to develop other characters. Our team meshed well in spite of not ever having worked together before and the lesson in that is how important communication is to a successful story. The workshop was so energizing for new strategies to employ at the Star Tribune as we redesign our website to better showcase multimedia.

World Press Photo

Year: 2011

Place: Nominee

Category: Multimedia Contest: Linear Productions

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