2008- Training, hyperlocal, China & the BBC

In three weeks time I will be interviewing a key BBC figure on News, News Futures and Multimedia.

All I'll say in the meantime is you'll unlikely to see many one-on-ones with him ( If any, particularly outside the news belt) so I'm very pleased. Thanks to those e.g. Paul Brannan, Peter Barron etc that helped out on this.

The inteview will be used for

A feature on Multimedia now previewing on Viewmagazine.tv

Presentations at Cultural Exchange and World Press Association

and some work on a PhD

But I have an idea which I hope we can share in.

I'd like to invite a video question from you which I will put to my interviewee and I'd like to use your question in the feature, but will also entertain posting your segment to you, if you want.

There are a couple of caveats to make this work really neatly.

That hopefully it'll be a good spread for use on an interactive map.

That you're a video shooter/ vlogger so that I can link to your story/vlog. Who knows we might even get a vlog carnival going.

That I'll probabably take about 6-10 questions, so you'll have to be to the point.

I'll come back to this again with more details closer, but in the meantime if you want to email me to talk about this please do so on davidg@jounalist.com or my viemagazine account. Just to save any spamming, if you're a viewmagazine.tv viewer you'll easily find it.

So there we are.

It's a mad, but clear idea for collaboration.

Just please don't ask how you'd make a living doing things like this. LOL

China
A couple of details to sort, but my colleague informs me that we should be off to Peking University mid year. He, Kienda Hoji is a visiting professor there in music and law and is some way in learning how to speak and write mandarin.

I have barely scratched the surface and will be picking up the odd tip from some of the Masters students at Westminster.

This year it won't be lost on many that this is China's year, and not only because of the Olympics.

If you attended OFF event in New York, which a good friend Rob Chiu presented at you would have come across the incredible Leonard Shlain who wrote the Alphabet and the Goddess, the conflict between word and image.

Inside Leonard talks about how different parts of the brain are developed from reading linearly ( western) and Chinese characters, which has provided Kienda and me with thoughts about working multimedia with our hosts.

It's all a germ of an idea, but I'll come back to it after some clarity.

Hyperlocal
Two years ago you'd still be ooming and arming about video; not any more.

We're all film makers, but does that mean saturation in subject matter etc.

Of course not.

But one area that has recieved a lot of attention but not much action is hyperlocal; I'm talking UK.

So this is going to an interesting year for hyperlocal news: News you can use.

I''ll make the links on this pilot/draft site fully active soon.


Training
And less I forget, training, training, training.

But this year, I expect to see some fairly non conventional outfits take to video, videojournalism and multimedia either as a way of documenting their work or teling their own stories.

Hillman Curtis, Flash Guru turned Award winning film maker has made a wonderful film on Pentagram; the tones and textures are just drop dead gorgeous, plus his depth of field comes across as if he were using a swing and shift lens.

Take a look for yourself.

You can see the interview I did with Hillman here, which I hope to update when I next get the opportunity to bump into him

But back to videojournalism, expect to see more museums and municipal bodies get involved.