Friday, August 01, 2008

Video journalism by stealth 2017

It's a moot point, but the Videojournalism evolution enveloping, by and large newspapers has come by stealth.

If youtube and the lot hadn't demystified how easy shooting and cutting a piece of video was, we'd all be going about our merry business.

Newspapers would be looking to redesigns with newspapers and TV would be pressing ahead with its HD and new division of labour.

Note: shooting and cutting a video is different from shooting and cutting a good film - one for the purists here, though Youtube has some blinding films as well.

By stealth, and increasingly by design now, we've become a media of video shooters/journalists/commentators/conversationalists.

It's so low hanging fruit that it almost requires no qualifications.

But without the whole web 2 thing, where would video journalism be?

It'd be around: Michael Rosenblum, Naka Nathaniel, Travis Fox,Scott Rensberger et al would be doing what they do, and doing it darn well except they'd be less eyeballs on them.

The explosion in newspaper video journalism changes all that. The question of ownership or custody of the form becomes an area of interest.

Not nakedly, but in refining something for that publication and this publication.

What is it is scrutinised over and over again.

Guidelines are set up to help the

Some say it's shooting TV, others say it's more than that: another language in itself.

Some say you can't cross the line; others say the line was always designed to be crossed but creatively.

There is a kink we've approached and as one of the thousands of VJs who's passionate about the form it is this.

This is what videojournalism is. This is it. This, it!

How do you go from Battleship Potemkin to a film like Gladiator. A lot of money :)

How do you get from photography at the turn of the 20th century to the Magnums and Pulitzer photographers?

Money again :)

How do we go from the classic but now seemingly tame beats of Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five's Rappers Delight to the more complex synthesis of P Diddy?

More Money?

I guess there was a lot of experimenting going on.

A lot of the things we never saw, heard, that sunk without a trace were all part of journey.

Video journalism.. I figure we've...correction I have really only just begun.

What might it look like in 10 years?


Yep, but that means experimenting, doesn't it?

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