Next month I'm speaking at the World Documentary Conference in Falmouth about this strange new film form called: videojournalism-as-cinema.
As with most academic presentations, I had to produce an abstract; a brief about my presentation, which is a couple of paras down.
But videojournalism-as-cinema is not some abstract theory of a film form. It was born from various questions.
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| Before Vjism, smallest camera made in 1947 B&H Filmo |
- Why do video news providers struggle to capture the attention of various audiences, generally younger 15-30 years?
- How did News networks muck up this thing called videojournalism by making you think it was all about one person making the news, when such practices are as old as news?
- What is the point of Videojournalism-as-cinema?
- Why would we pay to go to the cinema, but not pay to go and watch the news?
- What's some of the best cinema that's grabbed you?
Here's the abstract
‘The first impulse is to record it or to interpret it’, says Film Director Martin Scorcese (Silver Docs, 2006), being interviewed about filmmaking. He adds: ‘One says to record it is documentary and to interpret it is dramatic fiction’.
‘The first impulse is to record it or to interpret it’, says Film Director Martin Scorcese (Silver Docs, 2006), being interviewed about filmmaking. He adds: ‘One says to record it is documentary and to interpret it is dramatic fiction’.
This ‘common sense’ view
has persisted when comparing the television documentary form and Hollywood’s subjugation
of the word cinema to denote dramatic fiction.
Academic studies,
coupled with the pragmatism of filmmakers have yielded forms such as Cinéma
Vérité (O’Connell, 2010), Docufiction (Lipkin,
Paget & Roscoe, 2006) and the
journalistic essay in Personal Cinema (Rascaroli, 2009). These forms imbricate
cinema modes e.g. visualisation, structure etc. with non-fiction forms, such as
news and the television documentary.
In this presentation, using
empirical evidence, David Dunkley Gyimah maps out the infusion of cinema in
news making that stems from within the discipline of videojournalism.
An under researched field,
videojournalism’s public reframing is much needed, however in his 20-minute
slot, Dunkley Gyimah presents evidence of a stylistic form used by exemplary videojournalists,
known as videojournalism-as-cinema.
Arguably, mains stream
news (MSN) uses cinema artefacts, but according to Dunkley Gyimah
videojournalism-as-cinema practitioners are more overt in their appropriation of
dramatic fiction styles as influences, as well as cinema’s earlier framework in
Russian cinema.
The implications are many,
but in this instance, Dunkley Gyimah focuses on how videojournalism exemplars
create news films that are memorable.
Above all it involves the effective communication of ideas involving a wide pool of styles.
follow David @viewmagazine
Above all it involves the effective communication of ideas involving a wide pool of styles.
Biblio
O’Connell, P.
J. (2010). Robert Drew and the
Development of Cinema Verite in America. Illinois: Southern Illinois
University.
Leyda, J.
(1983) Kino: A History of the Russian and
Soviet Film - Study of
the Development of Russian Cinema, from 1896 to the present. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Lipkin, S. N., Paget, D., & Roscoe, J.
(2006). ‘Docudrama and mock-documentary: Defining terms, proposing canons’ . In: Rhodes, G. D. & Springer, J. P. ed. Docufictions: Essays on the Intersection of
Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking,
11-26. (6th Ed).
Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co
Rascaroli, L.
(2009). The Personal Camera: Subjective
Cinema and the Essay Film London: Wallflower Press.
Silver Docs
(2006). ‘Interview with Martin Scorsese, Documentary Vs Narrative’. AFI Discovery Channel Documentary Festival.
Available at: http://www.youtube.com/wactch?v=RHFmjGxB0lU [Accessed: 5th September
2013].
Bio.
David Dunkley
Gyimah is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster lecturing in
videojournalism, documentary and online/ social network practices. A former
broadcast journalist/producer at BBC Newsnight/ (1990) Channel 4 News and ABC
News South Africa, Dunkley Gyimah is also one of the UK’s first NUJ recognised
videojournalists in 1994. He is the recipient of a number of innovation and
journalism awards e.g. Knight Batten and is chair of the jury for Broadcast
Innovation at the RTS. Dunkley Gyimah is an artist in residence at the
Southbank centre and has recently submitted his PhD that examine
videojournalism and its offerings towards a future journalism. He graduated
from Falmouth postgrad in journalism in 1989. His work can be viewed from the
sites his built
