What is videojournalism on the web, in multimedia and offline - a major study and film - and why it matters

What is videojournaism and why it matters?

What is videojournalism?  

This could be a boring academic question, but it isn't. Many have defined, or described it, but few have attempted an anthropological (historical) examination.

Some people have, but as journalistic enterprises and as a journalist myself they've made for interesting reads, but I wanted to attempt something different. A deep invasive examination into what it is, and its purpose. I secretly refer to it as the lost chapters.

Why does this matter? Here's an analogy. You can't begin to understand social media, without the contribution of web 2.0, web 1 and unequivocally going back to the break out of the web itself into the public domain in the 1990s

Only by interrogating its past, provenance,  can you understand the potential of its future. And that's what I have set out to do.  In the 1990s there were around five different pioneers that emerged in the US, UK, Denmark, Germany and Japan.

What if some of those people never went away. What if they quietly continued with their craft? What if they harboured deep thoughts about it and amazingly emerged and said we did it quite differently.

What did they mean? Then they showed us and from that we could see the endless possibilities, its potential and where videojournalism was strangled. Yes its potential was pared down.

You may think I sound like a salesman. That magic snake potion for the media's woes. But actually my research has the dryness warranted from academic research. No hyperbole, but substantiated facts.

The process has taken me to China, Cairo and Chicago. Its language and construct is more expansive, yet as previous posts going back to 2007 show it's not a utopia. There is no such thing, but the form when it bears its fangs it constitutes an artistic form par excellence.

But why would anyone bother reading it?  Its 85,000 words, involves more than 150 interviews.

They include the figures that brought videojournalism to the BBC and has taken 6 years as a part time PhD.  So when I do publish please feel free to skip to the conclusion then work you way backwards.

5 Reasons for presenting

Why would anyone consider reading it. If you don't mind here's 5 rhetorical answers

1. I was one of the first official (National Union of Journalists) videojournalists in the UK in 1994.
2. I have spent near 20 years immersed in its form and style, in one year creating 500 stories on air. Before being a videojournalist I worked for the BBC e.g. Newsnight, was an on air reporter for BBC 2 Reportage and ITN's London Tonight and produced for Channel 4 News and ABC News.
3. I have used it on projects to create: 

• commercials, turned around in a day that went out on CNN International
• Being Heavyweight boxer Lennox Lewis videojournalist during his fight with Tyson. 
• Creating the first ever Country-to-Country videojournalism broadcast (Ghana and South Africa)
• Launch the UK's first newspapers training with the Press Association
• Created films that have been well received international, winning international awards
• Used it t create Obamas 100 Day film showed at the Royal Festival Hal
• 
  

     4. It's been one of the most difficult things I have undertaken and I'm grateful for opportunities such
     as being a judge for the UK's television Emmys, the RTS that opened my mind some more.
    5. Its work that extends from winning the J-lab knight Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism
     and the international videojournalism awards in Berlin.

And I'm looking forward to sharing it with as many people as possible, my good friends in the US and universities, Europe, China and Ghana/South Africa. They're linning up nicely.

Its place in a future of journalism when its done and that's soon, because I'm also making it into a film. The results I believe will question videojournalism to the point that "there is no such thing as videojournalism, yet there IS videojournalism". This almost drove me mad.

In the meantime I look forward to sharing and explaining some of its preliminary findings such as the image above, how videojournalists read a scene in making a film.

Intentionality - videojournalism alt-directness

If thoughts are the pathway to impulses: you think and so you do, why don't we give "thoughts" a hierarchy in news filming?

We do in literary journalism: Minister what did you think? Yet so far we fail to give it enough precedence in non-fictional filming.

Our thoughts; the subconscious are unsecured, unguarded and if anything giving it prominence in filmic narratology may open us up to not just thought, but intent, which is convictable.

Man: Yes I was going to murder him ( film shows how)

In the plastic arts, such pathways are encouraged; they're the stuff of flashbacks, entertainment par excellence as in Minority Report or Dream Sequences: Jacobs Ladder and last year's mind bender Inception.  Mental content directed was the basis of Intentionality by Husserl.


Memories from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
This video references the past, but not just as literal recordings of events ie news, but an essay, reflexive thoughts, that could be the basis of non-fictional interaction.

In non-fictional, the canon of "cause and effect" and evidentiary purpose leaves "thought" still a figment.

Evidence, what you see and hear from an event only acquires the status of fact if it can be tested, both outside the discursive arguments by people of repute. As Bill Nichols puts it: "Facts become evidence when they are taken up in discourse; and that discourse gains the force to compel belief through its capacity to refer evidence to a domain itself"

Policeman: Tell me who saw you thinking this?

Doesn't quite work, does it and only in films do subjects interact with each other in the same plane.  What makes Nolan's Inception all the more fascinating is the shared consciousness - call it social networking dreaming.  Coming to a screen near you. Stick that up your bonny clyde!!

This is all dandy so far, but can it, does it have a legitimacy in non fictional filming? As an emerging currency for videohyperlinking and spatial videojournalism, why yes! The DVD extra now becomes part of the body politik.

This is the emergence of spatial cinema post "24", as captured elegantly by Inception, repurposed not just within the screen but the narrative. See the cube on viewmagazine.tv

Though limiting at the moment; it was an expression, more than the finished product, it relays screen based frame watching, with a leaning to vid- hyperlinking ( see article that features David's thoughts in The Economist)  and hyper narratives.

And in a world of varying truths, re: wikileaks, what we thought was true and now realise what is and isn't require a bit more than reflexive paragraphs.

We might not give it much exposure now, as we're still locked into a mimetic language of films of record - point and shoot, but as we become more video narrative literate, we'll begin to borrow more from fictional-film.

The power of thought materialised really means " you mustn't be afraid of thinking a little bigger, darling".

How good do you think you are and how do you know?

Here's a thought? How good do you think you are at what you do?

It's one of those squirmish questions human resource often inflict on unsuspecting candidates, who must then straddle a line between deprecation and the avoidance of arrogance.

That is, if you are good.

But spare a thought for those whom you might say are not very good at what they do.

John Cleese sums it up as follows - the same cognitive skills that allow you to know you're good at something, can also illustrate how poor you are at recognising how bad you are.

It's long winded, but put simply. If you're bad at something, often you lack the skills to understand how bad you really are. You see it all the time at open competitions, say the X-factor.

Cleese got me thinking more deeply though, because often the act of knowing something boils down to the science of knowledge and how to learn.  This is captured exquisitely in Don Schon's the Reflective Practitioner.

The philosophy of knowing
In Don's book he takes us on a journey of how we learn and how we might qualify that learning process.

Do something, fail, and do it again, reflecting on where you went wrong.  As such, even acts considered futile by others may have merit.

I demonstrated this when I showed a group of students an object and asked what it was. It was an apple, but how could they prove that.

They needed by negation or what Don refers to as hypothetical testing disprove it was anything other than the object in question. They needed to traverse a reflective journey articulating and discarding thoughts.

I often in my first video classes give a camera to clients asking them to go out and shoot. Many students return often embarrassed or disgruntled that they were not given instructions.

I point out there is no formality in what to do. Were I to abandon them at that point, then their fears would be justified, but I then begin to explore their natural ability, untainted learning, around the exercise.

Some will demonstrate natural talent; others will in despair do very little crippled by the fear of not knowing and not wanting to explore.

Which experimenter are you?
Schon devises his experimenters into the following

• Exploratory experimenters
• move testing experimenters
• Hypothetical testers
• and my own interpretation non-testers occupy these realms.

Explorers are what I call jumpers;. They'll take the leap into the unknown with often little guidance, backed by their own fierce temperament.  Move-testers need to see the next link in the chain. If it's not obvious they'll not move.

You meet them in Chess all the time, when you literally have to pull their finger.

Hypotheticals scratch an itch. They've thought about any number of tangible outcomes and will eliminate by active thinking what to do. Non-testers lack the spirit to move in an alien environment.

Child Psychologist Dr Desmond Morris' extensive work with children - the subject of a BBC programme gave some clues. Some toddlers in an experiment were quite at ease playing with foreign objects; others would stand by non-committed.

Perhaps it is preprogrammed, explaining why those who aren't as good at what they do often have no idea about this. But it does help if you're in a safe environment where you can explore your concerns.

This is something that I try and foster in my work. Creativity craves safe environments to work without fear before you let the genie loose.

Providing a safe place and getting people to work together, whilst encouraging the first three aforementioned often helps bring along the non-committed. It's a complex process of behaviour, but often it works. Age, background, self esteem all play a part.


Daring exploits
In 1992 with little more than a piece of paper and a scribbled name I travelled to South Africa for the first time. I was met at the airport by someone I had swapped a letter with. Yes, no emails and mobiles during those days.

It was a huge risk, but he met me and is still a firm friendship today. The fact it turned out he was one of South Africa's up and coming theatre directors adds another layer.

In this world of continual change, the tools- this onslaught online - is only part of the key to innovation. Steven Covey, author of the galactical best seller The 7 habits of highly effective people, provides an insight into interdependency.

It was true back when his book launched to become a best seller then as it is now.

Often it's not the subject that stymies us, but the process of how we acquire and process knowledge that needs greater critical thinking.

And here in a world being levelled by consensus whilst we have the opportunity for collective thoughts - a good thing- we must also be mindful of not losing idiosyncrasies and a sense of inddifference to consensus.  That's not the same as not knowing, more the explorer at their best.

We need more explorers.

Searching for the definitive in new journalism

Hey

Bit of a change for me here, but I thought of writing something in the first person. It's more of a reflexive diary entry - a sort of brain dump, but if any of it chimes with you, do as always plse ping me.

Yesterday I spent the whole day in the British library. At one point I looked up from the six books surrounding me and thought, what a way to be spending your time - when I'd sooner be out in the open air making a film or something.

But the Library - and I have been surprised myself has become a monastery. The reading rooms are something out of a Potter movie egging you on with imaginary hog what evers lurking around. Anyway enough of my soporific nonsense.

I did however come away with evidence I needed to build into my ongoing research and my PhD thesis about future media. PhDs are for me the pedagogical equivalent of waterboarding where you feel you're drowning in a mass of data and you just can't breath. Nothing is so quite psychologically mind pounding.

But when you do catch your breath and think through, you start to see glimmers of things that seem to make sense.

Take this statement that often platforms very rarely serve the purpose for which they were designed. The early adopters find a means, and then through the years and "misuse", often serendipity we get to that place.

You can trace this in, art, photography, and film which was first designed for science value, or that in the 50s cinema moguls thinking they wanted to be different from television introduced cinevision ie widescreen. There was no functional reason or clearly thought out aesthetic as you look at your latest movie shot in 1080i HD.

More closer to home, the net from 1996 when I first started on it, is way different from to today. For Berners-Lee it was his way to remember data. That's old hat. Now, if you haven't seen the news video from 1995 which shows the UK newspapers talking about the web, please do here.

David presenting at the annual Media Development gathering - Around 200 companies from around the world who publish in difficult environments.

But we haven't yet still cracked this thing of new journalism on the web. Through experimentation, we've made gains, but academics, and broadcasters continue as we, they, must ponder big questions for knowledge, power and economic value.

So, as a new cohort of trainee journalists are set to start this year, I think what it might look like in 2020?

In the meantime, we go to conferences, we listen to scions, people co-translating their experiences, some sharing pilot studies....We're constantly, rightly so, searching for the definitive in new journalism.

This statement crystallised my thoughts. In fact I must have coughed so loud in the library I might have been in danger of being kicked out.

"A new medium is not born fully formed with a clear mission and purpose. Instead the first people involved have to struggle with various formats to find what programming and information fit the medium’s particular strengths and weaknesses"

“...new practices do not so much flow directly from technologies that inspire them as they are improvised out of old practices that no longer work in new settings".

The attributes of the medium according to the author, Carolyn Marvis, come about through a negotiation of technologies. Now, this is a bit of a wow statement, because it gives some legitimacy to postulate with academic constraints, what might be?

Imagine in 2020, the generation working on the web looking at what we were doing now thinking OMG what Luddites. When I showed some students my Uher- a radio recorder - and explained this was the universal tool of choice in the 90s, laugh they nearly died. That it's a lethal weapon and in my 8 years of use I never injured anyone is a miracle.

So first let's think about the net as it exists now, the web and its unique qualities, where with a bit of trend extrapolation and modeling we might be able to kick to touch the crystal ball.

Here I pay tribute to Dr Latham, cuz I used to loath this stuff during my degree in maths and chemistry.. modelling.. but hey, 26 years later, here I am dusting it off. So what would the web look like, but more importantly what sort of journalism, the trading and exchange and sharing and asymmetrical flows of data will exist?

This is the stuff, yep I'm guilty, that I play through in performance lectures in conferences, though increasingly these Petcha Kucha 20 minutes need a different approach.

What you want is to be in an area provoking (nicely) people, them provoking you into thought -a sort of creative fight club where you draw threads and attempt new synapses from fresh and old understandings. Take our penchant now for blogging and expression, no different in the macro sense from the pamphleteers of the 16th 17th century.

In 2020 will we be paying for the web? Likely I said in this post here on Murdoch, though the argument's being made on economic grounds which is hard to swallow. It needs re-orientating - if you remember the exploits of the digital boffins of the 90s where download this version and pay for the upgrade was the norm, few objected.

I'm finishing off some work in Cairo, where I have identified for the participants 9 clear streams for videojournalism. If you think how only 10 years ago, the BBC playing with bi media thought working two media was radical, the idea today that a videojournalist does everything is heretical.

Actually we can push it further. The expression sticks in the craw, but integrated multimedia videojournalism (IMVJ), leaves little to the imagination at being a 21st century television studio. And it's far from solitary, but interdependent and collaborative.

Truthfully, videojournalism - as we know now - is no more radical than the kid - and I remember Paul Hardcastle's 19 (1985) as my yard stick - sitting in his bedroom working on a synth. The question thus to address which will unfold is one of aesthetics, weighed against purpose and a dirty word in journalism - art.

At some point, the art of the media and its practitioners emerges from the flock. Think Murrow et al ( the art of radio); Cronkite, Robin Day ( the art of the interview); Alan Hart (ITN) Michael Nicholson ( the art of television Reporter) . Sorry I have only mentioned UK and US - my ignorance.

This aesthetic involve a sort of rotation of themes and genre - contemporary versions of Noir, Dogma, or Russian two-step and flutter cuts mixewd with the unknown.

Data journalism become more hyperlinked. It's voice-driven and negates the use of a telephone (Will the telephone companies give way cuz I have already seen it) which finds a way to usurp the main news agenda. Multimedia, writing in 2007 will still adhere to these functionalities, but there are now new variables afoot.

But of huge importance beyond the innovations and the processes, is the individual. The most interesting thing will be, well, put it bluntly "You".

Someone asked but I have not empirical data to uphold this whether those entering or in any modal forms of journalism today are on average, more aware than those 20 years ago. Apropo what about the next ten years?

The tools will be ubiquitous, but what will the journalist require beyond the "press here and fly button" - knowledge and context? Why, if they can access that instantaneously on a mobile device. (I'm not here supporting this idea, just enamoured by it). Here's my trekkie moment

More guile and creativity to access stories. How do you access the truth as it happened, when organisations will be happy enough with the efforts of their own media telling their story. BA is a good example of this. This post fleshes this out.

And what about training and learning. The convention today is to take a glut of subjects. In this post and a link to a video by a former vice chancellor , we should start to train the workforce of tomorrow e.g. journalists, very differently.

It all adds up to some grand theory, except we've been here before. We've always been, and through the thoughts, books knowledge of others we've found our way. Except this time the none geographic nature of the web, places an interesting premium on paradoxically geographic centres of learning.

Ten years ago the impact of knowledge or journalism from Australia or China registered comparatively smaller with today, but today where you can spot excellence, we all gravitate to that company, that region, which becomes the new hub.

We've seen this Silicon valley, and as a new digital company drawing in users and knowledge exchange Media storm is a good example, often on the lips of many BBC execs talking about future media.

Interesting that Newsweek reported recently that Xinhua news agency may well be the dominant news in the future. If the little I know from my work in China tells me, technologically, the boundaries are porous, and now the country is placing a high quotient on information and data.

It all adds up to some interesting scenarios ahead.

So there are a few thoughts I thought of getting of my chest before I hit the Mac again to get some other work done :)

Normal service begins tomorrow. BFN

How Star Trek boldly takes storytelling and journalism where its never been before.. Journailism Trek

One of the best Star Trek franchises ever, but how did they do it and what can others learn?

I've been watching Star Wars, again! Perhaps it's the fact that it's playing on Sky, but truthfully I wouldn't give much time to other films when I have a stack of Wong Kar Wai films to get through. I have just finished the stunningly stylistic 2046.

I grew up on Star Trek, and perhaps like every young male fantasising about space flight and Uhuras appreciated Roddenberry's contribution to my development.

But JJ Abrams did do something special to the franchise; he was given free reign which included not having to stay loyal to its old fans forewarning them in ads: "this is not your father's Star Trek". He had the license to do something new.

Frankly give over journalism to JJ or the JJs. Let the leading news studios say it: "try something new". Janet Street Porter, was powerful and creative enough to try this on British television and youth current affairs in the 80s with Network 7 and then Def II.

It may seem so anodyne now, but back then, when I worked on Reportage, it really was Star Trek.

Journalism Trek

The Retwitter Show titles - journalism 2046 from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

But back to the film. I had a mini eureka moment watching Bones talk about telemetry and beam ups. For some weird spatial moment I got thinking about my Applied Chemistry moments, co-efficient of friction and refluxing of crystals.

Each, as with much of Chemistry, involves equations; equations with variables which when altered change the state and outcome of that being experimented upon.

The beauty with sciences is a problem can be attempted to be solved by often identifying what could constitute a variable and then set about devising an equation.

Simplified, the coefficient of friction, identifies the point of contact between two surfaces e.g. your tyre and the road. On a rainy surface it's different and this therefore requires engineers to set about looking at your brakes, the nature of your tyres, load of car.. all sorts of things. A naturally occurring event has been broken down into stages.

In the purification of chemical substances, purified yields tend to be rare, there's always some imperfection, but scientist keep honing, much in the same way news and documentary continually search for the truth, but there's always an impurity.

Put another way, there's no such thing as truth in news, which is a recording of an event; there's an approximation that comes close, but it's disputable. The only way you get the truth of what you see is by being there, but even then in the interpretation is suffers from distortions...impurities..

So, what does this all mean for videojournalism? Well a couple of things:

• Stick the creatives in a room and leave them alone, but with the knowledge that there will be support. I've got a venue at the Southbank Centre to do this, but need your help.
  
• Don't be afraid to upset the baby boomers, if you want a new generation to tune in.
  
• Break down the variables of a new semiotic into mathematical variables, which is what I have been doing in my PhD study. Yes, Applied Chemistry applied to filming. I smiled first when I thought about it. My first supervisor sowed the seed when I began extolling Art and Physics.
• Lastly, let the random thinking that pushes science beyond its border, the science fiction bit, infuse the creative and money men to think beyond their station. I recently came across a device no bigger than a button, which I'm convinced will be the next phone device, and oddly enough its very similar to the Comms device in S.T.
• Now, anyone for a creative fight club or a chat about about this. Email me here David@viewmagazine.tv
  

Lets see if we can boldly take this somewhere else. See you on viewmagazine.tv and please don't hesitate to write :) LLAP


David Dunkley Gyimah creates and trains in video and storytelling, with brands such as the Financial Times and the first regional newspaper journos in the UK going video. He graduated in Applied Chemistry.

Viewmagazine.tv

VideoJournalism's film making Sony & Panosonic pro choice - Viewmagazine.tv David Dunkley Gyimah's tale

The explosion in videojournalism and equipment is one of the most exciting features 0f the last five years.

Some of you may know my work in using small DV cams and even though this has allowed for a range of video projects, there is still something to be said about using pro cameras.

I appreciate this may be out of reach on your pocket, but I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about my background and how as a videojournalist using pro cameras has been significant in my understanding of cinematography in broadcasting and filmmaking.

The top shot is from 2002 when I was hired by World Heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis to shoot his fight: Lennox Lewis Vs. Tyson, one of the most anticipated fights of the decade.

Here I am at base camp in the Poconno Mountains, before setting off to Memphis at the Pryamid Arena to to cover the fight.

This was a really nice camera. It's been a while so I may be wrong but I believe it's the Sony HVR-S270U which which is around $5000. It's quite light but with a good centre of gravity and interchangeable lens which you could play around with e.g. Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar Zoom Lens, 12x f = 4.4-52.8mm, f = 32-384mm at 16:9 mode, f = 39.5-47.4mm (4:3 mode)

Now what's significant about the use of a camera like this is that journalists learning video journalism would rarely work with a pro camera, which had a larger range of ND filters and other accessories to improve the picture quality.

Many journalists were more likely to start their careers with DV cams.

This is one of my favourite cameras - the Digi beta 970P It's top of the range and cost then about £50,000. I uses this on several shoots but all always hired them.

Here I am shooting a feature for Channel 4 News in South Africa in 1999.

These are some of its features:

• amazing high quality pic with a compression ratio of around 2.1
• Good weighted centre of gravity
• It shot 625/25P progressive mode and 625/50i interlaced mode
• Good sound at 20 bit resolution

You'll notice it has a Matte box at the front of the lens which allowed me to use different filters.

I think that is a hugely important point, because I am altering the look of what I'm recording at source. If you've ever graded your films you'll know what I mean.

Using different filters allowed me to imprint a colour-code to the image I perceived.

In one of the shots that I'm hoping to find and post I've altered between deep red filters and harsh colours in trouble spots in the townships - all through filters.


Here, you can just about see the camera on my left.

This shot really illustrates the structure of the camera.

And finally another shot as a videojournalist using a Panasonic in Paris - the aftermath of the Death of Princess Di, 1997 reporting from France, Champs Elysee.

I remeber this shoot well. I got some pretty strange stairs doing a stand-up by myself in the middle of a busy shopping lane.

Now why is this in some way interesting? It's interesting because of the difference between DV cams, pro cams and the new brill kid on the block the Canon 5D II.

I think something really interesting is happening here in the videojournalists firmament, in who comes from a journalism background and those that come from a picture background.

It' not so clear cut because there will be always be overlaps but I think you'll find that
a lot of photographers looking to video are opting for the Canon, while pro journalists are gravitating towards the camcorders.

I don't use a Canon 5D Mk II just yet, as so far my body muscle memory still likes the phantom hold for the Camcorder. It's a matter of ergonomics: the way its held, its feel and the assets I get from the camera.

One of the my training partners at the Press Association who has one says it's more geared towards the doc because of difficulties in pulling focus.

That's an issue whose pros have been sold to outweigh the cons. You try filming on the fly with a 50mm lens at 1.2 - great shallow depths but difficult to control on the fly, unless you push your f-stop higher and shoot deep-focus, but even then.

Hollywood had an answer for these, the focus puller.

A couple of years back a Sony exec was adamant that the small cameras would never feature interchangeable lens. I'll post that vid as well when I locate it.

Well, my guess though is that there's a real fight erupting behind the scenes and it will only be a matter of time before the small DVcams make way for lens changes.

Otherwise video cameras may well lose the intiative in much the same way Hoover did to the Dyson.

And that will be exciting. At the moment I work with an adaptor on my JVC GY100 with a prime lens, which gives me OK enough quality, (though better than the vx1000) but no where near the same picture size as the pro cameras I used.

That said if you are a videojournalist, I'm pretty much camera agnostic. But if you can, I do recommend getting your hands on a pro camera and getting the feel and sense of what it does, which will let you appreciate more where you are with the small accessible gear.

Youth Angst - Videojournalism behind scene

Youth Angst, Gun Crime, Bullying - Videojournalism behind the scene. I'll write more about Rob Chiu's shoot soonish. This was the last thing I created on the A1

A brief visual history of video journalism -from BBC to newspapers

A brief visual history of videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Recently, I've been spending my spare time researching further into news film making and a video journalism praxis, with the view for a book later this year.

My US publisher is like the best editors: "carrot and a big stick approach".

It's going to be fun, but in the meantime I thought of posting this vid above in expectation of NewRewired, a much talked about London media event I have been scheduled at speak at.

Next week too is the start of South Bank's Collision - an amazing gathering of artists and experts who will share each other's company and exchange ideas.

I have always believed some of the best ideas come from inviting others to share an reconstruct new threads and thoughts. So I'm thrilled at what Southbank has achieved here.

I'm also delighted that an expert who is hugely and widely respected in film and docs has accepted Southbank Centre's invitation for the week, in which I'll play the discreet host to him.

The story of film

His name is Mark Cousins. When speakers inviting a guest on stage say things like... the following guest needs no invitation, they would be talking about the likes of Mark.

This is his Mark's background. And be sure to get hold of his book, the story of film.

Back to the video.

In television terms you could call it a showreel, but I do believe it's more than that. In essence through the fringes of my career it gives some idea of the changes in video productions from the early 90s to my curent Phd practice.

Here's a precis of the video inserts

• BBC Reportage - the BBC's flagship youth programme which defined a generation of video/ film makers. Before reportage there was no current affairs that did youth issues. Before Reportage cinema verite was rare.

• Channel One TV- Channel One launched the year the web grew up circa 1994 with the launch of the first web browser Mosaic. The clip shown is part of a larger film looking at newspapers taking to the web in 1995

• Videojournalism is as much a western model as printing is believed to have been soley down to Guttenberg. Scholars have determined Guttenberg wasn't the only one on the trail of mass printing. And as for videojournalism, the Africans started experimenting with it in 1997. More recently in the Middle East a number of countries e.g. Beirut, Jordan, Egypt have taken to videojournalism

• Channel One proved something else - using the vj concept it could make any genre of programme. Last year Ferrari gave my good friend the 599GTB. We made a 15 minute vid taking the car back to Ferrari HQ which has got some good hits on youtube.

Through out the videos I'm sing a verite approach - something I call accelerated verite.

The vid ends with one of my favourite young film makers Rob Chiu whom I accompanied on the making of his first full short about teenage angst in London.

What do you want from Videojournalism?

Videojournalism training in South Africa

If you're looking for some of these from videojournalism, then I look forward to saying hello and getting reacquainted in 2010 here and in Viewmagazine.tv

• Ability to make good films
• To understand how to make different films appropriate to the subject
• To be fast at turning around films
• To get access to your subject
• To speed up your workflow
  
• To gain an insight into a relevant history of image making
• To see how you can use videojournalism in various innovatory fashions
• To keep up to date with new practices
• To experience the works of those that inspire us all
  
• To see what you could do differently to traditional media
  

If these are some of the things that by mistake or purposefully landed you here, then in the 2010 I hope you'll come back.

Because in 2010 I'll be shaping viewmagazine.tv towards the above in greater detail.

For instance, there's an interview with Rob Chiu whose Fear/Love series around youth issues explains how to make stunning shot films, using DV Cams and Reds, but also how you produce short films that don't lecture to the audience.

See Rob's trailer here ( You won't be disappointed )and then see his interview on Viewmagazine.tv click "scene". Government's take heed.

In Collisions from the (South Bank Centre), some of the foremost experts in film and video will explain where next for the medium. I have my own interests in cine-videojournalism, but there's more, much much more to hopefully sate your appetite.

I'll be talking to a range of bodies, whom may be interested in your talents. For instance with the Olympics looming I have been having a wonderful conversation with various bodies e.g. Sports governing body at looking at new ways at recruiting multimedia journalists.

Do drop me a line to say what you'd like to hear about as well. Happy Holidays.

David Dunkley Gyimah
Senior Lecturer
University of Westminster
Creator, Viewmagazine.tv
Artist in Residence South Bank Centre

Belief conquers old. Boxing lessons Briton's Haye vs Russian giant Nikolay Valuev

David recalls the experience of mind over matter as one of the film makers of the heavyweight champion of the world, lennox lewis.

On an afternoon in the hotel, having just completed a morning shoot, ringside. My friend and exec producer delivered a boxing lesson redolent of life's experience.

I had dared uttered the statement: "If Lennox Lewis wins.....".

Kofi, one of Lenox's right hand men, literally flew of his chair in mild rage

"What do you mean, "if". David, there are no ifs here. You disappoint me".

He had reason to. I had been invited. In fact rephrase that: I had been hired by Lennox Lewis to be one of his documentarists.

If you could see me. I was the cat with the cream.

Many outfits and journalists had requested to be part of the inner sanctum of one of the most anticipated fights in contemporary boxing history: Lennox Lewis vs Mike Tyson, and I had ring side seats.

And now I was about to blow it.

Training days

Over the days watching Lennox train though something happened, I found myself in conversation with a journalist and to my own amazement was chastising him for very comments I had made earlier.

I had turned. No longer an objective bystander, I was now a believer. It was extraordinary. The evangelical belief inside Lewis' camp had an intoxicating affect and I was drunk.

Watching the build up to Haye's vs Nikolay Valuev, I might imagine that Haye was wrapped in his own inexplicable, but explosive, self-belief.

It seemed impossible and if anything there would have been a fair number of people whom I'd imagine would have wanted the Russian to shut him up.

But yes he did it. And the event brought back that sense of purposeful belief I came across during Lennox's fight.

Before the big fight Lennox takes a cat nap. He is a figure of serenity. And then with minutes to spare he walks through his tactic: jab, jab, punch.

The biggest stage was set for an explosive fight, but in many ways the fight had already been won in the head of Lewis' camp. The mind conquers all. A lesson we could all learn, a lesson that Haye punched home yesterday.

From Arab to African media, West to East-the power of videojournalism II

On a sunny day, nothing to write home about in weather terms on the African continent, in South Africa two state broadcasters shared a common ideal to work together.

It was 1997, an era of no Youtube and any mention of videojournalism drew gasps and increduility in the UK and US. But here flying between Cape Town, Durban, and J0ohannesburg were journalists from Ghana TV and the SABC cracking open the videojournalists' bottle.

Those films, a documentary of that time, South Africa three years into democracy sit on my shelf, one or two of them can be found here in the United States of Africa.

Fast forward the time continuum by eleven years and I'm in South Africa again, Rhodes University, courtesy of the Knight Multimedia Foundation led by venerable academic Rich Beckman.

Training Days
The object is to train academics from other African states to grasp the fundamentals of Sound Slides and an iteration of videojournalism you might call video slides.

Here the voice track is used to drive the visual narrative, in many ways just like an observational documentary (sans reporter's voice).

Simple enough? But the skill belies an understanding of shooting strong visuals ( b-roll/ GVs) and mastering how to interview. A report on that workshop will be posted soon.

But after a couple of days of mixing it with the team and the attendants I wanted to share with you how resourceful and enjoyable a time I had.

I have lived (8 years) and worked in Ghana long enough to know practical media skills particularly in the Youtube era is something so badly needed and whilst sadly there were no academics from Ghana, I felt a kinship with all the academics.

Five days ago they arrived here fairly tentative. Today they themeselves admit they leave more confident at passing this knowledge on.

I'm not taking credit for this, for in the camp for visual skills were Jim Seida from MSNBC, a veteran practitioner, Programme leader Rich Beckman from Miami University, Sam Tirelli, a lawyer turned academic of many many years standing and Trevor Green, who's producing skills and temperament are enviable desirable skills.

I'm back in the UK soon, looking to kickstart our semester with an incoming lot of Masters journalism students, butressed against a social dance multimedia project I'm involved in at the South Bank, and a viva and show and tell of the new landscape from my own PhD programme.

All worth their while, but I can't help thinking of the spring you get in your step when you know you've been involved in a programme that potentially has a huge trickle down effect in its abilty to influence many others down the line.

From Arab to African media, West to East-the power of videojournalism

Travelling and lecturing in videojournalism further strengthens my already robust resolve that the tools and media skills for reportage, important as they, cannot be seperated from the understanding of the dynamics of human behaviour.

Four months ago I was in Beirut, swapping ideas with some of the emerging videojournalists at one of the country's leading independent newspaper's, Annahar. Its videojournalists are breaking into off-agenda stories to furnish their audience with a wider knowledge of its people and news.

I was drawn to the journalists' energy and their desire to push at the form; their want to landscape something bigger and interesting for locals and internationalists.

In the above picture Joanna is interviewing me on a one-on-one. It preceded a training session to shape the format visually and literally to keep it interesting.

There are many iterations in video and videojournalism and more often than not I am made to feel fortunate about a position I have come to occupy. It is one I neither take lightly and continue to feel indebted to the many people who have helped shape my ideas.

That position assumes a wide understanding of forms and associated behaviour.

But believe me, particularly at the time I was freelancing for any number of network broadcasters, travelling to danger zones to produce the news because that's where the story was, learning how to 2-machine edit and work a $60,000 beta camera because I couldn't find a camera operator/editor, I cursed my fortunes.

The business of video story telling and videojournalism is a journey of the visual art of information, a process in which I'm oft heard to say the square root of four is not two.

It's a creative medium bound by guidelines. For me also it's the journey of as many highs and sucessess as it is lows and failures.

There is no one fixed stanza, no absolutes, no definite way of story production, but I do know the value of a ethical qualified journalism and visual essayist lies in understanding as many of the different forms often, very often by working those genres.

Those catergories include: news, news features, factual programming, interviews Q and A, Long format features, obervational narratives, voice of God narratives, reporter-led features, documentaries 30 mins, docs 40 mins, series docs, adverts, and the many many genres of cinema.

Anyone of these has its semiotic. And in the age of web communication their boundaries continue to be tested, which I believe they should. But there is a constant, though attenuated by nuances of culture and that is people.

Journalism - story telling involves people and we, people, are complex sentinents. But we also exhibit common traits. Traits that lawyers, doctors, managers and many other professions rely upon to make sense of things e.g. who's guilty, an illness, workplace hiearchies and the rest.

Journalism's abilty to make sense of these depends strongly on understanding codes, guidlines, genres, cultures abd being empathatic, curious, understanding and above all forthright.

Which is why I'm often baffled when I ask friends who aspire to be journalists or have been, do you watch television they reply, no.

For as bad as sometimes it is, and it's not the only medium to learn our craft, it is a stage where much emotion plays out.

If you want to learn how to fish, why go to a blacksmith. If you want to know how the clock works, you should have a desire to open the casing.

And slowly methodically work you way through. This thing we do isn't rocket science, but it asks for more than the pushing of buttons and elegant framing.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you more about where I am now and the debates we've been having

Videojournalism Presenter fatigued explained

Rachmaninov concerto No 2 - got there.

I'd tried all the other stations, but this time even a tight bit of soul, Bill Withers wasn't doing the trick.

Earlier in my fuzzy state, I turned to Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start definitely worth its chunk of 40 minutes.

You see I have a presentation in two days time to a class of Chinese Masters students. It's about something to do with "practice and pedagogy, the web and new things that make you go woo" or something like that.

I presented to a similar group 6 weeks ago and went off message, talking about mediating and motivating theories that underpin our behaviour - far more interesting I thought.

For instance, why are YOU reading this. It it because you're

a) looking for something interesting (chancing it)
b) you're looking to fill time ( reading a newspaper on the train is an example)
c) you have a relationship with this blog, albeit a cyber-like conversation ( which would prob mean I'm saying something of relative value)

Making it happen
What motivates how we spend our time doing those things and how can the very things we seek be made stronger by the providers?

That was the thread. A common sense take. But as I sit here pounding away, I have no desire to repeat that. Perhaps I'm tired, perhaps I'd rather be talking about something else, but you know when sometimes you get this "heavy head" syndrome.

Manager: Hey Chris we'd like you to talk about automated drive systems
Chris: Ok

And you think ***** what am I going to say. Happens to me all the time, usually 15 seconds before a presentation, when I go, wouldn't it be fun if I just went on stage and said, "right, what shall we speak about?"

It's got nothing to do with me not knowing. I kinda do this metaphoric what do I know, and what have they paid their money for?

there are broadly two kinds of talks.
1. what motivates the system
2. the system itself

When I talk about videojournalism et al, I'm mindful people want to know about how to accomplish that edit and that shot, but the alternative, a hybrid practice-theory, begs you to look inside the system.

Why did you want to shoot that way?

I love videojournalism for the reason that's it's not just about point and shoot, and even when it gets really complicated, it's about human behaviour.

Shine a camera on some one, nod sagely and stay quiet and anytime soon they'll begin to speak.

What you're doing with the camera is capturing the essence of a lengthy conversation, in which some piece of valuable information is divulged.

Hilariously, when I first became a Videojournalist, the widespread argument was you couldn't use the two main senses, sight and sound proficient enough at the same time. Well.

Back on Message
Anyway back on message. So in the same way I've illustrated with Videojournalism, I'd rather be inclined to do the same with my online presentation.

So what's the fuss?

Well I get the feeling that the group would want to know more about the system.

Here's the site, that went to the blog, that shifted into a tweet and here are the supporting Twit apps, the 1,000,000 or so that fulfil various functions.

From tech crunch you get a list of 20 apps
no, 1 Twit pic
no, 2 Tweetdeck
No, 3 Digsby
No,4 TwitterCounter
No, 5 Twitterfeed

Now if you're a twitter aficionado you've prob sourced 100 of the above. If you're an addict, 1000. At this rate you could spend a life time explaining to friends and family; in my case, Chinese students, the next best app.

There's legitimate reasons for doing that if you're in marketing, defacto personal branding or want to make those millions of friends. But at some point you have to simply ask, "why?"

Why are you doing this? What's the value? The thin line between addiction and practice is ever shortening.

These things that we do and I count videojournalism in this camp flourish from within an inner social need SMOs. Ambient awareness always existed, but twitter provided the microscope. Making our own programmes is something many of us would like to do; videojournalilsm makes that possible with the right tools.

But to quote Kawasaki and what I tell my own students, "ask why you want it?" "Create meaning rather than pursuing money" says Guy.

Some of the most selfless proponents of this are Mindy McAdams who publishes all her modules and academic findings online, Guy himself whose presentations are micro MBA modules, Mike Jones who possesses a rare deep insight into visual imagery intelligence. Off course there are many more.

They are driven by their "kwa". You could presuppose the group I'm presenting wouldn't be interested in knowledge. There is a strong propensity to always want to learn what other people are doing, so cracking open the SMO model of new apps would do the job.

No, that's not my point, but that perhaps, in this case I'd much prefer we had an open forum and attacked issues on their own need to know.

It cuts into this idea of the conversation, the exploration of ideas and moves away from the idea of the grand lecture, which at times and I rather think doesn't always work. I rather think I'll do that.

Now don't you feel better now David?

Inside BBC Multimedia Newsroom Mary Hockaday

The interview I did with Mary Hockaday has been restored. Mary is the head of BBC Multimedia News and in this cut she's showing me around the BBC Newsroom. I'll get the actual actual link, but you can find it off the bat from www.viewmagazine.tv.

A bit of unobtrusive interviewing :)

Hitting the creative and videojournalism wall and emerging stronger

A different sort of hitting the creative and videojournalism wall, David's private studio deconstructed.

David's private studio and thinking space (1)

I can't deny it.

It cannot be hidden.

I hit the wall. Hard.

It was a combination of things, some not quite resolved, but in many ways it was almost neccessary, albeit I could do without it more than once in a year.

Tapes on right side of shelf ( beta) D2 and
Panasonic pro ( see below for tapes I'm yet to digitise)
See film on The Mayfair, London's beautiful people

Those things were:

Rewriting submission chapters towards my research thesis.

If I can come close to making sense of the research, it might annoy you. I WILL be persona non grata.

Equally though if you're working in this space of video and design, it should open up a glimpse into some of the whys in a phenomenological way.

The sum of all those parts, shaping the argument, has meant 19 hour days for the last 10 days.

But the SMARTlab Dean of Research Programmes invited me out for a supervisory catch up over supper and in many ways acknowledged this manic streak had not bypassed their radar.


Long Sigh
A small weight has lifted, not a lot, but the knot in my shoulder should dissipate and hopefully they'll be no more incidents where blood vessels in my eye pop. Yes it did.

Academia presses quite different buttons compared to what we know as practitioners. And the fact I have been a senior lecturer for almost a decade counts for very little.

Anyway.

• Artist in Residency
• Crisis Management
• New Videojournalism films e.g Beirut Videojournalism see Pt 2. on Youtube.
  

• Student Markings
• South Africa Knight Batten
• Book deal

Images from my broadcast past working for the BBC, ITN and ABC News and a shoot with Moby in Washington, and an invitation to a creative meeting from the Olympic 2012 bid

These are some of the other things that have been happening alongside my Robert Frost moments ie The Road Less Travelled.

The Artist in Residency (AIRS) is quite frankly the most extraordinary thing to happen and I'll soon refocus new posts on this.

The South Bank Centre has been the home of some of the most illustrious and creative AIRS e.g Royal Philharmonic, Award winning dancer Raphael Bonachela, Poet Lemm Sissay, so it's not to be taken lightly (as if I would) , rather to be looked upon in awe before driving into its principles.

For you see the AIRS programme is all about developing the artist, taking you to a place where you wouldn't go and then watching how you return-that-to- senders: the principle of pay it back.

Free from the constraints of what can be done, what should be done disregarding fixed semiotics, and whether it should be done (which has never put me off) the South Bank asks you to imagine. BIG.

Ideas on deep video linking have been featured in The Economist

Videojournalism Show and Tell
So in September I have my "Show and Tell", a sort of in house TED talk to the South Bank, and at the back of my mind I'm aware they are not impressed easily. Time to raise the bar again?

Videejournalism in Beirut is receding fast. That does not diminish its importance.

What's happening in Beirut with videojournalism is where I'd like to take the form universally and I wager, even though it was the briefest of visits, that the videojournalists, real smart beings, will be trailing a blaze on an international scale in some months.

A lecture to a Chinese contingent in visualisation, and a media management crisis lecture and prepping for a trip to South Africa with some of the US' esteem practitioners in the media and academia looms.

But that's enough for now, I must turn my attention to marking our Master students projects. I'll post their links to their work tomorrow.

Passes from covering Lennox Lewis heavyweight fight in Memphis - a truly awesome experience working for the Lennox Team. You needed at least five passes to move from Ringside to the after party

It is, I hope you agree, pretty good work and as their blog and exit interviews demonstrate, it's less what's on the surface but their informed thinking that's truly beautiful and I know they hit the wall a couple of times as well.

-------------------------------------------------------

More images

Beta tapes I'm yet to digitise. Each tape holds up to five stories. There's a stack of dv tapes which I can't even think about


Made on a Mac - talking at Apple Stores. Looking forward to enveiling new research and going back, if they'll have me, next year

Knight Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism, which only recently has come out of its box. I'm so indebted to Knight Batten for this award

And here thanks to Sabine Streich, who organised the international Videojournalism Awards in Berlin. She rang me up and said you've won and I told her to £@%^& off believing a friend was making a prank call. We still laugh
about it.

Tickets for much sought after friendly England vs France Rugby. My cousin, Paul Sackey, whom I have only met once, plays for England and I wanted to see him close up. I'm still thinking I should get in contact with him and say "Hi Paul fancy me making a film on you"

Making a videojournalism story

Making a videojournalism story.

If videojournalism can do anything, which involves readdressing our notions of what we think, and what is, then it goes beyond that of merely the cheap one -wo/man-band recording of events. And if it can dare to seek out its own aesthetic, we may have underestimated it. And if we can create bespoke site experiences, then there's no need to plead with the detractors.

Videojournalism can lay claim to its own Bauhaus. See Videojournalism definition on Mrdot here. Presenting at SXSW, I spoke about "the film is not enough" which I'll repost. There's still a lot of work to be done.

PART I






SXSW
The film is not enough - Presentation at SXSW - annual gathering of creatives attracting more than 10,000 people in its week. Thanks to the many people, such as Tony who rated the session as one of their best sessions.

Here's an extract of my 50 minute talk

David presenting at SXSW on IM Videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

The art in video, videojournalism, and journalism

Solo - a film about videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

There is art in this thing we do, a non-quantifiable asset often hard to describe.

Some see the words, others see the spaces in between that connect the words. Many see what the eye records, but the artist sees the syllogism, past the obvious, reinterpreting and finding new meaning.

Can it be learned, studied ? Why oh yes! But often it comes from study, that insatiable and tireless habit to know why.

There are few geniuses in this world who can tilt the power of transaction, cause and effect, to be asymmetrical.

In life you get out what you put in.

Many through dexterity and greying hairs have become masters of their trade, but have not forgotten the respect for their craft. The writer chews over every letter, syllable, that emerges from the tips of their frayed fingers to the keys and magically finds itself on the screen.

But today we ask for the Master and Jack of all trades. It's not uncommon. Renaissance was coined centuries ago.

But have we become arrogant in those ways? New journalism does not prescribe old journalism as dead. For without one you cannot have the other. Without the foundation can we build sky scrapers that touch new space?

And have the masters also forgotten that at some stage they too must relinquish their crown? Time moves on, but deference to them must remain. And we're not simply talking about the Cronkites.

There is art in this thing we do, but it is one honed through late nights, early mornings and a bid to see past that where many will tell you it can't be done.

For all the great writers, many of whom had lean years, there are countless others clamouring to get to the top. For all the great videographers, another tier of peers awaits the chance to proclaim their prowess. For every multimediaist, there are countless more playing with form who say they have seen the future.

There is art in this thing we do, but often art does not seek a common consensus. It is the confidence of you and appreciation of others. It is the he or she that sticks their neck out for others to throw invectives.

It is he or she who dares say something that many of us find preposterous, only to realise eventually the haste in our reply was ill-thought.

Camera in eyes, full site streaming at 1gb, gesture video calling up by voice recognition: the hapless thoughts of fantasists.

There is art in this thing we do and sometimes when you're not deluded, you're the only one that knows and sees it. Till others see it as well. That is the greys in your hair, solemnity in your voice and the skill of your pen and video.

Therein lies the art.

What's needed in videojournalism training - a trainer's perspective

3.00 am and I'm just rejigging an edit from a video I shot on a videojournalism training project in Beirut.

The video provides a privileged view of how one major independent newspaper, Annahar is pushing ahead with videojournalism.

In many ways the concepts and thought bubbles at this paper are not so different from what I have experienced training in the UK, specifically a substantial number of regional newspaper journalists, the Telegraphs superjournalists and the Financial Times to name a few.

It's the value added which will often resolve other questions such as why a newspaper or broadcaster is taking on videojournalism, what it means for existing jobs and what it means for our outfit.

They're all emotive subjects invariably splitting views, and passionate ones at that.


Videojournalism's value added

(slide from one of the speakers whilst presenting in Podgorica)

But in the value added conversation there's always one question which comes up again and again. How can I be different from television and different from that other group there?

Because videojournalism's basics are such a low hanging fruit: put the camera here, shoot according to the rule of thirds, don't shoot into light, that after a weeks training, you could quite easily train others.

Fact is those that come to the Press Associations videojournalism training programme often do. Saves the company on multiple fees and many have indeed been successful training other staff.

But while the chords on a guitar can be easily memorised, jamming into a session when someone like the late Buddy Miles kicks in a drum beat takes a little more doing.

Comprehending the different approaches to the components of videojournalism, in say filmmaking such as Iranian Abbas Kiarostami to Bollywood, to news reportage of Ed Murrow and modern day less disciplined soliloquys is crucial.


The Creative Art of Videojournalism

Videojournalism Training from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Videojournalism is a creative art and is by no means a one-size-fits all and it's also a body of sharing, otherwise the disservice is cloning everyone to be the same.

By all means for someone starting out, here are the basics, but if your intent is to find your own identity swiftly, then it is the trainer's job to help you find that.

I often cite in my lectures with Masters students, "the wisdom of crowds" and thus at some point soon, the independence that they try things, which in turn spur new threads.

Essentially improv, testing my ability to find where they're going and make a contribution to that.

"OK that's very mimetic of Elia Kazan in East of Eden playing around with angular composition and space" or " OK the visual intelligence of stability plays a huge part in trusting you, so looking confident and smart pays off".

These however in the end are all choices, journeys of dual discovery, so I often call training regimes an exchange of ideas, because no one method if sacrosanct and even the best of rules awaits to be broken.

What's need in videojournalism training is the same thing I'd say for any other self expressive art.

It is the notion of helping develop the actor's voice, the videojournalist's eye, the confidence to be exposed to an array of goodies - from directing, producing, voice overs, editing, post producing - all core skills for broadcasters.

But videojournalism begs for more from TV broadcasting, so requires that bit more work. What's needed in videojournalism is the opportunity to work with the very trainers who can enrich your existing dialect.

It takes time. And truth this journey for news auterism is still in its infancy.

What's needed in videojournalism is...... you know the answer by now.

end.+


David Dunkley Gyimah has been a videojournalist for 15 years and worked in the media since 1987. He is a Senior Lecturer, Artist in Residence at the South Bank and researching as part of his PhD Videojournalism's creativity. He's looking forward to his first open videojournlism session being planned for the future for two days.