Over to you from the BBC - Reporting Egypt, the African aspirational view and what to do next?

David Dunkley Gyimah at Aggrey House Prempeh College

I can see myself now, getting ready for lights off 9.30 p.m. and quietly turning the dial of my portable radio to the short wave of the BBC World Service. The din of the crickets suddenly became inaudible.

The photo above cryogenically preserves those moments. Memories as Barthes professed at photography's ability to evoke the past and present it to the future.

Today I listened to Richard Sambrook presenting Over to You at the BBC World Service and that special transatlantic relationship I developed came pouring back.

Years later I would freelance for the BBC World Service, whilst reporting from South Africa. Who would have guessed? Certainly not my dad because abandoning all efforts to become a doctor strained are relationship for 15 years. We never spoke. The media was no match for doctoring.

And if it means anything I took the sciences as far as I could in a BSc in Applied Chemistry before fulfilling an ambition.










Over to You
Richard's  programme touched on two areas I feel passionate about sharing.

Firstly, and it was the last piece on his show, an African rang in complaining that there was too much African material on the BBC World Service.

Over to You

Certainly when I listened to the World Service (WS) those years back, I confess I certainly wanted to be transported out of the dreary surroundings of Ghana's coup de tats and harsh standard of living.

Yesterday in my blog I spoke about journalism as a cultural construct, purloining American academic Michael Schudson's argument in the Power of News.

Africa is one of the BBC WS' most important regions. Letters from Nigerians and Ghanaians are a mainstay of the postbag. So it's reasonable to consider how reportage is geared towards the continent. The Africa Service, whichI freelanced for alongside Rageh Omar brings back fond memories, but this was about the WS in general.

The caller from on Over to You, sought from the BBC a window looking out onto the rest of the world. Is this cultural? Somehow, there's something in this. The media when I was in Ghana was in Vertov's words 'cinema' with its ability to transport me to new mental territories.

My sister today would hardly read the Voice Newspaper-- targted at Black readers  but give her the Daily Mail any day. Aspirational media and stories of celebs have more currency.  When I spoke about journalism and culture yesterday it was to advance the idea that audiences ask different questions about their journalism.

In this media below, I asked a group of my former Master students if they could change one thing, what would that be. Listen to Daniel Kofi from Ghana speaking about the media.





In 1997 we tested a hypothesis of Africa media with the first ever co-production between SABC and Ghana TV using videojournalism

The next segue then. Egypt and its reporting, which is by no means an easy feat. The country as Richard stated in Over to You is polarised and striking a balance in reportage is increasingly problematic.

Two areas struck me. How event-based journalism -- sort of dramatic cinema verite reportage brings to the listener news as it happens, but runs the risk of being interpreted as symbolic of a grand narrative.

The BBC's Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen is one of the BBC's finest, but it's not his fault that the institution is not articulating the argument of the challenges of executing balanced reportage more effectively.

I interviewed a former BBC foreign editor last year. Vin Ray reminisced how during the Bosnian war when he was producing another big hitter reporter, replaying a context piece ever so often would have helped the audience understand the complexities of the war.

Over to You's much respected editor, Joanna Mills, missed an opportunity here to explain. These verite reports convey news' dramatis. As Robert Drew would have said, giving you the feeling of being there, but this is not a substitute, which the audience can be benignly ignorant of, for contextual themed reportage.

However, to the audience if it's on the BBC, it must have been thought through for its balance.

The Egyptian caller from Canada was suggesting the Brotherhood was monopolising the news and the BBC was not being as effective at countering this.  Editing is a nuanced job; it comes from years of experience and a feel of the audience, which is truly difficult in a social media age.

However, either the Brotherhood's PR machine is doing its job of staying in the headlines,  or difficult but transparent decisions could be arrived at by the BBC that limits their exposure and pursues wider contextual reportage. Otherwise is it fair to use the Net to solve the temporal fixed-amount-of-time problem?

Grand theories or otherwise universal themes will always be difficult. You couldn't please all the audience in the analogue age, whilst in digital, really! Good luck!

Last year at NewsXchange, professionals were advancing the idea of more metric-based data that would strengthen broadcast reportage. That needs to be considered. Meanwhile greater transparency with the listeners about the task faced could be aired.

The hegemonic model of news is only so because no one dare tinker with it, but is there an issue in a news bulletin to explain why today you're running a piece that does not take account of the Brotherhood.  Of course that opens up editorialising, which for the BBC's defence is what journalism does all the time.

The caller also stated a high percentage of the population were against the Brotherhood. If there was ever an opportunity to marry journalism with pragmatic academia this was it with the BBC commissioning its own poll to substantiate or disprove this.


Inside Egypt

Inside Nile TV making a documentary about journalism

Seven years ago, I was invited to train journalists, videojournalists in particular, at Nile TV - a job that continued up till 2011.

When I was invited back to speak at the Arab Summit earlier this year, my host explained. It wasn't that Egypt doesn't have a wealth of media, joined by online news sites, but that reporting had degenerated to internecine combat.

Being open about the intricacies of attempting grand narratives was something we discussed with the audience. It's a first step I believe the networks, in spite of all their might, could do.

Remember Dan Gilmor's oeuvre, which served as a manifesto for many traditional media in 2006.

Gilmor acknowledged his audience knew a lot and that he no longer had all, small "a", the answers.

Reporting in the Social Media age is problematic. Given the tools and fresh discourses, we journalists could do a better a job at explaining.

By the way, in response to my article yesterday, a promising social media networker Q has responded in a feature-length post here.

The original post I wrote can be found here.

Next week, how one of my posts in being featured in a popular publication concerning safety in filming in Syria. I share the experience of Master students at the BBC's hostile reporting event in November with my assignment near the Turkey- Syria border training videojournalists.

The footage has been made into a trailer and is part of my PhD submission on videojournalism with films I made in China, Tunisia, Egypt , US and South Africa

David Dunkley Gyimah runs the award winning viewmagazine.tv

Integrated Multimedia Videojournalism's New Ideas. Please bare with me

Prepping on late night food for the Arab Media Summit in Cairo

It's 11.30 pm, we've just stepped of the flight to Cairo to find out in the morning the agenda we had planned for their summit needs to be changed. &^%$£?? Major ouch! Journalism is in a crisis in Cairo, that swiftly needs a solution.

It's different to what I am aware of  in the UK and US. The pros are, they believe, suffocating under the weight of social media and the independent news maker.

Nothing stays the same, everything changes.

Followers of this blog, which principally deals in videojournalism, , ideas, academia and journalism innovation may have noticed how strangely the blog has changed over the past couple of days.

The reason being I'm experimenting with a new layout. After six years of blogging and with a whole wealth of information to hand from my extensive work, the need has arisen to display this on a more open, and easily navigable blog site.

Some of that info includes work I'm about to start with the Comedy theatre, one of London's most successful comedy houses, as they go digital in a big way, looking to expand into India.

Equally exciting is another company, OrgVue which has found a way to use data visualisation to help companies figure out their output/ staffing etc.

More rceently, I have had the pleasure of working alongside a medical data company, Dendrite, supervising a true talent who has built a top rated site from scratch.

Pragmatic ideas
Then there's my own personal work from my thesis, which, if the logic holds means the way we teach doc making/ videojournalism and news needs a radical overhaul. The text tells you how, with some powerful people in the industry combining their thoughts. I'm looking forward to sharing that with the industry.

Couple of years back I received this email from the BBC.

Dear David 

We are currently organising BBC Worldwide's annual Leadership Conference in October which is aimed at the top 150 senior leaders across the company. We would like to invite you to speak at a session focusing on 'Creativity and Innovation: Creating the Winning Idea' which currently has speakers including Innocent; Ten Alps and Bebo. The session will run on Thursday 5th October from  11:20 - 13:30. With your fantastic experience in both old and new media and your insights into next generation TV both in the UK and US, you would be a valuable addition to the panel. Your slot would be around 20-25mins, followed by a 60 minute Q&A panel session in which you would jointly answer questions from our staff.
About the Leadership Group Our Leadership Group consists of around 150 of our senior staff from acrossour seven business areas: Global TV Sales, Global Channels, Content &Production, Magazines, Digital Media, Home Entertainment and Children's. They are a lively and talented group of people who would greatly enjoy theopportunity to hear you speak and we very much hope that you will find the event interesting too. 

Head of Communications

More recently, I spoke to executives at the BBC, so with my new findings rather hope I can share some more with broadcasters.

Recently speaking at BBC Meetings

In June, however,  I'm in Denmark presenting to their journalist in a week which includes some of the world's best thinkers in image making, such as Bombay flying Duck, Drea Cooper  from Califormia is the Place and Michelle Michael, a highly respected VJ from the US.

Timetable for Denmark talk.

One that I hope meets the need of the pro and pragmatism of the student, whether that's academia or life-student.

Unfortunately, many of the blog skins treat key words as categories resulting in a mis-alignment of pages. Horrible!

I'm hoping this can be resolved really soon. So in the meantime, I have reverted to the blog of old and hopefully over the weekend can present the new site, without all its detritus. So please stay in touch and we'll get this experience to where it should be.

How audiences will access video and online content in the future

Albert Maysles with David Dunkley Gyimah

How will audiences access the future of the web? I approached this using trend analysis, qualitative audiences feedback and cognitive behaviour and some other research techniques, such as phemonology.

I'm very grateful to James Montgomery, the Controller of Digital and Technology, BBC Global News for an invitation in 2011 May to speak to the BBC executives.  James wrote to me

David,
Thanks very much for your fantastic presentation yesterday. I’ve had lots of positive feedback – so much certainly interested in your idea of you staying in touch as it all progresses.
best
James
James MontgomeryController of Digital and Technology, Global News

My pitch was along the lines of cognitivism. In the last five years I have been conducting a sweeping deep survey, which has involved sound qualitative analysis, so these ideas are not my opinions. Though phenomenology was employed, which is a methodology about how we know what we know. 

I have some twenty plus years in the media, starting my TV career with the indefatigable BBC Newsnight, followed by ABC News in South Africa,  and Channel 4 News and a range of other jobs. 

Some of those figures I have interviewed include Henry Jenkins, Dan Gilmor, BBC executives such as Mary Hockaday, and pioneers in film and scholarly text such as Prof Brian Winston. In all around 200 figures, 

It also includes audiencing, carrying out various polls and research in Egypt, Tunisia, China and the UK. 

STORIED

 STORIED Videojournalism, Past, Present and the Future from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

How audiences will access video and on line content is research based on Dewey's How We Think? For instance, based on the current speeds of the web, by 2020, you should be able to project a hologram of yourself into the web to appear elsewhere.

In all likelihood we can expect a meta renaissance.  If you're familiar with the Johari conundrum, then you'll get it.

I hope to share some of the data at some point. There's also a couple of trade magazine's where I share my thoughts on the future of the moving image, which it would be unfair to post anything until they're published.

I have also got some 300 hours of footage that needs digitising. Some of that research I have alluded to on previous posts, but now I hope I can pull it altogether.

Talk again soon :)

Images below from forthcoming trailer on viewmagazine.tv about the future of the web. A film made from my PhD

Brian Storm of MediaStorm - one of the world's leading agencies talks about my work

This is truely awesome. A child with his mother say hello to grand parents, except they're holograms being piped down the web. The web of the future will be truly immersive.  I recorded this in China, at the Expo.

Jay-z plays a part in the future of the web as you'll see on the trailer.

This man was hugely influential in the BBC because he introduced videojournalism to the BBC in 2000. In my interview he acknowledges the contribution of Channel One TV from 1994 saying we were too ahead of our time.

I was one of the thirty videojournalists at Channel One. If you're a media historian or interested in facts, then yes, the BBC or CNN was not the first to practice videojournalism, Channel One TV was.

And this is Sensai Rosenblum, who needs very little introduction. I am restoring the original 1994 documentary Birth of a Station, so you can see how we did videojournalism, which has marked differences.

Tom Kennedy who led the Washington Posts videojournalism. I shared some nice moments with him reflecting on the early days. The Post started in the US around 1996/7.

These are just a few of the 200 people I have interviewed.

David will be presenting to UNESCO, Denmark and possibly at News Xchange, Spain on the future of media. More from his site www.viewmagazine.tv

Click here for insight into major new findings on 

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

The photojournalists' Photojournalist-The Bang Bang Club

BangBang Club - a must see film

South Africa 1994. Elizabeth Ohene, the South African correspondent for the BBC World Service's Africa division is recounting a story to me in the BBC's bureau. She's just come back from covering Tokoza, a township in South Africa.

A BBC Producer had a gun pointed at his head and the assailant looked ready to pull the trigger. "What would she have told his mother?", she tells me of her friend and much loved journalist.

I presented a programme for BBC Radio in London called "Black Londoner" hence the play on the title from a harrowing but life-defining assignment in South Africa in 1993

Below, after 15 years, last year I returned to South Africa to train African Journalists at Rhodes University, working with Miami University and had a couple of hours to visit where I used to live and produced this videojournalism - meta report.



I knew of the aforementioned demo; it could make my next report and earn me some money, but I decided not to go instead. But I also remember that day for another reason. Ken Oosterbroek, one of the members of the famed Bang Bang Club was shot and killed.

I didn't know Ken personally, but I had friends who I would visit at the Star newspaper where he worked. My landlady, Lyndsey who also edited Living Magazines, would take phone calls late in the night for two hours at a time from one of her commissioned photojournalists.

His name was Kevin Carter. Kevin had just returned from a haunting assignment in Sudan. The picture is now legendary, but it was Lindsaye's retelling of Kevin's story and how he came to take the shot which kept both of us talking to the small hours of the night.

Some months later Kevin committed suicide. His picture had won him the greatest honour in photojournalism, but Lindsaye told me he found it difficult to square that with the plight of the young child in this picture.

When I became a videojournalist a couple of months later in 1994, this picture adorned my cubby hole. It was one of the few pictures that inspired me to apply to the UK to become a dedicated videojournalist.

Kevin Carter's award winning photo/Corbis Sygma.. The film Bang Bang Club retelling the true story of Kevin et al will soon be on general release

There are countless aphorisms about photojournalism. Soon The Bang Bang Club, long revered amongst photojournalism aficionados may well turn out to acquire wide common use.

The story of a band of brothers who attained rock star like status from covering  South Africa's trenchant apartheid-induced killings, is as inspiring as it is tragic.  Joao Silva, one of the four, incurred severe injuries in 2010  from a landmine in Kandahar.  Greg Marinovich blog can be found here  He co-authored with Greg the book, The Bang Bang Club

Alongside them another name a synonym for exceptional photojournalism can be found, James Natchway

In itself this film will bring much reflection and awe at a professional set who often dare to go, where those considered fearless would. Look at Danfung Dennis today, whom I had the pleasure of inviting to share his life for a PhD study and then there's Yannis Kontos who I have worked with on a number of projects.

Bang Bang needed to be told. For me as a freelance journalist reporting the townships the film will bring back  personal memories of reportage and my next phase into videojournalism.

More on viewmagazine.tv

Three other incredible films that inspired me into journalism

The Year of Living Dangerously


Salvador


Frankie's House


Click here for insight into major new findings on 

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

BBC My story - great idea & stories, but the film making?

The BBC's My Story - amazing stories, but the semiotic even from the above picture suggest we still can't hear what you have to say, without a celebrity. User Social Network debunked.

I have just watched the BBC's My Story and curiously am upset.

The idea is well thought out in a way of bridging television - a social enabler - that is it brings people together, with the new new thing, participatory social networks.

In the latter case, this was illustrated by its central premise that everyone has a story to tell, so send yours in, which people did in their droves, 100os in fact.

From that judges of the highest calibre of literature and reportage e.g. Fergal Keane, whose reports from Rwanda and South Africa still resonate today, combed through and chose an eventual winner whose prize was nothing short of miraculous.

Following today's showing the winner will have her story published tomorrow. That's ambition. You can, as te BBC says, download that story for free, which I have just done for an Uncoventional Love by Adeline Harris.

Adeline's story is as amazing as the other three profiled in the show.

She fell in love with a clergyman, Father Kelly, many decades ago. Couched in the words of the show's presenter the relationship did not go to the next level. But he cared for Adeline through trials and tribulations.

They lived together for two years. Then she fell pregnant to another man and had a baby and still he cared for her. Up until Adeline married her lover and they had another child when Father Kelly would shun her. He has since passed away and Adeline is still married to the same man many years on.

This is an epic story, no less emotional wringing than the other two on display: a woman who falls in love with a lifer and campaigns for his release, having questioned the original conviction. They are now living happily on the outside.

And a woman whom through the power of the Internet, most likely Facebook returns the affection of her first love 40ish years ago and despite being happily married leaves everything to reacquaint herself with him, and leaves her happily married husband beached.

Middle England must have been harrumphing like mad at the moral message of this story as somehow through the presentational skills of the host Christine Brinkley we get an unequivocal great love story, rather than someone who's also been, well ghastly.

What her husband she'd been leaving with in her retirement must have felt? But this was about stories, so yes, the clash of morals itself is fibre for the viewer.

The show's flaw
So why was I, and I imagine I'm in a minority, mildly irritated? Because the films they showed did not do the stories the justice they duly deserved.

TV has its failing in its often tired aesthetic, exacerbated media historian critics might point to the time 35mm gave way to 16mm and then beta cameras took over.

So what you got was the most cinematic quests reduced to the style of a TV news package. The narrative, their story is strong, the visualisation however is enough to mutter all sorts of things.

For instance more often than not, a camera is used to record the subject's narrative in one take, and then sequenced shots cut back and forth, with V/O from the presenter. There are enough cliched shots e.g. looking on yonder, to fill the Directors Book of Film Cliches.

The colours are harsh and any subtlety of lighting to reflect these incredible stories had been sacrificed for capturing the oral narrative -the news narrative.

Reading the download, the book is everything I suspected. It's cinematic, expansive, rich in description, textured - just as a book should be. But if the producers treated the book, just as they had the visual story, there's no reason why you wouldn't expect a newspaper article.

And perhaps a good one, as there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, if that's what was intended, but I suspect it wasn't. This was a different semiotic.

You could argue on the pin of a needle whether the show needed a presenter, but there's something about epic stories that don't need the embellishment of a strong personality narrator.

TV goes social network is inevitable, as realised through the litany of reality shows, but TV realising sometimes cinema offers a richer experience is something still being wrestled with - and that's a shame.

Ultimately just as the book is a download, their self-contained stories should be as well potentially cinema at its best.

For inspirtion, if you haven't seen Last Minutes with Oden, up for a Vimeo Awards , now's your chance. TV could still learn a bit or two.

Last Minutes with ODEN from phos pictures on Vimeo.

How do Blacks, Asians & Ethnics find jobs in UK Broadcast industry

Despite a digital broadcast revolution Blacks, Asians and Ethnic minorities (BMEs) still struggle to find a job in UK broadcast journalism.

David Dunkley Gyimah reports from ITN’s hosting of the Cultural Diversity Network – designed to solve the problem.

A shorter version of this article is published at Journalism.co.uk

It is the British broadcasting industry's hypertrophic scar, visible only if you truly want to see it: How Do You Solve A Problem with BMEs finding jobs?

When a phrase morphs into a three letter acronym you know it has political status, yet decades on since this "Solve A Problem" first needed attention, ten if you count the CDN's (Cultural Diversity Network) existence, Black Minority Ethnics still have reason to feel hard done by.

One by one in the basement of ITN they strafed the floor with questions to four panellists from the BBC, ITN, SKY and Channel 4. If the mark of a good journalist is to be dogged, readily posing open difficult questions, the panellists had their fill of journalists to choose from.

Each delegate could have held court for longer burnishing personal testimonies and follow-ups questions such as "Can you tell me what you do on a daily basis?” had the chair Sir Trevor McDonald not chivvied proceedings along.

The reflexive accounts from senior black and Asians in the industry: Chuck Nwosu, assistant editor, BBC News; Vivek Sharma, programmes editor, Sky News and Samira Ahmed, presenter, Channel 4 News, via a short film set the evening’s agenda.

Black and Asian figures
This was followed by ITN's managing Editor, Robin Elias providing snap shot figures of industry employment in England:

* In England the population percentage of BMEs is 12.8%

* In London this is 29%

* In London BME editorial staff accounted for 10% of the workforce

* On Screen staff made up 14%

* Off screen staff and editorial managers (decision makers) came in at 8%

Elias acknowledged there was work to be done.

In the 80s broadcasting countenanced a triple whammy, but judging from the shards of glass on the floor and editorial meetings looking less like an OBN Club, women groups have reaped a much better hard fought campaign than minorities and disability groups.

In the 90s before the era of the CDN and feeling the need to do something colleagues and I formed a collective, which with the assistance of the Freedom Forum staged events well attended by broadcasters.

We posed the same questions. Today, a new more savvy generation within the milieu of digital broadcasting wants answers.

Two hours is hardly adequate to resolve deep issues, and while “Gis-a job”, seems more than straightforward, a more inclusive transparent strategy between both groups should be under scored.

But a forum of this kind is necessary. It gives the panellist a realistic sense of the depth of feeling.

Channel 4’s head of news and current affairs Dorothy Byrne and Sky’s Executive Producer Kate McAndrew intimated fresh strategies.

For delegates it puts flesh on this abstractism, "the media", and the pushy ones will no doubt have done their career prospects no harm getting in the face of the likes of Tim Singleton, head of foreign news from ITN and Craig Oliver deputy head of BBC Multimedia from the BBC - an opportunity to be cherry-picked.

This last point is a favoured long-standing modus operandi. Channel 4 presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy mentioned how he’d been guided by a senior exec. I have Tim Gardam then Editor of Newsnight and Janet Street Porter for kick starting my TV journalism career in 1990.

CDN Today

Today’s CDN lives in a digital space that could generate a reciprocity of creative methodologies e.g. crowd sourcing and in the bricks and mortar world accessible ideas exhaustively enacted by the indefatigable Janice Turner at BECTU’s “Move on Up” events.

Delegates are guaranteed a sortie of face-to-face contact with potential employers over the course of the day.

It’s time for bolder creative solutions said BBC journalist Barney Choudhury. And more robust research is needed because blink and you would have missed the logic of causality that evening which makes for uncomfortable telling and listening.

Broadcasting’s revolving employment door, the result of job-hopping, internal promotions and redundancies has slowed down. The debilitating economy has further damaged the hinges. Every one's staying put.

And that puts more pressure on entrants. Jim Latham, the secretary of the BJTC, the journalism accrediting body represented by broadcasters and academics gave this stat breakdown.

In 2009 with 58 accredited courses almost exclusively in universities around 3500 students were interested in journalism, 1000 of these will emerge from post grad and grad programmes of which 350 are black and Asians.

Says Jim:

“There are big problems in broadcasting which have to be dealt with by essential programmes of in-house education and training. The casual offence caused by complete ignorance of interests, beliefs, what makes ethnic communities tick isn’t god enough”.

As a senior lecturer in Journalism and council member of the BJTC I too see this at the sharp end. Couple of years ago I asked the question in a short on digital diversity at the ICA, recognising the many tiers opening up in the digital world where minorities were becoming marginalised in the main.

I have a duty of care to all students. I do also where possible try and mentor black and Asian would-be journalists, and there have been happy outcomes.

Creative Ideas

At the Southbank Centre I’m looking forward to working with artists in residents SE1 United (predominately black youngsters) alongside acclaimed British filmmaker Penny Woolcock behind Mischief Night, and recently 1 Day - an uncompromising film of the Birmingham’s Grime scene on making dv films.

My friend and fellow artist Lemn Sissay tells me when Tennessee production Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was on its way to London, they were desperate to work with black technicians – another story in itself.

But clearly in these digital revolutionary times and richer variants of journalism and storytelling, it’s disheartening not to be seeing wider more apt gains started by so many, so long ago.

The will appears to be there. Certainly, the tools exist in twitter (twitter clouds); blogs and videojournalism to further lift the campaign. And the job market will pick up again. So Just how do you solve a problem of BMEs finding jobs?

---

David was a former broadcast journalist who started his career in 1987 and worked for Channel 4 News, Newsnight and ABC News and is now a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster in journalism and artist in resident at the Southbank Centre. He is currently researching videojournalism and news innovation as part of a PhD and was a juror for the RTS broadcast innovation awards.

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.

Freeframing inside BBC Multimedia

It looks like something out of youtube, which in itself has its own aesthetic, but videojournalism film making is all about different forms and applying them.

I'd probably have preferred going handheld peaking. See 8 days or Reuters for a good example. but freeframing, is the dogsville of filming, surfing blindly not so much as looking for a set, but feeling it.

So this VJ shoot, most likely the only one you'll find on a non corporate site, of the BBCs recently appointed Head of Multimedia News raises a number of things.

Firstly deep thanks to the Mary for granting me the time. She's extremely busy. We met in Podgorica, Montenegro on a training presentation programme.

Results - How to create a multiple angle interview in 3 mins from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Mary wasn't excpecting a camera when I got to the BBC and neither was I really in the mood to do a "crafted" shoot.

The intention was for a show around the BBC's new multimedia studios, so while I had my camera frankly its incidental all the way through and I never make any real attempt to focus up or frame. Mostly it's being framed by spatial awareness.

It's evident because Mary and I are actually having a conversation, rather than an interview, and the camera is almost always at waist level focusing up, with me throwing the odd glance at the viewer.

Freeframing
Freeframing is something that's catching fire and the real proponents of this shoot so carefreely, that so what if you hive of a head or get the composition wrong.

If you're a trained VJ it's more difficult, but there is a time and place for freeframing and I have come across many instances whereby it's the only option for the shoot.

In this case, given time constraints and the attention given to the conversational exchange, I'd let this through.

By the way, at Channel One we use to freeframe a lot. Bear in mind we were using BVW betas with no flip out screens, so the question is how did you know what your framing looked like ona fast turnaround shoot.

A more refined version of freeframing is peaking - cf 24. and this short piece on Reuters launching their mobile phone.

I'm going to be engineering variants of this following a summer programme of being an artist-in-residence at the South Bank supporting work which I'm feeding in from my research.

Next week I'll post a tour given to me by the head of the media department at Cairo Univerity - where President Obama has just visited. Here I'm in shoot mode.

DOES TELEVISION JOURNALISM HAVE A FUTURE – AND DOES IT MATTER?

Before he left to join google, Newsnight's Peter Barron gave me this interview.

The write up goes as follows:

"With ad revenue in freefall, the BBC licence fee under severe pressure and online news sources rapidly expanding, this session will examine whether we need – or can any longer afford – journalism on the small screen".

DOES TELEVISION JOURNALISM HAVE A FUTURE – AND DOES IT MATTER intones the programme.

The Chair of this debate, bringing together experts in the industry and academia at the university where I lecture in the 19th & 20th of May, is Nick Pollard, former Head of Sky News.

He's joined by:

• Helen Boaden, Director of BBC News
• Simon Bucks, Associate Editor, Sky News
• Dorothy Byrne, Head of News and Current Affairs, Channel 4
• Robin Elias, Managing Editor, ITN

My head of journalism, the principle organiser suggested he would like me to join the panel, logistics and events on the day allowing. He spotted something, that feeling perhaps he needed an outsider.

The Journalist Outsider
I'm the outsider. I'll explain.

Firstly, nothings broken! Producing a conference of this size with the said contacts is a herculean exercise in VIP contact management and value. Not least getting all your experts' diaries free on the day, so we'd want to be there. I'd like to be there.

There's also no doubting that between this august line-up the audience will be drawn a vision, a reality of broadcasting in the future, which will be deeply knowledgeable and insightful.

But you could also subscribe to McLuhan's notion of :
If you want to know about the water why ask a fish.

The panelists will be talking about TV journalism, so we're on diamond-hard Terra ferma.

But if there is a threat to TV News, if there is an alternative, if the net has something up its sleeve what do the alternatives have to say?

There are three broad threats to TV News: technological, creative, and financial. Though financial is a linked the two.

For the technological threat, shareware platforms, play out services such as the BBC iplayer and the rest, like many I have an informed view, but I'm not in the lab and wouldn't know how to calculate the ohms variance on a capacitor from writing code.

For that then I'm not the right person. If you follow my posts you'll know I'm passionate about videojournalism, multimedia and innovation, whether in the production process alone or its application to television.

I have worked in TV, know most of the panelists by sharing a stage with them at past conferences or worked for them, so like so many people could provide an intelligible view, but I'd easily defer to the MIT technologist or TV Execs calling their IT board level strategic meeting.

If 2005 was the apotheosis of heightened TV exec nerves (what is this thing with social networks?), 2009, despite the C.crunch is a more assured time for TV to take stock.

A Clearer TV Journalism Future?
How? Well in part most of the foresight technologies that threatened in 2005 are now here. New ones continue to emerge, but truthfully nothing is, or was as devastating as Youtube. Nothing appears to threaten that dominance and destabilise the present equilibrium.

Now everyone knows what everyone else knew back in 2005. Sky has rolled out an ambitiously successful web service, Channel 4's highly unique show is on the web, as is ITN's.

And the BBC has recently turned its newsroom into a multimedia one (an exclusive video interview and tour follows shortly with the BBC's head of Multimedia News, Mary Hockaday). Embed video is no longer a fad and then there's the Iplayer for good measure.

So like I said informed knowledge:

• I worked under the chair of this session, Nick Pollard for a number of years and interviewed him recently.
• Julian March Sky's supremo for their web manifestations showed me some of what he had planned at Sky way three years back. Simon Bucks I have met many times. Here he is inspecting my Sony A1 camera at an ONA meeting.
• Some time back, I met with Robin Elias at ITN to assist in a programme I had in mind. I worked at ITN for a couple of months, and spent many good days of five years at Channel 4 News freelancing.

Six degrees there, connecting everyone, Not so an outside after all? But I am.

My Views
I have an onotological belief.

That whilst the web has been a major player and all the networks occupy the space, and the value of their content has not diminished in news terms.

In fact, as a jury member judging their output at this year's Royal television Society Awards for Broadcast Innovation I would say the bar has been raised. However my belief which qualitatively I'm exploring is that this is not it.

Bound by semiotics, with one eye on social behaviour, creatively there are horizons we could touch now to strengthen this thing called news. To that trend extrapolations, and various qualitative procedures yield something which my gut's been feeling.

Last year the BBC failed in its bid to launch local broadband networks to support its brand of videojournalism. The BBC will pitch again and I reckon win.

Video journalism offers, or at least should do, a new language of information enlightenment. It's value is not so much its speed, economics, or swift turnaround but as viewers will know from my magazine www.viewmagazine.tv, something within the vein of rich media.

Videojournalism also allow for a levelling of the news agenda. Ti's the night of long so far in the UK with thinly sheathed knives out.

The mix of old journalism and the new
The Telegraph, a newspaper, has with good old fashion journalism demonstrated in sequel upon sequel the public's insatiable thirst for the story of the year, thus far: MPS expenses. This news could be strengthened further with quick turnaround vj docs, which would also broaden the agenda.

Incidentally is the word TV becoming redundant with this congealing of different bodies e.g newspapers online, Manchester Evening News, The Guardian?

TV News will stay, but I'm equally interested in how the web and Now journalists work in new discourses and news that has the value of that sweeping us at the moment. The death of regional newspapers, for which many TV outfits depend is in itself an issue.

On a train recently I over heard a passenger, an employee of a municipal council in South London lambast their uselessness. A prime territorial ground for journalism, fact gathering, and videojournalism, I thought.

The future of News is not so much that it won't be on TV, but that it will continue to attract viewers by the nature of what they cover and how.

Regional, closer-to-home TV will increasingly matter and the way we do it for TV does not necessarily make it work online. I guess that's what makes me an outsider.

Either way Journalism in Crisis at the university of Westminster, you should be there, Otherwise here's the link for viewing online on the 2 days and the blog from students.

Downloading my brain

Sorry normal posts assume next week as right now I'm buried under 7000 word chapter for my thesis, plus a film to demonstrate the new realism of video journalism, which has taken me around the centuries 5th, 13th, 17th and 21st ending up on Henry Jenkin's convergence culture.

Preshoots for Masters coming along, with how to cheat at Current Affairs making.

Next week I'm in Berlin for a day, judging panelist meet the winners of the International VJ awards, and am looking to submit abstract for Journalism in Crisis.

Then there's a revalidation of a new course, not before a week of phd peer review supervision, then off to Miami for WeMedia.

Meanwhile publishers have touched base and so looking forward to that dialogue, But have to submit marks to grad office for 70 masters students.

Peron emailed me about coming to Brazil to lecture in video journalism. The energy to VJ anywhere in South America would be awesome. Just look at the talent of film makers emerging. We'll have to see though about that.

So back to the thesis, but I will be twittering. Circuit training 9.30 tomorrow. Bang goes my Saturday. If you're passing by Viewmagazine.tv the BBC feature from the 90s - one of the best BBC current affairs shows for young people is worth watching / reading.

They don't do it like that anymore.

The art of storytelling - video journalism

The art of cinematic videojournalism, David will be revealing his latest piece of work and the strongest link yet to videojournalism irresistible flair.

Video Journalism: We can do this one of two ways; the technical and you'll get something commendable or the creative and I can't tell you where that's going to end, but I can tell you it should not be predictable.

I'm currently going through video after video from judging this year's International Video Journalism Awards, and while I can't and won't say anything about the event, I'm reminded of the theory under pinning good, even great stories.

CONFLICT.

At SXSW where I'm scheduled to talk, I have something that makes that point and the new cinematic language of news telling. It will be something.

There is a story in anything, but to get there we/ you/ me must ask the right questions. If you're new to the game that can be daunting, if you're a bit long in the tooth, then you're forever probing for tensions, seeking the soft underbelly of the story.

It's the collision of attributes, the rub of consequences, the absurd vs normal.

I have to say that's one of the great things about working through the BBC, alongside editors who pushed you, who demanded more, because they believed they/you could deliver.

And that ethos then stays with you, like a bad/good rash, depending. But knowing the technical and even being creative is not enough. It's the kwa, and something else, the passion of it.


The Passion of VJ
Video journalism/ film is passion, a get down and dirty to deliver something out of your comfort, embracing the metronome, the heart of the subject with a peculiar synchronicity.

It works because it works. The technical is subsumed by a creative bent and that passion.

Some people are naturals, but most film makers go through the pain, years of the graft; there's no short cut, you have to make, and make and make some more and often come away feeling it was not good enough.

You're like a chef. Having learned the basics, you then start experimenting, and often that gunk ends up in the bin, but you try again until you know you're onto something. And then the inner flamboyance, the passion takes you because when you're confident you start to fly by the seat of your pants.

You're tempting failure each time you attempt something. Not because you're maniacal, but you want to push and push some more.

I love film and video. After 22 years I still approach it like hyperactive toddler and each time I see something in say, Man o Fire or one of those cutting edge one dot zero films, I exhale a "wow" and return to my Mac wanting to see if I can replicate the narrative and then redefine it for my own use.

The art of storytelling can be found in many books, but you've got to let go. "just let go". Pick up the bike, ride it, fall off, then get back on, ride some more and then when you're confident close your eyes and ride. It's hairy yet ultimately exhilarating.

Bravo BBC Today Programme

We all have our tales for recounting our meetings with celebrities.

One fine afternoon, some years back, my agent, yes those were the days, rang me up to appear at a Warehouse in South London.

There it would transpire a number of young black professional had gathered for what was to be a photo shoot and article for the Evening Standard.

There was little other that connected the people gathered.

Small talk ensured, but truthfully it was a played-down theatrical performance in the peacock syndrome. Not purposefully from the writers, fashion designers, journalists and musicians, but instigated by the newspaper.

The photo shoot was ten young black men and women supposedly going places and the photographer and Evening Standard journalist needed everyone to be at their most upright proclaiming the great things they had done.

On the far side of the lineup was my first glimpse of a true celeb, and a rare one. Tall elegant, not saying much, almost slightly irritated, it wasn't difficult to ignore her.

She had just broken through the conservative league of writing a novel that was monumental in many ways.

This was true talent, which is not to say the others were not, but what this writer would go on to achieve is testimony of the chatter back then and now.

When I picked up the Evening Standard afterwards, that one quote - a sort of phrase that is murmured but dare not speak itself, screamed.

"It'll be progress when black people don't have to necessarily gather to show what they've achieved" - or something thereabouts.
Zadie Smith - author White Teeth.


BBC's Guest Editor
Today, the BBC's flagship news and current affairs programme that imprints on the day's digest of news was given over to Zadie Smith to edit - a typical run of guest editors for the festive season.

And what a superb collection of reports and packages she chose.

A discussion on avant garde writing, classism in comedy, a deeply provocative report from Libera, which played more to quiet gonzoism than traditional reportage, and then a one-on-one with the Today Presenter Evan Davies where she queried whether Obama's style of politics differed for different races and cultures.

If you're interested in the germination of thought-bombs, the stuff of "blink", "Wisdom of Crowds", then I'd advise you spend sometime listening back on the programme.

I was particularly interested in the ideas surrounding 21st Century avant garde, and as Ms Smith put it, if there exist a movement that challenges traditional writings?

It's a question you could apply to modern journalism and one I constantly ask. As a side step, why do we still refer to is as journalism, when the objects we write for are no longer exclusively journals.

Hari Kunzru, another superb writer [I have a video interview of him somewhere] argued against the romanticism of the avant garde in favour of a vanguard.

The relevance of this can't be emphasised enough and dovetailed nicely into Zadie Smith's panoramic radio report, as well as a her observation of US President-elect Obama's "sweet potato pie" oratory. [ New Yorker article by Mark Danner]

Explanation: In electronic story telling, modern reportage, contemporary web story telling, is there a new discourse we (non traditionalists) can either tap into or spawn.

In the 80s this was evident in the music industry. For whatever culturally popular modernist programmes did like Top of the Pops, there was always a Guy called Gerald or Tricky.

Zadie's poetically authored, yet disturbing piece, from Liberia, in which she deliberately became part of the report, veers off to Hunter Thompson's Gonzoism, but for a completely different form - radio.

The BBC's already does this to an extent with "From our own Correspondents', but Zadie's story illustrated how the feelings, mannerism, demeanour, the ability to feel shit, guilty, impassioned could seep into a report without taking away the grand message.

It's quite deconstructive, and if anything floats towards the discursiveness of a facet of blog writing. Whilst traditional broadcast reportage, for instance at the BBC, is proud to proclaim its objectivity and impartialness, their blog has become the outlet for the story, about the story.

Over the last few years this level of reportage is becoming common place, which begs the question, what lurks behind ?

The underground by its very nature is that, often misunderstood, not universally accepted, but part of a quiet brew, which potentially could become the zeitgeist.

The many backroom experiments performed by millions, the non-conformists, is the spark plug for ideas of the future.

Zadie's report about Liberia, was as much a report about Zadie; a report within a report.

Perhaps it could only be pulled off by those adept at seducing us with their skill for words, but it works all the same and has a place to be studied or experimented with with the new vanguards.

Here for Zadie's ideas she contributed to the programme