It's a financial Time

It's been a FT [fab time].

James Montgomery, who played a leading role in steering the FT.Com through its digital transition is to leave his managing editor's post for new pastures within the FT.

Personally I wish him the very very best of luck. You couldn't meet a more charming, pro manager.

I worked alongside James in training a number of FT journos in the VJ way and also managed to get a few of our student's work placements there.

You'll be hard pressed to find a group whose approach, courteousness, robust questioning and absorption in multimedia is a model for new journalism.

Ft article on Viewmagazine features video, which will be updated with controls shortly

The FT write up on viewmagazine.tv happens to be one of the most pinged, which led me to rethink how I might present some added value on the page.

That now will come in the shape of a lot more unpublished video, pictures such as these and including their first ever VJ piece and how that package was made.

Photomontage within the FT and some

One of scenes features Rob Minta, head of multimedia querying the City of London Police's decision to ask him for his personal details and then issue him a notice for filming in the city.

Rob handles it well. Later that evening I asked the Press Association's lawyer Mike Dodd whether this was acceptable. He sought clarification from the City of London Press Office and replied, "No".

More recently I invited a team of police to talk to our masters students and this issue came up again. But more on that in another post

New posting name
In thinking of a name for a new post, I came up with: "We live in Financial Times" only to realise on googling it was already part of the FT's brand.

But what I did stumble upon, I so absolutely love.

I have seen this poster [above], but the Flash form is sublime art, design meets commerce. A minimalist futuristic metropolis, which on closer inspection appears to be pulling in xml data.

So for the new write up on the FT, It's a FT time will be the headline and based on the poster I'm spellbound by I'll create something Flash-based for the new micro site.

2009 trends for accelerated media - videojournalism

Scientists refer to the point where one species is superceded by another as "passing through the bottle neck".

It is a punctuated timeline which yields an entity, species zero, much able to cope with new conditions. So if you thought newspapers and TV will disappear, having adopted web 2.0 mannerisms, you might want to think again.

So what are some of the things that might crop up in 2009?

• Ever more richer multimedia films in which the likes of Thirst in the Mojave presents one of the more interesting uses of the lean towards greater linking e.g. video linking. Use of the events in the FLV player provides "bloombergesque" content. Next step in Mojave is independently being able to drill or hold the info on screen.
• HD video, richer saturations, wider screens and more player innovations e.g. click to send to your i-phone etc will become more evident. Paradoxically, the web is set to realise the same problem TV wrestled with during its launch. It'll need a brand to face those videos. To some it's not rocket science, but the "screen" factor for the generation ahead will begin to matter in deciding who to visit in this vast digital soup of ours.
• Since front end ads have proved not to be a distraction for viewers, will we see behaviours such as tent poling creeping into video stories? That is the first 15 seconds sets up the next story from the one you've clicked.
• In the face of a crippling economy and lay offs, is this the year finally when whole swathes of former bricks and mortar broadcast employees set up alternative online structures. e.g. NottheBBC.com or Alternativebbc.co.uk. Might as well, particularly if you can keep overheads down.
• Video journalism - appreciation of the psychology of the moving image and its emotional flow online
  
• Training, training and more training - not for information, which is transient, but knowledge.
  

Origins of Multimedia meets Video journalism Flashback 2001

The piece is called The Family - a finalist at Channel 4's Digital Awards. Click here to launch

It's something else to look back on this piece of multimedia work from 2001. One of the first attempted integrated multimedia video journalism pieces.

I need to tell you a few things.

• Few people outside of the design community knew what Flash was. We were on Flash 4 going into Flash 5.
• Flash did not support video, only bitmaps which you had to animate to look like video.That meant you had no video controls. You had to write code.
  
• We were on 56k modems, so we had to encode these to unfathomable small sizes to today's standards [using load movie scene variables] because broadband resided only with big companies who could afford T1 lines.
• IMVJ was the dream, that is matching video expertise with Flash. Credit here to Rosalind Miller the designer and encoder.
• We filmed at a boxing gym set up for urban kids, quite a few from troubled backgrounds, in Islington.
• We collected sound using a sony walkman and video with a Vx1000.
• I got hit in the ring operating a minature steady cam. Yep suffer for your art.
  
• The piece had no navigational direction, it employed play and spatial theory. If you've never read Lev Manovich - The Language of New Media, go order it now. It's where I got my epiphany from
• Heavyweight boxer Lennox Lewis' team on seeing this hired me to work with them. I had the time of my life witnessing the fight of the century Tyson vs Lewis
  
• You can read about it here in Blue Print - an article that I think has some currency now as it did back then.
• I was introduced to BBC Commissioning Editors to consider some more "circular docs", though it never came off
  
• It lead to me meeting Hillman Curtis - The Flash Guru -awesome!
• Read up further on video hyperlinking - something I believe will be the next disruptive method/technology. The Economist rang up for an interview aferwards. Gobsmacked!
• If you look at the credits ask yourself now if you could perform all the known disciplines, because that's where we are with IMVJ now.
  
• This week I'll pull out another Flashback from 1996 - an ad broadcast on CNN International, made in 24 hours and whose renumeration you could only describe as "silly!"
  

multimedia story Part 1

Just got the news that completes the Multimedia story package. Senior BBC Exec has agreed to the interview in the new year.

I'm thrilled.

Yeah the things that make me happy eh :)

Making of MM Journalist
Meanwhile Robb Montgomery from Visual Editors and me should be able to start The making of a multimedia Journalist from Egypt.

I apologise to the purists but it's a bit like pseudo bourne style meets wannabe Tony Scott.

You saw the trailer here some time back; if not here it is again: Trailer - Be a multimedia Journalist

New media training for the newsroom Continues

Following on from recent posting on New Media training for the newsroom, one of a series of video clips to drop into the theme.

This looks at the classic interview/ Q and A/ you see on TV.

In many ways it's the easy pick - the low hanging fruit.

I have shortened the timeline of the process but the technique should appear obvious inspite of a muddled audio.

This was a sequence picked up by another VJ and I wasn't miked for the process.

Three different shots which visually move on the narrative to give you various cut aways and establishers.

Somewhere in an archive posting is an interview with 7/7 survivor Rachel North done in the fashion described.


INTERVIEW, CUT AND POST IN 10 MINS

We ran an experiment at a Skup in Norway.

An interview with four questions, one edited out, cut and posted took ten minutes.

Because I'm shooting to edit, my timeline in FCP is clean.

All I have to do is mask the question I have removed and provide enough drop in shots to make the interview look interesting.

A decade plus ago, perhaps even now, TV will tell you you need two three people to execute that interview.

In 1994 we proved then, as now that a lot of the visual cues and language of TV was outmoded.

There was a swifter way of doing it.

Today a lot of my interviews tend to be handheld; that's a conscious filming style which allows me to work more creatively and swifter.

You can see an example of a more fluid interview here - one I did with super blogger and academic Andy Dickinson and respected Doc maker and also part of the MELD team Paul Egglestone

FT's Rising Cost of Food

The FT's The Rising Cost of Food

Financial Journalism made immersive using the whole range of multimedia furniture.

Very nice