Good multimedia Ideas are timeless/priceless

Good ideas are good whatever the period. And casting an eye back to pre-web 2.0 one of the companies I worked for RE-ACTIVE. NET has aged really well.

The concept for this small commercial/ Ad agency was to mix video journalism and Multimedia. and the site, which garnered huge praise from the industry still reflects that.

All the credit goes to Rosalind Miller, the creative director whom in 1999/2000 would, with Hillman Curtis, make me marvel at what Flash and action scripting could do.

Simple sublime, you really must go and play with the site, if nothing else for the zen haunting bars that float around when you run over an image.

The key then as now is by mixing up different forms, we learnt from each other and came up with some interesting ideas.

A lot of what I came to appreciate, though I already had some existing Flash skills ( that's how Rosalind and I met) came from observing Rosalind at work.




The last still is commercial work from the XTP project, which is now spreading across London Underground.

What is it?

You see those new screens which play soundless ads that are replacing posters, yep.

Viacom asked if we could produce a set of ads to demonstrate how they would work with what was called 5 degrees of motion that gave clients an aesthetic as well as pricing model. Rosalind's designer aesthetic was just ......!

Design+Interactivity+VideoJournalism = commercials?? **^* $ Not so radical after all

Mi6 Videojournalism

Image from draft book

I have put together a draft for a book on videojournalism which covers a broad palette from working at the BBC in the 80s, looking at Vjism in the 60s; the dirty word in the UK media, Channel One TV; to the more up-to-date talking about modern forms of storytelling.

Story forms that include videojournalism gonzo, techniques and methodology on the Press Association course and exchanges with a number of outfits in South Africa, US, Berlin, Norway and the UK.

I'm soon to be in Bejing so am holding off til that leg

Part educational - a sort of how to without the clunk clink of it all - and part personal journey, it's about story, story, story with hopefully some interesting anaecdotes, some almost bordering on the absurd.

Example: always pack condoms on expeditions or foreign shoots, you'll never know when you'll need to protect your camera from sandstorms or rain - yep I don't bother with the rainproofs etc.

To date there's been, oh dear, near a 1000 journalists I have trained - loose count and that's going some way back.

If you'd asked me what I'd be doing when I left Applied Chem school I couldn't have told you this, so ( shrugging shoulders) sometimes I stop and become a wee bit amused.

But we're enjoying it which is why we do it, isn't it?

Here's an old draft of the front page which will undergo further changes.



WHAT IS VIDEOJOURNALISM ?

Videojournalism is an advance on television news production - a shift away from the predictable appproach television has stuck to doggedly since its inception.

It is next generation television: story telling in which you are not bound by the many constraints of traditional news production.

As a movement the form merges a graphical and photojournalistic stanza; a poster cover depiction of the moving image, where each shot matters, each shot counts.

If Capa lived to capture images on light weight, hi-tech cameras, he'd be the classic videojournalist and his dictum that if you're not close enough you haven't got the shot would still count.


**Broadband Era**

Vloggers, video bloggers will undoubtedly rule the net. Their short, sometimes idiosyncratic productions well suited for a medium where time is compressed and users' attention spans shortened.

Videojournalism is a sibbling of video blogging and citizen journalism.

It's a low entry, affordable and highly versatile discipline - which will not only alllow you to compete with television, but often beat it.

The first videojournalism station in the UK in 1994, which this author worked for, animated the industry.

It frightened some as well.

That's because our story composition, narrative and creative use of pictures were different.

The time it took to get the story on air or online was swifter.

Today, for newspaper outfits, magazine publishers, corporate PRs, creative agencies, the aspiring film maker, photographers who want to increase their earnings, video journalism offers a powerful visual solution.

All you'll need is a small lightweight HD camera and PC with film editing software - all highy affordable - and an enquiring mind.

From short news pieces you'll leap to lengthier features and THE FORMAT, before breaking that rule.

And you'll learn all this in a short amount of time.


**Meeting the Web 2.0 Challenge**

And what's more you'll go on to embrace the newest form of videoojournalism Mi6 (Integrated multimedia 6 ways)

From your shoot you'll be able to publish 6 ways, the audio for podcast, stills, multimedia, video, a promo and of course your article.

And you'll find videojournalism will sharpen your video blogging skills or what television calls the piece to camera ( UK) or stand-up (US).

If nothing YouTube has shown us video nations we're driven by video.

As a videojournalist your instinct for visual story telling will heighten. As an organisation you'll increase traffic to your site.

As a manager you'll look at the bottom line and realise the cost and returns from your new venture more than square up.

Videojournalism isn't cheap, but it's a resource you can ill afford.

Be part of the visual video revolution.


ref: posted in Videojournalism Today
*Multimedia posting
* Film site -Multimedia Film released in January
* Trailer for Mi6 Videojournalism
* Scott Rensberger and Claudio Von Planta Two of the many accomplished VJs around the world.
* Amusing little ditti - made in 99 Featuring Dany Glover - as one of his producers working at ABC News South Africa in 1994
* Flash promos circa 99 for Lenox Lewis, Chatham House among others The beauty of these were their file sizes around 200k and interactivity

What's the point of websites

David's website in 2001

We've been here before.

For me in 1997 having produced a site showing my work I wrestled with the notion of what looked like self aggrandisement.

Unsure I emailed a friend: " Is a personable site nothing more that the vanity of placing a mirror in one's back pocket?"

The web was corporate; a window to a business' world but personal sites?

There were noticeable exceptions e.g. Auriea Harvey - that brilliant NY digital artist

But for franchisees like me, what was the point?

But we, me, published into a black hole nonetheless.

Today, any such luck or determination to build your own site should be met with squeals of derision.

Why bother when there are enough off-the-shelf solutions at no cost to get you a web presence.

Any number of blog sites will do, but of course the daddy of playing the web field is Facebook.

Jeff Jarvis captures the zeitgeist of Facebook brilliant in his Guardian article today

Too late

So why would you want a website, when everything's there on plate - at which point I half expect a chorus of deshevilled chilrden to break into song with this doctored verse?

"Ere now, Oliver, you just copy Dodger
and I'll help you out with the words, alright? So it's
"I'll have anything"

Why would you not want a prefab portcabin house with its plethora facilities, available on demand?

Why would we want to produce something like this when we might seek an off-the-shelf solution

It answers itself, but not quite enough.

I look at viewmagazine.tv and my ask why bother?

Though when I peruse theronin, or HillmanCurtis I'm certain in my assessment.

Branding and characterstics; that certain je ne sais quoi which provides you with that distinctiveness and aura of being.

Facebook may be the best site going, but you'll not see the BBC, or Guardian jettison their brand to go all out Facebook native.

But that's it then.

It's not an exclusive deal either or but and "and".

But where then do we see the distinctions in form and function between our Face and our own sites?

It won't be lost on any of us why we have Facebook; it's not so much a platform, as a Killer medium funneling considerable day time, and night energies.

In part it's the low hanging coconut; drink and you'll feel good, avoid and your daily fix of hugs and pinches will leave you looking cold turkey.

As facebook encroaches on the apps ground of web site building, it'll be up to those that want to be different to up their game.

By that, content that's so compelling, outlays that ooze immersion, playability that would have WII addicts wanting to stop by.

Truth, we're not there yet.

How can we be ?

These intermittent web growth spurts indicate with some trend extrapolating there's more juice ahead in what we're trying to do.

The most absurb twinning of courses: computer science and journalism, may have had you doubled over laughing a year ago, however today, you're fearing the worse.

CSS go.. CSS go.. We're a limited time away when journalists will have to know CSS, action scripting and XML as a matter of course.

Why?

Because what they are likely to encounter in this new rift we're opening will be unimaginable compared to now.

WSWYG may render a lot of code knowledge redundant, but perversely understanding what it means will make you better lay person underneath the bonnet.

If you've ever tried to check whether the oil in your car needs changing when your partner has no clue, you'll understand what I mean.

Even more intriguing we have absolutely no idea what algortithms will emerge from the bowels on google to rank that precious piece of copy.

Writing brilliant article may soon just not be enough to get the bots to show the humans it's definately worth the read

Key words
Don't sneer or feel despondent if the following fail to set you on fire; there's time yet.

keyword proximity

how often google crawls through your content

noindex or nofollow attribute.


But for the videomakers amongst us what could the future hold.

This year was the year of Brightcove, soon not to shine so bright when it switches off its free-to-submit without ads on the 18th of December.

In fact this year was video distribution galore year.

There's still acres of innovation and when video hyperlinking hits you might as well pack up if your videos aren't scoring.

But more relevant to the method and quality of video, (news video) will be the aesthetic and the advanced visual language skills to make video leap from the screen.

There's an incredible scene in 300 where a gladiator vanquishes opponents in swift ballet movements in a stacato-sped up- stacato style.

It's rich and tantalising to watch.

The technique for such a dramatic shot involved three cameras filming on the same plane; three independent cameras which could manipulate their own data: slow, normal, sped up.

That's just one technique, but texture, composition, function will all heighten to ensure we spend 20 minutes on average on a site rather than 5.

So what are sites for?

My bet is still to this end game of web video presentation, again not at the expense of text, but the point where the screen supports HD and dimensions that will have your niece laughing at you when you show here Youtube's 425X400 screen.

What are sites for?

With what we've been thorugh this year, we're about to find out in another frenetic year ahead.


David has just gone back to browse though his CSS cookbook