David returns to Apple London with a little help from Visual Editors

The date needs sorting but I'm going to be back at Apple Regent Street London for an evening of fun and play.

It's going to be an hour and half session with 30mins Q&A and its free for you to attend.

So what can you do in that time?

In the past I have used Apple sessions to showcase work.

This time, I'm thinking about concentrating soley on video and aggressive videojournalism, which means it'll be far more practical.

Also I'm looking to get video of my buddy, Rob Montgomery from Visual Editors showing how he uses his i-phone as a reporting tool ( We hung out in Cairo where we worked on a joint reporting project).

I'll deconstruct one of the UK's most cutting edge series I worked on as a Reporter/Assistant Producer in the 80s/90s: BBC's Reportage, which could easliy be the gene for Current.tv.


David reporting on the UK Brain Drain for network current affairs youth programme BBC Reportage.

Click below for show

Brain Dran

Britains Youth Crime system

The programme invested in a style which in now all but redundant, but as I'll show it was right on the money in the way it mixed genres and could be invaluable for big set piece video programmes. e.g the Telegraph for instance, which is planning a major series on politics.

Several of its original casts are huge names in the industry.

Apple Time after session
Hopefully they'll also be time for looking at multi-entry story telling, so if you're a flash designer do pitch so we can have a discussion.

So what do I mean by aggressive videojournalism?

In effect there's broadly, for me at least, two types of video journalism.

You shoot with a DVCam, you're a VJ and you likely shoot very well.

That style is solid follows the rigours of the 3:6:9 rule and is very apt for TV, and in some cases you're award winning.

There are some incredible VJs that shoot like that and I'm a big fan of their work e.g.

Then there's a style where you manipulate the lens and direction on-the-fly to dictate the nature of the shot and object-subject.

There's a fluidity within the camera and the narrative; the camera mimicks eye movement; cuts are often fast; and the shooting and editing is symphonic.

Two different short cuts include:

This Reuters demonstrating their mobile phone kit

8 Days - the story of the UK's first newspapers journalists turned videojournalists.

Rules of thirds and compositions are bent to accomodate fresh direction.

If you're a big fan of the BBC series Spooks, you'll note how its style has fundamentally changed from last season to this.

Similarly, Paul Greengrass and Tony and Ridley Scott offer the sort of inspiration and guidance e.g Scott's Man O fire with Denzel Washington and more recently JJ Abrams "Cloverfield" ( WATCH THIS).

The style - shoot to edit - involves multiples direction and thinking in 4-6 second cuts - almost predicting or trying to the next shot - with one camera.

See you apple. I'll drop the date in when I find out when.

* Write up of David's first presentation at Apple UK's Regent Street talking Hillman Curtis, Heavy.com and Newstoday to name a few.

Multimedia, Innovative Mobile Phone Reportage, ONA and Reuters

Reuters Mobile Reporting Phone Kit

A lot of things can happen in er a day.

Thanks to Peter Ralph at shooting by Numbers who had me in stitches and still has when he emailed me a response to a my earlier missive about the trailer for "So you want to be a multimedia journalists?.

Cmon Peter it was the high definition version that came in at a miniscule 7mb, which is why I sent an ee out.

Peter's response.

"I do, I do!

Please send cap and scarf!"

Fab - that's all I can say. An art in how to bring a fellow brit down a peg or two - fantastic.


Reuters
Yesterday's Reuter's Online News Association gathering was lovely - not a word I use often.

The whole set up with two hours of Q and A with four/five of their team walking us through the whole mobile phone correspondence kit.

Good turn out of heavyweight writers/ journalists and bloggers as well. Kevin Anderson from the Guardian, Martin Stabb from Press Gazette, and that talented multimedia correspondent Tim Overdiek.

Apparently the ONA's been growing at rate of knots.

Someone needs to correct me but some 45% in the last year and most of that out of the US.

Anyways so what I liked about the talk was the honesty from the Reuters crew; we're trying this out and we haven't mastered eveything, but we're looking at what it can do, they said.

I think I jumped on ilicco their mobile products manager when a point came up about neswpaper journos prefering the Nokia system to the A1 HDDV cam I use.

Video's not for everyone, yes, but those who have taken it - some 200 plus to date - are doing some fine work. I can give a fuller list in later postings.

Anyway others weighed in.

What are limitations in bandwidth?

Do the phones have a built in stabiliser to minise shake?

How long do the batteries last?

I'll post that video once I complete this post, and so on and so on.

In the hands of Citizen jo it'll be formidable - the whole kit looks like a point and click affair.

Only pressure I can see is from the I-phone - which I have seen at work from Robb Montgomery.

Now that is special.

Onto a good thing
But Reuters are on to a good thing and they know it.

A question about quality and camera steadiness was a red herring according to Paul Brannan (BBC); if the shoot is newsworthy who cares - his point?

Reuters grabbed interviews with William Gibson ( Cyber), Vince Serf and Peter Bazelgette ( Big Brother Boss) and aside from some film motion - me thinks it has something to do with the chroma shift or compression ( what do I know) - it looked and sounded fine.

Mobiles are the future
Mobiles are the future, now that looks a certainty.

That much was talked up today by marketing mogul Ricky Chopra from Quba.com talking to Commercial Music undergrads at Uni.

I gate crashed to see if I was missing anything in SEO, which he discussed.

Ricky, confident in his presentation spoke about the dash for digital downloads i.e. everyone wants to be on mobiles and how bluetoothing films, at festivals etc, was becoming the norm.

You can even go mobile: all you need is a back pack with a transreceiver, cost about 1400 dollars, and a laptop and some poor soul to lug it around.

Anyway what happens when you get passed by the cyborgy person is you get pinged with "hey here's my film", if you've got your bluetooth device on.

Does that mean Web sites will soon become redundant ?


The New Marketeers
But the best part of his talk involved the subversive area of "article marketing".

Mmmm the art of creating a buzz around your product by conversing with your market in "clever" somtimes underhanded ways.

The more savvy of you will recall Loreal and Microsoft's debacle, so it has huge negatives.

The positives: students can earn around 3200 dollars a month for "article marketing" around their blogs, and says Ricky they drove traffic from 1000 a week to 2000 a day or thereabouts when they took on a campaign.

I have got to get more facebook friends. Damn!

Meanwhile at the same time a department head went all google adwords today. Took us minutes to get on - further linning thoss nice levis pockets of google.

How much are google making from ad words alone - really - nice!

Intercontinental classrooms
And then back home Robb Montgomery from Visual Editors ask if I'll skype into a class he's taking so we can talk multimedia.

We're back where we started because I'm somewhere near producing this multimedia piece I have been banging on about- but meanwhile get some of this.



The FT have pulled a big multimedia bunny from the hat: The Rising Cost of Food I like this. And I'm sure you will to, particularly as it addresses a huge topical subject with such clarity and style.

yes yes the FT are friends, but this is still brill

I-Phone in action

The I-phone has hit British shores.

Here's a 40 second clip I shot of Robb Montgomery from Visual Editors during a gig we did in Cairo. Soon after off camera he was practically mobbed.

What Robb is very enthusiastic about is the Iphone as the next generation journalists tool.

He road tested the device to show its many options e.g. Google map, GPS, Video et al

Being a simpleton, I loved that he could take my pic and it manifested full screen tagged to called ID.

Can't tell you the number of times I have been flummoxed by who's on the end of my phone - even when their name comes up.

Now can it make coffee I asked