The Wire - good for videojournalism

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

Chapter 13.

The Wire - good for videojournalism

Detective: The reporter comes with us?
Producer: He's a VJ..
Detective: A what?
Producer: You know they film and edit their own stuff
Detective: Unions let you do that shit?
Producer: What unions! Stopped paying subs when we lost an injunction to you guys be able to film us for records.
Detective: Yeah times move on. Guess your VJ will get an Oscar for this.
Reporter: Oscar does films, most likely shot at. Does he get a vest?
Detective: You been watching too many dramas!
Reporter: He gets a vest!
Detective: In the f*****ing Wire he do. Here we so damn down on it, be lucky if you get steel cap boots.
Reporter: Where are we anyways?
Detective: Dagenham.
Reporter **** where?
Detective: Outside London somewhere!
Reporter: Then why the hell are we talking like we Americans
Detective: We're having a "Life on Mars" moment.
Reporter: True...
[ pause]
Reporter: Does he get a vest?


There's no denying The Wire's huge influence. Realms of thesis have been written and combed over. It's only just started its BBC run.

If men would knit in public and police could be exposed for cross dressing, you'd find it in The Wire. So what's it got to do with videojournalism?

Not a lot except that it inspires to go beyond the mundane. For original VJ inspiration, Homicide - Life on the Street, is the bible. In one scene it breaks 5 TV rules. But what The Wire does is inspire thought for the way contemporary chat has moved on.

The way you might speak and access info differs broadly from the way news speaks to you in intellectual high tones. That doesn't mean journalism should dumb down, but that there is a new language that's required, a new semiotic.

As I mentioned at SXSW - the film is not enough. Now where's my vest?

Pixels without borders -photography and videojournalism

Here's the link www.viewmagazine.tv/pixelswithoutborders.html

I have removed the different states I've been working the format to for a presentation next week. If you're on a real fast connection you may stumble across something.

For this production, the rostrum effect is minimum. Yes, you could do the same in Soundslides, though I'm using AE and FCP, Director and Flash action scripting .

Please be advised a couple of the images are disturbing.

Multimedia new for old rope - repurposing or innovation

Alfred Hermida writes from a posting on his site which I have pulled out a section

This fails to recognise that the the Internet is not print, it is not radio, it is not TV. It share some attributes with print and broadcast, but is a medium in its own right, with its own strengths and weaknesses.

This requires a shift in how journalists have approached stories, adopting a multimedia mindset from the get go.

It is time to stop talking about repurposing and instead to start a discussion on how to re-imagine journalism.

In which I responded

Couldn't agree with you more Alfred on your last para.

Part of what amuses me is what might be called the sanctity of journalism.

That everything we need to know about it, is out in the open. That, there are no new paradigms.

At least that's what you could have made of it in the absence of the web and accompanying digital environment.

But now?

The repurposing debate mirrors my thoughts around the use of broadband: a new medium or repository for repeats.

Here's an exercise. If you scan a raft of broadcast news programmes [trad] media will have reported faults related to progress and the web with the medical profession, business, race, society etc, but very, very, rarely introspectively about itself.

Everything's alright in the house.

The explosiveness of race and culture provides an example of the fault lines of repurposing. Does MM news inherently provide added educational value, rather than exclusively reaction/comments to events?

Because if it does, that makes repurposing a wee bit difficult and you could argue more work is required for MM reportage compared with linear.

For instance, the reporting agenda needs to be widened and be more expansive, say, in covering news about the tragic nature of youth stabbings in London.

We'll read about it, watch in on the news, but hitherto we're not seeing much of MM's ability at big issue coverage.

The time, the crime, the preventional schemes, concerted programs, the sharing and pooling of knowledge between groups, what the police are doing down to community level participation and so on.

Meanwhile, you wanna do multimedia, figure out what you want, then fill in a form, shove it in the hands of the graphics department and say something like: "Yeah I want this to go swish and that chira thing you do.."

See, repurposing, and it didn't cost us much.

It may well be "journalism" - the very word itself - negates the sort of vision you imagine, at least at present.

The vested sums/ interests wrapped in the word, the politics/business surrounding it, means wholesale changes aren't possible.

We might blog, believe we've found a tool and fresh semiotic to broaden the news agenda and accompanying discourse, but adopted by many trad media it's funnelled into something that suggest inclusivity, yet how much impact has it on shaping/driving news? Does it almost amount to merely free content on your doorstep?

Videojournalism which I'm passionate about is another example of the repurposing debate. Is it merely about one person taking on a story from the idea stage to completition, replicating the model of TV news?

Or is it about a fresh stanza in story telling and widening the agenda, particularly when produced for the web?

The "journalism" in video almost makes it restrictive, because TV journalism does not court creativity, big "C".

"You wanna do docs or advertising mate if you want to shoot flash stuff", you almost expect to hear.

It was Richard Deverell in his former position before he became the BBC children's controller who said in a
project we were partnering at my Uni:

We haven't figured out anywhere near what to do with the Net with regard to the media... or something like that.

I still agree with him.

Maybe, just maybe, a solution to multimedia reportage exists outside the confines of contemporary journalism.

That perhaps the graphic designer, Flash expert, motion graphics artist, photojournalist, journalist, futurologist, Tech, business major - should all be sitting at one table having a conversation rather than the division of labour that has become so prescriptive.

But then that wouldn't be journalism would it?

Cheers David
Uni Westminster
& Smart Lab

2008- Training, hyperlocal, China & the BBC

In three weeks time I will be interviewing a key BBC figure on News, News Futures and Multimedia.

All I'll say in the meantime is you'll unlikely to see many one-on-ones with him ( If any, particularly outside the news belt) so I'm very pleased. Thanks to those e.g. Paul Brannan, Peter Barron etc that helped out on this.

The inteview will be used for

A feature on Multimedia now previewing on Viewmagazine.tv

Presentations at Cultural Exchange and World Press Association

and some work on a PhD

But I have an idea which I hope we can share in.

I'd like to invite a video question from you which I will put to my interviewee and I'd like to use your question in the feature, but will also entertain posting your segment to you, if you want.

There are a couple of caveats to make this work really neatly.

That hopefully it'll be a good spread for use on an interactive map.

That you're a video shooter/ vlogger so that I can link to your story/vlog. Who knows we might even get a vlog carnival going.

That I'll probabably take about 6-10 questions, so you'll have to be to the point.

I'll come back to this again with more details closer, but in the meantime if you want to email me to talk about this please do so on davidg@jounalist.com or my viemagazine account. Just to save any spamming, if you're a viewmagazine.tv viewer you'll easily find it.

So there we are.

It's a mad, but clear idea for collaboration.

Just please don't ask how you'd make a living doing things like this. LOL

China
A couple of details to sort, but my colleague informs me that we should be off to Peking University mid year. He, Kienda Hoji is a visiting professor there in music and law and is some way in learning how to speak and write mandarin.

I have barely scratched the surface and will be picking up the odd tip from some of the Masters students at Westminster.

This year it won't be lost on many that this is China's year, and not only because of the Olympics.

If you attended OFF event in New York, which a good friend Rob Chiu presented at you would have come across the incredible Leonard Shlain who wrote the Alphabet and the Goddess, the conflict between word and image.

Inside Leonard talks about how different parts of the brain are developed from reading linearly ( western) and Chinese characters, which has provided Kienda and me with thoughts about working multimedia with our hosts.

It's all a germ of an idea, but I'll come back to it after some clarity.

Hyperlocal
Two years ago you'd still be ooming and arming about video; not any more.

We're all film makers, but does that mean saturation in subject matter etc.

Of course not.

But one area that has recieved a lot of attention but not much action is hyperlocal; I'm talking UK.

So this is going to an interesting year for hyperlocal news: News you can use.

I''ll make the links on this pilot/draft site fully active soon.


Training
And less I forget, training, training, training.

But this year, I expect to see some fairly non conventional outfits take to video, videojournalism and multimedia either as a way of documenting their work or teling their own stories.

Hillman Curtis, Flash Guru turned Award winning film maker has made a wonderful film on Pentagram; the tones and textures are just drop dead gorgeous, plus his depth of field comes across as if he were using a swing and shift lens.

Take a look for yourself.

You can see the interview I did with Hillman here, which I hope to update when I next get the opportunity to bump into him

But back to videojournalism, expect to see more museums and municipal bodies get involved.

The Mathematics of Multi Media News

David reflects on an article written about broadband

"Multimedia in my view, is not an invention but an ongoing discovery of how mind and the universe it imagines ( or vice versa depending) fit together and interact.

Multimedia (MMs) is where we have always been going"

So said William Gibson, the author who has done much to guide our thoughts and ideas within cybermedia.

The word he changed the world with was cyberspace.

Much has been said about MMs origins; many claiming it started with television, a multi-sensory device; or even cinema, a system of moving images so radical that when a train was first shown on screen - people physically cowed for fear they would be tramelled.

Better still watch Eisenstein's Revolution: Battleship Potemkin for a simply unsurpassable piece of multimedia theatre (Cinema).

You could even argue hieroglyphics present a good case.

The dispute over when multimedia started if it ever did, going by Gibson's assessment detracts from one of the central arguments of where it's going and what it can do.

However I'd also acknowledge that a source, an origin, provides a platform for advancement.

Ted Nelson, a man so ahead of his time theorising open systems that the web should have been his invention commented on innovations surrounding the new digital economy of hypermedia.

That even though CDRoms kiosks, DVDs and the rest were innovatory multimedia systems they were closed, unlike computers that allowed an open transaction and flow of new ideas.

This would later lend itself to Berner's Lee nonhierachical structure and open protocols.

This is not a closed argument (I wouldn't dare) but it strikes me that in the pursuit of ongoing discovery in an open system the status quo of closed TV reports, cinema etc represent an ideal which is so passed a paradigm shift quotient that 2008 awaits to be a truly exciting year.

For me this harks back to an earlier article (:() how to use the web a year ago Broadband's capacity offers scintillating innovation, for Journalism.co.uk

I'm looking at that now, proclaiming "ungh!"

Vannevar Bush 1945 prophecy now
Re-reading Vannevar Bush's seminal essay circa 1945 which would cause huge excitement in amongst others the science world, one begins to marvel at the present.

Bush, Roosevelt's scientific advisor was a genius.

"Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanised private file and library. It needs a a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex", will do."

In 1945 Bush had already seen the web.

But something else to take from that period onwards, that all the major advancements towards this evolving multimedia platform involved an array of disciplines: scientists, engineers, artists and poets.

Journalism, despite its own internal brilliant advancements was just one of spokes.

It should frankly be of little wonder that today it is technologists, dramatists, and engineers who are pushing at the seams of multimedia.

And that multimedia within journalism itself is so ill-defined

Journalism ~ writing for a journal. Was there ever a misnomer for our century?

In fact multimedia journalism is the imaginary media of its age.

Whilst mathematicians were comfortable with Natural Numbers, Integers, Rational and Real Numbers, how might they deal with numbers whose square root was less than zero?

Put simply -2*-2=4, so what could yield the answer -4?

Mathematicians found it in a fifth quadrant, imaginary numbers (j or i), so the square root of -4 is 2i.

I had fun teaching an eight year old nephew this over the Christmas.

If anything from a scientific POV, it illustrates an ability to adapt (though thoroughly brutally in the science world) and address varying circumstances when they arrive. For instance solving integration and differential equation in physics.

In journalism we're being made privy to far more information than the present paradigm can handle.

Spatial context gives us location and timeline, but we insist on a 2 dimensional approach of what, where, how, why and when.

Interactivity offers us differential windows into a story, but we adamantly pursue a linear exposition, blithely ignoring other "less important".

Multimedia gives us many access routes to create as well as eke out layers of knowledge, but for its use with video we deign it should be closed.

Here is the 9.O'clock news and if you don't like it well, sod off.

Alan Kay said in one of his essays recounting McLuhan's Understanding Media [1964) that McLuhan's claim about the profoundness of the printing press was not merely about making books available but "changing the thought pattern of those who learned to read it".

Could it be for both those who read and those who teach multimedia we'll have to ride an even bigger crest than that of 2007?

Could 2008 well turn out to be the year when we not only break out from quarantined eco systems of say video news, but embrace a different thought pattern of presenting the narrative?

See related article on video hyperlinking at Viewmagazine.tv which was featured in The Economist

Mike Jones pod on open and closed systems - extremely informative

REFLECTIONS

As we bid adieu to this year in expectation of the next, a look back on a few things, in no particular order of fun, frivolity and work, which are now deep memory pylons.

Most are just images which capture a moment and reveal their own story.

FT
One of the real pleasures was working alongside the FT.com team.

Sharp as razors, as you'd expect, but full of fun.

How often, from afar, we mentally prep ourselves only to be immensely surprised at the turn of events.

The digital pages of the FT will be one to watch with a new team unravelling new areas of multimedia reportage.





8 Days


It may have weathered, but as new outfits or traditional ones try out video and the rest, 8 Days still appears a favourite from my logs.

As with most of the dedicated films on viewmagazine.tv there's a sense of he movie poster about it; something that heavily influences my work.



You can't see it


Using the clone tool in photoshop I comped this image to illustrate how some of us just can't see it, this new Event Horizon.

Disturbing somewhat!

In a film (was it Greenaway?) I recall a beast had his eyes in the palm of his hands.

What was that film again?


IM6 VideoJournalism


I've often interchanged this coinage IM6 or MI6; the latter more interesting as that's the acronym of the UK's foreign intelligence service.

But this image was one of 6 on viewmagazine peeling back the idea of integrated multimedia video journalism.

The main window is the deep sea dive off Gallipoli which includes the BBC World Service report from Gallipoli


VideoJournalism circa 1993


How far we've come.

An image of an old colleague from the days when we lugged around a huge camera costing 40,000 us dollars working at London's equivalent of New York One.

Rachel, now a professional motivator, has recently been knighted with an MBE for her services to Afghanistan teaching and empowering women with communication skills in radio.

More here on the videojos 10 in 1994




Take a 300,000 US dollars car, a network TV presenter and me, the VJ, and this is what you might get from an unrehearsed shoot.

My friend Kevin was taking the car back to Ferrari's base and asked whether I wanted to come along.

He was late and so wasn't really up to many of the sequences I threw up in the air as we drove.

"David, sure, maybe some other time, but I'm a bit late returning the car".

But this is waht we got and you've been generous.

Perhaps some more tests in 2008.

Any sponsors?

The Ferrari 599 GTB isn't she something here for viewmagazine.tv which has far less compression or if you prefer here on Brightcove
Or here on Youtube.

Part 1


Part 2




The Superstar-in-waiting

And how, how can I forget the amazing Nancy Ginindza - a former student of the University where I lecture.

The head of the course, Kienda called me up:

"David quick you gota come and listen to this".

Nancy's music, raw energy is the stuff of William Wallace.

Kienda and I have spent a few late evenings at her gigs trying to capture what she does.

She hasn't broken through yet, but if we can still play a part - great.

Looking forward to devising her promo in the New Years



Same song with visuals




Happy festive season

Multimedia thinking - see below

Is this how it could be?

Within the ecology of the article above lay many strands.

As an introduction to this thinking; the text resembles blocks of information.

Right side brain interprets it almost as a picture, given its shape which is dominant over left side, literary.

See Leonard Shlein.

The skewed nation of the positioning may suggest a hierachy, but truthfully it was placed randomly around an aesthetic.

Each block should be able to expand to the screen or shrink.

Key words light up other texts; they're viral.

Eack key word can activate video.

There looks to be a beginning born from the latest posting, but it's a circular dialogue.

The picture is video - a multi-deliverable asset combining Flash, Video and Text.

The video in itself is the programme and not the programme.

The real programme had Riz Khan interviewing Designer Ozwald Boateng.

I have gone behind the scene to capture elements that could add to the interview or stand alone.

There are various nodal point along the lines of the interview which could activate other films such as this one - an earlier interview with Ozwald .


In this film you'll see some of the emerging ideas of what I might call "outer space" interviews.

Ozwald asks me a question designed to be off camera but is kept in to reveal the nature of discussions: the interview and the non official interview.

If you wan't to read the linear form see previous post.

Soon I'll post the interview

inspired by maths

A site in progress for an amazing friend who is a composer.

Inspired by my maths background in Integration- differentiation ~ a work in progress

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

Interactive Multimedia Videojournalism Manifesto add ons

From the original 1-23 Video Journalist decree

24. Create alternatives to the convention ~ that may surprise you

25. Experiment or expire - a run on demo or die from MIT

26. Acknowledge that online the environment is interactive, your package can have multiple entry points.

27. Think expansively, shoot lean. Think like a detective entering a crime scene. If you think too narrowly, too traditionally, you're in danger of missing the new story, the new clues.

28. Videojournalism, blogging, photography are daughters of multimedia which may well require a multi modal language approach i.e. you could be the one to better define the new language.

29. Mi6 VJ says you can shoot and strip a package 6 ways,. You're a conductor controlling the play of any instrument at any time in unison. But you'll need to appreciate the capabilities of the instruments.

30. Add value to the visual conversation rather than exclusively always seeking a reaction. There is a difference. Being confrontational does not always lean towards resolution

31. It's not multimedia that is impossible. it's how you're conditioning your thinking.

32. It is an evolving language with atracting jack of all trades and masters of all.

The Multimedia Video Journalism Manifesto

Expanding on the popular theme, with an updated manifesto to follow soon, but this is a conceptual visual rep ~ made on FCP.
Many many thanks to Robb Montgomery of visualeditors.com who shot the behind-the-story scene vid and pics and provides the voice clip ( part of a bigger package)

VJ Swarm

We have Howard Rheingold and the RAND to thank for the term in the manner which I'm using it: VJ swarms, where groups of VJs are pursuing the different stories but taking angles on the same person.

A trite intimidating, but I show this picture for another reason.

Working over in Soho with an MD - an Ex Saatchi head - promos and advertising were the rage.

A peculiar, but briliant set up for ads was the tilt- shift effect, which enabled you to produce the most striking pictures where a section of the same plane would be out of focus.

Equally the set up would create the impression that the image was a miniture box set.

It's been used brilliantly for shots near the Tate Gallery London and the bridge that spans North and South London.

But you can go some way, as highlighted by Helmut Kobler in Wired to achieving something of the same effect, which I have done with the inage at the top.

Open photoshop

press quick mask on the tool bar

Seect the gradien tool and reflected gradient from the top tab

Click hthe area you want to be in focus- you'll get a red streak informing you of the area

Press the quick mask again and apply a guassian blur from your filters.

To get the staurated look.

Dup the image in the layers pallatte

and apply multiply from the layers tab and play around with the fill.

Alternatively nip over to Soho for the whole set up

The making of a multimedia journalists

A six pager on the making of a multimedia journalists -a rough guide out on Thursday

Tell me a story - IM6VJ

Guy Ruddle Daily Telegraph Podcast Editor talking to Viewmagazine.tv David about how multimedia and the Telegraph is the future

My head hurts.

I have five books in front of me - one an original from MIT - which started off multimedia as we know it. (re- Negraponte)

I have been furiously writing in a note pad, surprised, challenged, disagreeing, but understanding that the discourse is what I am looking for deconstructing videojournalism - already deeply influenced by photography, film and sound.

This morning I filmed/interviewed Guy Ruddle at the Telegraph who spoke about their multimedia offerings and how one national broadcasters has been pressed to look at what the Telegraph is doing cuz they're 'wopping' us.

I'd already thought the package with Guy, the Croydon Advertiser doing Sound Slide, and Al jazeera's Riz Khan was way incomplete, so I crossed over to our graphics department where two heads of Graphics further aroused my interests.

Their bent, multimedia has altered in meaning in delivering everything the computer can offer into a commodified entity. The end user is still king, but there are significant spaces to explore.

So I'm reading through Stewart Brand's The Media Lab Inventing the Future at MIT and Multimedia from Wagner to Virtual Reality.

And this is why in part my head's pounding. There are so many ideas about ideas, thoughts within thoughts, links from present stations to new ones that I have taken a break to "brain dump" - some kind of cartharsis.

It still strikes me that the geometrical spatial plane online and interactive narrative can further 'disrupt' present flows.

Actually, I should say links away from the status quo.

We're back at video hyperlinking which I demonstrated in the Trust in the Media video and now with some new action scripting (some kind of "tell target") could be deployed towards a new experience.

And what if this piece of work - seven years old- was modifed so each narrative linked off each other in a factual based story.

And what if we could xml narrative data on-the-fly, so further explanation could be given of background info provided.

Yes it's all about the end user

Photographers making slide shows

David Berman from the Croydon Advertiser takes sound and prepares to take a pic. Below, I'm getting David to explain the process

One of the main planks of a piece I'm putting together on Multimedia had me down at the Cenotaph in Croydon.

David Berman, Chief photographer at the Croydon Advertiser has devised a series of Sound Slides and yesterday's events gave me an opportunity to see how he and his colleagues work to produce them.

If you're in the US this is a no brainer, but in the UK market very few newspapers comparatively, per the total number on the market, are using this multimedia methodology as effective as the Advertiser or Sitbonzo - the site which hosts their work.

Thoroughly nice man and his colleagues, why else would they work on a Sunday :), also took me through the process and it afforded me the chance to look to make a short film about them - stand alone to the bigger film.

It's not rocket science he says. But by the end of three plus hours shooting etc, they were putting the finishing touches for it to go up. And here it is, Remembrance Sunday Very nice and very solemn.

Two interesting things to look out for.

David and his team of photographers have editorial control, and place a good degree of value from their managers in acknowledging their work.

What is multimedia, why do we do it and who cares is the angle I'm taking.

What is multimedia journalism - who **** cares?

It's a dogged question that I'm looking at with a videojournalism package next week.

I love the web for this type of pre-shoot thinking.

Here's what I have planned and please do chip in - as they say in Blighty.

I have a shoot from Al Jazeera with Riz Khan, which I hope to follow up with the Telegraph and then the Croydon Advertiser.

Riz is a multimedia operator and you'll see an array of DV cam he uses for his shoots. The trick is in the lighting

The Telegraph frankly need no introduction in this area.

Whilst the Croydon Advertiser has gained notoriety for its soundslide shows.

All of these bring different elements as the sum of all parts to the multimedia landscape and it will be interesting to hear what the parties have to say in a considered package rather than one which has the obligatory 2 minute TV time span.

There's some archive from 95 with interviews from the Guardian, Sunday Times and Telegraph about their thoughts on the matter which I'll drop in.

So what's the point in this?
I suggested the package to the Press Gazette in the face of a market that has come a long way in the last year and thus deserves a look in.

I also stumbled upon this site in my referral matrix logs - a Channel 4 Commissioner Matte Locke giving a robust speech to independent TV producers to pitch to him pieces that are not "Buckaroo" packages.

Buckaroo is that game played where the users try and place a saddle etc on a horse which buckaroos when the weight's too much.

If anything TV has shown itself up by it's lack of multimedia expressionism

What's multimedia got to do with it
So what does multimedia bring to the journalism table?

Six years ago in this article for one of the UK's leading architecture and design magazine's Blue Print, a colleague and I produced an interactive documentary.

It garnered ok attention, making its way to the finals of Channel 4's Unleash the Talent comp.

It's strength was that it was circular, no navigation arm, so required users play with it.

I hadn't quite dabbled in as much game theory then as I have now, so it was a wonderful eureka moment.

And there have been more. The Successor Generation - a documentary, radio piece, online site of a story I have kept in touch with over 13 years examines South Africa's young black professionals.

Who Cares
Multimedia yes, but frankly who cares. Who cares?

It's a language, a discourse and if you can speak it but no one can engage what's the point?

Multimedia in terms of a visual vernacular is a universal language, just like film.

There are various descriptions in the industry at what constitutes multimedia, from blogs to ful blown film sites like this Darfur Now, which shame, could and should have been made by any number of broadcasters

For instance there are sites that are multimedia driven but not multimedia in the singularities they offer.

On the other hand there are multimedia practitioners offering multi user experience, which claim the senses.

You only need to look at Apple 's Trailer site for new film sites in this catergory. Xmen is now a classic in the ranks of multimedia.

Does it matter really? Well, yes and no.

The bottom line is about delivering richer experiences for the end users isn't it, and one that gives them greater control?

It's about finding a more expansive, sometimes simpler way of telling a story, that may have a beginning but no end.

And what's apparent about that strand of multimedia stories is their timelessness.

Newsday's Cost of War is a brilliant example of a multimedia package that I came across from the Batten Awards 2 years ago and it has't left me.

It's also about the innovation and economics of journalism using available technology, offering something uniquely wonderful, pushing new paradigms and widening consumer choice.

Newspaper doing TV is one

Adrian Holavaty's Chicago Crime.org is another.

And the economics must be such that new producers feel confident they're prolonging the shelf life of their assets and learning, as well as engaging more with a wider audience.

News never goes away.

The Tsunami, Hurrican Katrina, the Second World War - all have their legacies and ongoing actulaities.

Multimedia helps us construct and preserve manifold examples of news to watch now and then, many years ahead - and even scale them upwards.

What about the professionals
And what of the professionals?

if you were a photographer whose only pics used to grace the front page of the newspaper, but now you can create sound slide shows from your portfolio of unused but key pics, how satisfying that must be for the photojo and the consumers.

I suppose making more money would be as well.

This report I'm making isn't an empirical report, though it would merit one at some point.

Given my interests as part of my Phd and in lecturing, as well as in journalism, it would incorporate scenario building and trend extrapolation to think through where we could go with this.

Ultimately the platform that may emerge the victor will have a lot in common with cable broadband as opposed to Satellite - which doesn't offer a true multimedia interactive experience.

The experience is a slight of hand - a loop. There is no return pathway. You crash in at any point. The BBC's interactive news (press the red button) is something like that.

So Multimedia - we've only just started, and it's highly likely that it will undergo more metamorphosis as we just about grapple with waht we can do now.

Multimedia megastar talent - Riz and Ozwald

I hadn't seen both for a while and today we got to meet up and have long chats about everything including multimedia.

Riz Khan doesn't make much of a deal about it now, but around 2002 was an early videojournalist shooting in Kabul and the Hajj.

We would spend late nights editing film for transmission for the BBC World Sevice.

Ozwald the designer I have known since 1982, but haven't seen him in years, but is now, aside from his bespoke tailoring, into making films and various multimedia extravangas.

For his Givenchy collection, where he was Creative Director, Ozwald mixed live performance with animation he directed.

There is a lengthy video I have shot behind the scenes of Riz's interview with Ozwald for his Al jazeera show.

Riz's interview which will be on his AJ show in the future covers a lot of ground and is both informative and thoroughly entertaining.

It would not be proper to reveal various exchanges, but if you get to listen to it, we were all in stitches at Ozwald's account meeting HR the Queen

My shoot with Riz provides the opening for the multimedia piece I'm doing for the Press Gazette, which should be completed soonish.

I'll be playing some of the tips and advice he offers up anc coming journalists to my Masters class, before posting also soon

The Videojournalist way

Some UK train services offer free wifi while others, whwther you're travelling first class or not make no effort &*^$£@??

Travelling on the train, a couple of overcooked thoughts.

Firstly those British Rail ( an anachronism) trains not providing Wifi, wake up.

The service provider contracted to the chain of Premier Inns wanting to charge £5 an hour up recently from £2.50 for 2 hours, WAKE UP.

Is there no end to corporate greed?

The changing face of VJ
This week I had the pleasure of exchanging ideas with a really nice bunch of journalists and photojournalists looking at the VJ way of doing things.

Richard shoots a lot of wildlife and has the most amazing footage ( if I can convince him to grab a few frames) of filming a stags on one of the UK's richest wildlife plains,Exmoor.

Seems he was so well camouflaged that they went about their business without sensing his presence.

Wildlife, in particularly the BBC's Cat Diary series is a big user of DVcams, but Richard could quite easily become a name to watch in making videojournalism wildlife his own.


Richard turns the tables on Jean-Yvess from the World Editors Forum who was keen to see how Vj worked

Two others, Martin and Martin from regional newspapers are photographers, Sarah's a web editor and Nick's a sport reporter.

The nature of Videojournalism and those it initially attracted is changing swiftly.

And equally indespensable is the contribution to the ever increasingly important multimedia presentations by, primarily newspapers.

Video journalism has become a bed fellow with multimedia - a word so vague when it attempted to make its presence felt in the late 90s if you weren't producing CDRoms you didn't have any idea.

Now that's all changed and the application, Flash, I stumbled upon at version 1 something is a must-have in any newsroom, broadcasting or newspaper worth its salt.

This is one of the first major pieces we made back in 2000/1 - an interactive documentary, the Family which would become runners up in Channel 4's Mixed Media Unleash the Talent comp and lead to work as Lennox' Lewis video journalism and multimedia movie maker.

Yes there's fabulous work in the UK, particularly from the graphic design fraternity. . .

If you haven't booked for Flash in the Beach (FOB) in Brighton, what are you waiting for.

But take a million TV conference back to back touting future TV and you're still come away with a fraction of new knowledge attending a BD4D ( By Designers for Designers) gig or FOB.

Watch out for what I predict will be equally big within the new journalism way of doing things: motion graphics.

Gosh I sound like a broken record, but here's a well worn article for Journalism.co.uk, which was relevant then, and more so now with Hillman Curtis, Newstoday and BD4D showing exemplary work.

It's only a matter of time before the kind of work you see here on Multimedia shooter listing work from say the New York Times and this Film makers in Residence becomes the norm here. Isn't it?

The new generation

Back in August I had the pleasure alongside some senior industry figures - predominantly from the Press Association to visit the Telegraph's offices.

A lots been said about the Telegraph - but on the ground showing us their studios coupled with an hour tour from one of their senior execs, you easily got the sense that you hadn't seen half of what you've read about.

Which is why at some point I'll release the podcast of that tour. But there's more. This week I had the pleasure of meeting the Telegraphs's creme de la creme next generation journalists.

These are dedicated multimedia journalists, mainly of post grad calibre, many from City University, whom are being put through their paces in the black ops of journalism - multimedia.

They do everything. I mean everything. Merge newspapers with broadcasting and online and that's the new super journo.

Eight of them chosen from 800 whom may well set the standard for the shape of the industry.

At the University of Westminster, we're tracking this future with our online cum VJ programme; the big difference here though is the industry link and the huge experience each of these young (22-25 or so) journalists will accrue.

I was able to film them in a number of settings to provide a snapshot of their thinking, so look out for that.

But it was their demeanor and outlook that I also found engaging.

Law, subbing, videojournalism - these are hurdles they're clearing.

The end game will be intriguing for in that team is the making of many editors and leaders.

You say VideoJournalism is **** I say look beyond your walls

A more considered piece - an article for viewmagazine.tv

A huge experience talking to Egypt's industry heads and academics. Here are some bullets that apply across the board:

* The VJ debate first viewed sceptically has gained a lot of admirers.

* The sceptic thing will never go away, whether you're in Cairo, Chicago or Chelsea, but Vjism is not a one size fits all. We've made programmes on cars e.g. the new Ferrari, Fashion e.g. The Mayfair Club

* In news it can be used to mop up, add on, or be exclusive

* Video journalism, multimedia journalism, integrated programme making, 360 degrees programme making - all fall under the versatility of media making. The VJ ( video journalist) is the VJ ( Versatile Journalist)

* The disruption and in-fighting to new methods and technology is as old as the first neanderthal to discover fire. In the middle ages new methods were deemed witch craft and would have got you killed. Thank Goodness for now.

* The biggest disruption is about four years away. IPTV ( Internet protocol TV -becomes universal) and greater bandwidth 10 mg + at greater MPG X compression. where x>10mg

* At the point of ease and simplicity where broadcast quality can be compressed and decompressed from point of origin to the source, with negligible differences, a further disruptive path will be introduced.

* Enhanced video players multi-simulcasting ( IPTV) on home systems will be also be paradigm breaker.

* The only difference between newspapers, TV and made for broadband companies will be the attitude of their CEOs not realising, it's about technique not technology.

More on viewmagazine.tv