Five life lessons learned; the importance of relearning

When asked about his talent, his awards, his performances, he stopped looked the interviewer in the eye and simply said: “I just wanna work, man!”

Society sets a series of de facto rules. Who get’s to make their way draws currency from its bank. It’s a loan with varying interest. Other side, it’s an application which more often will be denied. So you build your own imaginary reserve. And slowly, inexorably work to a plan that seems ad hoc, but there’s meaning, because like the actor: “You just wanna work”.

We listen to stories because they give us something to anchor. Sometimes these stories are stars lighting up a hidden destiny.

I once had a meeting with the foreign affairs editor of the BBC in the BBC canteen. After perusing my CV for a moment, he asked somewhat confused: “So, what is it you do?”

You see my CV reflected a myriad of interests, which could either suggests the convention of a lack of focus, or an interest in many things. I grew up working in my active imagination. I was a foreign correpondent, a firefighter, an at one time a milkman, then I wanted to become an artist, but my father wanted a doctor. I got so far as Chemistry and maths.

These aspirations; I didn’t quite make firefighter and milkman, I lasted two days before my parents told the milkman a child of nine going out on milk runs, was well, not right. But if I have learned one thing, you’ll either conform to what people want, or you’ll forever chase lights with moments of fulfilment.

I do these, not because of anything than I just wanna work. So since my encounter with the BBC head, I chase them lights, often hoping and have taken people with me.

1. Give yourself different experiences. I once dived with British and Turkish navy divers into a world war one wreck off the coast of Turkey. Thirty metres down, I was trapped by a thermocline and ran out of air. I don’t advocate that, but in the process somebody from the BBC was interested to hear my thoughts.

1. Collaborate, share your gifts. It won’t always be accepted, but that’s not the point: I imagined with a friend what it would be to shine a light on the incredible array of people who are talented. We created the leaders’ list, sixty of the UK’s leading BAME producers.

1. Humility is the key to people giving you their success. My friendship with a senior tv figure would result in an invitation to a dinner, and whilst eating, a tower of a man appeared. We stood. I said hello, shook his hand, and like many was and still am mesmerised by him. It was President Nelson Mandela.

1. Search for them stories: I’ve loved stories from the time my mum would rerun Doris Day’s Calamity Jane. That love has fuelled me towards coding, a different form of journalism storytelling, and photojournalism which my peers have recognised through international awards. But, I just wanted to work.

1. Live life with the certainties that uncertainties is but a rock in your path. I recall my foster parents, my boarding school, my parents and mum who recently passed. She was a figure of hope. We shape our world by the way we let society frame those conventions. Each journey can finish like you want it to, when your imaginary reserves materialises as they will. It all starts with that simple commitment; I just wanna work.

Lessons from Tunisia in Video journalism and Creativity

David Dunkley Gyimah training videojournalists in Tunsia with the IPWR

"Creativity in television depends upon the building of teams of individuals whose talents are complementary and who, in combination are, able to make programmes which are more original, more effective and more valuable than any of them can achieve alone".

Grace Wyndham Goldie, Pioneering BBC exec. 

True or false?

The example given by Wyndham Goldie to support her point is of Tony Hancock, a brilliant comedian of the 1950s who begun to resent the writers and producers who shaped his material. His team would break up and Hancock would commit suicide.

But being at the beginning of television Wyndham Goldie, a revered figure in broadcasting, could see creative genius much closer than anyone else could.

But how many of us will get to work in television?

Through out the years,  a coterie of creatives e.g. Eddie Murphy, Robbie Williams, etc. have at times try to rid themselves of the team that made them who they were.

But if creativity cannot be achieved in a team how do we account for the many such as the artist e.g.  Cezanne; Musician e.g. Jay-Z; Olympic Medalists e.g. Mo Farah and the Videojournalist, YOU accounting for your brilliance in what you do?

In reality all these sets are still supported creatively, at the very least through emotional support.

Even the lone painter or photojournalist seeks the comfort of others. The octogenarian photographer Bill Cunningham in his absorbingly portrayed documentary Bill Cunningham New York  is the loner personified, but don't be fooled. Cunningham's experience comes from absorbing a life time of support - some concrete, some abstract.

If Videojournalism was about working solo, then it inadvertently propagated a lie, which was not of its choosing.  Being able to work alone, doesn't mean you must work alone. Conversely as one of my favourite philosopher's Heidegger put it, being able to think doesn't give you the power of thought.

One of several promos, some broadcast on CNN International made in the 90s by David

The experience of working as a videojournalism-driven station and also within a structured environments proves something. We, ill-equip the individual who needs to believe in their own independence and creativity. By yourself Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule is a yardstick, but there are many other factors.

The maths goes if you work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week then that's the equivalent of 250 working units, of which could constitute 250 stories. For two consecutive years as a videojournalist I, with other video journalists shot and produced more than 500 stories each ; after that working a news agency I must have cut the equivalent.

Innovation was a hallmark of videojournalism, but so was swift turnarounds.  This stand up covering an early morning police briefing on a raid involved no other camera operator, circa 1994

The quest then becomes what structures we need to increase the knowledge of the lone videojournalists. Renaissance creatives built the idea of the apprentice. When the teacher became too remote in contemporary society we searched for exemplars through literature. But we could never question them, so the preferred route was to look for flaws in their monologues by reading others.

The unchallenged dogma in a blog is as dangerous as Wyndham Goldie's understanding that the unchallenged documentary film of the 1930s, was no barometer at reaching truths, just because some one said believed so.

My role in working across regions has been to build a sort of library of learning and output styles.  And something appears to be emerging from my experience working across Beirut, Cairo and now with Tunisian videojournalists and its profound enough for me to believe it mirrors the creativity of television of the 1950s, which I'll talks more about in my next post. In the meantime I'm posting a short on viewmagazine.tv as an introduction to videojournalism - Tunisia.

Emerging talent from Tunisia in the new wave art of videojournalism

David Dunkley Gyimah is an international award winning videojournalist who has taught around the world and is completing a radical study of future film making for his doctorate. He lectures at the University of Westminster and publishes on Viewmagazine.tv