Videojournalism: the revolution in media influencing academia. On assignment near Syria's border.

In this video, something happens at 1.27, but you need the contexts of the earlier footage, so be patient,

The girl singing survived, you see her ushered into a safe place as her caretaker calls her name.

The caretaker is a videojournalist, an activist documenting the atrocities in his country. Two years ago circumstances led him to pick up a camera. For the next 7 days, I share a space with him and fifteen other so called "activists", in one of the most rewarding and emotional projects I have been involve with for a while.


End of prologue. 

 ++++++++++++

"Non-emergency personnel and family members" were ordered to leave Beirut and given permission to leave Adana, near Turkey's border with Syria.

This news reported on Reuters couldn't be any worse. No S**t a friend said. In 8 hours time I was heading into the very region, Adana, where Americans officials were being ordered out of.

Was I scared? 

Apprehensive, Yes! Enough to talk about a likely exit plan, if things were to go Pete Tong [wrong] , as we the Brits say.

Last time I had butterflies like this was traveling to Tunisia, Beirut, Cairo and in the 90s South Africa. What's new? Except there was no whiff of air strikes or rogue chemicals in the air.

There are lecturers I know and respect who make it a habit to stay in touch with their craft e.g. Bill Gentiles a figurehead in the world of backpack journalism.

Not by design, more by default, but firstly, the need to stay in touch with the field I'm in is an anti-bored pill. Secondly, it furnishes me with my narrative for storytelling I like to tell. These story-forms derive from a fascination in what experts call the world without theory: Bakhtin's Carnival.

Beirut Videojournalism

I train enthusiasts to become videojournalists, but to paraphrase Mr Cobbs " I specialise in a very specific type of security  videojournalism". I apologise if that sounds arrogant. It's not meant to be.

This videojournalism has been the subject of a six year PhD, [historical and qualitative] which through the selfless help of  Rosensblum, Drew, Turness - NBC first woman president of News -  and several other people.e.g.  contemporary videojournalists such as Adam Westbrook. The thesis should  be evaluated soon.

videojournalism study

The working-in-the-field also, many performance lecturers believe has benefits for their students.
What I do constitutes experiential knowledge. Lectures become hermeneutical. Practice is informed by theory, and the process of curating information becomes wrapped in that most basic of perceptions.

You know the story of the politician expressing a point evoking Mary with one child agreeing that raising taxes puts her 100 UKP in the red each month. Well yes, merely saying that gives you scope to imagine Mary and hear her predicament, even when she's not real.

In performance lecturing, based on actual events, the narrative of teaching journalism, say expressing SEO, ethics or how to keep a low profile, is a story in itself.

A brief visual history of videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Did I tell you the time, I had to Q and A with Nelson Mandela at a press conference and I was terrified out of my wits, and then met him at a foreign correspondence do? South Africa 94.  Or being asked to film for Heavy weight Boxer Lennox Lewis and his camp as he fought Tyson?  Memphis, 2002. Or  back in February explaining cinema journalism to the Arab media summit? Cairo, 2013.

Experiential notes on a page - that mobile narrative.

The story of what happened in the week in Adana is extraordinary.  A series of lectures, exchange of knowledge, seven stories that we  (Marwan, Fires, myself ] had to shape - some of which constitute war crimes of a nature that would make you physically sick.  

 Marwan, from the think tank Menapolis presses a point over verification

The video at the top.. dramatic, terrifying.. their stories deserve a proscenium, where we can learn more about them in ways that are affective Presence reality?

Imagine going to see a film at the cinema, and then seconds after the film finishes the general manager tells the audience to hang on, because we now have a personal skype interview with the participants in the story.

Otherwise imagine I create a story that leads imperceptibly into their stories, and everything from the technology to the social issues become dialogical.

David discusses the philosophy of the 100 videojournalists and specialised videojournalism equipment

Or what about a lecture in which the wisdom of crowds is also the narrative. This is the domain of Touch cast which I explained in my previous post. 

These are methods to bring journallism straight into the lecture room in a more visceral way, but also to pump it out again as both narrative and eipitome [ notes in a lecture]. See my post yesterday on the BBC's secret weapon and popular post, the theory of new videojournalism

It requires a new collaboration - a pragmatism to lecturing emerging from the interplay of the professional practice and theoretician. The two have always been bedfellows, yet academia post 70s has invariably delineated the two. In his wonderful articles Bordwell expressed this in a related way why don't academics and critics get along.

This merge will also spawn a new type of university, one which corresponds to the demands on the one had of emerging technologies, but also as part of its core values thinks up the next generation of practices, not as a theoretical exercise, but by creation.

This new proscenium will see a heurestics of emerging media as key, utilising apps that bring journalism in the field right into lectures. I'm excited by this.


End



Thanks to Marwan and the team from Menapolis

Viewmagazine.tv is about to undergo an overhaul to reflect what academics refer to as an autoethnographic study, where I use myself as the narrative to express the changes to journalism and communications, such as shift media and videohyperlinking - my most recent post.


David Dunkley Gyimah is a Knight Batten winner for innovation in journaism, an international award winning videojournalist and Channel 4 Digital finalist, among other awards. His PhD research reevaluates videojournalism repositioning a new understanding of the form. David is a senior lecturer in online ( social) and videojournalism. he is a juror for the RTS awards.

Film on the future and past of videojournalism - Must Watch

Did the BBC pioneer videojournalism? 

No, says the senior executive who brought videojournalism into the BBC.

Pat Loughry credits a little known company called Channel One TV.

So how did this obscure company no one has ever heard of become so integral to a movement that would have huge ramifcations around the world?

And this isn't hyperbole as its former press officer, now an executive at Turner/ CNN, states how executives flocked to the station to see how it worked.

Channel One was not responsible for making you pick up a camera and shoot, but when it launched way back in 1994 every broadcast manager worth their salt came to have a look.

The former chief executive of ITN, the UK's biggest commercial news provider pays tribute to Channel One, calling them pioneers.

Here's the rub!

Channel One Videojournalism

STORIED Videojournalism, Past, Present and the Future from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Channel One was a newspaper company broadcasting on cable. The irony is so rich, and if you'd like to sample yourself, an extended trailer is on Viewmagazine.tv.

Videojournalists likened one facet of their work to speed chess. You arrived on the scene and would swiftly have to assess the story. You had one hour to wrap the whole story up, because you had another two, sometimes three stories, to fill in.

If you're a photojournalist it is the equivalent of what one of the photography's greatest theorists refers to as the punctum.

The punctum in the picture is the punch, the thing that stands out. In videojournalism storyform, you were scanning for multiple punctums, so it was fundamentally crucial you

• Understood this ethereal concept of news
• Knew when and where you wanted to break it.

Storied will eventually be a series of shorts. The trailer features Michael Rosenblum, Brian Storm et al.

The second trailer version will feature prominent managers from Channel One TV. But see for yourself how videojournalism started in the UK, and how when it closed it took with it a number of key features, I have since unearthed.

My overaching PhD thesis that looks at storyform includes Channel One TV,  a ground breaking videojournalism project in African in 1997, work in Egypt and qualitative evidence of where its going.

This is only a trailer, and a substantial section is also about establishing credibility, because there's some pretty jaw dropping things to come.

This film will have some value, I hope, if you're a student, professional or expert interested in corrections in media history, and want to have some idea of videojournalism's future.

The glimpse I give includes China where the net is a hologram in your living room. And there are many others.

See you on the other side.

How audiences will access video and online content in the future

Albert Maysles with David Dunkley Gyimah

How will audiences access the future of the web? I approached this using trend analysis, qualitative audiences feedback and cognitive behaviour and some other research techniques, such as phemonology.

I'm very grateful to James Montgomery, the Controller of Digital and Technology, BBC Global News for an invitation in 2011 May to speak to the BBC executives.  James wrote to me

David,
Thanks very much for your fantastic presentation yesterday. I’ve had lots of positive feedback – so much certainly interested in your idea of you staying in touch as it all progresses.
best
James
James MontgomeryController of Digital and Technology, Global News

My pitch was along the lines of cognitivism. In the last five years I have been conducting a sweeping deep survey, which has involved sound qualitative analysis, so these ideas are not my opinions. Though phenomenology was employed, which is a methodology about how we know what we know. 

I have some twenty plus years in the media, starting my TV career with the indefatigable BBC Newsnight, followed by ABC News in South Africa,  and Channel 4 News and a range of other jobs. 

Some of those figures I have interviewed include Henry Jenkins, Dan Gilmor, BBC executives such as Mary Hockaday, and pioneers in film and scholarly text such as Prof Brian Winston. In all around 200 figures, 

It also includes audiencing, carrying out various polls and research in Egypt, Tunisia, China and the UK. 

STORIED

 STORIED Videojournalism, Past, Present and the Future from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

How audiences will access video and on line content is research based on Dewey's How We Think? For instance, based on the current speeds of the web, by 2020, you should be able to project a hologram of yourself into the web to appear elsewhere.

In all likelihood we can expect a meta renaissance.  If you're familiar with the Johari conundrum, then you'll get it.

I hope to share some of the data at some point. There's also a couple of trade magazine's where I share my thoughts on the future of the moving image, which it would be unfair to post anything until they're published.

I have also got some 300 hours of footage that needs digitising. Some of that research I have alluded to on previous posts, but now I hope I can pull it altogether.

Talk again soon :)

Images below from forthcoming trailer on viewmagazine.tv about the future of the web. A film made from my PhD

Brian Storm of MediaStorm - one of the world's leading agencies talks about my work

This is truely awesome. A child with his mother say hello to grand parents, except they're holograms being piped down the web. The web of the future will be truly immersive.  I recorded this in China, at the Expo.

Jay-z plays a part in the future of the web as you'll see on the trailer.

This man was hugely influential in the BBC because he introduced videojournalism to the BBC in 2000. In my interview he acknowledges the contribution of Channel One TV from 1994 saying we were too ahead of our time.

I was one of the thirty videojournalists at Channel One. If you're a media historian or interested in facts, then yes, the BBC or CNN was not the first to practice videojournalism, Channel One TV was.

And this is Sensai Rosenblum, who needs very little introduction. I am restoring the original 1994 documentary Birth of a Station, so you can see how we did videojournalism, which has marked differences.

Tom Kennedy who led the Washington Posts videojournalism. I shared some nice moments with him reflecting on the early days. The Post started in the US around 1996/7.

These are just a few of the 200 people I have interviewed.

David will be presenting to UNESCO, Denmark and possibly at News Xchange, Spain on the future of media. More from his site www.viewmagazine.tv

Click here for insight into major new findings on 

What is videojournalism on the web, in multimedia and offline - a major study and film - and why it matters

Journalism as it travels along modern art

Michael Rosenblum posted this

"Modern art – Bathers by a river by Henri Matisse 1910

Yesterday we went to see the new Matisse exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in NY.

(As we live on top of the museum, this was not so hard to do).

The exhibition has gotten rave reviews, and not being such great art historians, we took the audio tour, which makes life easier and far more interesting.

Last week we went to see RED, the Broadway show about Mark Rothko and the Picasso exhibit at the Met.

It’s been an art-packed week..... More here

Here's my response.........

And therein lies the rub.

It’s a simple enough argument with a powerful antecedent, but, as they fought then, the wise men from the academy le baux, so they fight now.

History and time will perhaps show how evolutionary changes over a continuum viewed in say 2020 as a snapshot of 20 years of change, came to be seen as dramatic change.

That when the pinhole, camera obscura and any no of devices encouraged the faithful reproduction of the image, the impressionist tired with it all took up a new course lending towards their interpretation of events mimesism ( Journalism abandoning forced balance).

But we know they paid initially with barbed critiques and being ostracized by the “wise men”.

The new journos look like being the Cezannes. Their work make’s no distinction between factivity, narrative and art. But alas for a legacy generation, the lines between journalism and new journalism, and art, must remain distinct.

And that is a shame.. but I rather think Darwinism might win the day.

Michael you might find what Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre says in this I-Videojournalism – design site I created for my artist in residency portfolio at the Southbank Centre Viewmagazine.tv

NB Apologies for the intermittent posts I'm looking to port over to a new blog system soon

How anyone can make Video - Master class lecture

Re:sounding motion was a short film made to complement the performance of a group of dancers and musicians shown on the big cinema screen of the Royal Festival Hall on Friday 26th, March 2010

Can anyone make a film? A good film?

I believe so, because it's a language and languages can be learned.

Michael Rosenblum, (my friend and tutor 16 years ago) arguably the most influential videojournalism evangelist in the world believes so fundamentally.

Recently he got me :) to make this video for one of the many illustrious clients he works with. ( See video below)

So our Master class at the University of Westminster will explore traditional and new themes of video making, and it really doesn't matter what level you're at, because this should be as entertaining as hopefully rewarding in prepping you for your careers.

Riz Khan, could be feeding into our lecture. Link here to earlier post.

I'll be pulling some early finds from my PhD study which surprised me and I'd like it to open us up to the new e.g. the IPad and films and make it as interactive as possible.

So I hope bring in a number of interviewees specifically for this lecture either live or pre-recorded e.g. Riz Khan, who is a huge digital film buff.

So see you back at Lectures and to Albert Gachiri for sparking the idea this possible.

----
Below is a post from an earlier write up on this event.

Jay-Z and Prince Charles sharing a joke at the University of Westminster, Harrow Campus, 2006. Yes the biggest rap star was in the TV- film studios. Link here to previous posts on IPad design.


It is shrouded in past iterations of different forms; just the word videojournalism may be somewhat novel in its acceptance of such a standard. No one ever calls a news item aesthetic !

But what does it mean?

Certainly not style over substance or otherwise a vainglorious attempt to dress mutton up as lamb but a distillation, to communicate as efficaciously as possible maximising the impact of what's said or envisioned.

You may end up playing the above video more than once; your behaviour, influenced by the affect of an aesthetic. The frame choice, mood, experience - all part of a complex interactive mesh.

Master Class
I aim to deliver a Master Class lecture at the University of Westminster for Masters students very soon.

Here, the focus is to illustrate, via an interactive forum, my own background as a practicing videojournalist/ artist in residence and findings from my PhD research how aesthetic videojournalism is crucial to our solo ability to tell more informed stories.

That is more informed stories of the same stories, taking into account the variables that allow us to enrich those moments.

The other notion I posit is how the very essence of "the story" in itself requires further interrogation in an age when the idea of story teller is no longer univocal. The concept of video-hyperlinking unravels ownership.

On page 44 of The Documentary Handbook (2009), under "Flying Solo", documentary maker, lecturer and author Peter Lee-Wright writes:

" His ( David Dunkley Gyimah) conception of videojournalism stands in stark contrast to the newspapers and broadcaster who see VJs as a cheap alternative to crews and traditional working practices"....

"While the experts trash around in uncertainty, it is a good time for the innovators to show their stuff...from the core investigative issues of public interest and accountability to the new forms of storytelling that Gyimah champions" (pg47)

If you're on the Masters programme (print pathway or broadcasting) reading this, then I hope to stage it after the Easter break and if you're allow me to say this, I believe it will benefit anyone with an eye to video or visuals of some sort. Details to be posted soon.

More on videojournalism here www.viewmagazine.tv

Viewmagazine.tv circa updated from 2005



David making a video for his friend and former tutor Michael Rosenblum for Oprah.com

Multiskilling should not be entertained, broadcasters told Video Journalists

Michael Rosenblum poked me; been a lot of chatter about Channel One lately.

Whilst I know there were organisations that shied away hiring any Channel Oners in the mid 90s, it wasn't the station per se, it was the idea that you could be multiskilled that was vampirish.

I mean have you ever heard anything more silly.

You can't possibly be a reporter and hold a camera; next you'll be telling me you're Harry bl***ying Houdini.

Back then if you said you did radio and TV, you were either very confused about your career or very confused about yourself. Mmmm might I have been both.

I'd spent a good 18 months before then living and reporting in South Africa doing TV e.g. ABC News and the series "Through the Eyes of a Child" and Radio for the BBC World Service and Radio 4 [ First Time Voters - doc].

In South Africa's still apartheid smouldering cities, if blogging was around then, you'd surely want to have done that too. More confusions £$@!!

Actually blogging was around, not quite out in the open yet.

One day I should just write what it was like reporting from South Africa: brilliant, surreal, dangerous, a world of contradictions.

Here I am on the eve of the election. A bomb has gone off in downtown joberg.

The impact was felt in the house I was living in, some two miles away.

The BBC World Service rang up, and as an ABC News Associate Producer, I got down their prompt and passed the cordons to inspect the damage.

Our camera shot some scenes, I had a friend fire off some pictures, did a piece for radio, then filed a print piece for a friend in London. Mmmm early multiskilling!!!





BEFORE MULTISKILLING
Prior to South Africa and just before Channel One I had seven years odd working and freelancing at the the BBC , including Newsnight and reporting for BBC's hip pre-incarnation of current.tv, Reportage - where we unwittingly used hi-8s for drop-in shots [Beep should really do something like this again].

Channel One was empowering, but it was way, way, before its time.

After working for them for two years and heading of to WTN and then four years regularly freelance producing at Channel 4 News, I'd meet the then head of ITN Stuart Purvis.

"Poor you", he would say, "Poor Channel One, but you taught us everything we wanted to know".

This was a classic case of early adopters and if you've looked back through social history and innovation, most EDs get it in the neck.

Oh yes irrespective whether you're good or bad.

AFTER MULSKILLING
Today some of the most talented on screen journalists around come from Channel One.

Tomorrow when you wake up to BBC Breakfast if you're not careful you'll be greeted by not one, but three: Chris Hollins, Julia Ceaser, and Tim Muffet in which it says on the BBC site:

"...he cut his TV teeth as a Video Journalist for London cable station Channel One - "a completely multi-skilled approach to television, and an incredibly steep learning curve" says Tim".

Then there's Guy Smith over at BBC London, Crime Correspondent etc..

And behind the scenes there's a whole army, so that's that then.

It clearly has paid off for some.

In my next post how to tell if your spouse secretly fancies your best mate.

Now I have just located this tape of Channel One, with the great Late Sir David English and Michael Rosenblum.

Er, I'm not nostalgic for it... C'mon you have to move on, but I admit as an academic now it makes for great thesis material.

After a Career in Video Journalism Part III - The Crunch

Make no bones about it the Video Journalism crunch will appear some time.

The market place has simply expanded too fast, exploded beyond anyone's perception that the pro (paying) sector of this new industry will need a "correction".

In part market forces will play a role as newspapers start to level out costs.

Those making video because their rivals are will find reasons to trim back; something's got to give.

The advertising cake will only allow for so many cuts.

So whilst the 90s held to an arcane system, the TV industry treating VJs as lepers: "They didn't understand TV enough" one ITNer said, today the concept is welcomed with open arms.

On the one hand creating a new tier of news makers is a mightily good thing, on the other hand it could quite easily create a false sense of our own worth.

VJ: "Yeah I'm a VJ"
EXEC:"So how much do you bench?"
VJ:"4 minutes average, 40 views"
EXEC:"Nice"

Furthermore, what's the point of producing a new breed of journalists, if their modus operandi and news agenda coverage mirrors that of old.

Regional newspaper publisher Northcliffe takes the above point in attacking the BBC for its pending launch of hyper regional online TV, claiming the BBC will not add any new value to what existing newspapers are already doing online.

The greatest travesty to video journalism is how narrowly it's being used to chase what might be construed as traditional stories or that it's used to produce material in a tried, yet tired format.

One of the most powerful yet overlooked models for video reportage would be to marry Pew Centers late 90s discursive insight into news gathering in Civic Journalism with Video Journalism.


Le Crunch
The VJ crunch will get managers thinking in different ways.

While TV does Mipcom and Vegas selling formats, only a few newspapers focusing on cross content, will sleep well knowing their product has legs: the triple play, Online, TV and mobile.

What happens when you launch your piece? If it's not exactly peripatetic, well...

The badge of video journalism, should be one of the most envious from other professionals and in the 90s it held that ambivalent monocle.

Journalists might ridicule it, but quite a few envied the format's independence.

Where else would a journalist have so much power to craft a piece from start to finish.

Standing on the college green, next to the Houses of Parliament interviewing politicians, one news maker openly remarked how envious he was that we could pick and choose who we wanted to shoot without the wait.

Video journalists, by default, are the decathletes of modern media. That's not a boast for supremacy, just as a decathlete would deem to be no more superior than a 100m sprinter.

It's comparing apples and pears. But the myriad skillset is a pre-requisite to doing extraordinary things.

Rather tongue in cheek if you could apply the talents of a decathlete in a survival game: run, hurdle, long jump that river, pole vault that fence, visualise that escape route, that would be something.

Similarly, a VJ should be able to read this: "Entry into Guantanamo Bay has been allowed, but you will not be able to interview detainee and many areas will be off limits" and see the film unfold.

This was the basis of Bachenheimer's award winning report

Better still, as the visual theme for your film starts to go belly up because the authorities aren't being so cooperative when you get there, plan B, C, D and so on should kick in.

There's no opportunity here to ring up the programme producer; the director; or camera operator and ask for help.

Small wonder that some of the best Video Journalist's I have come to know, also shoot long format, commercials and docs.

The Channel One trait

Inset pic VJ Julius Ceaser, 1994, now a top Ecomomics presenters at the BBC

The new crop of VJs that sprang onto the market in 1994 attempted to buck the notion that you could be a jack of all trades and master of all.

But short termism almost got in the way. Many of the VJs from Channel One could have done away with the hierarchy of TV making, but then had to eat pie.

At Channel One's demise, many went into television.

Few of us would practise VJ any more.

If VJ had given anything it was was a lingua franca to speak to different sectors of the production process.

Could you pull focus? Could you L cut that and crush the blacks? Your inflexion stress is on the wrong word.

Editors, camera operators, and reporters, now had a singular interpreter that could translate geek speak for everyone to understand.

Hooray!

In turn, Channel One's ex VJs got back into the hub of mixing ideas, exchanging views and learning from others.

The editor's editor, the producer's producer, the reporter's reporter, if any became your friends you knew you were strengthening your hand.

If you got to work with Charles Wheeler, Bruce Goodison or Paul Greengrass and scores of other talent, Christmas had arrived.

Note: (Paul Greengrass ( Bourne films) was a Producer on ITV's World In Action - an incredible current affairs show. Bruce Goodison is one of the UK's most talented documentary/film directors and the Late Charles Wheeler, a reporter was unsurpassable)

That's not to say as a VJ you need TV for validation, but you did, I felt and still do, need somewhere to replenish and swap ideas.

Video Journalism's current overlooked problem is it's become a one-size-fits-all.

You can be a VJ in the US, the UK or in Australia with altogether differing standards but hold firm views as a master video maker, though other territories might think you're pants.

If you "cross the line" in the UK, you'll get slated in the US. Nice huh!

In the UK if you're picture rather than chronological, eyebrows are raised.

These two observations are generalisations, but they show how TV's umbilical chord is nurturing video journalism. Good thing... bad thing?

Curiously communities of film makers, amateur or otherwise see creativity as integral to the script. Perhaps it's because film is working a more matured language.

As yet there are not nearly enough evangelists, though Rosenblum, Halstead, Streich, are up there.

And if I have unintentionally left your name out, apologies, but do correct me, the above list is a snap shot of those who have contributed by organising awards.

Also, something that perhaps needs looking at, there is no professional bodies safeguarding the interests of the movement, if that's what it is - a movement - and why should there be you might argue.

TV may have it's director and camera's guild, but VJ's, well don't be stoopid.

It's not serious news making is it?

But that's the rub.

How can Video Journalism begin to measure it's own success?

Competitions?

Yes! So when the ONA says it's setting up a VJ award that should be applauded.

When concentra hold their yearly VJ bash, we should all celebrate and when Sabine Streich dares to be the first to want to celebrate this new art form as she did in 2002 with her now acclaimed Video Journalism award, throw her own medal.

Awards at very least expose strengths and weaknesses.

It makes us privy to different genre, varying attitudes which in turn should lead to a healthy debate amongst practitioners.

So when Michael Rosenblum attempts to build an agency along the lines of Magnum for VJs, throw him a medal too.

Video Journalism where next?

Moby, a one-man band experimental musician, much like video journalism interviewed by David in Washington.

Surely we can have no idea of the potential of Video journalism, it's only a toddler or to the first wave, a teenager.

It may suffice as status quo video news.

And just as the front page photograph is bold and arresting, embedded video - though I had my own take at the Batten Awards - may become a standard, but it's the content of the film and its execution which will lead us to consider video journalism is a killer app.

Truth, though Vjism was a k.app the moment it hit the market.

Video Motionists
If you've been shooting for more than you care to remember you possibly occupy this rarefied ecosystem of seeing sequences unfold before you.

Human movement becomes particle physics.

You've probably acquired that sixth sense of marrying film, light, music and dialogue that makes you the Kitano Takeshi of Video Journalism.

Japanese multi talented film maker Takeshi is renowned for shooting three times as many scenes as other film makers, because he works so fast and often shoots one take.

Video journalism is in fact a misnomer, because at some point you're a DV film maker, a latter day Dogme.

But for the genre to push it needs to be allowed to be creative, make mistakes, test shoot, reinvent itself, do to for video what film makers do for film or the Moby, with his multiple synthesisers does for music.

It needs a coming together of idea sharing; it needs a mixing of different formats and it requires stake holders, distributors, young people to take ownership.

When video journalism first arrived on British shores in 94, courtesy of Rosenblum it had ambitious ideas.

It was not television, but at every turn executives tried to make it so.

Video journalism is the spoken word of TV or to pad out that analogy, it's the language e.g. English you'd learn from native speakers and not from a book.

Chinese visitor with English translation book: "Very nice to meet you. Please indicate how I get to Harrods edifice"?
Spoken word translation: "Hello there, where's Harrods?"

Video journalism is contemporary parlance that organically develops and it's still developing.

Maybe, it actually needs a crunch to sort that out.

Tomorrow, Video Journalism's new Art

David started his career for the BBC in 1987 before turning to Vjsm in 94. Years later he went back into TV: Channel 4 News, BBC Breakfast News and Politics programme PowerHouse, and then returned to Vjism with a passion.

If you'd like to to book David for talks, drinks, reminiscence- damn it - about them days, email him before he gets really boring.

Versions of the last post with video are on Viewmagazine.tv

Video journalism by stealth 2017

It's a moot point, but the Videojournalism evolution enveloping, by and large newspapers has come by stealth.

If youtube and the lot hadn't demystified how easy shooting and cutting a piece of video was, we'd all be going about our merry business.

Newspapers would be looking to redesigns with newspapers and TV would be pressing ahead with its HD and new division of labour.

Note: shooting and cutting a video is different from shooting and cutting a good film - one for the purists here, though Youtube has some blinding films as well.

By stealth, and increasingly by design now, we've become a media of video shooters/journalists/commentators/conversationalists.

It's so low hanging fruit that it almost requires no qualifications.

But without the whole web 2 thing, where would video journalism be?

It'd be around: Michael Rosenblum, Naka Nathaniel, Travis Fox,Scott Rensberger et al would be doing what they do, and doing it darn well except they'd be less eyeballs on them.

The explosion in newspaper video journalism changes all that. The question of ownership or custody of the form becomes an area of interest.

Not nakedly, but in refining something for that publication and this publication.

What is it is scrutinised over and over again.

Guidelines are set up to help the

Some say it's shooting TV, others say it's more than that: another language in itself.

Some say you can't cross the line; others say the line was always designed to be crossed but creatively.

There is a kink we've approached and as one of the thousands of VJs who's passionate about the form it is this.

This is what videojournalism is. This is it. This, it!

How do you go from Battleship Potemkin to a film like Gladiator. A lot of money :)

How do you get from photography at the turn of the 20th century to the Magnums and Pulitzer photographers?

Money again :)

How do we go from the classic but now seemingly tame beats of Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five's Rappers Delight to the more complex synthesis of P Diddy?

More Money?

I guess there was a lot of experimenting going on.

A lot of the things we never saw, heard, that sunk without a trace were all part of journey.

Video journalism.. I figure we've...correction I have really only just begun.

What might it look like in 10 years?


Yep, but that means experimenting, doesn't it?

The Video Journalism Revolution UK - Watch this

Birth of a station - Video Journalism revolution from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

90 second clip shows Michael Rosenblum in song mode, with Vjs Tricica Adudu and Marcel Theroux commenting on their experience, rounded off with one of the station's news editors Peter Brookes whom would go on to become managing director of Manchester United TV.

If you're interested in video journalism, as a newspaper, broadcaster or citizen journalist, you will absolutely, most definitely want to watch this, the video journalism revolution in the UK.

The title was Birth of a Station, a play off from DW Griffiths Birth of a Nation 1915.

It is the documentary about video journalism's entry into the UK in 1994.

How thirty video journalists came together and what they made of their new skills, the training and views of Michael Rosenblum, and how a station costing 50 million UK pounds was born.

I was thrilled to bits when I stumbled across this in my archive, even if the quality leaves a lot to be desired.

It features, among others interviews with the late Sir David English - the newspaper editor's editor, managing director Nick Pollard and the CEO Julian Aston.

The doc has academic as well as real industry value.

It is a snapshot of a piece of broadcasting history emerging from a blank canvas.

Video journalism had never been practised in the UK. In fact no one knew what it was.

But after the launch, 100s of broadcasters from around the world visited the station to see how it all worked.


The VJ family
"You join a group of about 100 vjs around the world...., an elite bunch", Michael says on tape back then.

Well 14 years on, so much has radically changed, but so much also remains the same.

The anxieties, the fears - how will television crews react to us, the excitement it's all here.

Many, many of the faces you'll see have become household names, award winning documentary and acclaimed TV makers and a notable MBE.

Among them Marcel Theroux, brother of Louis Theroux and son of American travel writer and novelist, Paul Theroux; Dimitri Doganis, an amazing film maker and winner of several awards for films such as 'The Tea Boy of Gaza'; and Rachel Ellison MBE, behind the BBC's Afghan Woman's Hour, which promoted human rights.

Those are a just a few.

Channel One was able to recruit 30 trainees from 3000 applications, so it could do what many newspapers can't - pick their VJs.

This isn't on the film, but some of the filtering techniques included observing how you handled a camera placed in front of you.


Video Journalism vs TV - not a them and us
This doc gives a real sense that wherever you are with your video journalism ambitions, you will prevail, if you persevere.

Whatever the debate about rights and wrongs of video journalism making, a new generational crop of talent will emerge pushing film making much, much further than anyone could imagine.

The future of video journalism, is almost a throw back to the ghost of Channel One, 1994, when it won't be about news any longer, but a whole production cycle.

Channel One had a film review with Karen Krizanovich, an interactive show about the Net and was the first to broadcast down cable in which viewers could respond via the net.

Remember this is 1994.

It had a car programme testing the most recent releases, a cookery show, a travel show and the rest - all made by one, sometimes two person video journalist teams.

The truly most interesting aspect of video journalism will be regional and national newspapers commissioning and making programmes:
mysanantonio.com, mercurynews.com, thisiscornwall.co.uk The Hull Daily Mail, and so on.

It's already happening with some outfits e.g. The Telegraph and the BBC's plans for local broadband news looks like a contemporary version of Channel One, sans cable distribution, which is what ultimately led to the station's demise.

Birth of a station coming soon.

Blog author David Dunkley Gyimah, was one of the thirty video journalists at Channel One. Today, he still practises video journalism and is now a senior university lecturer and Phd student, where he lectures on integrated multimedia video journalism (CSS site building, multimedia and advance video journalism) and advises a number of newspapers such as the Financial Times.

Video journalism's anti-aesthetism short from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
You can contact him at david@viewmagazine.tv facebook or skype: daviddunkleygyimah