The political aesthetic of scale and the ambitious - how makes an impact.

As you read this, your campaign is turning south. Launched amid a flurry of board meeting and plenaries, the team had every reason why it would work.

It was checked, doubled checked and even straw poll of reasoning thrown in.

Then there was the tiresome debate about how no one watches videos more than 3 minutes long and that without the obligatory social buttons sowed on, it didn’t stand a chance.

So why is it floundering?

Because it’s failed to catch the mood of the politics of scale, of ambition, of sensation which is now part of the zeitgeist likely to  make any visitor ponder: “what!”

Go Big and Prosper

The politics of scale is not a new phenomenon. It's practiced all the while on television e.g. the Olympics, or even reality shows such Undercover Boss USA, where a CEO masquerades as a new employee at his own company to assess what's wrong.

Simply, these programmes beg us to be in awe in disbelief. 

And now with the fashion for social networks it's now gaining firmer traction.

At its heart is an ambitious idea enough to scare mere mortals away. By dint of its presence, it leads to an aesthetic of scale debunking the myth it’s not about size. It is, but you’de be mindful to understand its first basic premise.

It must be affective – whether as a website,  more so as a film – which is not just about representation but a processural experience.

The groups who stand to excel the aesthetics of scale are broadcaster, NGOs and commercial outfits with ready access to audiences and inhouse talent who should be thinking big.

Far from being the big society, this is is about thinking big to get to the small. You’ve seen it in the following works:

• One day on earth.org
• Whitacre's Virtual Choir
• And this by Katerina Cizek a global housing project

New Aesthetics of Scale

My own experience with scale stems from video shows made in South Africa and Ghana, and Nato's programme.

The South Africa show in 1997 used small DVcams, leading an interntional team of African broadcasters to report on each other in what you might call intranet broadcasting - between 2 nations.

That sense of ambition has since returned with a project I'm talking to the BBC about, as well as a programme concept with a fellow Phd colleague.

So what are the ingredients for scale?

• An original idea
• Involves many people as contributors or participants
• It yields the exclamation.. "are you mad?" when you tell friends
• It involves a methodology you've not encountered
• It often takes a long time to accomplish and resources beyond your means, so you need to have a co-partner

How anyone can make a good film - aesthetic videojournalism

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

The aestheticization of videojournalism is not a new phenomena.

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 (courtesy of Albert Gachiri).

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

The Art of My Praxis - Video journalism film making

Jude Kelly asked the question: "what does this mean for you then?"

I explained, citing the intervention of Mark Cousin, one of the UK's leading film historians and an acclaimed film and documentary maker. Mark's recent piece, The First Film he describes as magical-realist is a road videojournalism can tread.

He and I had exchanged ideas; actually I had sought more from him, than him me in the days we had together under the banner of "Collision".

Collision devised by Jude, the artistic director of the SouthBank Centre, with Jeremy Deller, an artist in residence and turner prize winner, has been a space for artists and their invited guests to collaborate.

Back to the question. I explained some more.

Art Videojournalism

Then the pieces begun to reconfigure. That's not to say I hadn't thought about this. Indeed I have made no secret about the fact that a practice like videojournalism is unequivocally and unapologetically subjective.

I have also been looking to study its form unwittingly through the arts and artistic field of expression including Phd research.

Here Jude laid out the "self". In essence, as I reflected the art mode or fresh cinematic paradigm may constitute a new form, but it cannot and should not be divorced from the self.

This isn't the same as default subjectivity; the pretense of trying to be objective when frankly you can't. It's more a celebration of, for want of a better example, Jacques Ranciere's Politics of Aesthetic - on my reading list.

My thanks here are due to Eyal Weizman.Thank you.

Politics of aesthetic videojournalism

Explained to me over supper - an expanding space that constitutes the audible and the seen. Here in lies the aesthetic. This is Ranciere, politics is not the physical warring conflicting faction we see in the papers, but something else tangible.

It is the line between the haves and havenots, that which affects you and that which does not.
It applies across the boundaries in my case of artistic videojournalism.

What can I bring from the outside into what I might call Ranciere's space? This really isn't mumbo jumbo. It's about tapping into one's own experience in a performative and interpretive manner.

We've been here before through the work of Chris Marker. Poets do it all the while. Writers wrap themselves around their own words. Musicians are their own song. Remove the artist and the song is an imitated cover version.


Videojournalism's authorship is thus both me unashamedly, and you as a practitioner. It's richer by our own experiences within a linked context to the stories we tell.

Does that mean in the absence of having never committed a crime you're a poorer narrator in talking about crime? Does the mean if you've never been to Haiti, you can't talk knowledgeably about a tragedy without the construct of parachute journalism?

These are questions [not specifically these ones] to be debated, which I invited further talk at City University in this video recorded by the BBC Journalism College.

The artistry in videojournalism would suggest metaphorically or physically finding windows into issues from within ourselves. Then the semiotic structure mined from any one of the reworked visual languages e.g. direct cinema, cinema verite, plays its hand.

Emotional reportage - does not mean showing emotion.

A couple of days back Camila Batmanghelidjh from Kids Company said what we, a nation needs now is a shift towards an emotional economy. The context was within the neglect of care of our young.

It's big news again within two boys assaulting others. We blame the damaged children she said unawares or blithely ignoring the sources of their troubles. All sorts of other questions now emerge.

It must be time to shed the "removed body" from which we hide behind in solo video reportage. Naturally not all may agree for its conceived as potentially sullying the actual subject matter.

The artistic practice is understanding the dynamics of personalisation and what's perceived as inteference. In many ways that comes from experience, but traversed creatively allows for a narrative akin to a painter, a digital one, at work.

And the painter should know all about narrative, emotion and the self.

In the weeks to come I hope to talk some more about this.