Videojournalism-as-cinema: reinventing television news, as the new videojournalists

Next month I'm speaking at the World Documentary Conference in Falmouth about this strange new film form called: videojournalism-as-cinema.

As with most academic presentations, I had to produce an abstract; a brief about my presentation, which is a couple of paras down.

But videojournalism-as-cinema is not some abstract theory of a film form. It was born from various questions.

Before Vjism, smallest camera made  in 1947 B&H  Filmo

• Why do video news providers struggle to capture the attention of various audiences, generally younger 15-30 years? 
• How did News networks muck up this thing called videojournalism by making you think it was all about one person making the news, when such practices are as old as news?
• What is the point of Videojournalism-as-cinema?
• Why would we pay to go to the cinema, but not pay to go and watch the news?
• What's some of the best cinema that's grabbed you?

At its heart it proposes ways to reach users by considering aesthetics, form function, style, technology, cultural and sociological and ideological values,  and human behaviour.

Here's the abstract
‘The first impulse is to record it or to interpret it’, says Film Director Martin Scorcese (Silver Docs, 2006), being interviewed about filmmaking. He adds: ‘One says to record it is documentary and to interpret it is dramatic fiction’.

This ‘common sense’ view has persisted when comparing the television documentary form and Hollywood’s subjugation of the word cinema to denote dramatic fiction.

Academic studies, coupled with the pragmatism of filmmakers have yielded forms such as Cinéma Vérité (O’Connell, 2010), Docufiction (Lipkin, Paget & Roscoe, 2006) and the journalistic essay in Personal Cinema (Rascaroli, 2009). These forms imbricate cinema modes e.g. visualisation, structure etc. with non-fiction forms, such as news and the television documentary.

In this presentation, using empirical evidence, David Dunkley Gyimah maps out the infusion of cinema in news making that stems from within the discipline of videojournalism.

An under researched field, videojournalism’s public reframing is much needed, however in his 20-minute slot, Dunkley Gyimah presents evidence of a stylistic form used by exemplary videojournalists, known as videojournalism-as-cinema.

Arguably, mains stream news (MSN) uses cinema artefacts, but according to Dunkley Gyimah videojournalism-as-cinema practitioners are more overt in their appropriation of dramatic fiction styles as influences, as well as cinema’s earlier framework in Russian cinema.

The implications are many, but in this instance, Dunkley Gyimah focuses on how videojournalism exemplars create news films that are memorable.

Above all it involves the effective communication of ideas involving a wide pool of styles.

follow David @viewmagazine

  
Video journalism's anti-aesthetic short from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Biblio

O’Connell, P. J. (2010). Robert Drew and the Development of Cinema Verite in America. Illinois: Southern Illinois University.

Leyda, J. (1983) Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film - Study of the  Development of Russian Cinema, from 1896 to the present. Princeton: Princeton  University Press.

Lipkin, S. N., Paget, D., & Roscoe, J. (2006). ‘Docudrama and mock-documentary: Defining terms, proposing canons’ . In: Rhodes, G. D. & Springer, J. P. ed. Docufictions: Essays on the Intersection of Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking, 11-26. (6^th Ed). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co

Rascaroli, L. (2009). The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and the Essay Film London: Wallflower Press.

Silver Docs (2006). ‘Interview with Martin Scorsese, Documentary Vs Narrative’. AFI Discovery Channel Documentary Festival. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/wactch?v=RHFmjGxB0lU [Accessed: 5th September 2013].

Bio.

David Dunkley Gyimah is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster lecturing in videojournalism, documentary and online/ social network practices. A former broadcast journalist/producer at BBC Newsnight/ (1990) Channel 4 News and ABC News South Africa, Dunkley Gyimah is also one of the UK’s first NUJ recognised videojournalists in 1994. He is the recipient of a number of innovation and journalism awards e.g. Knight Batten and is chair of the jury for Broadcast Innovation at the RTS. Dunkley Gyimah is an artist in residence at the Southbank centre and has recently submitted his PhD that examine videojournalism and its offerings towards a future journalism. He graduated from Falmouth postgrad in journalism in 1989. His work can be viewed from the sites his built 

• www.videojournalism.co.uk
• www.viewmagazine.tv and
• www.viewmag.blogspot.com

Safeguard teaching videojournalism from online journalism's unsubstantiated knowledge to generations online

How important is Videojournalism to Online Journalism?

When we look at the New York Times's SnowFall, which pushes online journalism [HTML5/CSS3] to new limits, or data journalism in building statistical logic you could say very little.

On the other hand, since You Tube and the availability of cheap cameras deconstructed video production, so anyone could become a publisher online, you could equally argue videojournalism is integral to online journalism.

Andy Bull's Multimedia Journalism  and The Online Journalism Handbook by Liisa Rohumaa and Paul Bradshaw both feature video and videojournalism.

Both are presented in a lively manner in different ways. @paulbradshaw whose work I have known since 2006ish, from my interactions with US data journalist Adrian Holavaty, is an exemplar in the field of algebraic data journalism and scraping, among other things.

A new book "Online Journalism - The Essential Guide" also features videojournalism and like the former books covers the vast and expanding Hawkinsian space of online journalism.

Publishing a book is no easy feat. so if like me you've never published and are either contemplating it, or imagine what it involves the authors demand our respect.

Because it is a solitary, isolating pursuit putting together words on a page and digging into deep knowledge to share with others.


I know that little from my PhD I have been finalising. I have neglected my own health in attempts to write-correct-rewrite.

So anyone who publishes, in reviewing their work we should put their efforts into perspective. It is a herculean task after all.

 If a book contains 20 chapters and one of those is critiqued, and interpreted to be found wanting, this should not colour the whole book, should it?

Does it matter if one chapter on videojournalism needed greater scrutiny regarding its history or those that practise it and what that means in creating videojournalism?

Probably not!  Historicity is not essential for understanding, in this case, videojournalism, but some context of is history, perhaps is required.

But here's the issue. Books, unlike blogs, and like photos have a certain immanence. That is, the printed word sticks with you and is easier to find and reference than say a blog or a newspaper article.

An educational book sets up a thread and when the book is deemed "excellent",  it perpetuates an unrelenting cycle for providing great information for the reader or a next generations of authors looking to build on the source of the knowledge. This comes from referencing.

David in San Antonio

Dan Gillmor's book WeMedia is one such book and there is nothing wrong with the book. Quite the contrary.

When I read it soon after it was published and then interviewed Gilmor at a conference Restoring Journalism Trust I was invited to in 2005 in San Antonio, I was thrilled to interview him, to gain his knowledge. Here's my story of that event

Online journalism

Online Journalism doesn't state it is a definitive guide, or is a book about videojournalism. It is an "Essential Guide", so there is some wiggle room from an academic perspective, but it's likely the reader, you,  may not make such a distinction.

But, here's the rub, in the world of videojournalism, so many published books have thus far got so many things wrong on the subject. Specifically, within the UK perspective.

Does it matter where, say, videojournalism started or that the source of information could be deeper? From a practical point of view, you could argue probably not. Who cares where videojournalism started in the UK!

What you would like to know is how to shoot a videojournalism film that grabs the attention of your audience. How you create meaning from complex ideas in a matter of minutes? How to create narratives that mostly everyone is ignoring. The "what is videojournalism" and how it differs from say documentary.

But what if I told you the source of videojournalism defines the form and delivery of videojournalism that can become the status quo. Put another way by recognising the BBC as the source of videojournalism, this may persuade you into reading more and studying the BBC's videojournalism.

There's nothing wrong in studying BBC videojournalism except the videojournalism practiced by the BBC was a fundamentally different form of videojournalism to that which the architects of the scheme envisaged.

Another point, the BBC did not start videojournalism in the UK. The official source as recorded by the National Union of Journalists was Channel One TV in 1994.

a videojournalist from 1994 with her betacamera

Does this matter? Theoretically, probably not, until I tell you that the videojournalism practiced at Channel One was different types of story form that most probably you would have liked  to have learned, and probably still would.

How it came together on analysis, involved different phases, some ad hoc, some engineered, and from interviews with Rosenblum, the VJs and just over a hundred other important figures. Then, we come to a place where the landscape is a clearer.

Channel One's videojournalism is an integral contribution of the UK's style of  a new global videojournalism style which radicalises and fundamentally transforms video in journalism. Six years ago I uploaded this to my You Tube site. It involved the beginnings of the manifesto after thinking and practicing videojournalism in 2008 for 14 years.





So how does Channel One contribute to this global knowledge?  As a product of Channel One, here's one hint of many, where I use myself as an example. In this video from 2005, the jury head is reading their citation of a videojournalism award in Berlin.

International Videojournalism Awards Berlin (Bauhaus/ ZDF) from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Here's another. What does this video too say about videojournalism and does this matter? Mark Cousins used to run the Edinburgh Film Festival.

He wrote the book - A Story of Film and then made the 15 part documentary series. He has won awards at Cannes and in the 90s had a series on BBC in which he interviewed all the major directors around the world.

So he is considered something of an expert.







In several academic books thus far, the BBC is cited as the source of videojournalism in the UK. This is not true. As part of my PhD I tracked down the senior BBC executive who was responsible for bringing videojournalism to the BBC. His name is Pat Loughrey. The picture below Pat is  Stewart Purvis who was the CEO of ITN in the 1990s. He too used  videojournalism at ITN - but says it was a different form of videojournalism.

Loughrey, former head of Nations and Regions at the BBC, now a Vice Chancellor

Purvis former CEO of ITN

Loughrey says Channel One was ten years before its time, while Purvis says Channel One deconstructed video news making to have one person film, produce and present their video on the day.

This video below is from 1995, one of many different submissions for my PhD. The point I make here is that this is an example of a story made in a day in which one person had control. There was no editorial input into this story. I researched, told my editor, shot it, produced it and here we are. Remember this is 1995.

The web is not knowledge

There is a video online about videojournalism, which is hosted by the BBC Journalism College. It is a conference that was put together by David Hayward at the BBC, myself and the University of Central Lancashire.

It is a worthy video, but it is not the repository of videojournalism. It features one of my former students called David Heathfield, who I invited to the event. David is brilliant. He works for Nato. Nato is an intimidating title, so I can see why on that video David becomes the videojournalism spokesman.

Now, here's where I have to be careful that the points I am trying to make do not come across as some academically elite bumf, brought on by red mist, or that I am spitting hairs. And that they amount to nothing other than my own ego.

In 2006 Nato asked my university if we would like to be involved in an incredible project. Help train their military by participating in their war games.

I was the editor for the programme. David was a graduate of the scheme two years later, before he joined Nato as an employee.

Nato practices a videojournalism that is aligned with BBC journalism's form and David as much as anyone's view of videojournalism needs to be contextualised.

Steve Punter, a brilliant videojournalist and editor was also featured in the Online Journalism book. Punter is a rare animal. He was one of the UK's first videojournalists, a great thinker and one of the editors helping the BBC understand videojournalism at two of its regional stations.

But as brilliant as Steve's quote is from the video online, it cannot begin to tell you about videojournalism. That requires research.

That's why we invited 25 of the most appropriate practitioners and managers to the event. In my PhD I interview 20 of the original 30 Channel One videojournalists so the reader is provided with a more rounded view of the form.

What does this all mean? Perhaps nothing, but the danger is that we come to believe that everything we see online is the be all and end all. The web is not the source of all knowledge. Not yet, anyway.

Videojournalism is the most adroit form of video making in journalism that came to the fore some twenty years ago in the UK. This year we'll celebrate its anniversary. In a couple of weeks I submit my thesis and then I can share its contents with you. There are more than a few surprises in it.

But even with that, it is only one part of a landscape of an expanding plain of videojournalism in online journalism. Hopefully, it will be one that places videojournalism where it should be and enable us as a community to argue and discuss more forcefully what is is and how it can help us.



David Dunkley Gyimah was this year's Chair of Television Innovative  News at the RTS.
He is the founder of viewmagazine.tv, a senior lecturer and artist in residence at the Southbank Centre. he submits his PhD in two months time. He's been in the media for 26 amd has worked for BBC Newsnight, Channel 4 News and ABC News years and now lectures and trains [ he launched PA's videojournalism training programme] around the world.

Coming up : They say the Black British talent is coming. It's been here for as long as. In this from the Evening Standard, I was lined up with some of the breakthrough talents of the millennium e.g. Zadie Smith. In my next post I reflect on why and how black British talent is probably now getting a hearing.

The 100 videojournalists - one of the most comprehensive research to date about the least understood form

They go by the name of the 100 Videojournalists. They existed as a unconnected collective, like Zavattini's filmmakers, Robert Drew's Cinema Veriteist of the French's Dziga Vertov group.

Each generation throws up its radicalists, who strive to show they have seen a greater horizon, and that previous formalists or cinephiles were flawed in some way.

The Internet claims to be THE harbinger for change, but it is really only the latest-to-arrive medium to provide the radicalists with a chance to do what they do best.  Before that it was cable, letters, telephone, community boards etc.

Our intelligence is only equipped for the norms and then shocks of its time, which is why some of the best brains still proclaim the 1960s as far more radical than the 2000s. It's a matter of relativity and conscious load bearing. That is how much we can take.

What separated the 100 videojournalists, however were some fundamentals, which would upturn some of the most venerable paradigms in film and the art of learning.

McLuhan said the medium is the message. He was right then, but the 100 videojournalists could prove rhetorically that this was now flawed and this would be before the Net. Many of us state content is king, but when everyone has the content is that still the case?

Imagine this. You travel for the first time to Russia, then Spain, China, Burma then South Africa. You're with a friend. All you know is English, and you're very proficient. But each time you get of the airport you encounter a problem.

Someone speaks to you in their native tongue. You can only guess what they's saying, but your friend each times rises to the occasion conversing with locals solving problems.

In communications and the landscape of video journalism, the art is the equivalent to knowing all those different international languages. The one traditional media is proficient at is English. And their proficiency is such that they've exported this form to others and maintain a tight grip. It's the one they understand.

The philosophy of the 100 videojournalists was to comprehend all the other international languages and reverse engineer its theory.  Film is cited as language like, and learning film requires not only a flexible mind, but a radical one.

The 100 videojournalists lasted less than a decade. It took that long for traditionalists to understand and rebuild a narrative to discard it. Today it's become a practice-based theory, meaning it can be taught.

Some of my Masters students will recognise traces of it in lectures, that our reception to problem solving, whether that's making an film, writing a letter, solving a maths problem, is tangible, if we're equipped with the diversity of knowledge-approaches.

Some months ago, I interviewed one of the figures the world owes a debt to, the great Robert Drew who pioneered Cinema Verite. It was one of the most enlightening interviews I have ever had, but I left also understanding how the 100 videojournalists could pick flaws in some of his very eloquent arguments.

In the coming weeks I'll divulge more of the 100 videojournalist philosophy and how you can truly comprehend its potential

David in Southern Turley, couple of hours drive from Syrian border

David Dunkley Gyimah is an award winning videojournalist who is completing a Six year doctorate study into video making, videojournalism and our cognitive  behaviour to the form. He has taught groups around the world, and most recemtly was training activists in Southern Turkey, a couple of hours from the Syrian border. find out more from Viewmagazine.tv






and

The 100

but there was something about them.

How traditional news making could corrupt videojournalism

I can guess what you're thinking? You're not alone!  But you're wrong.

A couple of days ago,  I wrote about the reality/ appearance divide as being fundamental to news as much as it is philosophy, then this story emerged and went viral which illustrated my point in its starkest terms.

Contrary to what you're thinking and your impressions of the young woman Kim Stafford (tumblr), she is in fact an Obama supporter who was lampooning the Tea Party's opinion of Obama.

The spelling of "Kenia" is the denouement. The revised story was broken by news reporter, Kyle Whitmire, who spoke to her.

How a lot of people got it wrong, is not an anomaly, and that it's referred to as news or journalism is itself an interesting thought.

If you follow my blog then you'll know that:

1. I'm a videojournalist, though not of the kind you're probably aware of.
2. I'm deeply concerned about the construct called "news" and how in this day and age we should avoid flaws that developed over time since traditional news makers brilliantly developed the form in the 1950s.  Note, when it was created, it was brilliant and to degrees still can be!
3. As someone who has worked in the news business since 1987 for the likes of BBC, ABC, Channel 4 News and taught around the world; I spent my college years in Ghana, I believe I have, like others, a panoramic view of the subject. Though yes, it's an opinion...
4. But it's an opinion I have tested and reflected upon through a PhD programme I'm completing, which has involved extensive interviews with those involved at the time, including VJ founder and trainer Michael Rosenblum, so I trust its robust knowledge (see notes below).

The deceit that news has come to inherit was the idea it represented the whole truth. This has not been purposeful since people behind respected news making are honourable folk.

A two-minute story purportedly told you all you needed to know, as did a five-minute and 15-minute. But the flaw was not in the length, though it plays a part. 

By the way the two-minutes was an arbitrary figure adopted by managers in the 1950s fearful any lengthier news would put off viewers. The issue was the assumption of total truth.

News presenting, presenting-live and reportage - just one facet of videojournalism

Reporting for ITV's London Today

Videojournalism and cinéma vérité

David meets Albert Maysles - a pioneer behind Cinéma vérité

Perhaps one of the worrisome features that has spawned is the classic metier between US and European news. In fleshing this out I'm not for one moment claiming anyone system is better than the other, but that it requires less prurient positioning by its agents.

Take Robert Drew's cinéma vérité. It was brilliant and is brilliant. I love Primary and Salesman and could not envisage seeing them done any other way. I have spoken to Robert Drew and Albert Maysles behind Salesman.

But the form's truth values, though at the time were seen as revolutionary and a breadth of fresh air, by today's evaluation puts it as no more superior than Jean Rouch's cinéma vérité. That's not my assessment, if you trawl the literature, you'll discover this.

All this means is the US system of cinéma vérité was as equally as valuable as the French system of cinéma vérité. In fact the US called there's Direct Cinema, which observed life; the other had a central figure as the agent provocateur. Each had their pros and cons.

Here's the rub though, the gene of those systems has largely been adopted by a new generation of news makers labelled videojournalists. 

So now we have newspaper videojournalism, television videojournalism, and US videojournalism and UK videojournalism. 

In other words different constituents are at odds with one another, though it's not a war of attrition, how we get to the truth.

News is a language defined by cultural literacy

I'd been a reporter in South Africa in 1992, so in 1997 took a team to South Africa as videojournalists looking at the country's transitional change from white suburbs to the influx of Africans

The fact is language and cultures are different, no matter how much the Net brings us together. 

But if you for one moment accept that journalism is a cultural and literacy convention according to Schudson, which they did not in the 1950s, you're closer to realising the stuff of old cannot be maintained. 

It is for that reason that when working in Tunisia, Egypt or China, I work with videojournalists I train to accommodate what they do in line with their cultural values, and normative principles in news' traditional values that need challenging or not.

Also as newsmakers we're not empty vessels who create narratives. You and I might both be able to agree the way the news on Kim Stafford  was wrong, but the manner and nuances in which we present this may differ.

Rosenblum tells a story that is rich in cultural significance and served as a launch pad for him to start to wire together videojournalism. He went to Gaza, to learn about palestinians, he was warned against meeting. Cultural pluralism, and your background, is key to interpretation. Interpretation is what you do in journalism.

The reason why the BBC's interview for jobs, at least during my time of employ, used to value travel ( inter-railing etc) was it expanded one's horizons to understand others. 

I spent my formative years in Ghana. It valued TV, oddly enough as a cohesive tool ( A pre-facebook tool) so much so that its deference in news was over bearing. It was a bit like the BBC of the 1940s interviewing a government minister. "Minister Poole can you tell us what you;re doing today?"

But when we took videojournalism to Ghana and South Africa in 1997, the results were remarkable. How traditional news making could corrupt videojournalism is a flag to make us aware of conversations we're likely to have in ten year's time as opportunities lost.

If the key concepts you hang onto videojournalism is the break in shooting your own news, I fear you might have missed a point.

As David Hockney said, a new form only became available in Art when the easles and paints became smaller and more mobile.

By the way the US-UK and newspaper and broadcast videojournalism divide should not be seen as a broad brush approach on my part. By doing so, I commit the very sin, I'm critiquing. Brian Storm, of Mediastorm, has a great insight into concerns I share. That said it is a concern nonetheless.

David Dunkley Gyimah is a panelist at NewsXChange in Barcelona. He publishes viewmagazine.tv which examines the history of videojournalism through his work and others and is a jury member for the UK's top broadcast news awards, the RTS. 

Notes

A part of the PhD examines videojournalism. There have been a number of exemplary scholars who've looked at this nascent subject and they should be applauded.

The nature of any PhD delivering new knowledge to the community is to frame what you know, coupled with how you went about verifying to the point it can be called truthful.

In other words how you bridge the reality of what's happened, to the appearance of your presentation (appearance). Not so different from news really, except each has their own standards of rigour.

My approach is based on several knowledge-creating methods.  Parking them aside for the moment, I believe I know what I know because I was among the first official UK declared videojournalists in 1994. Thus what I talk about from the transition of traditional broadcasting to a dedicated videojournailist, and reception of videojournalism from the 1990s to the present, is a lived experience.

I know what I know because before it there was no network in the UK officially, by the NUJ's acknowledgement practising videojournalism.

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