RTS Award Prelude- juror for best of the best in journalism

RTS Judging package arrives with DVD

Nestled between CS5 and code hints and introductions to polysemic documentary making,  I can see on my diary, RTS awards.

[Read here for response to Mike looking for further explaination  of RTS Award Prelude]

This will be the third year running I have been invited to sit with a panel of experts to adjudicate which UK TV or newspaper takes the Innovation award for Journalism.

Two years ago, it was for me unequivocal: 10 Days to War by BBC Newsnight - an impressive dramatisation of the lead up to the Iraq war involving what looked in the end- a hand in glove fit between documentary mode and drama (fiction).

The programme didn't have it its own way. A rigorous vote ensured from a shortlist, which itself proceeded arguments for and against contenders.

Sitting down to Judge the awards. In shot Toby Castle ( ITN), Nigel Baker (Chair) APTN,  Iain Dale, Deborah Gorbutt (APTN), Martin Turner (BBC)

What got me thinking was how the concept flagged up the notions of embedded videojournalism. That wasn't the casting vote, for by itself 10 Days was an imaginative piece that tackled a subject which wrestles the collective conscious.

It was a sort of Green Zone - Dir. Paul Greengrass, but more newspaper journalism than novel-cinema.

Its relevance can't be over emphasised enough. What really happened and why the world (a US-axis with Europe et al) went to war is still as contentious then as it is now. The programme should be made available for all secondary schools to study.

I pondered though, what if programme makers got videojournalists into these pivotal events?  In  cases, some of the scenes were predictable according to the press. Almost any follower of the build up would have known from the media that Colonel Tim Collins would be delivering a rousing speech.



"You tread lightly there. You'll have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people  than the Iraqis. You'll be embarrassed by the hospitality they offer you even though they have nothing. Do not treat them as refugees in their own country".

The above from the loquacious Shakespearean actor, more recently the director of Thor, Kenneth Branagh, underscores the paradoxes of war.

Two years later, I caught up with the figure behind the series. Peter Barron, an old acquaintance from my Newsnight days in 1991, who also hired me to work on Channel 4 News from 1997-2001 and is now a senior executive at Google. Peter reflected on the programme.

"It was bold", I said, "What of fact-fiction storytelling?"

It came with huge risks and must be treated with due care, he cautioned.

Last year that latent thought materialised in the shape of photojournalist and self-taught cineist  Danfung Dennis  Battle of Hearts and Mind. ( Please note there's swearing and some scenes could be considered not appropriate for youngsters)




Here was a film that had the affectiveness of cinema wrapped around factivity. Zeitegiest! I interviewed Danfung - an incredibly humble and self-effacing person at the Southbank Centre - as part of a programme for my artist in residency.

Danfung had thrown film form's vividness into a dramaturgical cauldron wrestling verisimilitude . 

By that I mean the notion now of what's real in cine-mode, resurecting debates around neo-realism, and dramatic constructs of  Honore' de Balzac or more recently epic realism of Brecht.

[Added notes next day to clarify: the cinema mode is not just the screen look e.g. Shallow depth of field, but founded on several principles refined since cinema began. Video as a format has struggled with this, read David Bordwell]

Show the two videos side by side to the screen generation in secondary schools and they'll be hard pressed to consider Danfung's piece as verity outrightly. Is that cinema? it looks real one youngster told me during an exchange with a group talking about modern day filming. 

On the night of the awards, I couldn't make it to black tie do, for I was many miles away in Miami at Wemedia, where thanks to the huge support of Dale and Andrew, its founders I was being treated untold generous hospitality - shortlisted in their game changer award.

A year later and a submission would raise the bar, courting a wee bit of controversy from us jurors. but that's for another story.

.. continues next week
End

David Dunkley Gyimah is midway into PhD study on hyermedia film and is a juror member for RTS 2011 Innovation in News Journalism Awards. He lectures at the University of Westminster and publishes Viewmaagazine.tv where he showcases processes and techniques of the digitalisation of film form e.g. Interviewing with former CIA chief.


 

The new mediaists - photos

Pics from wemedia.

Brian Storm of Storm Media with Jessica Stuart, Project manager and Tom Kennedy, formerly Head of Multimedia at the Washington Post. Out of shot, you can just about see his hand is Rich Beckman - often referred to as the Yoda of multimedia [ I heard that]


Pic of Tom and Jessica free framed by Chad of Wemedia. That is Chad's not looking through the camera and just firing off shots. Free framing is the new in thing now. Produces natural and sometimes beheaded shots.



I so loathe posed shots, but I was more than up to taking a snap with some of the figures I revere in this emerging profession. The facial expression is me barking at Chad, who's just free framed and is now having us count down for the shot.

Chad it's digital, blow film :)

Donna Shalala's thoughts - Wemedia

Always refreshing to hear someone articulate thoughts and spiels you've preached and in this case they don't get any bigger than the former secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, now president of Miami University.

Ms Shalala, being interviewed at the WeMedia gathering spoke about the curricula, she uses to lecture her students.

It's a paperless environment, with knowledge being shaped online on Blackboard.

And it's a changing curricula. By the year end she noted as and when new things happen that gets pulled in.

Classes are blogged, and there is a heavy reliance on Facebook, which is monitored.

Importantly in this instant society, students she said have to be more aware of what they do and say.

Research shows News unaffected by the Net

The news agenda has not changed and blogs have had little effect on the news. These were the findings of one of the UK's major media research bodies, in the wake of a major and ongoing piece of research. ( see previous post)

Goldsmith's media is internationally renowned so this research involving extensive ethnographic studies and interviews is not to be taken lightly.

In the face of noticeably huge shifts in the way blogs, twitter and web 2,0 have impacted on news, the reality after the research by academics is it's business as usual.

Some noticeable results

1. Journalists were publishing more across platforms
2. They were over worked.
3. Traditional news set the agenda
4. The mainstream of blogging fed off traditional news
5. There is no real shift in a paradigm as we've been spurting.
6. There was no real participatory exchange between public and traditional broadcasters such as the BBC.

The academics expressed surprise behind their research, which yielded equal surprise from the floor.

Any research and its framing has merits and drawbacks.

That is whether one adopts an interpretive(this link looks at wikis) or positivist epistemology.

Equally the methodologies behind the data can vary depending on the frame work of the questions and who's asking. Social Scientists have wrestled with these two polars for as long as they've acknowledged the differences.

It may sound incredulous that the impact of blogs, twitter and readings from the likes of Dan Gilmor, Jay Rosen, Poynter and indeed Charlie Beckett on which the researchers based their premise, count for very less than what we've assumed.

We can't dismiss Goldsmith's research out of hand, but does it require further analytical research? Would the make up of a highly qualified and venerable team make any difference to the outcome?

Would the pool of interviewees and question framing have changed the results from the times they spent with more than 200 journalists and a number of institutions?

Or as the head of the University of Westminster's research Peter Goodwin asked, is this research too early to determine any significant change in the media landscape?

A point that still does not describe what many web 2.0 practitioners see as a shift in the way news is being orientated by technology.

In one way you're damn if you do and don't if you engage in research which marries new and old media.

I'm due at Wemedia in February, and these findings offer new food for thought, at least from a UK perspective.

Game Changers Guest Post: David Dunkley Gyimah

Early November Beth Laing, from Wemedia, asked the finalists at the 2009 Game Changers Awards to write about their projects, what they’ve learned along the way and what’s next. This is the essay I submitted.

We Tell Stories

We tell stories. Everything we do is about stories. From the young child skipping home from school, the mother navigating a hard day’s work, James Joyce’s epic Ulysses to the shortest passage in the bible: Jesus wept. It’s story telling.

We tell stories across different media: Designers through space, image and text; artists through bold or subtle gestures of paint, sculptures, digital ones and zeros; dancers through the contours of their bodies, and today’s journalists, through an emerging basket of digital goods.

The stories we tell are shaped by their medium, Marshall McLuhan said as much in his medium is the message. Critic Andre Bazin extolled the language of Cinema and Muhammad Ali across a throng of Harvard students regaled us with “Me, we.” – the shortest poem there is. Rest of the article here

Finalists - Game Changer for Wemedia Miami

David has been nomintaed as a 2009 wemedia finalist game changer for creating Integrated Multimedia Video Journalism, as a viable training course.

It involves a cinematic accelerated production of news and story telling, which earlier this year he shared with journalists at Camp VJ in Chicago.

To vote for him, please go to wemedia and ping his name

p.s David would like to point out he did not write the subbed submission on the wemedia site. Er, it's a bit brassy eh!

David says: "Thanks every one for your support and all that!