Videojournalism driven programmes

Filmminute from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Their show now successfully over, I feel I can now bring you the odd insert from the filminute.com global show.

The group behind this have an awesome product, which they've planned to turn into a show.

I suppose the point with this is that video journalism goes beyond clip-cut news and can be developed into something that can create a raft of progs.

This was a 2 hour shoot on location starting cold.

We ( Sabaa, Filminute exec) and I met at 12, storyboarded and prepped by 1 pm, and then rang up Selfridges, where the event was showing in a purpose built cinema.

By 2 we were at Selfridges, one of london's premier stores.

We started filming; he presenting around 2.30

By 4.30 we'd wrapped.

Editing at home took me about 5hours with post; reason, I was playing around with tone and we also had to synch the right music.

If I were to do this again, I'd attach my new prime lens to achieve shallow depths of film ie enhance the film look

wassup - returns

Their Last word!

Transition Trauma -US elections

If you've been bemused by all the camaraderie, "we'll help you in the hand over" gestures from the Republicans to Obama go over to The World Today for a highly informative on Transition Trauma.

John Dumbrell, Professor of Government at Durnham University reveals what happens inside the White House, when its time for an elected president to move in, and the other to move out.

Change overs in British politics are harsh, the keys to 10 Downing Street swap hands at break neck speed, bu then the US have shown they're equal to t art of eviction.

Many PMs in the UK comment on how they go from the lush trappings of government to nothing in a split second, as a delivery van awaits to bring in the new No 10. occupant.

Here the Blairs give the cameras one last shot, whilst Cherie Blair shows her hand literally telling the press:" I don't think we'll miss you"

But at least the legacy of changing governments is a continuity provided by civil servants .

No such luck in the US where civil servants are government/ party appointees.

But where Prof Dumbrell's article really quickens the mind is how an incumbent president can make the incoming one's life difficult by leaving absolutely nothing behind: notes, tips, computer software etc.

Elsewhere on Ireports, CNN's unfiltered news, one submission, and I can't verify the veracity of the article points to the Bush administration being the first to ensure a smooth transition to an incoming president.

The article adds Clinton's team on their exit removed all the "w" from the keyboards and are alleged to have "trashed" the place.

The trouble with rolling news - the law of stupidity

Jesse Jackson motives for crying: bitterness or joy?

Its not often I get angry.

But rolling news can do it for me. And the march of nonsensical utterings from parachute reporter pundits can be grating to say the least.

Parachute journalism, the art of dropping a reporter into a hot zone and attempting to fool viewers that the person you're listening to knows everything is both insulting and embarrassing.

The latest one I saw was from a BBC correspondent whose lack of depth was gnawing. Though she managed to speak fast enough to suggest she knew her American history from black politics.

" The weight of the whole world will be on his back and he'll develop a stoop" was how one of her deliveries maneuvered.

On Yahoo.com one poster comments on how BBC pundits witnessing Jesse Jackson crying suggested it's because Mr Jackson felt it should have been him. That may well have been and I hope therefore further qualification would have appeased someone like Kolbe who wrote:

'Yes and i was angry listening to BBC pundits saying it was because it was because he felt it should have been himself.
This man was in the real struggle that brought blacks to have a right to anything major. He was with Martin Luther King on all the marches and was right besides MLK when he was shot and killed."

There is an element of "just a minute" padding reportage. Just a minute is a BBC Radio 4 comedy show where contestants have to talk for a minute, so to pad out they turn to all sorts of gibberish.

That however is comedy.

To see professional wordsmith do it, a practice which is as outdated as it is unnecessary, is turn-for-the-remote time.

The late Charles Wheeler and a good clutch of senior journalists have warned against this. Obama's win indicates the hegemony of corporatedom, even news structures, may not be off limits. Time to seek out other news makers.

Best Election Obama Cover

My buddy, Rob Montgomery, a highly experienced press man features a palate of newspaper front covers on his site on the Obama victory.

I nicked this from there.

Sun Times, Robb's old newspaper, what a cover?

It reminds me, I've no reason why, of Ali’s poem to Harvard students.

Simply... wait for it

Me,

Whee!!

Yes that is the world's shortest poem.

Sometimes the simple things are the most powerful.

No better time to be a Video Journalist in the US - how envious

Joy Hatwood, a multiple Sony award winning producer; think the Emmy's for Radio in the UK, was leaving the BBC after so many years.

In her box she carried personal items and the odd radio piece, memorabilia, she'd produced.

At dinner, a couple of summers ago, she pointed to a place in her living room, where her audio memories of BBC days lay.

And there nestled in between the cassettes, oh yes cassettes an 18 year old is guffawing, was First Time Voters.

Joy's ensuing words touched me: "Ordinarily when we commission we assign a researcher and a presenter.

Multiskilling in the BBC I mused - not a chance.

She continued, "but when you came with the "Successor Generation", later renamed, "First Time Voters", I said to my partner, interesting...interesting!"

We exchanged more banter before I concluded: " don't worry I'll get found out one day". Brits don't do compliments well. Humility sells rather better.

" Agh Shame" my South African friends would say

But to the idea and why I believe being a VJ in the US at this moment, this time, is a time to remember.

First time voters
First Time Voters ( web site)was a simple enjoyable idea: follow four South Africans about to vote in their first ever election.

The poignancy?

Blacks for the first time were being given the right to vote and it was a forgone conclusion that Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, affectionately called Madiba, was on the crest of being the first black president.

For nine months, six months more regularly, I dipped in and out of the lives of the four people I thought would make good theatre and sent their briefs to Joy in London.

One was the country's first black stock broker, the other a feisty journalist, a comedian too who riskily could get away with poking Mandela jokes, and then there was a model, turned, conflict resoluter.

Between them they embodied and captured the spirit of South African getting ready to wake from a deep slumber.

Two young men, two young women - all from townships of sorts- now living in the city; a coloured, 2 blacks, and an Asian.

No whites? Yes no whites. This election, in this case, was about those getting the vote for the first time. Under apartheid only whites could vote.

First Time Voters played in the UK on BBC Radio 4, then the World Service, and then on the eve of SA's historic election, SA's public radio bought the rights urging each hour its audience to stay tuned.

Joy - a fantastic producer did the heavy lifting, when I arrived back in London with 60 x 1 hour tapes for what would be a 50 minute programme.

But as I begun to assemble the radio piece in Johannesburg I took pics and even recorded some footage.

Five years on
Five years later, SA's honeymoon well and truly over, I returned to SA and sought out my First Time Voters. Two new ones had joined, two old ones had moved on somewhere, but this time video journalism would tell the story from the go.

And Channel 4 News became the repository shooting on high end digibeta- a camera costing $50,000 - The Successor Generation [an edited version of this went out].

Through four people I could measure the changes, what I believed was the pulse of the country. They still paid homage to their township roots, but wrestled with ideas of being buppies ( black upwardly mobiles).

And then in 2003 before the election I paid another visit.

By now you know where I'm going with this.

Obama's victory, the new voting citizens and their aspiration allows for the sort of private long term project to tell an anthropological story that will stand the test of time.

A 7up if you know that format, when in years to come, because that's what the idea really needs like a good wine a programme will unfold that is instructive for generations.

I'm being naive really, cuz I know of a few friends already doing this. If you haven't?

Well....

This truly would be the Successor Generation.

Successor to what you might ask?

That's what time and being a video journalist will reveal.

End

Here for the Radio 4/WS broadcast of First Time Voters

Words won't do

I got up this morning from 2 hours sleep and switched on the radio and television and sat.
Words won't do.

I saw the images of young, old, white, black and one Jesse Jackson streaming with tears.
Words won't do.

I listened to the TV pundits second guessing, filling air time, attempting to sound knowledgeable.
Words won't do.

I recollected how 14 years ago I stood on soil marking a new beginning, South Africa, about to welcome in a new Messianic president.
Words won't do.

I mused how God and physics had tilted the world on a new axis, even if I sense no geometric change.
Words won't do.

The philosopher Wittgenstein defied the superfluousness of language by delivering a lecture saying nothing. He had a point.
Words won't do.

In years to come, they will ask, where were you when it happened, who did you hug,whose emotions did you share because...
Words won't do.

Then I paused for thought, surveyed the words I had just written, pondered the banality as I, you, us watched the most powerful man take the stage, a man who transcended race, culture and religion and said to myself, just capture this image, because.... because....

WORDS SIMPLY WON'T DO.

US Elections

realclearpolitics.com [simply one of the best election sites] prediction for the election is reflected in this map, while their site tracks the changes as they're happening.

Meanwhile
VIDEO & AUDIO Interactive graphics
Financial Times - London,England,UK
US presidential candidates must win at least 270 electoral college votes to be elected. Our map shows the latest poll results, with a close-up look at six ...
See all stories on this topic

Visual Editors Rob Montgomery reports from Chicago

I travelled downtown Chicago today to hand-deliver my visa application to the Indian Consulate so that I may visit Hyderabad in a couple weeks and I had a couple of hours to kill before catching the Metra train back to Naperville.

I walked around Grant Park (See my annotated map above) (and I do mean AROUND as there was no ordinary privilege to pass through as a pedestrian today) with all the cops and fencing up already for the Obama Presidential Rally. That is the official name today of this venue formerly known as Grant Park. TV satellite trucks have long queued up on Columbus Drive and the ticketed and non-ticketed patron areas are clearly defined and defended.

more

SXSW Interactive, Film, Music Festival Viewmagazine Dunkley Gyimah features at shows

On SXSW site the Salon.com describes it as

"SXSW is a great place to catch movies, directors and trends way out in the depths of the indie ocean, a long time before they reach the mainstream, if they ever do." Salon.com, 3/8/08

Couple of months ago they started their intense assessment programme picking those to present from a sizeable list and so I'm thankful to those that contributed, because a couple of days ago, the organisers rang up to say my session on IM Video Journalism had been chosen .

So if you're coming along what might you expect? Truth I haven't bolted anything down quite so solidly yet, but it would be a series of how tos.

How to make a video journalism piece [david's early definition here] that has that cine feel, so we'll deconstruct a piece and I'll show how aesthetic, sound, construction and camera can turn the piece around.


Mash up intro viewmagazine.tv from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

I'll situate a piece how it would have been made working for an agency e.g. WTN, the BBC way, and the Channel 4, then the VJ gonzo.

I'll play around with the film arc and exposition to demonstrate the difference between narrative timeline and video driven pieces and show how you can turn a piece's momentum up using tagging and aggressive editing as well as posit interactive nodes at these points.


CAMP VIDEOJOURNALISM from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.


News people talk about neutrality in news making, however visual language [ non verbal grammar] can make subtle, but significant differences to your perception of the issues.

Then how I might attack any piece from a multimedia - video journalism perspective. That's the integrated multimedia video journalism way. A sort of 3rd way in my mind between video, cinema and motion graphics
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BBC Reportage from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

The BBC's cutting edge network current affairs programme of the early 90s reporting youth matters. The style has much in common with Current.tv. This was one of the BBC's jewels in the crown for a younger audience. The report I have included is me reporting on the UK's expanding youth crime.

Web Promos and the faultlines of TV Commissioning

Double click to play Flash Promo
size 224k
dur 110'

Coming away from failing to secure a commission for Lewis Hamilton, [see last post] the young teen go-kart racer destined for great things, I was introduced to another would be champ.

In this case, one who already had a pedigree and a few world titles underneath his belt, Lennox Lewis.

Meanwhile, I'd begun to meet a few new TV Commissioning Editors interested in the potential of future work. I also had an agent Jacque Evans who was carting off my portfolio of what I did.

To no avail.

TV Commissioning is the black art of the media industry. It's the interstice of common sense and bloody mindedness, where everyone fights for the attention of a few powerful people whom control what goes on TV.

They are the gatekeepers, whose apparent broad tastes and peripetetic lifestyle enables them to see through programmes on race to scientific discoveries.

Sometimes commissioners, like fashion trend setters make up the rules about what they're looking for.

"This year is about identity and the conflict about the self. We're looking for bold ideas that challenge our notion of being"... and so on would be their pronouncements.

Trouble is when you decrypted the commission wins, there was always a familiarity to the names, former TV employers, big name TV production companies, and then the odd flurry of new talent.

Frustration then. And it wasn't just me. You won't meet a single independent producer satisfied with the status quo. My good friend, Claudio Von Planta, a major TV producer talent would sit with me and lament.

So whilst I sought and failed to sell a sports idea, only to be met with the feedback, "sports doesn't sell", Team Lennox was a different proposition.

Owning your media
Lennox owned his media including rights to his own fights, and it wasn't TV he had his eyes set on but DVD and other routes beyond TV e.g. Cinema.

So working for Lennox took any pressures of me. I shot and Vjed what I needed and made my own video diaries.

And it was an incredible journey, to the Pocono mountains and then Memphis blagging to get into Tyson's camp.

But some of the best times involved working across different media, from vjing to writing for his site and then producing a set of net promos.

Lennox team understood the new media economy. His archive alone of best of best fights will serve on day, when nostalgia bites of a show that can be delivered nth ways.

For commissioners, they're still needed; there's no other system to determine broad taste.

Yet, crowd sourcing, wisdom of crowds and social networking is yielding ideas, that may come to shape how programmes, or a doc on the young daring Lewis Hamilton could, and should have been made.

Youngest Formula 1 winner Lewis Hamilton - Drama

Damon Hill - the last Brit to win Formula 1 championship. That was in 1996

OMG you had to be watching F1, because it was heart in your mouth. Lewis Hamilton becomes the world Champion and the youngest ever.

The last lap was awesome. Winning and losing the title with 18 seconds to spare.

I have a few mates who will recall the fortunes of the last Brit winner, Damon Hill. For my own little story.

In 1999 working at Channel 4 News, Super Car tester Kevin Haggarthy [ here we're testing the Ferrari 599 GTB] wanted to introduce me to a young boy and his dad- a daring go kart racer.

I shopped the idea around as much as I could about the boy racer, but no TV commissioner would listen.

That young lad was Lewis Hamilton. Ah well some you win, some you lose.

Two years later, I wouldn't and in fact couldn't make the same mistake. Team Lennox Lewis asked if I'd join their camp for Lennox' fight with Tyson.

I was the only journalist let into the circle to witness and document the build up and fight up close and personal. I know that might not mean much by today's standards but at the time, and I'll talk about this is my next post it was awesome. Truly magnificent!

In terms of today's drama, the other F1s that rate up there:

• 1986 Nigel Mansell's tyre burst in Adelaide.
• Schumacer's shunt on Damon Hill
• Mika Hakkinen's tears at Imola in 1999

Pic of Damon Hill is by Charlie Amponsah - a friend and VJ/Director , and F1 Nut, then there's Ken Walker, who's taken a fair few pics for me at Viewmagazine.tv and for a period in his life followed the F1 bandwagon around the world from race tracks in the US to Japan. What a great life!
Great stuff!

Sunday's Digital Chill Zone

Sundays will never be the same again....

The last time I said that in that very same way was... er 1995 presenting a broadcast package from a colleague Mark Vjying about this thing called the Internet.

The papers had just got hold. It's definitely worth a look: What the papers says, just to give some contemporary historical to where we are now.

Among the pundits, The Guardian's Bill Thompson, now a lecturer at City University and pundit appearing on BBC pages talking about the future of newspapers.

Sundays have transformed from a desk strewn with various Sunday papers to a permanent glow of light and rattle of keys from my mac.

Today I detoured to Search Engine News - an online publication that I used to subscribe to, which this month is giving free access to its stray clients.

Everything you wanted to know about SEO and link building and the rest. e.g claiming your Namyz, Yahoo's Web Analytics -in answer to google- and managing your search engine reputation.

It's conceivable, quite conceivable that at some point we'll cross some digital Rubicon, in which the quality of your article, its witticism, erudition, quality of prose will be usurped by bots determining inbound links, viewer popularity and how many social sites feed it juice.

The inhuman face of article writing becomes the dominant form - heaven help us eh!

Darwinian Futures
In Darwin amongst the Machines, a passage reads:

Three centuries after Hobbes [a philosopher] automatia are multiplying with an agility that no vision formed in the 17th century could have foretold. Artificial intelligence flickers on he desktop and artificial life has become a respectable pursuit.

Not an endorsement for androids over humans, but worth a read.

So to round of the week, what organisation or individual this week did not submit to the Knight News Challenge.

Dan Gillmor twitters on the site: "We've had a huge response this year, please be patient"

Yes I too fell for the long odds and will post my scribbles here this week, a sort of ethnographic study of inter community news flows.

Do I hold out any hope? As much as having Sarah Palin become UN Secretary General.

I wonder what the odds would be for submitting a, " I want to set up regional video journalism in every neighbourhood?".

Sorry! BBC's already looking to do something in that guise.

So then to the biggest story this week: the US election. And on the front page of viewmagazine, I asked a question partly prompted by watching BBC news analysis show Newsnight.

Is this election [US] the most important one globally in years? What about those of Roosevel's ,Reagan or even this 1994 South Africa's first all race election, which I have posted the audio on viewmagazine.tv.

A day before the election which would signify the legal abolishing of racial segregation [ Apartheid] right wing forces detonate a bomb in down town Joberg.

Here I'm doing a 2-way live with the BBC World Service.

When David met Jayz

Well the truth is I did and I didn't.

I was reflecting on seeing Jay-z in full stride in the arts programme Imagination on BBC TV.

David meets Prince Charles

Two years ago at the University of Westminster, Jay-z, Run and Russel Simmons gathered. I was standing next to Jay-z for a considerable time and I couldn't think of a single question to ask him.

Actually I turned to one of the students and told her what she could ask, after she said" "Er what's he done, music wise". Yep I fell apart laughing. LOL

I dd kick myself afterwards cuz I remembered my niece would have even loved a "hello'.

Ah well. Happens doesn't it.

David filming Moby in Washinton DC

But I have had a few gem moments with other artists.

There was Grace Jones in South Africa. I'm watching her now on Jools Hollands later as I post this. She was scary then. She's scary now. Cuz she's not afraid to tell you off.

She was pretty sharp with me. Woops she's just called modeling prostitution and stood up gyrating her body. This is a car crash. Luckily Jooz Holland has an anti-ruffle gene.

• 
  

Quincy Jones also in South Africa.
Cameo, Larry Blackman in Leicester
Fela Kuti, Roy Ayers Ertha Kitt and London and a few more.
I'll see if I can find some of the recordings and post, but if you skirt to viewmagazine.tv and enter say Maceo Parker or Roy Ayers into the search you should find a recording.

If not I'm a numpty and should post.

Follow David on Twitter- who has recently been appointed an Artist in Residence at the renowned London South Bank Centre.

David working for ABC News in South Africa in 1994 was one an associate producer with Danny Glover

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!

The Future of Video Journalism - Conventions continues

The Future of VideoJournalism is part of a three post article looking at the conventions of videojournalism. You can read the most recent here and the first post here.

Cinema and Video Journalism meet

"You might call me a doc producer, and you might be right. You might say I make news features and I might consider this. You might say the pieces I made look like motion graphic packages and I might not disagree. And then you might say actually what do you make? ...
And I might reply all of the above and none so specifically. No one owns video journalism. It can neither be prescriptive nor easily defined. It is what is is to those that practise it".

1996 - West Africa, David reports and interviews US Special Forces training Ecomog soldiers, preparing for tours in Liberia.

Neither exclusively reportage nor videography, Video journalism occupies a rare and evolving genus. So much so that it's found itself at the centre of a tug of pedagogical and industry war.

At stake is the notion of dictating a prescribed set of rules, attract a following and have commerce do the rest.

If you disagree with the body politiks of any of its major communities, then you risk ridicule.

There's nothing new there. Thomas Kuhn captured our propensity for protectionism and a move away from fixed discourses in his pronouncements: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

So where might video journalism go?

The seeds lay in the past, even a more immediate one. Or as John McHale, a cyberneticists explaining American Culture would say:

"The future of the past is in the future. The future of the present is in the past. The future of the future is in the present"

The Immediate Past
In 2005 as the first UK newspaper journalists to practice Video journalism, the Hull Daily Mail, Liverpool Echo and Press Association journalists,rolled out of the Press Association following three intense weeks of video and narrative discourse, we all agreed on one thing.

Video Journalism is not TV.

There were reasons the regional journalists wanted it so; distinction, difference, a fresh outlook.

Mine emerged from the 18 years or so in the media, many of which involved working either as a journalist, producer, reporter and in some cases video journalists for some of the most respected networks around.

What I had experienced and seen what Video Journalism could do was different, not always necessarily better than TV , but different, tailor made for this new web platform.

The wondrous nature of video journalism's origins give some idea. TV its most obvious cousin emerged from the silent movie reel with a lot of help from radio.

In fact the first coterie of TV reporters e.g. Cronkite (US) Dimblebee (UK) almost exclusively came from Radio, and before that print. They were the finest of their time.

The classical nature of TV news mirrored in many respects Hollywood's formulae for story structure and resolution. But whilst different genre conventions began to evolve in film e.g. avante garde and documentary, TV News maintained its set of codes, though different house styles emerged for different corporate authors.

For example ITN reports differently to BBC; ABC will have its house style as will CBS. If anything the form that creatively mashes up TV with a sub genre e.g. 1st person narrative versus omniscient is documentary.

Video Journalism has thus gestated from TV, where as a broader, richer canvas would be a hybrid of cine/photographic language and radio/TV reportage, which a growing number of VJs are reveling in.
Scott Rensberger, [right. pic] one of the US's most celebrated multiple award winning video Journalists talks to David.

The latter sets up an interesting proposition. In order to critique film/video we need to comprehend some of its language and distinguish our analyses from the audiences' expectations.

The former of these resides in what might be referred to as an evaluative assessment. Who's the audience? Did it satisfy their needs? Were the graphics good? Did it meet what often is a reference to classical story arc?

These are instincts often you build up and again depending on the target audience will differ from one group to another.

An interpretive analysis of film presents huge problems and is the stuff of critics, whom themselves may differ in opinion, but they often have one thing in common: a rich historical understanding of the product.

Video Journalism's Achilles
Why is this problematical now?

Because whilst you wouldn't ask someone who's had a limited knowledge of newspaper design to present to the board a critique and launch of a new newspaper, it has parallels in an interpretive analysis of video, if your knowledge of video is limited.

This is by no means qualifies only those with the scars of a camera to talk meaningfully about video journalism. I personally wouldn't dare profess to knowing it inside out. I am a student of its form with a particular perspective.

Whilst conversely not having looked down the lens doesn't disqualify those new to the genre. You don't need to have been a video journalist to understand any of the forms of the video journalism.

Our collective televisual maturity provides some fallback.

But it does mean when we critic its form it would be expedient to have a broader understanding of analysis deployed. Story form, a play with the form, comparative analysis, technical innovations, tone and delivery - just some of the things that matter I would say in Video Journalism's increasing diversity.

This last statement sets up a segue for point of this post: "the many forms of video journalism".

The future of video journalism is and will be a break into different forms, as witnessed at the 2006 Video Journalism Awards in which you could distinguish between genres like: breaking story, video feature, independent, self reflexive and so on.

And then there's the unknowns, or trend extrapolated thinking knowns [ sounds tautological, blame Rumsfeld, better still Lacan].

Unlike the media of television which delineates its product linearly, notwithstanding styles such as Flash backs and Flash Forwards, the web is spatial, and so we might well see a style emerge that captures spatial story telling. In 91 Manovich gave us a reason to see this with THE FAMILY at 56k modem speeds.


For more contemporary and innovatory forms I strongly advise to look at Richard's Multimedia Shooter.

That void is being touched with multimedia, but we still can't be sure of the shape of things to come. When video hyperlinking breaks, what next?

• When the video configurational size jumps from 620 to full screen, what next?
• When virtual life meets real life, what next? [ incidentally I'll bring you a report from the Science Museum, in which I hosted a panel of some of the UK's most talented multiplatform story tellers including one who mixes real and virtual life using his mobile]
• What happens with holographic video? Remember wag the dog!
  

What we can hope for at the moment with this nascent form is a healthy debate and discourse.

No one owns the form.

At the moment it is without form [ unless you prescribe to its TV tendencies], we have the ability to create a new visual stanza that just as TV borrowed from its antecedents, it takes and moves on to boldly......[ you're ahead of me :)].... gone before.

One which takes into account narrative and exposition, montage and sequencing [ spatial as well] and the new technologies that are likely to come on stream.
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• The Future of VideoJournalism is part of a three post article looking at the conventions of videojournalism. You can read the most recent here and the first post here.

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David has been nomintaed as a 2009 wemedia finalist game changer for creating Integrated Multimedia Video Journalism, as a viable training course. To vote for him, please go to wemedia

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David Dunkley Gyimah is researching the Outernet for his Phd, integrated multimedia video journalism and is researching with a colleague a Video Journalism doc, a remaking of Darwin's cell theory.

For more on David's ideas around videojournalism go to www.viewmagazine.tv, in which he's about to add some fresh material.

Power of the mobile

Power of the mobile.

In light of the BBC's Paul Branan, editor of emerging platform's talk a couple of days ago, this dropped into my email box.

An interesting, an event in Helsinki, Oslo and Trondheim 1-5 December, prising open the future according to mobile.

Click here for more info

The Madness of Britain

If you're flying in to the UK today and in the serenity of your hotel or eventual resting place, switch on the television, or Tele, as we might say here, brace yourself.

The lead and subsequent running story might have you clutching your bag and signaling to your partner: "Sheryl, I think we should leave the UK. I think there are some terrorists on the loose".

Therein, the images of two white adults will flash across the screen; one with a trademark Barry Whitesque facial hirsute, the other clean shaving with Barry White esque Loreal hairstyle.

For the next hour or so, they'll keep cropping up. The baffling bit is the footage that follows depicts middle class people, greying hairs and rinsed wigs not looking fearful, more outraged.

If you're lucky you'll catch an image of one of the perpetrators hosting a radio show and probably scream at your partner. "Sheryl, that bad man is hosting a freakin show, you know like David Letterman..".

Partner: "Oh yeah, lovely suit, what has he done".
Male Partner: Haven't a darn idea"

Mad Britain.
Britain's gone mad.

A crime has been committed.

Now lets not underestimate the crime; here's the background.

Two talented performers, one a major chatshow host, the other a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants stand up, a sort of David Chapell on a really bad day, played a prank that went horribly wrong.

They rang up another performer, an old skool one, you know, someone from the: "Bewitched" era, except this was Fawlty Towers [ I know, I know, that means nothing] and said lewd things on his answer phone.

Things like, oh I have slept with your grand daughter and when you hear this you might commit suicide.

It was bad, pretty bad.

After making the programme, it sat on a shelf ready for broadcast a couple of days away.

The victim of the prank, a pensioner, is said to have pleaded they don't broadcast this recording.

He was ignored and then some days later the broadcast went ahead. On the day itself there were a couple of protests.

Then the newspapers got hold of the story, the Daily Mail, a paper that appeals to conservative England.

Then to use that proverbial expression: "the S*** hit the fan". 30,000 complaints and rising.

As the days unfolded, I thought "oh dear, no one from the BBC's talking".

Then again, I thought if the BBC responded to every event then would they ever make any programmes.

Anti Customer Service
Consider this 'one off' story for instance relayed to me by an acquaintance whom I worked with whilst at the BBC. Our mutual friends is now a senior reporter in the organisation. He picked up the phone from a viewer complaining about something.

After listening to the complainant for a while he said:

"Er did I give you my name".
Complainant: No
"Well **** off then.

So you see the BBC gets complaints every hour, every day.

Yesterday, the two top flight performers were suspended, one then duly resigned, but that wasn't before the Prime Minister, the leader of the Opposition, had weighed in.

And now the BBC is holding emergency meetings.

Yes this is code red: the Madness of Britain.

Comedy is now under threat, the direction of the BBC as a vanguard for young people is under threat. More resignations and sackings are expected.

Damn the BBC might just implode, and then we'll find at last the moon is made out of cheese.

So what's going on?

Ah drama par excellence. Spleen venting of a kind that has its roots elsewhere and has slowly been simmering away.

The financial collapse, fat cat payouts, anger, avarice, gluttony and excesses in the financial system added to the mix.

Ingredient for a distaster
Here are the ingredients.

Jonathan Ross, one of the pranksters, is one of the highest paid presenters £18m ie around $29 dollars give or take some change and this swinging exchange rate. Too many that's obscene, way obscene.

Jonathan Ross presents a number of programmes on the BBC. So if you're not a JRoss fan, you're already complaining about why you should have to put up with this.

And it gets worse for you. His deal lasts till 2010.

Russel Brand, the other transgressor, is also paid a nice sum £200,000 a year for his radio 2 show

Then there's the BBC, whose relationship with the Daily Mail might be described as er "non existent". You might say the Daily Mail thinks the BBC is a $£@^&(()&^%$£@!!!! and the BBC might return that compliment.

The BBC, to its detractors, is the firm you love to hate, you see. Funded by tax payers but with no accountability, if it went to the wall, we'd go psychotic. Yet at the smallest of windows, you'll find groups complaining, sometimes even legitimately.

Then the issue of its funding pops up. Grrr! Why the papers argue are we paying a tax towards an outfit we have no control over, did not elect their management, and they rarely cater for your taste.

Damn if it does and if it doesn't really. Newspapers fearful of their future criticise the BBC's expanisionist ambitions. Must bring em down a peg or two, so this latest saga plays right into newspapers' hand.

And finally the misogynous, aegist and indencency nature of the crime. An apology simply wouldn't do.

So there you are, a warnng to you if you're flying into the UK and want to make sense of this Madness of Britain.

A crime has been committed, those guilty indeed do need to be reprimanded, but a root and branch look at the BBC???

Well then that's it. The press had mooted it, post Sutton, commentators had poked at it in their columns. Think back to another talented performer Chris Evans resigning from his radio show complaining of fatigue to his boss Mathew Bannister.

THere was going to be an endoscopy of the BBC at some time. Thank goodness Jonathan Ross has provided means.

end
p.s
Of course this isn't the first time Ross might be cast into the wilderness. Following on from his highly successful shows in the 80s, the Last Resort and into the 90s, Ross hit rock bottom. He's recounted this story so many times, so will he bounce back.

Yes. In two weeks time all will be forgotten and we'll move on to something like Gordon Brown's masterful curtailment of the banks [ yeah! ] or why Brits hate boxer shots.

Meanwhile did I tell you he story of me when I used to dance on Britain's Soul Train in the 80s while a chemistry maths undergraduate and a rather bossy floor manager kept on prodding us where to stand. His name Jonathan Ross




.

Burying the lead -Media Tip 102

I'm shattered 96 hours of full on with little sleep, but it was worth it.

Firstly our Masters students put together a blinder of a show today; 6 sessions of online culminated in a 5 hour news cycle towards their online newspaper.

There were many highs; one student pursued at least 6 different potential interviewees before getting her quote. Persistent pays. 

Secondly, and following on from today's live newsroom, it was a dash across town to the University of East London for my annual review of my Phd.

I'm through to the next year, and now the fun starts...

But burying the lead - media tip 102?

There are some advantages if you can call it that for working online. A huge slice of it is processing. Take a cut here, rework that para from that site there, grab a quote somewhere else and you're done.

But when you're the primary news gatherer and you're still grappling with the idea of news worthiness, how do you spot the lead from the mass of copy?

The Cat Sat on the Mat

The Cat Sat on the Mat is one of the games, it's easy.

Cat, Mat and Sat have to be used in the first para of a make believe story. 

Then you go Jayson Blair, creatively constructing  a story of 350 words.

It's a pretty hilarious exercise, revealing some active imaginations. But when the laughter done ask your students where the lead is.

Most often its buried and thus the expression, the cat sat on the mat become an allegory for the lead being buried.

As journalists we get paid to execute some fundamentals:

• Asking the right questions
  
• Using words accurately
  
• and spotting the news story
  

Of course there's more..., but these are some of the basics

Paul Brannan BBC on mobile phones - talk

Blogging live: Paul speaking for about 30 mins.

You can see a short video of Paul at London's Online News Association, when we gathered to hear reuters talk about mob phones

Paul Brannan,editor of BBC Emerging Platforms is talking at the Uni about reinventing the future.

A precise follows as he highlights changes in the industry.

Paul talks about " 13,000 job lost in US - Source Garret co Inc.

Penetration of newspapers down, 2007 steepest decline in a while.

At home UK losses in ITV and Channel 4".

Inventing the future through the past

He later goes on to speak about Paul Chappe ho invented the pre-telegraph 1791.

"If you succeed you will soon bask in Glory", he notes in his presentation.

Chappe's invention was picked up by Napoleon who helped push it along.

But being first does not guarantee success, he adds. Chappe did not benefit from his invention.

Brannan takes a stab of the future and shows a picture of a mobile from the 70s and more recently the 90s explaining how technology has changed.

Nokia calls it the age of the 4th screen, ff on from Cinema

Some stats he reel of from the BBC and those getting content 47 percent users survey used mobile. 50 + percent said they used it to surf the web.

Uses DVDH signal ie the phones, but the problems receiving signal.

Slide of Hellen Boaden, director of BBC News shown talks about 2m gone because of the nature of news. It says fewer that 24 percent of 15-24 watch 15 consecutive minutes of BBC News on TV in any given week.

Paul explains how mobile picked up last images of Saddam Husein

Paul then segues into UGC and talks about how the power now lies with the audience.

References Nokia 95 phone then points to Kyte which runs UGC, then Qik -allows streaming to sites, and then there's www.flixwagon.com and 12 seconds.

Disparate content from RSS readers such as netvibes, Paul adds is his mode of surfing online. If the news headline doesn't work he's off.

Zoopy contacts with friends, synchronous data, to give context. Trusted places site ensures you give credible info otherwise your rep suffers.

Here's Paul's advice to about 140 students gathered in the conference room

• learn the basics
• embrace change
• innovate
• learn every tool
• recast journalism's relationship with the public
• listen collaborate enable and serve
• add value avoid commodification
• and have fun

Q an A

Paul goes on to explain the sort of person he'd employ if he were in an interview.

• - good writing skills
• - knowledge of online apps
• - some coding skills if they have them.
• - enthusiasm- a zeal to learn

Quesions ff on Trust
Paul explains Trust is everything.. defending the BBC

Question of those who took pics at Bunsfield fire. Were the people there irresponsible?
Paul points to strict guidelines that the BBC uses to guide those who submit UGC

Question on hyperlocal TV
Paul says BBC not doing hyperlocal, however imminent decision due soon on this matter. See my previous posts