Amazing work from the Californians

Borderland from California is a place. on Vimeo.

You'll like this, a lot. It marries so many elements but in a minimalistic way. In many ways it might not have worked, but it's the cinescope, dutch tilt motifs, narratology and the visual perception. Superb! I'm now a big fan of California is a place.

The newness of old -innovatory story telling

There is little that it genius, or for that matter new. Each substrate we happen upon has its antecedent, somewhere, sometime.

Ignorance is usually are excuse for failing to find it. Not purposeful, for knowledge can never be absolute.

Each generations proposes new solutions, attempting by default to also discard the past. We have moved on. But the past provides answers for why we exercise or seek to try new things. Without the past, the old, we cannot have the new.

It's a catch 22, because we would rather the old remained hidden, yet at the same time, the solutions are rooted in various trials that have succeeded or failed of old.

The question for developing that which we deemed new, innovatory, then is a simple one. What can we add to the giants before us? What is our contribution to the form having burrowed deep into the archives of our choice?

Ignorance no longer becomes a default excuse, but a failure on our part. There is nothing that is new, if we prepared to drill deeper than often resources allow. What though can we contribute?

Creating cine-sites using the integrated videojournalism approach

Creating cinema-sites along the lines of the Apple Trailer page uses the integrated videojournalism approach.

It's been a busy couple of weeks and won't relent, so I have been absent from these pages, but I did want to share with you a project I have been doing for the last couple of days, in-between book chapters and the rest.

Site starts with a short promo featuring Shlomo, one of the world's most acclaimed beatboxerspercussionist. who was working with Colin Currie - an acclaimed

In Jan early this year, as part of my residency at the Southbank Centre I participated in a programme called Collisions. Well, I'm now looking to create the legacy of that event, and some event it was.

The strategy falls along the lines of what I call an "impact site" or Outernet. It's when you take a single subject and engineer its reportage through video and online.

South African Poet Lebogang Mashile performs for the audience.

Thanks to the wonderful pics of Dominic Brewser, the job was a joy. Here's the ongoing results. I have treated the photos to enhance their aesthetic and am adding appropriate video where I feel firstly I have and secondly where it will be appropriate.

Thanks to Adam Westbrook whom I invited to join as a videojournalist. Some more of his directional work, which I'm editing will be up soon.

Food and cooking was an integral part of the programme. We all took turns in the kitchen aided by the Company of Cooks and SE1 United. I cooked on the first day, Jollof Rice, spicy plantain with an avocado mix and spicy chicken. I have never cooked for 50 people. Was I nervous? Not until my sister range me up to say she couldn't come to help. The video of my Jamie Oliver moment, er no, will be posted soon.

This methodology is one I also lecture in as final project modules for Masters students. In the end it's all ones and zeros. Flash, which I have been working with for more than a decade, provides the platform.

The bombastically talented Dave Clark

I'll be deconstructing this and others e.g. how to produce rostrum camera production slides in a forth coming book, in which I have been promised one of the most sought after film directors as an interview. Fingers crossed. To peruse the Collision site go to http://www.viewmagazine.tv/collision/collisions2010.html

Penny Woolcock the director of 1 Day - a grime hip-hop feature length film which she street cast and had the rappers breaking into song as with a musical was one of several artists, who I had the pleasure of meeting.

Multiple award winning poet, writer and recently MBE Lemn Sissay on the final showcase of Collisions

Images of Cairo

Journo getting to grips with videojournalism

We engage in a street lecture.. c'mon anyone can join. Feel like a tour guide LOL
Golden morning


Mosquito bite - £@%^& in hotel room

Cairo Television's videojournalism

“The more we experiment, initially the more we are likely to fail. The more we fail, the less we are likely to fail again. Then the more confident we become. The more confident we become, the better the experiments we conduct and the more successful we become. Videojournalism’s exactly like that"

Cairo state television is taking the plunge into videojournalism and are looking at videojournalism not neccesarily as a cost-saving device per se, nor exclusively a more hands-on-deck approach, but a combination of this and the emerging aesthetic.

Eminent award wining journalist and Nieman scholar Prof Yuen Ying Chan, now director of Journalism studies at Hong Kong University asked a pressing question couple of days ago during our session on videojournalism the future. "Wasn't I talking about cinema verite?", she asked.

The differences are as wide between the two forms, I answered as they can be the same. Videojournalism is the feisty bastard child which seeks to be more than the sum of its parts.

That view is shaping up from prelim ethnographic studies that has me somewhat surprised.

One of the UK's most respected film makers and author of "the story of film", called it impressionism. Granted its use was in an artistic praxis at the time and there followed a debate about videojournalism's schizophrenia.

Videojournalism has its problems, but in the manner Cairo TV want to adopt it, it gives a respectful berth to Cinema Verite, adopting more "accelerated verite" under the ambit also of that precious statement of the 50s "4th person singular".

I hope to make a feature about what happens. See you on the other side.

Footnote
Through the eyes of a Child Director/producer David Dunkley Gyimah, 1993 The Line Producers, South Africa.

Two days ago at this conf in Bratislava, a chap approached me and said "Through the eyes of a child". I winced and then sheepishly said "yeeessss", naively thinking he'd seen the programme.

As it happens Tidiane, an award winning journalist in in Senegal, was the french translator/narrator on this features I made in 1993 whilst living in South Africa.

We'd never met before and here 17 years later were reminiscing about the prog and South Africa for the first time. Happy times !

What video and Videojournalism can do for you

What videojournalism can do for you - an integrated approach illustrated with this diagram below.


Firstly videojournalism sits at the heart of what I do in media. It is an integrated approach which allows me to pull off or push together cognate media, explained much better in this Apple article.

I call it the IM6 Approach.If you search IM6 on viewmagazine.tv, you'll find a range of articles.

The phrase was coined by Ted Turner... "Use every part of the pig, including the Squeal". In video as the illustration shows, I can and often pull put or put together a number of assets.

• Website - viewmagazine.tv ( winner at the Knight Batten Awards 2005) was built around a videojournalism praxis. The original submission in 2005 can be found here and I did think of flat screens from Minority Report in making it, so there are similarities with IPad's presentations today The presentation of film and text means if you take a page like this one below the video comes first with text wrapped around the video - film. This example below shows videojournalism training at the Financial Time. The article and film can be found here.

• 1. The FT has now a bouquet of programmes it has created using the videojournalism paradigm
  2. Sites like MultimediaShooter.com show how Videojournalism is also integral to Multimedia storytelling. Here's how videojournalism made this multimedia game theory documentary: The Family
     
     
  3. Promos - The Yannis Kontos Photopromo I showed was influenced by the overlap of videojournalism and photojournalism. You can see that here (pixels without borders). The background to the video is we had about 1000 pics to sort through in three hours and then score the piece which he presented on a big screen to the World Press Photo Awards ( Ist prize)
     
  4. I mentioned during my talk, students I lecture at my university and the three different sites. Alas time constraints I could only point to the one.
     

• Pics and Design

1. Here's a snap shot of a video I made - an interview with the CIA. Using Final Cut Pro, I can also pull of a pic whose quality online on an HD camera rivals still cameras

• Audio - which I can pull of the video timeline

1. On the Final Cut Pro pic (above), you'll notice the timeline is a block - (1 brown, 2 purple). The purple element is the audio component which I can export to form an Ipod or audio track for any number of projects, including this one here from South Africa ( see below)
   

• blog- This blog; its specialist topic is videojournalism. Though apologies because of commitments I have not been blogging as much as I should. But the point is there's a content pathway derived from Videojournalism.
  

1. Multimediast bloggers like Adam Westbrook have made invaluable contributions in this space
   

The slide below gives my POV of the the many things you can do within the video ecosystem making films, but that was more than brilliantly shown and executed

• Thomas Loudons' fabulous VJmovement - the BBC of the future
• Irina Samokhina, publisher of Krestyanin, Russia demonstrated how in the short space of two years she is transforming her company into a digital platform using videojournalism
• Premesh Chandran CEO of Malaysiakini.com is blazing a trail with videojournalists working with citizen journalists and finding an out on TV screens as well
  
• And then Thomas Bella's of SME.sk who showed how branding and the use of entertainment programming can bring in audiences.

I'll fix the links on the above and post some more soon and speak about the second slide later. BTW this and much more is being published in a book by Peachpit called Revolutionary Video

Slides for MDLF - The future of videojournalism.

The future of videojournalism.

Opened talk with over view of the below:
1. Showed two films. One from 1994; the other from 2005. I wanted to demonstrate that between 1994 and 2005 there has been a visual language change for those that started in 1994.

No surprise. If you learned a new language. say English, Russian or Manadarin, 15 years ago, by now you would understand the language enough to use its local dialect.


An example of two camera - film approaches from different eras



Channel One wanyed its reporters to be multiskilled, so many got to use the web very early. The new total reporter would shoot video and build sites. These skills are only difficult when they are foreign to us.




Future will be more Outernet: personalised and landscaped
Videojournalism is a combination of skills and does not mean exclusively news making. It's a total package and one that encapsulates a quikc turnaorund understanding of cinematographic film news making

Global TV videojournalism

New World Order - article for Sony Magazine by David in 2001. The Order is only now materialising.

I'm in transit to Slovakia, before Cairo, to share ideas with 150 of the top media and digital media execs from around the world where I'll be presenting, listening, and chairing a session on New TV.

And in this new tv setting the production methodology is one of videojournalism.

In the last couple of years I have been researching an aspect of videojournalism, which I call the Outernet, as part of a PhD.

I wanted to do this, a sometimes tortured exercise, to understand better, drill deeper into the tissue of videojournalism and its cognate areas e.g cinejournalism.

And to complement some of the practical techniques in training and videojournalism I have been doing for the past 16 years.

The research is proving highly interesting and some of those will feature in a book I'm writing for Peachpit.

The coming years will prove the most fertile period for this art form, because that's what it is, something manifestly more than it seems, ushering a fundamental era in authorship and trust.

It's not a restrictive language and its deconstruction will force the hand of new technologists to up their game and theorists to revisit and formulate debates of subjectivity and objectivity, which we've wrestled with uncomfortably for far too so long. The realignment is well due.

DVCam revolution
Get ready for a slew of new DVcameras with features that hitherto have not been present on current cameras.

Commensurate with this, will be new understandings and rationales within the filmic (subconsciousness) space.

Thus far we've taken the visual grammar for granted at the behest of the radio narrative. Every video moment requires a voice track.

To practitioners this is a period of great creativity, but what does it mean for execs and business managers ?

That truly in the main videojournalism will have nothing to do with costs, because the mean cost threshold would be fixed, normalised.

So it boils down to one of the most contentious, but exhilarating areas of film and art mode:aesthetic.

Aesthetics is not about beauty, but that which we create and make sense of; it affects our sensibilities in ways that envelope unique characteristics.

In the future, global New TV will play to these in far more sophisticated ways parallelling the decades of creativity that have underpinned other creative arts e.g. music and film.

And in many cases, it will be about a modern day versions of old formats ( that's what the research is showing) and housing films in environments which can be viewed as stand-alone or within their own architectural aesthetic.

How to woo an audience and keep them in a world flushed with video will keep us awake like no other time.

VideoJournalism's film making Sony & Panosonic pro choice - Viewmagazine.tv David Dunkley Gyimah's tale

The explosion in videojournalism and equipment is one of the most exciting features 0f the last five years.

Some of you may know my work in using small DV cams and even though this has allowed for a range of video projects, there is still something to be said about using pro cameras.

I appreciate this may be out of reach on your pocket, but I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about my background and how as a videojournalist using pro cameras has been significant in my understanding of cinematography in broadcasting and filmmaking.

The top shot is from 2002 when I was hired by World Heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis to shoot his fight: Lennox Lewis Vs. Tyson, one of the most anticipated fights of the decade.

Here I am at base camp in the Poconno Mountains, before setting off to Memphis at the Pryamid Arena to to cover the fight.

This was a really nice camera. It's been a while so I may be wrong but I believe it's the Sony HVR-S270U which which is around $5000. It's quite light but with a good centre of gravity and interchangeable lens which you could play around with e.g. Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar Zoom Lens, 12x f = 4.4-52.8mm, f = 32-384mm at 16:9 mode, f = 39.5-47.4mm (4:3 mode)

Now what's significant about the use of a camera like this is that journalists learning video journalism would rarely work with a pro camera, which had a larger range of ND filters and other accessories to improve the picture quality.

Many journalists were more likely to start their careers with DV cams.

This is one of my favourite cameras - the Digi beta 970P It's top of the range and cost then about £50,000. I uses this on several shoots but all always hired them.

Here I am shooting a feature for Channel 4 News in South Africa in 1999.

These are some of its features:

• amazing high quality pic with a compression ratio of around 2.1
• Good weighted centre of gravity
• It shot 625/25P progressive mode and 625/50i interlaced mode
• Good sound at 20 bit resolution

You'll notice it has a Matte box at the front of the lens which allowed me to use different filters.

I think that is a hugely important point, because I am altering the look of what I'm recording at source. If you've ever graded your films you'll know what I mean.

Using different filters allowed me to imprint a colour-code to the image I perceived.

In one of the shots that I'm hoping to find and post I've altered between deep red filters and harsh colours in trouble spots in the townships - all through filters.


Here, you can just about see the camera on my left.

This shot really illustrates the structure of the camera.

And finally another shot as a videojournalist using a Panasonic in Paris - the aftermath of the Death of Princess Di, 1997 reporting from France, Champs Elysee.

I remeber this shoot well. I got some pretty strange stairs doing a stand-up by myself in the middle of a busy shopping lane.

Now why is this in some way interesting? It's interesting because of the difference between DV cams, pro cams and the new brill kid on the block the Canon 5D II.

I think something really interesting is happening here in the videojournalists firmament, in who comes from a journalism background and those that come from a picture background.

It' not so clear cut because there will be always be overlaps but I think you'll find that
a lot of photographers looking to video are opting for the Canon, while pro journalists are gravitating towards the camcorders.

I don't use a Canon 5D Mk II just yet, as so far my body muscle memory still likes the phantom hold for the Camcorder. It's a matter of ergonomics: the way its held, its feel and the assets I get from the camera.

One of the my training partners at the Press Association who has one says it's more geared towards the doc because of difficulties in pulling focus.

That's an issue whose pros have been sold to outweigh the cons. You try filming on the fly with a 50mm lens at 1.2 - great shallow depths but difficult to control on the fly, unless you push your f-stop higher and shoot deep-focus, but even then.

Hollywood had an answer for these, the focus puller.

A couple of years back a Sony exec was adamant that the small cameras would never feature interchangeable lens. I'll post that vid as well when I locate it.

Well, my guess though is that there's a real fight erupting behind the scenes and it will only be a matter of time before the small DVcams make way for lens changes.

Otherwise video cameras may well lose the intiative in much the same way Hoover did to the Dyson.

And that will be exciting. At the moment I work with an adaptor on my JVC GY100 with a prime lens, which gives me OK enough quality, (though better than the vx1000) but no where near the same picture size as the pro cameras I used.

That said if you are a videojournalist, I'm pretty much camera agnostic. But if you can, I do recommend getting your hands on a pro camera and getting the feel and sense of what it does, which will let you appreciate more where you are with the small accessible gear.

The video pitch gets more intensive - video freelancing

"This is to confirm that I have known David Dunkley Gyimah for 10 years as a journalist of exceptional talent and innovation and I would have no hesitation in recommending him. .....He regular pitches ideas, several of which have developed into interesting and watchable news stories. David is not only a creative talent but is a team player who puts his shoulder to the wheel when required".
Guy Kerr, Managing Editor Channel 4 News, 2002
More of reference here

Seems I had something in television. I'll call it over exuberance.

However refluxing an earlier post last year on pitching, with everybody a video maker, the art of pitching will increasingly play a vital role in earning a living.

Pitching to who? Well, given the number of platforms aggregating video in an agency-brokerage format, it could be any number of outlets, not necessarily traditional broadcasters.

So here goes. I'm basing this post on my experience in broadcasting from when I first joined the BBC in 1997 , 1987 but more specifically at Channel 4 News and BBC WS where I regularly freelanced.

Firstly it has to be said pitching an idea can't be divorced from the you.

At a visit to the stock market in the late 80s, when considering a career in the city, we were asked to trade imaginary stocks. We almost all failed: "too cautious" was the Managing Directors advice. There's a reason we go for East End boys, he said to our bewilderment.

The Pitch is the message, how you tell it determines whether you'll get the sale or not.

Hollywood vernacular has refined this process: Taken: it's Bourne-like. This short hand instills the appropriate message.

For the doc/feature maker, pitching to commissioners, it can be a long arduous round of meetings and is often not separated from whether you're:

• part of the club
  
• have a history of programme making.
  

Otherwise in the pitching exercise we undertake it follows protocols and outcomes you're likely to encounter in commissioning circles.

A rough idea of pitching
1. If you've sent in a one pager about your idea. Stick to that idea, adding a little bit more detail, but DO NOT deviate from your initial idea.

2. If you've submitted an idea; refine it, refine it and refine again. ( practice your elevator pitch. If after 10 seconds your commissioner is lost, you're climbing a slippery mountain. Cut out the waffle

3. Your commissioner wants a story that is populist, but with its own unique subjects/angle, say updated for modern times. Think audience and where it will show in broadcast channel terms.

4. In all likelihood the idea you're pitching will have been done before in some way. PLEASE research the net. Don't think you're the first person doing something on drug addiction.

5. Get to the point: who your central character or characters are; why its interesting; where the conflict is (though don't use the word conflict) and how it might get resolved.

6. Convince the person why you can make it. If you've never done espionage in your life. DO NOT pitch about tracking criminal gangs. Firstly you don't have the contacts. Secondly for your safety we'd never allow.

7. Dress for it. Look the part.

8. Have all your papers prepped. One for you and how many others for commissioners. DO NOT say, "Oh I thought I sent you one already". Commissioners trade lots of papers, and may have lost yours. So coming in with a new batch gets them of the hook and shows you're prepared.

9. Leave time for questions and have some idea what they will be.

Pitcher: I'm looking at prostitution........
Commissioner: so where will you find these prostitutes

10. Know the ecosystem of the idea e.g. Prostitution - social.. The society against prostitution. ..and some of the obvious research. Have you looked up the national stats office on this?

And finally, testing on a critical friend: Pitch to a friend under near conditions and ask for harsh feedback.

--------

From an earlier post in 1999

There's a scene in Black Hawk Down where a nerdy Ewan Macgregor's character explains to a bewildered superior about how the taste of coffee is all in the grind. He's not wrong!

But it had me thinking at the art of story telling Videojournalism, or otherwise and that it's all in the pitch.

As the number of videojournalists explodes, they'll come a time when just as a features editor may commission a writer, it's likely they'll set out their stall for videojournalists to offer stories.

Channel 4's news film fund already does that, not discriminating against full crews or Videojournalists, in so far as the story is right.

And you don't get to the story, without the pitch.

Last week I had the task of listening and reviewing 24 of our Masters students. A post is not the forum to discuss how they fared, but they will know the emphasis we place on this.

Pitching is an art form, and differs across genres, but the basic principle is the same.

In roughly 10 seconds you're going to tell a story that's going to light your listener's fire. In 10 seconds you're going to paint a vivid picture of what could be. In 10 seconds you're going to create an illusion powerful enough for your listener to buy more time from you.

"Uhum tell me more"

Working at Channel 4 News as this recommendation from the Managing Director in 1999 illustrates gave me the chance to observe a facet of pitching and also often refine and make my own.

In fact such is the art of pitching, that I have considered it a chapter in a forthcoming book for a US publisher which is gradually taking shape.

There are two yardsticks that measure the value of a pitch. What is it? And why should I care?

In other words, if you're planning on going for an interview for a media job, chances are you've listened to your potential employer's output and found something to offer that suits their style.

Furthermore, it's got to be a story, which in all likelihood your listener has either not heard before, or you have a unique way of saying it.

Remember it's a pitch, not an exposition of your ability to hold and dispense of a great deal of facts.

And all great stories involve a person or persons you have or will get access to rather than a big themed issue.

And if you're really up to speed you'll spend endless hours sometimes rehearsing it. TV is all about creative ideas and those that know how to speak in that mimetic fashion of experienced pitchers have a career ahead of them.

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Speech to text

Summer has officially arrived in the UK. There are birds chattering away as if they'd just awoken.

A makeshift team of footballers bludgeon each other on the pitch that underlooks where I live.

And then as only the Brits would do the sun worshippers are out in force.

Me, I'm stuck in my office devising a book chapter, new research and questionnaires I need to send out, and thinking about any number of presentations I need to produce in the next couple of weeks.

But the real revelation this Saturday is my new toy. In fact it's nothing of the sort.

For the post you are reading is being written without me touching a type pad. After weeks of searching, I have finally come by the device that will make my workload easier.

It's called dictate a voice-to-text system in which as I roam around my room speaking on a wireless mike it translates what you're reading.

Saving Time

To say this has cut down on the enormous amount of time it would have taken me to write, sullen by the lack of motivation hopping from one thing to another is an understatement.

In fact I'm beginning to think why anyone should want to type copious notes documents or e-mails ever again.

Occasionally the programme gets a wrong it wrong. And I have to issue a command for it to delete the word.

But most of the time it's a mixture of surreal meets wonderment as I watch the words unfold on the screen. Text-to-speech program have come a long way.

The big difference is you have to learn how to speak in the written form, as well as in intelligible sentences, rather than streams of consciousness.

Relearning how to Speak.

In many ways I'm relying on the previous skill as an on-screen reporter when I only had a couple of minutes to devise a stand-up or piece to camera.

Apart from that I found what helps is to surround myself with things that prompt me to write in a particular way.

That said, I still have to go back on this, proof, re think like a writer, and insert paragraph breaks and collect correct the odd spelling.

But that's nothing compared to my aching fingers after a marathon write.

It's taken me as long to write this as I have spoken it and as I look outside its as if time has stood still; the footballers are still there, as are sun seekers and the birds are still giving it wellie.

A videojournalism era stirs at the Front LIne Club

To a videojournalist, the title of this post sounds absurd; videojournalism has gone past stirring, it is a full force in the armament of journalism, but I'd say it still is a neologism.

You can test this theory by walking out onto the street and asking the next three people what they think of videojournalists? Then ask the same question about television journalists.

One group needs little explanation.

So it was that yesterday, one of the UK's most foreword thinking journalism think tanks, The Front Line Club planted a huge step in the sand for videojournalism - an era is awaiting to stir.


The Front Line for my US friends, in many ways, reminds me of the time I was sitting in the National Press Club in Washington DC equally in awe of its surroundings.



David reporting from the Batten Awards,
National Press Club, Washington DC. Here for report


Many attributes may separate Front Line and the the deeply revered National Press Club: time in business, patronage of presidents or prime ministers that have graced the club, even prestige some might say, alarmed anyone dare compare anything to the US' august institution.


But to those that know the brand "Front Line " and it's not the comparisons per se I seek to draw attention to but the intent, this truly is something to deeply admire.

Praverna and Vaughan Smith (founder), backed by a pro media/events team, have built a club with a unstinting steadfastness to independent journalism.

Among its many strengths, one of them is its ability to walk the dichotomous thick grey line between traditional and contemporary journalism with aplomb.

Yesterday it demonstrated that drawing a crowd of 50 or so from a 100 people (almost the event's room limit) who'd expressed an interest to to engage in the new new thing videojournalism.

The Front Line Club's videojournalism era

There's a lot I could talk about from the night, not least the films that were shown and short talks. For that attendees should doff their hat to organiser Patrick Smith

Producer and director Daniel Bogado previewed a documentary on neighbourhood police and gangs in South Africa, made with David Matthews, commissioned by Current TV (UK).

It was an extraordinary clip of a drug dealer justifying why, having emerged from prison with no job provided for him by the government, he had very right to to sell drugs on the street.

For original cinematography, freelance film-maker Cameron Robertson, who regularly contributes to Guardian.co.uk showed how mounting a camera on a nightclub bouncer gives a strong unmediated point- of-view filming. More please.

Vaughan provided the opening, accompanied with a short talk about his time spent in Afghanistan, and how having slipped his minder, he came away with a number of films that bring you, the viewer, Cappaesque closer to the action.

With each round that whizzed by, I could hear myself swearing. Vaughan, no stranger to that course of journalism, few dare to tread, was now telling us in his own words and voice, what it was like on the front line.

This was unheard off. I know that well because as a freelance producer/videojournalist at Channel 4 News, my film I made from South Africa was reedited using Stephen Smith ( now at Newsnight) as the narrator



The message for us attending and you, a videojournalist, was in spite of our differences and own motives, the Front Line Club could and would serve as an agency to push the ideals of independent, freelance videojournalism.

It's an act we should welcome and enact upon with passionate embracing arms.

Videojournalism - a different film

David elected to a show a film from his site viewmagazine.tv that addresses evolving areas that mashup interdisciplines, yet still constitute videojournalism.

I showed a short film as well. Thank you to the many people who said they liked it and excuse my ruse for showing, joking about my fraudulent motives: the opportunity to research the work of other videojournalists as part of my PhD.

But the key moment for me, and I'll cherish it was when a gentleman in the audience after the showing said "he didn't understand it (the short)".

I further explained to him later, from an earlier qualification that the film's context played as part of an event at the Southbank made for a cinema screen. I'm not sure he was anymore convinced but I was thankful for the question.

Undoubtedly not everyone will agree with what you, we, do, but the challenge is to attempt to help people understand. Not always, as it's your prerogative, and some people are beyond negotiating. I'm not saying this was the point here.

But we are entering a bottleneck phase.

Think about it. 15 years ago, a few people said the web would one day change the way we do business. I know that much as this rare video from 1995 illustrates, which I intro.

10 years ago, a burgeoning web log said as much. The professional journalists harrumphed.

5 years ago, video and social networks made a bold claim.

Videojournalism is but one in this long list which awaits its day.

End
David Dunkley Gyimah has been a journalist since 1986 working for the BBC (Newsnight), Channel 4 News and ABC News ( South Africa) and is now an academic

Presidential Videojournalism- Don't throw the baby out with bathwater

Presidential Videojournalist. President Obama shows his shooting skills, but is he shooting stills or video? Picture WhiteHouse, Pete Souza See here for David's 100 Day Obama video played at the Southbank Centre to an original live score by composer Shirley Thompsom

You're a would-be videojournalist. You're researching a course and you're at a loss at

• What to look for?
• What outfit to choose?

You're now in possession of the most amazing piece of shooting kit - a stills camera that shoots film and you have a bit more time on your hands than the US president. So options?

• Do you go on a course to jump start your solo shooting career?
• Do you go it alone?

When you open the directory for videojournalism outfits, there's the university and as many short course videojournalism training outfits leaving you a trite bewildered. They offer different epistemologies as those who have done short courses and proceeded to Unis or vice versa will testify. Not least the length of study. Consider this, a thought I'd like to stake in this piece, a sort of iambic pentameter. "Da de dam du dum, dum. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water".

"online video part of 'the new journalism'? - original article 2005 on journalism.co.uk by Jemima Kiss. Here for the rest There are now two schools of journalism. In one, the journalist must be accredited and trained. In the new school, we have bloggers, mobloggers and latter-day gonzo. You can attract a large international audience through blogging or podcasting, so a generation of storytellers may well bypass traditional routes of education and the mainstream if they don't feel the industry is relevant to them any more. "

Television is your answer Professor Leonard Witt, talking about Trust in the media from his 2005 Conference in San Antonio. You can see the film I made on this on their site. Trust is an issue I'll come back to later. Many of us may chasten television, I did and ocassionally still do, for the manner in which it tells stories. But this semiotic exists for a reason. Its use dependent on its medium. There are horses for courses. It's not the art of television journalism that is at fault as you pursue your new love. There are the most brilliant TV practitioners that ply their trade or have left extraordinary legacies for us to be informed e.g. Murrow, Jennings ( I met as an ABC news producer in 1994 in South Africa and was just awe struck), Bradley, & Wheeler, It is its application by those no longer turned on by its creativity and the extraordinary association and connectivity with the audience that has reason to make you feel frustrated. How many times as a journalism students have you screamed at the television reporter proclaiming you could do better, because a pun was not necessary or the reporter dominates disproportionately the message of the report.. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Da de dum, da de dum Television journalism was and is a necessary lingua franca and just as Latin begot common parlance e.g. Catalan English, French, Italian, so will generations ahead proficient in a paradigmal shift in visual factual literary story telling, be thankful to this form. Which begs the question for you right now. You've decided to go on a short course. It's cheaper and provides a quick rush to build your confidence. What do you look for in the background of the trainers?

A still David reporting for ITV's "London Tonight", circa 1998, from David's book and PhD study in which using phenomenology he shows how his background working for the likes of Newsnight, Channel 4 News, dotcom new media companies, Designer, Commercial Promo maker has informed his notion of visual grammar.

Television, yes, to impart to you an understanding of the foundations, but then something else, hopefully, an illustrative vision on how to push the form. In learning about about composition today we still go back to the origin e.g. Caravagio et al. Yet to break the rules, you need to understand them and many of the rules, we call "rules" are in fact guidelines, there to be broken by the innovator e.g. 180 degree. Mind you my thinking comes with a footnote. In years to come again when we've turned over, we'll likely not teach television in videojournalism, just as you don't teach radio writing for TV journalism. Or or taking form for for, you would not teach creative storytelling in novel form for print journalism So back to Videojo how do you know your trainers will be able to place you in this new space?

• Simply ask them.
• look at their body of work. Bill Gentile has thirty years shooting in the field; he gets to teach me, yah! Rosenblum needs no introduction.

Be wary of abject recommendations. I spoke about this presenting at the World Newspaper Forum, last year. I once knew someone who approached scores of people for that cred letter. He eventually found one, and guess what pride of place it went. Front page. A caveat though, as in any profession, there are some people who are autodiadactists or combine conventional education with a penchant to keep rethinking. I can think of a few like this, but would not want to embarrass just yet. They possess that "kwa" to push you beyond the boundaries of your comfort, which is what you need. "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. dada de dum da de" Teaching is a selfless act to others and a mirror reflection of ones self. That's contestable you might think as you're paying for the time to be taught, but the philosophy of teaching is not simply saying, this is a good film and this is how to carry a camera, but a psychological process leading to critical thinking and analysis, that enable you to be able to make your own judgement. Why is a chair, this chair beautiful to look at and how can what I know about this chair be transferred to how I might build my website? The answers lay within us all. The frame work is what teaching, building on knowledge, imbibing different socio-cultural indexes and pedagogical explorations, is all about. Whatever videojournalism is, and I have my own convictions littered through out the history of this blog and articles I have been writing or contributing to since 1994, it transcends all that which came before it. It has to in many ways otherwise is fraudulent of packaging itself as the new new thing. Pic. David reporting from Africa on its first cross production between two African states using videojournalism: Ghana and South Africa ( 1997) David is in Slovenia, Cairo and Chonquin in the coming months lecturing in "training the trainers" for professional TV execs and University Professors

How anyone can make Video - Master class lecture

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

Can anyone make a film? A good film?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

But what does it mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on videojournalism here www.viewmagazine.tv

Viewmagazine.tv circa updated from 2005



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

Test

Behind the scenes with Riz Khan - Al Jazeera

Riz Khan was in town so I popped by to catch up with him; he's normally based in Washington, and see how his show is put together. I'll post that at a latter date.

But the interview with him was pretty funny, talking about some of the people who call him up to be on the show.

One thing that's not so known about Riz is he's a digerati - the consummate digi aficionado. He's show One on One with a number of celebrities, involves a three camera shoot using Sony ZXs.

And he's an avid photographer with a D7

I still recall a TDB ( till day break) we did in early 2000 when he'd made a film on the Haj and it needed to be on the BBC World Service the next day.

I'm a bit gutted. Riz is interviewing Annie Lennox tomorrow and asked if I'd like to come and sit in. Grrrr I have a previous engagement.

Anyhow's how The Riz Khan show is made and interviews shortly :)

Frame grabs from my JVC GY100 video camera