Videojournalism Eye -hommage to Dziga Vertov

To cineaist and documentary makers, Vertov is synonymous with Shakespeare for film.

His Kino-eye Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is an epochal piece of work,  a ten commandments with Vertov pre-empting Chartlon Heston many years in advance.

Except Vertov's grandisoseness exists behind the lens, than in front of it.

We know much of what Vertov has done for film and docs, but what about videojournalism or meta-video? I'm increasingly substituting meta-video for videojournalism, which is disappearing into tautology.

Why? Because everything in video delivering factivity can inherit videojournalism as a category. What started off as a nouvelle language for some has been subsumed into the fold of video-everything.

This isn't a criticism, but an observation that elides videojournalism a grand theory approach - a conversation for another time perhaps.

Vertov today
So back to Vertov. The film starts with the bold title, this is an experiment and the statement it will be free of the use of inter titles, which held cinema together in the soundless days, adopted by photography later as captions in photo essays.

The film is many things, but for me it's an Encyclopedia in the language of (meda-video) videojournalism revealing a number of processes.

• Filming technique
• Film language
• Position of the cameraman, Vertov's brother, whilst shooting. 
• Effects
• A compendium for modern films.

In Man with a Movie Camera, there are the obvious motifs, scene settings lifted by other films, such as

• 24
• The Matrix
• King Kong
• Mr Fox
• Gladiator 
• And any film with a train

Though free of narrative, it's possible to construct one, but really that's no bother. The films shows up somewhat embarrassingly for our videojouralism times what was achieved in 1929.

Claymation effects, Freeze-frame film as photos; symbolism in video making as a merry go round and wall of death rider interchange shots.

The inter cut between mechanisation, against the ordinariness of daily life (shaving and washing) a baby pushing out from his mothers; and a fair smattering of nudity - soft flesh -Vertov knew what sells.

Vertov knew what was going to sell: films of social purpose. In those days the expense of it all meant docs were reserved for big themed subjects. Housing Problems - Griersonian docs came 6 years later.

The cascading score (not the one playing but the notes he left for composers) set against a game of football is mesmerizing. We get the obligatory behind-the-lines shots, though much cleaner than today's in-the-heavens depiction, and then some tantalising images on the pitch.

Why can't videojournalism's be allowed to film on the field of play whilst Manchester United play Arsenal? Yes it's an absurd thought you might ask, but then why not fix the ref with a head cam, which gives the viewer access to the pitch.

Vertov videojournalism next
That's what Vertov's film is begging us to think.

Then there is the pure poetry of the athletes, high jumping; hurdling, hammer throwing. Women in full grace, men exuding brute strength.

The shots have been slowed down in superslowmo. 1000 frames a second, who knows, but its genius to watch.

Vertov or Kaufman tags his shots ala 24; he hollywoodises his language: shot/reverse/shot.

He hangs off a moving train, and captures the belly of a fast-moving one. You see the mound Kaufman builds to provide the shot. All the while having to handcrank the camera, which in those days lacked electronic motors and was barely entertaining spring-based wound up mechanisms.

Its superb because if you follow the timeline of what he achieved back then working under strenuous conditions (Directors thought him pretentious etc) it deserves to be shown to all vjs, with the caveat - now what would you do?

A favourite repetitive scene for me is watching Kaufman lug his camera and sticks around. The weight of that camera and tripod, hardly mobile, must have been something.

This zoo- approach to film making, which often unveils the artifacts of film making, with the cameraman, soundman in shot, is much used today. Back then he would have been further criticised for dispelling the illusion of film making, much as  News makers continue that three-card trick today.

BTW I was watching an entertaining film on billionaire Donald Trump on BBC two days ago, where the director went Vertov - showing a full three-person crew in shot with Trump. One camera at play with no director would have caused its own visual fuss.

Man with a Movie Camera continues its relevance, but for a new generation.

Perhaps it's not so much aping the compendium of his shot list, but providing a new lingua-aesthetic. One in which the psychology of shot juxtaposition, rather than sequence - which often gets lost in translation - is given priority -  if not in affective experimental film but also visual narrative driven videojournalism (meta-video) essays.

Find out what the reverential Mark Cousins, writing partner with Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void Director) Author of  Imagining Reality says about digital film and David's work on www.viewmagazine.tv, which starts with a trailer with intelligence chiefs talking about closed and open secrets.

Social Network and the law - Everyone's a journalist now!

Did you know you contravene broadcast laws if you film a subject and don't get their consent?
 

Post script:
 After writing this piece I was drawn to an article from the Guardian some days later, which is appropriate to this piece and chilling. I have posted the link at the bottom of this post.

Social Media - Alterity Meme of Breaking News

How to become an instinctive thinker covering breaking news when you're mobile

A couple of days ago working with International Masters students we simulated a breaking news event and drew up a methodology how Social Media with Traditional Media, coupled with user-behaviour enabled us to understand the dynamics of the story. You might want to have a look at that BREAKING NEWS after this present post.

Trainee Journalist's integrity - Royal Marriage

Prince William and Kate Middleton are to marry.

The news media has gone into a tail spin. Nothing like a royal event - that\s blockbuster news -ratings.

Spare a trought however for one of our Masters joournalism students who says she knew about this news two weeks ago.

Yesterday her conscious niggled her, so she asked the question.

Should she tweet and blog, without revealing her source? But what if her source comes across the copy? What damage would it wreak on their friendship?

She saw it fitting Not to  tweet or blog the story, not wanting to ruin the relationship with her contact. Journalists integrity trumps story.

Question is what would you have done?

The Alterity of Breaking News

How to become an instinctive thinker covering breaking news when you're mobile

In the term "breaking news"it would not be anomalous to imagine a giant surf set breaking - rolling out a life of its own.

The UK Press Gazette recently reported a group of surfers uncovering a 50ft wave in England, yet refusing to give its exact location. This contested spirit is much the same for the news surfers seeking to break news.

Yet, somehow in our meta data-mined digiworld, breaking news is becoming an irrelevance - at least in the way TV once had the monopoly and practiced its wares.

Not any more - anyone now can break news.

CNN, London, I'm told by a lecturer-colleague no longer invests in the act of "breaking news" being its raison detre.

Breaking News Broken
Baudrillard, the late contemporary philosopher might have proclaimed the media's incestuous naval gazing has now seen some sense.

He might add what TV inevitably saw as a form of electronic corporeal voyeurism, the need to get to the scene and flaunt oneself first whilst attempting to ride the wave exclusively is diminishing. Merci Dieu.

Today as part of a Masters lecture over a couple of hours trainee journalists sought to deconstruct this modernistic news parlance.

In 1963 the term would evince a chilling turn,  but in the hands of the television supremo Cronkite the most gut-wrenching of news is delivered in a matter-of-fact, unflappered manner.

Contrast this with the many excitable presentations of today, some crassly riddled with bon mots.




Breaking News in the Lecture Room
The lecture room does not do its justice.

Breaking News is truly realised under the intense gaze of the controlled frenzy of the newsroom, where old friendships can be lost in seconds, and where everyone is calling for order in disorder.

Here then is what we devised. A collaborative meme, which I have since added to and hopefully our MAs can modify as well. That I published it gives us all a moment to evaluate its purpose: the lecture gave it much more context.

But when the news doth break, what is one to do? When you're working for an outfit with limited resources how do rise above your station? Also when you break and its an exclusive, how do you manage, control, stay with the story?

Today app-determinism e.g twitter answers some of those questions. But it needs to be buttressed with the old and new . Those old fashion acts include the relentless act of "phone-bashing."

Remember time is the premium commodity. Every second gone, reduces your real-time prowess in driving the story. Like a trader, one minute the stocks up; the next it's down and now you failed to bring it in.

So instinct is crucial. Instinct however is practice learnt.

That means arriving at the point where when the big story happens you get all the elements in a Madhatter row and publish with all the prudence it deserves.

The hacks hacka

ABC Associate Producer David Dunkley Gyimah in the midst of a breaking news story in Johannesburg

David reporting live on the BBC World Service wrapping up Breaking News of the above bomb blast

To the hack in anyone, the breaking news story is or was the supreme Adrenalin rush. My first at a live station, BBC Radio Leicester was in 1991 - the assassination of Rajiv Ghandi.

When the news broke, I was shifting on the Asian network about to go home for the day, with only four other members of staff around to subsequently run a rolling news programme.

I'd had four previous years of radio to give me the confidence of what to do.

Today, within Breaking News the pubic demand more: participatory, explanatory, localisation - features explained in news' generic terms in Stuart Allan's News Culture,  but apply to the breaking format.

Being on air recounting information you reeled of seconds ago only wears the news down - a symptom of 24 hours news. We watch perhaps because of our insatiable appetite and curiosity, goaded by the announcer.."More news soon, meanwhile let's go to our correspondent". 

This, and how we now address breaking news in the digi-age  is food for this generation, compounded by a myriad of ethical and professional concerns.

Breaking News? More like Constructive for the post-TV age.

How to become an instinctive thinker covering breaking news

1. top zone is white heat hot - an abstraction from Mcluhan. The news is breaking fast
2. The lower zone - the temperature is more tempered. The news gets cycled into the lower zone for the creation of the news feature, whilst attention is still given to the top zone

• The blue zones are web-enabled activities towards coverage of breaking news
• The grey circles are customary traditional news practices
• The reds are routes that may often not yield swift responses
• The black will be hard pressed for an immediate response

The one we did not discuss in detail that we'll look at next week will be your reputation. In the event that a news story breaks and you're competing with others, how do you ensure a response from a potential participatory body may depend on the presentation of your reputation.

David Dunkley Gyimah, a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster, and PhD Candidate at SMARTlab University College Dublin is a member of Microbes Mind - a gathering set up by Nasa researcher Zann Gill, which provides provocative questions and answers to scenarios.

Post Script.
Spare a through for a Masters student who knew about the Royal Wedding announcement before its official announcement, but did not break the story for all sorts of ethical reasons, not least though if you break the story, how do you go about managing it.

Attempting Videojournalism's Learning Process

Screen writer Sir Ronald Harwood's lecture on the British Academy of Film and Television Arts - a must watch

I'm always eternally grateful for the gifts given by many; words, filmic ideas,  which capture how I might have wanted to make a point, but said much better.

I have been watching  Sir Ronald Harwood's captivating lecture on the British Academy of Film and Television Arts site as he reflects on his own craft. It produced many "aha" moments for me.

I ask you to take a look for I'm sure it will have currency for you as well.

I was struck by several things, but these few have left an indelible impression and catalysed me to start scribbling reflexive thoughts in videojournalism - the art of oneness (my pet subject)

Creative Videojournalism Thought (1)

Firstly,  made plaintively clear by Sir Ronald that the only way to become a writer is to write.

This is a seemingly torturous mantra to Masters students who I recite to endlessly. WRITE!

Sir Ronald says writing is the equivalent of muscle training for the athlete. The more your write, the more you train yourself.

This act is one that covers many disciplines, such as videojournalism.  Cue the only way to become a videojournalist is to shoot. Viewmagazine.tv is my exhibit B for this.

No matter what's done in the classroom, its only in the field where those creative impulses can manifest into a tangible or intangible product to be critiqued.

Creative Videojournalism Thought (2)
Secondly,  a statement which Sir Ronald qualifies in his lecture as it could be misunderstood - that is he's not sure screen writing can be taught, but it can be learnt.

There is an element of the philosopher Descartes in this: "I think therefore I am". A statement that hides a deeper truth.

You cannot be taught, but you can learn, but then from whom or what. If you learn from a teacher he or she teaches (you're being taught) - contradicting Sir Ronald's statement.

I am a lecturer and I understand the mechanics and limitations of my teaching. There are rules to guide, which can and should be broken.

Sir Ronald, for instance, takes issue with those creatives talking about the three act movie.

He tells us the 3-Act long perished becoming the 2-Act post 60s or otherwise the classical 5-Act driven by Shakespeare is an alternative option. The formula is but a guide.

In effect Sir Ronald I believe is saying the act of being taught is not a traditional classroom-based event. It involves a performance, an apprenticeship, a journey to make the learning process work, or even more memorable.

From his (screen writing) example of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby’s true story The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (2007) directed by Julian Schnabel,  Sir Ronald illustrates how he was influenced by a film made thirty years ago. 

The film Lady in the Lake directed by Robert Montgomery works off the central character's POV perspective.


 

Videojournalism Thought (3)
This segues nicely into the final truism I take from Sir Rowland's lecture, and I'll paraphrase it in my own way.

"I know nothing about videojournalism. I did not witness its inception".

But what I do know, (this phraseology lifted from Sir Ronald's lecture)  is how I see my videojournalism. How I define "my" videojournalism that has come through experience and learning, through pedagogy and the refinement over time through open discussions and trial and error.

Like the writer we all have a uniqueness for the way we permutate letters, syntax and grammar. T'is the same with video as a language. ( I have come by philosophers who discount the idea that film is a language).

Like any creative journey there's years of getting it wrong, and then occasionally right and then more rights than wrong hopefully. The creative learning process then is the permission to experiment.

And even when you get it wrong ( as some of my students might note ( see below), I will often shriek with delight, because that is a profound learning curve. You're inclined not to repeat it.

Though I admit I would rather after a few wrongs you begin to get it right.

And here in my videojournalism world I have in recent years come to believe another process: that videojournalism whilst a solo affair should not necessarily be enacted as a solo affair.

That incongruously whilst seeking an autership, video as a creative medium works as a collaboration - whether with your subject, or more so with another creative.

The Common Wealth of Video


Memories from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
David's Radio 4 and Channel 4 feature from South Africa in the 90s

The common wealth of video is one of the our contemporary break throughs in language-evolution.

Previous ventures involved writing e.g.  pamphlets, then essays, books and literary scores, before at some point arriving at the stage of the screen writer.

The Screen writer is a curious being: a cinematographer without a camera. He or she prods at a page as if it would animate.

The director is, more often than not, an actor without a physical presence with the mis-en-scene thrown in for good measure. Then there's the talent, actors et al. Sir Ronald explains the collaborative nature of film making.

Videojournalism is just as curious (and that won't be the first time I'm saying this). We start from a different position of being self-expressive and then like the creative writer, at some point seek company. Doesn't always have to happen, as with artists, but it most certainly bolsters the creative process.

Which is why I'm so keen on an association to bring videojournalists together to match make at the Southbank Centre, to encourage a professional sharing and learning process that gives room for journalism and art to rework themselves.

And to think this reflection emerged from a tweet from Bafta :) A ripple in a pond. Now I'm off to watch the rest of the lectures.

David, a senior lecturer and artist in residence at the Southbank Centre is a juror at the RTS for the third year running on the panel for innovative journalism 

Kelvin McKenzie speaks to Stewart Purvis

Please note there's a bit of swearing in this video.

In a City University conference on Local TV generously packed with experts, Kelvin McKenzie did not disappoint.

Mckenzie as the interviewer Stewart Purvis notes is well placed to provide punditry on a subject the conservatives have got the bit between their teeth.

The former Sun editor ran the Mirror's cable station Live TV  in the 90s famous for the new bunny.

Yes, that's right a fluffy human-sized bunny that reported the news, and if that sounded like an eye raiser, there was also topless darts.

This interview, a mix if humor and Mckenzie's acerbic wit, sheds light on his opinion why Local TV won't work.

The Times Newspaper sets out the future in its paywall

On BBC Radio 4 this morning, the Today programme, an interview with the Times newspaper's James Harding  defending its paywall strategy.

So it might, for a google of Times Newspaper and paywall reveals a spate of negative press and comments. It won't work, it's pointless, the cost damages the Times' growth are the vein of the criticisms.

But this interview, which is worth  listening with Editor  revealed some interesting figures.

It also aired a logic that argues the conversation has yet to break out of collateral damage blame.  It's to early to call this action said Harding, which I agree.

A look at trends and decision which go against the status quo tend to reveal widespread antiviews.

Here, Harding says he is encouraged by its figure of 100,000 readers, which Steve Hewlitt, a media expert agreed had merit. Depends how you look at added Hewlitt

The Net's echo chamber ensured that while their copy was behind a paywall, they were still being talked about.   The 100,000 figure appears to pan out at 20m UKP in advertising, compared with the Guardian's 40m UKP for its open access.

However, just as the FT has claimed, and reiterated by the Times, the IPad and Kindle is revolutionising the printed word.

We created a grave error admitted Harding when we gave our copy away for free. Will others follow behind the paywall asked the BBC presenter, Evan Davies.

Hewlitt was unsure, but the IPad/ Kindle offered an intriging future. I wrote earlier in a post. This is a waiting game of deeper pockets versus the possibility of a turn around in the logic journalism is free.

That does not undo my firm acknowledgement of the Net's free and open access approach, but that a new type of journalism in apps and need-to-know info may redeem the printed word's perceptive premium: some things cost.

Cine-videojournalism, small screens and futurescoping

At the RTS reception. In shot Peter Barron formelt BBC Newsnight Editor, now a senior executive at Google UK

This evening a key figure from the RTS jury panel emailed me to say he'd put me down to be a juror.

The RTS is the UK equivalent of the EMMYs - the gong much sought after by television news makers.

After being involved for a couple of years I'm much looking forward this time around as with the British election behind us, there's an expectancy towards this year's entries.

Two years ago, the victor was a bold concept traversing the line between fiction-fact and news making.

The BBC's 10 Day to War a dramaturgical series about the Gulf War attracted universal praise, as well from our secret ballot.

Some of the shows were directed by uber talent Bruce Goodison whom I worked with at BBC Reportage in 1992.

The programme followed in the footsteps of an earlier innovative BBC concept programme called "If".

What separated the two was one a dramatization of what had already happened.

The other was yet to with the theme of probability. What if, say, something catastrophic happened in the UK how would the country cope?

Cinematic DNA
Giant programmes shot for the small screen with cinematic DNA, which transposed into the web did not trully invite justice. I watched it via a DVD. Size matters.

What knits the aforementioned together was a much respected BBC figure who was Editor of BBC Newsnight.

Peter Barron is now Google’s Director of Communications and Public Affairs for North and Central Europe.

A fortnight ago I had a chance to visit and speak to Peter who I have known since I was a researcher on Newsnight in 1990, and he shed some light on 10 Days to War.

Alongside a compelling presentation on how google sees the future, he reflected on 10 Days casting a degree of caution for mixing fact and fiction for news type programmes.

Interestingly, 10 Days stoked an earlier venture I'd been involved in with Nato.

Here a cooperative of videojournalists illustrated how future TV makers could negate the expense of dramatic film, by actually being on the scene.

In 2008 Danfung Dennis, a photojournalist turned film maker showed this in its cinematic terms with Battle for Hearts and Minds.

David, as editor of a global videojournalism team embeded in War Games reportage with Nato

Today, fictionalised news, redolent of Newsreels contemporised is seeking a revival buttressed against real life.

Small Screens and a future
And here's where it gets even more interesting.

I have been meeting with a BBC execs where we're looking to convene a collective of Videojournalists/ film makers.

The  prospect exist of having their films shot and made for the big screen down at the Southbank.

I have wanted this for a while, videojournalism made for panoramic screens, before being downsized to the Net.

The relationship is different, the vista altered, the camera technology often the digital preserve of the Red Camera

And coming full circle one of the ideas that is being explored as a cinematic videojournalism project is with NASA practitioner and a PhD colleague of mine, Zann Gill



I'm at City University conference as a participant on hyperlocal and local television this Friday.  If you're there be good to chat.

City University London on Local Television

City University London conference on Local Television
Friday November 5 2010 (0930-1530) at The Performance Space, College Building, City University London, St John’s Street, EC1V 4PB.

0900-0930 Registration and coffee

0930-0935

Introduction and Welcome by Professor George Brock, Head of the Journalism Department at City University and former Managing Editor of the Times.

Session One (0935 -1000)

Local media, communities and citizenship –the big picture.

A panel of Jon Zeff (Director of Media, DCMS), Prof Roy Greenslade (City University and media commentator), Peter Williams (United for Local TV) and Prof Natalie Fenton (lead author of ‘Meeting the news needs of local communities’) discuss how the state of the UK’s local media fits into the wider debates about local democracy and the future of public service broadcasting.

Moderator George Brock

Session Two (1000-1030)

Is Local Television a threat, an opportunity or an  irrelevance to other local media?

John Fry (CEO of Johnston Press) and David Roddick (Commercial Director, Northcliffe Media) and Matt Payton (Radiocentre) talk with Roy Greenslade.

Session Three (1030-1100)

Local Television-the story so far

A conversation with conference attendees who’ve worked in local TV, past and present.

These include Philip Graf (formerly Chief Executive of Trinity plc, operators of Channel One Liverpool, then CEO of Trinity Mirror, now Deputy Chair of Ofcom) David Dunkley Gyimah (ex-Channel One London) Mark Dodson (ex-Channel M Manchester), Helen Philpot (Channel 7 Lincolnshire), David Lowen (ex-Local Broadcasting Group), and Daniel Cass (SixTV).

Moderator Stewart Purvis (City University, formerly CEO of ITN and Ofcom Partner for Content and Standards)

COFFEE BREAK 1100-1115

Session Four  -1115-1135

The Shott Team’s Interim Report

One of Nicholas Shott’s Steering Group, Claire Enders of Enders Analysis, is interviewed by Steve Hewlett (writer and broadcaster)

Session Five 1135-1200

The Shott Team’s Issues –part one

Steve Hewlett questions expert witnesses on the commercial possibilities for local TV :

1.     Where and how might local TV work? Mark Oliver (Oliver and Ohlbaum) 

2.     Where and how might commercial revenue be raised? Sue Unerman (Mediacom)

Session Six 1200-1220

Kelvin

Kelvin McKenzie gives Stewart Purvis his views on Local Television based on his experience in local newspapers, local radio and local TV.

Session Seven 1220-1245

The Shott team’s issues-part two

Steve Hewlett questions the broadcasters about whether they can help Local Television.

1.Who will ‘host’ local TV?  David Holdsworth, Head of BBC English regions and Magnus Brooke, Director of Policy, ITVplc.

2.Does the EPG have a role to play? David Wheeldon, Director of Policy, BSkyB

Session Eight 1245-1315

A tale of two Birminghams-a case study

Why the comparison between the UK and USA is not quite what it seems including the story of Birmingham UK’s first local TV channel.

Stewart Purvis talks to Marc Reeves (ex-Editor Birmingham Post and now the businessdesk.com), Phil Ryley (Orion Media, owners of BRMB radio) and Nick Booth (owner of podnosh, a Birmingham-based consultancy on ‘social media for social good)’,

LUNCH 1315-1345

Session Nine 1345-1415

Thinking outside the conventional box: are their new, different and better ways of making and funding programmes? 

Alex Connock   Ten Alps

Jaqui Devereux   Community Media Association

John Furlong   Channel M Digital multiplex

Roger Parry    Author of 2009 report on local media for the Conservative Party.

Moderator Lis Howell (City University Director of Broadcasting , formerly Border TV Head of News , Sky News Managing Editor and Programme Controller GMTV)

Session Ten 1415-1445

Local TV via DTT versus Local IPTV via Broadband –the debate

George Brock chairs and Lord Wills (formerly Labour MP for Swindon North and a former Director of Juniper Productions) leads off a debate about the best way forward for local content and civic activism.

Session Eleven 1445-1515

Where does the Local Television debate leave news and current affairs in the Nations and Regions ?

Rob Woodward –CEO of STV

Richard Hooper – Chairman of DCMS IFNC panel

Dave Rushton –Institute of Local TV

Glyn Mathias- Welsh member of the DCMS IFNC panel

Mary McAnally- President of the National Consumer Federation and formerly MD of Meridian Broadcasting.

Moderator Stewart Purvis

Session Twelve 1515-1530

The last word

Claire Enders talks with Lis Howell

CONFERENCE ENDS 1530

P.S If you're going, hope to see you there and chat. I'll be sharing my experience in the 10.30 - 11.00 session

Sometimes a Bio adds context

Added context for reader.

Interested in Cinema journalism. Then please read Deleuze. All will become clear

shooting for Channel 4 News in 1999 on the digi beta 900 using interchangeable lens

I have been making films for 20 years (started in radio) of a 23 year media career starting with the BBC with BBC Newsnight, BBC Reportage, ABC South Africa, WTN  and Channel 4 News, and Jon Station Agency ( fmr head of TV at Saatchi and Saatchi etc.

In the last 10 years I have been a senior lecturer in videojournalism at the University of Westminster - the past two years of which include a PhD study into the Outernet.  

In 1994 after becoming a dedicated videojournalist working at Channel One I shot on a range of cameras from beta, 16mm, and digi beta. This one above is from a shoot in South Africa for Channel 4 News - which you can find here.

The post ( this add on appears as an addition uner my most recent post) is not an epiphany, and depending on your entry into this blog, you will have read going back to 1995 aspects of cine and interactive videojournalism. 

Or in magazines such as Africa Communique in 1997 looking at work done in innovative video.

However, this post was a realisation of the intention of 17/ 23 + inch mac screens transmogrificating into the precept of the Outernet ( see front page images of viewmagazine.tv  ).

I have been writing about film, innovative video, videojournalism and cinema since the mid 90s. Here's a piece from Blue Print in 1991  highly respected architecture and innovation magazine .

The film fortunately was appreciated by the audience who saw the group before seeing the short film. But as a film maker seeing it on a cinescope screen ie an Outernet system, I would have changed one main parameter to correct the film's metronome. In less than 10 years time this will be a moot point.

David working for ABC News, South Africa - a day before their first all race election, a bomb goes off in Downtown Joburg. You can hear his report on the BBC World Service here.

Foreign Reportage. I was in South Africa in 1992 with a hi-8. I had no formal videojournalism training, but had worked for newsnight and reportage so had a very good idea of production and direction

cine-videojournalism - a lesson I learned

In the summer gone a short film I had made was screened on a cinema screen at the Southbank.

The film all of 5 minutes was over just as it had begun. The effect of which caused me some disappointment. Everything I had planned about the film, turned out to be anything but.

The film was a let down. Had I known the affect it would have provided on the big screen, I would have produced it differently.

We hear so much about the cine adjunct to videojournalism surfacing courtesy of, in particular, the DLSR cameras that a growing debate about cine-journalism is an industry in itself.

My take and by no means as blunt as it seems, but that the lens culture of shallow depth spurned by any piece of equipment, does not in itself constitute cinema.

Moreover, if it were the case then how would we define deep focus as exercised in that cinematic feat of Citizen Kane. We could argue a cultural specificity as a get out clause.

Certainly there is no denying the allure to a visual stimuli whose aesthetic affect has been often associated with cinema praxis, but to assume equipment is the key primer ignores a huge epistemology of knowledge that makes cinema work, as well as the giants before us.

We could point to fundamental differences between the two forms cine and video, which in attempt to correct the former's elitism would bring forth videography to counter cinematography.

We could talk about movement to reinforce a narrative. There's no such thing as a cut away in cinema.

I could in fact have a 2 hour discussion about the many facets which markedly define the signified of cinema to that of other media.

In many ways the medium doth shape the message, but the journey towards a videojournalism within a cinematographic ecosystem pulls towards the philosophy of the moving image. Yet plays heavily also to a reassessed ideation of the still image in say photo essays.




Delueze's What is cinema is much food for thought. In practice, in commerce we want immediate answers, simplified discourses, clear lines of demarcation, but alas I believe it's far more diffused.

I may have spoken effusively about cine-videojournalism in recent posts and I believe we are inching away from video ( form and style within TV news) to the more dominant escalator in film.

But the technology and practice will not in itself provide clear answers; they lie in devising new languages ( literally too), not borrowed, but worked a new. In the field of experiments where mistakes that are made inform our own and others phenomenological outlook.

For me - a huge lesson - they lie in thinking, however beautiful the image produced for the mac, has a different haacceity  which when impinged on our conscious yields something or not that comes to define cine-videojournalism.

Added context for reader.

shooting for Channel 4 News in 1999 on the digi beta 900 using interchangeable lens

I have been making films for 20 years of a 23 year media career starting with the BBC with BBC Newsnight, BBC Reportage, ABC South Africa, WTN  and Channel 4 News, and Jon Station Agency ( fmr head of TV at Saatchi and Saatchi etc.

In the last 10 years I have been a senior lecturer in videojournalism at the University of Westminster - the past two years of which include a PhD study into the Outernet.  

In 1994 after becoming a dedicated videojournalist working at Channel One I shot on a range of cameras from beta, 16mm, and digi beta. This one above is from a shoot in South Africa for Channel 4 News - which you can find here.

The blog above is not an epiphany, and depending on your entry into this blog, you will have read going back to 1995 aspects of cine and interactive videojournalism.

 However, this post was a realisation of the intention of 17/ 23 + inch mac screens transmogrificating into the precept of the Outernet ( see front page images of viewmagazine.tv  ).

I have been writing about film, innovative video, videojournalism and cinema since the mid 90s. Here's a piece from Blue Print in 1991  highly respected architecture and innovation magazine .

The film fortunately was appreciated by the audience who saw the group before seeing the short film. But as a film maker seeing it on a cinescope screen ie an Ourernet system, I would have changed one main parameter to correct the film's metronome. In less than 10 years time this will be a moot point.

P.S If you strongly want to understand the epistemology of cinema in the context of cinema, and journalism then you would do well to read Gilles Deleuzes What is Cinema 1 and Cinema 2. There are few people alive today who make the case for cinema and  its imbrication with other forms. A MUST READ.

Future interdisciplinary journalism

SMARTlab interdisciplinary Phd programme Feb 2010

The phrase is tautological, because journalism by dint is interdisciplinary. It involves text, images et al and any scholarly book in your library will evince its transversality.

The interview was a legal lift into the realms of television interviewing. Television news making looked to cinema and documentary maker - themselves polymorphic forms.

This is an uncontested point. However many agree there is something else going on.

Future interdisciplinary journalism is a reflexive thought - from a week away on my Phd programme, SMARTlab, which is a communion of interdisciplinary individuals embarking on a learning journey.

It explores ideas within post structuralist and postmodern ideologies (matters after the 1960s); the notion that there are periods within our culture when systems break down, albeit imperceptibly, and new ideas take their place.

Each time this happens, history shows the uproar, the spike in opprobrium, anger and often vitriol- somethings never change

But that however, the cornerstone of those systems must in themselves be comprehended and its upon those pillars et al that we contextualise new forms.

Those arguments take many shapes and within the field of media and journalism: there are inter and intra discourses between the citizen, the practitioner (journalist), and the academic.

Should the news media be involved in promoting society to act? This thought would have had you ridiculed out of the room ten years ago, but now?

SMARTlab programme
We meet three times a year for a week: a Nasa virtual reality pioneer, dance educationalists, 3d space engineers, educationalists in the field of disability, scholars examining autistic spectrum, interactive television specialist, sonic crafters....

Within that space, we pitch to each other and critique each others work. Sometimes many of us fail to understand the density of a colleague's research, but occasionally a light goes off.

Kathy, a dance educationalist from Ireland, whose credits include dance programmes for the UN and Hollywood films introduced me to Laban and areas of kineathesia, which unknowingly I use in my work, as I suspect many other photojournalists do.

Dance posture and engineering illustrate how to minimise a growing area of concern for videojournalists; many are seeing chiropractors because of back problems.

You're not alone. Same thing happened to us at Channel One. Pity us then carrying weight loads the equivalent of a five year old.

The model itself is one, though I have spoken about   in articles going back to the 90s, have never really experienced it in this form.

In the 90s whilst learning flash and director (remember lingo), I was always amazed there were no journalists in sight.  If you used Flash 3, we have something in common.

So the reason why the reflexion.

• Where we are in journalism
• How I'm joining a Knowledge Transfer Programme from my uni with Ghana
• And that our SMARTlab programme is now transferring to University College Dublin.

It's all new and gives a refocused meaning to this word, "journalism" - which is undergoing an epistemological shift.

All interesting stuff.

The future of something and some

Just past midway in Phd week and I'm back to sleepless nights.  

Ideas about ideas. Even as I sleep, I can hear how noisy my thoughts are. If I say I'm having an "inception" moment, you'll understand.

There are now micro level knowledge knots I'm untangling, or at least trying to.

What is it that seperates one person from being visually creative from another?  Does psychoanalayses or arnheims school of Gestalt have the answers.

The relenting probing into questions like this have set of  a country of academics over the years to investigate in one guise or another.

Often at surface level it makes little sense. Jumbled, jargon-riddled words on a page: Verisimilitude, Libidinal space,  hyper reality and Haecceity.

Academic fisty cuffs- one of the last bastions of knowledge where entry, if that's what you want into this knowledge pod requires you to demonstrate critical thinking.

What does it mean to think of a neoaesthetic or an anti-aesthetic or that there is a pre-discurvity towards emotion?

Often  we watch a movie, a film and make utterances of how much we liked it. We may even breakdown the film into its components; that scene and this one, and so on.

And on the back of that, we then attempt to describe why, because the bottom line is simple and evident for us all. We all want to find a way that helps us formulise how we do something and do it well.

It's what or partly why we're all still learning; going to varisity, or in that job.

Making films in your sleep
The Net and film making is a deeply interesting field, especially since we're all film makers, but what wouldn't you do to be able to make a film like Ridly Scott?

There are big spaces we all occupy, and then there are the in-between spaces; tiny cracks, often not evident that a comparative few work in, understanding implicit choices in creating a creative film.

Can you learn this? Yes, but there comes a point when to differentiate yourself from the broad masses, we go into this ecosystem of deeper level thinking. You don't need to know what those words e.g. Verisimilitude mean, but you're now occupying that space.

You know it, cuz a friend looking at your stuff has just called it "deep", "crazy", or wow.

But to get there, you often engage in your own fight club. There aren't many creatives I know who don't fight those demons.

To get to that space, be prepared to go mad. To get to that space, be prepared to entertain those alien words. To get to that space know that sleepless nights are part of the transaction.

And then, when you get to that space, be aware that it's not there. It's beyond that, because no matter how hard you might try, its fleeting and then moves on.

And then, like an idea, like sleep, you're awake again in the real world.

It's 6.31 time to get up - I can hear the alarm going

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

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

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

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

So why is it floundering?

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

Go Big and Prosper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Aesthetics of Scale

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

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

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

So what are the ingredients for scale?

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

How good do you think you are and how do you know?

Here's a thought? How good do you think you are at what you do?

It's one of those squirmish questions human resource often inflict on unsuspecting candidates, who must then straddle a line between deprecation and the avoidance of arrogance.

That is, if you are good.

But spare a thought for those whom you might say are not very good at what they do.

John Cleese sums it up as follows - the same cognitive skills that allow you to know you're good at something, can also illustrate how poor you are at recognising how bad you are.

It's long winded, but put simply. If you're bad at something, often you lack the skills to understand how bad you really are. You see it all the time at open competitions, say the X-factor.

Cleese got me thinking more deeply though, because often the act of knowing something boils down to the science of knowledge and how to learn.  This is captured exquisitely in Don Schon's the Reflective Practitioner.

The philosophy of knowing
In Don's book he takes us on a journey of how we learn and how we might qualify that learning process.

Do something, fail, and do it again, reflecting on where you went wrong.  As such, even acts considered futile by others may have merit.

I demonstrated this when I showed a group of students an object and asked what it was. It was an apple, but how could they prove that.

They needed by negation or what Don refers to as hypothetical testing disprove it was anything other than the object in question. They needed to traverse a reflective journey articulating and discarding thoughts.

I often in my first video classes give a camera to clients asking them to go out and shoot. Many students return often embarrassed or disgruntled that they were not given instructions.

I point out there is no formality in what to do. Were I to abandon them at that point, then their fears would be justified, but I then begin to explore their natural ability, untainted learning, around the exercise.

Some will demonstrate natural talent; others will in despair do very little crippled by the fear of not knowing and not wanting to explore.

Which experimenter are you?
Schon devises his experimenters into the following

• Exploratory experimenters
• move testing experimenters
• Hypothetical testers
• and my own interpretation non-testers occupy these realms.

Explorers are what I call jumpers;. They'll take the leap into the unknown with often little guidance, backed by their own fierce temperament.  Move-testers need to see the next link in the chain. If it's not obvious they'll not move.

You meet them in Chess all the time, when you literally have to pull their finger.

Hypotheticals scratch an itch. They've thought about any number of tangible outcomes and will eliminate by active thinking what to do. Non-testers lack the spirit to move in an alien environment.

Child Psychologist Dr Desmond Morris' extensive work with children - the subject of a BBC programme gave some clues. Some toddlers in an experiment were quite at ease playing with foreign objects; others would stand by non-committed.

Perhaps it is preprogrammed, explaining why those who aren't as good at what they do often have no idea about this. But it does help if you're in a safe environment where you can explore your concerns.

This is something that I try and foster in my work. Creativity craves safe environments to work without fear before you let the genie loose.

Providing a safe place and getting people to work together, whilst encouraging the first three aforementioned often helps bring along the non-committed. It's a complex process of behaviour, but often it works. Age, background, self esteem all play a part.


Daring exploits
In 1992 with little more than a piece of paper and a scribbled name I travelled to South Africa for the first time. I was met at the airport by someone I had swapped a letter with. Yes, no emails and mobiles during those days.

It was a huge risk, but he met me and is still a firm friendship today. The fact it turned out he was one of South Africa's up and coming theatre directors adds another layer.

In this world of continual change, the tools- this onslaught online - is only part of the key to innovation. Steven Covey, author of the galactical best seller The 7 habits of highly effective people, provides an insight into interdependency.

It was true back when his book launched to become a best seller then as it is now.

Often it's not the subject that stymies us, but the process of how we acquire and process knowledge that needs greater critical thinking.

And here in a world being levelled by consensus whilst we have the opportunity for collective thoughts - a good thing- we must also be mindful of not losing idiosyncrasies and a sense of inddifference to consensus.  That's not the same as not knowing, more the explorer at their best.

We need more explorers.

Britain's swingeing cuts to an elephant in the Chancellor's room

Is it me. Or am I missing something.

Britain today announced cuts to to its house keeping budget that might no longer allow for the moniker "Britain - one of the best places to live".

Then again, given what's going on in France with its riots n all, things haven't got as bad as they seem.

The French are protesting over the hike in the pension age from 60 to 62 years of age. In the UK it's going from 60 to 66 years of age. There should be opprobrium from the Brits.

Early days though in terms of a potential pending strife -as the unions in televised interviews are calling for resistance.

But a couple of things irk me in a manner which has me stamping trampoline-fashion on-the-spot.

Maligned Bankers
Am I misinformed in understanding that a major part of the fault of the UK's debilitating predicament was caused by maligned bankers.

That up until the collapse of Lehman's brothers, Britain's budget was fairly in good shape.

So why after the cataclysmic event that have led to Britain PLC being saddled with huge debts doesn't anyone, namely politicians from the labour bench force this argument.

Rather, we're led to believe that the previous government was reckless with the state's finances over its 13 year run.

The evidence is that the Tories broadly supported Labour's budget strategy up until Lehman's crash, but the tory-lition continue to land punches over Labour's recklessness.

So what would have happened if the banks were allowed to sink?

The former PM, Gordon Brown is absent from this much needed redress now.

And so while this open sore needed penicillin, the medicine instead has been to severe the foot and then waterboard the vunerable. I can't imagine how many rogue banker are chuckling over a a prized bottle of wine, singing "happy days, happy days".

Can anything be so perverse?  Frankly why not skim of more bonuses.

If you're planning a hols to the UK, better do it quickly, next couple of months appear to be very uncertain.

Visual Anime at the FT

Sixty Nine Days - the movie of the Chilean miners

As films go this was truly epic - Sixty Nine Days.

A worldwide phenomenon played out on the small screen years earlier (that would be today) on live TV.

Thirty three miners, also a good a Hollywood title, though not with the same resonance as www.sixtyninedays-the-movie.com emerging from the depths of entombment,  delivered by awe-engineering cesarean.

As we wept, Hollywood moguls mixed their emotions. After all they too are human. But it would not have escaped them that here was a film to be made on par, if not more ambitious than Apollo 11, or The Titanic.

And like both  seafaring (really) tragedies, here was a movie whose outcome everyone knew, but had more than enough drama to sustain two hours.

So, with the dust barely shaken of their boots, Hollywood is now in a behind-the-scenes bidding war.

Which studio will emerge triumphant for the rights, which will no doubt have trans media written all over it: book rights, merchandise ( those dark shades) etc.

Which director will be tasked to helm this soon-to-be global brand?

Will it be an ensemble piece, that's 33 characters?  Or will it be character-driven to feature the perceived stars, such as Mario Sepulveda  (Super Mario) and of course the 19 year old, who'll attract the teen vote.

And then it could get messy; a story needs tensions and wrong doings. Cue miners' infidelity, wives and girl friends fighting for the attention of their man, and cynically you could say financial dues.

Movie Journalism
But here's where this story takes a u-turn, because in discussing a movie about one of the most epic factual stories of our times, this should be a narrative penned and produced by journalism.

If journalism bereft of a definitive pathway of the future, but willing to experiment, had it in itself, it would necessarily reclaim what was once within its stable.

The schism dates back to the early 1900s when Lumiere's and George Melies slugged it out for ownership of fact and fiction. The Lumiere's doubtful of their novel equipment failed to press ther case. Vision became at best documentary. 

In the 50s as Television news took over from Newsreels,which dallianced quite wrongly with fictionalised narrative, it too baulked. Such was the clamour for truth, that anything but was derided - even the great Grierson - father of documentaries - and his staged reenactments.


And therein lies an intriguing issue.  It may be that television doesn't have the infra structure to produce and distribute cinema films. It may be that they don't have epic directors, though that's questionable. 


But frankly, TV news doesn't do fiction.  And furthermore it won't discriminate between fiction - as in made up for commercial reasons, and fiction crystallising a story based around fact, but pushing fictional content. Docu-dramas are one facet of that. The motif "based on a true story", another.


However, last year the BBC showed its hand, with 10 days to War. A brilliantly conceived story of the run up to the Iraq War, in which I was one of eleven jurors at the prestigious Royal Television Society, which voted it to take the coveted Innovations in Journalism Award.

In next weeks Special viewmagazine, I'll be looking to bring you an interview with the BBC Editor who conceived this and the strategy which enabled him to posit the programmes into Newsnight.

It's a dangerous road to go down the editor admits, but if you're experienced enough -as the Newsnight team were the results can be highly rewarding.

Viewmagazine.tv Magazine download on Web Journalism, where next?

 Viewmagazine.tv - special report

Next week, a special report from Viewmagazine.tv looking at some of the contested and talked about issues within journalism. 

Written as quick reads, for travels-digests to work or otherwise, it'll include material intended for a book publication.

Created to stimulate and provoke further, the contents draw on my experience straddling traditional e.g. BBC and new journalism e.g. Outernet  over the last 24 years, and the Net's propensity for open endedness. In otherwords, this is envisaged as a hyperlinked open magazine.

The latter, a brief developed as part of my Artist in Residency a the London Southbank Centre.

As the author, some of articles lean on research drawn from PhD research studies, though written up in journalistic prose, and is part of a visual presentation planned for Apple's Theatre in London later this year.

Also in mind, a collaboration which one of best brand news makers, whom I'm in talks with. The magazine looks at:

• Videohyperlinking explores an inevitability of future video transactions.
• Training Days asks whether processing to ensure the wheels on your news production turns over is enough?
• The triumphant and gradual ( at the time of writing) rescue of the Chilean miners is a story journalism should tell. But it will be left to Hollywood and fictional cinema to retell this epic story. Why?
• And the new philosophy for videojournalism. TV news of 1955 is creaking around the lens, so why should videojournalism ape its methodologies, rather than seek to define its own
• And can't pay, won't pay, but then who pays? Why can't every journo, pro or amateur, enjoy the spoils?