Small cameras = cheap TV, Yes? No?

I think I have spotted a misconception amongst broadcast news and newspaper professionals regarding the use of small cameras and their standards.

So first let me share with you this . . .

This is the digibeta dvw 900 - a beast of a camera which I've shot with - as a video journalist- extensively. (I'm about to post the film I made for Channel 4 News on viewmag)

The quality is great- viewed on the oscilloscope.

The lens would cost more than your car, unless that is you've got a ferrari 599 gtb =170, 000 uk pounds.
No seriously, it is dear, not that much though.

The lens arrangement allows you swap lenses and attach various filters across its matte box to get dramatic shots and also incredibly field of depth which Hollywood relies on to get you into cinemas.

In a crew or shoot you can look very very important.

But, you'll be hard pressed to run with it, unless you're one of those alpha camera person types. And it doesn't do small spaces. And, and forget it if you were thinking off walking into that presidental rallyin Zimbabwe incommunicado believing no one will spot you.

Here I am filming a long feature for Channel 4 News, spot the camera just by my side.



Now, these smaller cams that you've probably seen me with on Viewmagazine.tv are just peachy!

The pros will tell you they're not broadcast standard, and strictly speaking they're right put through that oscilloscope gizmo thingy. But unless you're Schwarzenegger's Terminator with that laser eye, you won't noice any difference, if shot well.

Where sometimes it is discernible on TV you'll spot that milky look. I won't go technical as I probably won't know what I'm talking about and someone may well eee in telling me "I'm rubbish". But anyway, if you're going to one of those electrical shops to buy a camera costing around 500 UKP, and it still says 3ccd, then in the camera's pants for getting rich colours.

Sony's A1 - the baby - cost around 1600 UKP, then there's he Z1 more money or the canon and then the daddy of small cameras is the Panasonic which shoots 720 p.

Won't go technical again, but it's the same near camera used in "24" - Jack Bauer, and various other high end productions.

With a small camera, here's the ff:

1. You're not important.
2. You're more flexible - you can run.
3. There are multiple positions of ease to carry the cam, other than on your shoulder, which we, you wouldn't do anyway.
4. You can't change the lens, but can attach a matte box with filters.
5. Cost is nothing compared to the big uns.
6. You can work difficult spots and go UNOTICED sometimes.

"Hey leave me alone, I'm just a freakin tourist"
"Is this not a picture of you sir on you blog, showing the work you do?"
"Hey man, that's my twin".

So you see the quality issue boils down to the person behind the camera. Stephen Sondenberg and many other top flight directors have used them for indies etc. And my good mate Claudio Von Planta has abandoned all his cameras to use the A1 for documentaries for CNN International, Sky and Al Jazeera.

It's the Video journalist/camera person, not neccessarily that dinky cameras equaly cheap TV

Yangtze River dolphin extinct ! @%&*

That's bad news, because in many ways it's a microcosm and great big sign saying: "Something's wrong people".

Does anyone remember the programme made by BBC Radio 4, also broadcast on the BBC WS many years ago in which two intrepid reporters went down the Yangtze trying to spot this rare species?

It was a wonderful piece of theatre radio; the water sound effects, the reporters themeselves, and one thing they did which will live with me forever. In fact, I tried it on my underwater dive in Gallipoli.

In an attempt to record the dolphins they put a condom over a microphone with a long lead lowered into the river.

If my memory serves me well you did hear the clicks of the dolphins; they would have attached the mic to a special unit.

I did the same with some divers coming out of the Dardanelles at 15 metres decoing - the point where divers wait to flush out/equalise air in their blood.

It worked.

If only such ingenuity in tracking down these creatures could be used to save them as well

Dogtown of broadcasting

The dogtown of broadcasting, videojournalism, rendered by many professionals in its early years as cheap vulcanised TV may finally be experiencing its purple patch.

A number of national newspapers and regional bodies are feeling the fabric and trying it on.

In the UK, the Financial Times and Telegraph newspaper are just two of the nationals off the start-block, regional press have had a two years head start, while BBC.co.uk/ technology is in trials as part of a wider brief.

Until now, it's been the BBC’s Nations and Regions flying the VJ flag.

**Across Europe**
In Europe, Circom, the body for EU Regional TV has firmly set VJism into its broadcast training structure.

This year it awarded the first ever VJ gong at its annual gathering cum awards in Bilbao.

Meanwhile, Concentra has expanded its rules for VJ entrants, though you still need to have your report broadcast on television news.

In its first run in the UK introduced by Associated Newspapers with consultant Michael Rosenblum, VJs style guide could have set it apart from television.

Stuart Purvis, then Chief Executive of ITN would later accurately describe the stations obitiuary as "way before its time."

Channel One resorted to a quasiversion of VJism and TV News by dint of the beta cameras it used while courting market respectability.

**Now**
At the last annual VJ awards held in Berlin, there were signs of VJisms maturity, noticeable by the emergence of several observational doc styles, particularly for long formats.

For more go here

Thanks and some: Videojournalism and Crime scenes

Many thanks to those who've emailed me about the Videojournalism story and video. Ta loads.

Friend rang me today; I use to shoot crime scenes for her which she showed in court to get her clients off. Learnt a particular way of shooting that meant I didn't break, that is no edits, and gave the jury a full view of what and where.

Anyhow's she's defending a case at the mo. This is er, something. A man called another man: you ****ard, prefixed by the colour of his skin. He is now being prosecuted and rightly so you might add for racial slurring.

The person who's alleged to have made the comment was black, the accused, white. Now, please I really don't want to get into the semantics, but for pure face value, it made me cock my head to one side. Why you'd say such a thing is one thing, why you'd have the presence of mind to prefix it with the aforementioned is another.

The rest is being dealt with in London court with severe penalties awaiting. Well you can't have it both ways? Can You?

On that very slippery slope of language and effects here's something I wrote some time back for the Humanist when Russel Simmons - the man who got rap music to where it is today - visited our uni and took questions from the audience. I really should post it. He said back then that he would rigorously defend an artsists right to say what they needed to say. The truth!

Reecently, though I heard he was leading a campaign to help clean up rap's image and its obdurate language.
"Cutting words, those blunt things that do harm and for what no other instrument can achieve".

The Tao of videojournalism

Posted here with embedded video from the Online News Association gathering

The tao of videojournalism and some

Almost completed the full article. Pretty expansive looking at Vjism from many different angles with a whole raft of films from the Online News Association gathering to Scott Rensberger and RTE's Michael Lally.

About to experiment with some really wierd stuff that enables me to control assets e.g. sound, video by hand movement. Really this is Minority Report on your desk top. Actually it's video news art.

In a future posting on view you'll see it at play.

Heard back today from the personal assistant of one of the hottest film directors around asking if I could come back in October after his much deserved break. If the interview comes off. I'll be asking you what you want me to ask.

OMG He's Mad

Listening back to tapes from my radio days - Film maker Ernest Dickenson's currently playing on Viewmag - I come across the interview with Fela Kuti.

Oh my word! Now if you never met the Nigerian and global superstar fella, whooah! It's an experience. It goes like this. I have minutes before I go on air and there's a commotion at the front of the station, Marylebone Road.

From a small throng of people emerges a thin rakey man with a Greta Gabbo fluff scarf and the biggest, I mean biggest er, cigarette I have ever seen.

Ok it wasn't really a cigarette. I hope no minors are reading this. Suffice to say when he got to the studio and we began to talk he wanted to light up.

Now they say there are three reasons to lose a job at the BBC.

1. No TV licence
2. Swearing on air
3. Coupling with a colleague.

Seemed I was going to add another. Allowing your guest to light up.

Fela was briiliant, funny, down to earth, and MAD. In times like this you need people like him around.

My 7 year old has also cracked imaginary numbers and this: 0x0=0 and 0x10=0. He's a genius. Woops Radio 4 just fell of the air. Marking MA papers today online projects. Some really good work. Well done people.

stop it!

8 O'clock and I'm teaching my 6 year old nephew imaginary numbers. The square root of minus four is? He seems to get it, which is a darn right more than I ever achieved in my 20s.

Retro

Watched a great report on the BBC about soul music in the UK and how it took from the US and redefined its own ID. If you're from that time and you happened to have danced on Soul Train, The Wag, Legends or the Cat in the Hat, howdee. Great times those were.

Prompted me to have a look at my shelf and archive and there were a couple of ROTs ( recording of transmission) from when I presented a news entertainment show on the London BBC station, then called BBC GLR.

Some great pieces to reminisce Juice -a film by Ernest Dickenson ( Spike Lee's cinematographer) which is playing on viewmagazine.tv now; a small clip - can't find the main body of a 40 minute interview - with Louis Farakhan from the Nation of Islam, and some live music.

Back then the world was a different place. It was difficult to get into broadcasting; even more difficul to host a show. I have one Gloria Abramoff to be thankful for giving me the room to experiment and learn stuff that would be unimaginable today.

It would be a shame to let those interviews go to waste so I'll start to digitise and play them out. It includes Walter Mosley talking literature, and a radio documentary I made for BBC Radio 4 during my last months of an 18 month stint in South Africa.

Dog Town and Z boys

Vjism circa 2007.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In years to come it won't matter any more man. You know they'll be like looking back on the 2000 and what and saying like ***t what where you cats doing. Crazy! Crazy!

Like now everyone's doing some kinda VJ for their b. (broadband) network. Yeah I got commotion, AE( After Effects) and Silicon g ( Silicon graphics) on my lap. That stuff like, hey Ji, what's that film with those robot type things.

Yeah yeah Transformers.. yeah I can do that on my lap now.

Vjism.. well no alternative. I mean wots so difficult about that. Aint rocket science. Shoot and make a film. You get apps like "making things" ties into you can do some crazy half ***t.

We did a reverse time lapse when there was a flood down south. Yep software tracked into geo sats and did a linear line map, which we could use to show what was going to happen next.

I mean that's news huh.None of this expo (exposition) stuff, more extrapolation.

I mean the VJ paradigm is a culture and an an attitude. We were trying stuff that everyone said you guys are nuts. Craig here linned up 12 cams wified into his main panasonic. Got this shot that makes that crazy film, The Matrix look tame.

Last count there were about... I dunno.. 10, 000 of us and I'm talking this region alone. Guys making good money though, but they know what to get and how it works.

What next?

We're doing predictive news now.. crazy huh! Gota shoot in a couple of hours.. some black dude wants to be the second US president... yeah so me and my team are swarming him. Ok! yeah is that enough for you. Catch you.


Postscript
Dogtown and Z boys were a group of Santa Monica skateboarders who radicalised skateboarding in the 70s resulting in the world phenomenon it is today. Just imagine if they'd been Video Journalists and it's 2014.

How successful leaders think

In June's Harvard Business Review, the mechanics of how successful leaders do what they do. I'm writing this into a piece for viewmag, because I believe it's inherent to the way journalism and some extent creativity within it works.

Written by Roger Martin the Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and author of the Opposable mind, his credentials need no scrutiny.

Mine on the other hand bear no empirical hurroomph, other than having worked within advertising with a respected thinker in Jon Staton ( ex head of Saatchi and Saatchi ) and news in different fields. News doesn't do creative, unless a small "C" and then. Video journalism is all about creative, big "C" APPROPRIATE to the story.

That is an adherence to the school of Charles Wheeler of Walter Cronkite. If it's a tragic story, don't embellish it with hackneyed phrases and music.

The four stages of decision making says Roger Martin reveal the exceptional leader

1. Determining importance: take in wide opinions
2. Assess how all these have a bearing on one another
3 " Integrative thinkers don't break down a problem into independent pieces and work on them seperately or in a certain order. They see the entire structure of the problem" - Roger Martin
4. Don't trade off on problems, resolve them all - the salients etc.

Now if we could all but think that way. Truth is perhaps some of us aren't hard wired, and there may well be a genetic disposition at play as much as the environment that groomed you. But the real crux if you're going to practice this mantra seems to lie in 1. ie knowing what is important and being a leader of cabinet by committee rather than the kitchen approach. Mind you wasn't Thatcher a fine leader?

No, no, that's not my politics,it's a genuine question.

And then in our equally pragmatic profession, we hear: research, news gather, streamline and process. What might we learn from Mr Martin, that perhaps successful reportage is about a wider body of opinion, views and dialect.

Watch how the news this summer will say almost what it said last year about crammed airports, stuffy temperatures, and the great getaway being the great standstil.

Wider opinion? Now that's where the politics of multimedia could play a significant role!

Qu. Can newspaper journalists do TV?

Qu. Can newspaper journalists do TV?
Ans. You decide!

8 Days chronicles the first UK newspaper journalists to turn videojournalists on PA's videojournalism programme. As novices they had 8 days to get into shape to report a murder case re-opened by Cleveland Police.

The site's finally completed. This link www.viewmagazine.tv/8days.html shows the feature, the making of it, the award it picked up in Berlin at the annual videojournalism awards, and things about video journalism.

Comments duely welcome including the occasional pork pie chucked my way :)

Get published in any Newspapers

"Quit putting second- or third-string copydesk people on the Web team. Because I was just at Google, and I can tell you, they don't hire second- and third-string talent."

This quote comes from a deeply interesting article from Wired attributed to Net-media intellectual Rob Curley, VP at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.

It's a longish article; more geared for the mag than the web, but pan through and there's more than a few gems.

My favourite is the aforementioned.

The web is still considered the "bastard child" by many editors. Got an intern; don't know what to do with them, how about photocopy the senior journalists research; make the tea or better still let them loose away from harm's way - give them the net.

I'm not suggesting interns are undeserving. No the contrary. Next time you're given the net to do yourf irst article, shout woopee in front of the editor. S/He won't get it, but you should.

The web class I take with nternational Masters students I stress the point, make the web your own. Everything is perishable, most media are strugglng to reinvent, but the web, the web, well we haven't even scratched the surface.

There are remarkable insights that we (students/ clients/ journalists I train) share in Eureka moments. Principally you're not just writing for eyeballs. It may be the greatest article but if you'er not offay with what the admen call "customer-pathway" writing ie link-rich articles in mini inverted triangles, then you've got some going to do.

In final projects, onliners play with form and function, creativity and conformity, technical and journalism, information architecture and weighted design. It's 2007, what might we be doing in 2012?

Chances are it'll be something far beyond what we're doing at present. My guess citizen joe and josephine will have got the video news construct. I can be fairly certain a next generation will get it and more based on a huge project being undertaken in the capital. Doh I have been given Chatham House rules, but will be sure to tell more when possible.

Digital Cars

My car wouldn't start.

One minute a red oil sign illuminated the dash board, so I did what most people would do, bought the right type of oil 10 40 w and poured it in the right place.

Two hours later it refused to start. OMG I have a thousand errands to run, what will I do? Walk, or take public transport of course. It's healthier and less poluting. 6 miles there and back, I did what most people would do, I rang the RAC - a reputable breakdown service.

The mechanic, a jolly bloke, with a wiry hand shake appeared three hours later and proceeded to inspect the car. He did one a couple of those "stand back 4 metres from the car and tilt your head".

Mmmm had he a magic wand, I'd swear he could be Harry Potter aged 55.

"OK...!

And without even finishing his opening, I told him the history and how I came to my current predicament.

There is at least one thing I acknowledge, that there are few geniuses in the world. Most mortals, even the occasional doctor need a history, then by deduction and elimination they can arrive at a probable solution.

Mr RAC took out a mobile device; he measured the power of the batteries, shook his head and proferred his diagnosis.

"I think it's your sensor mate. I can't see the relation with your oil, but its def a sensor. That's a lot of money. What we can do is tow you to the nearest garage. D'you want to do that now or tomorrow?"

I knew RAC, like most services pegged to number of calls are reticent at spending too much time on one client as it brings them no more money.

"Er, odd though how it stopped after the oil", I said. I wanted to engage him again; prod a thought that might yield a eureka moment, but my car expert had run his course. He was out of ideas".

"Yeah, I would say 90 percent sensor", he concluded, gave me a paper to sign and off he went agreeing that if I needed to be towed I could ring up tomorrow. I'd just spent 80 ukp for the call out with no result. That, as you might say is life.

My neighbours are the most fab I have lived next to and duely worked to find an alternative solution; but they ascertained it would cost 300UKP from calling around buddies.

I went to sleep.

Next day I ignored for the moment the call out and struck an idea. I have a friend, he's an old class mate from thirty years back. He is, I've heard over the years, an expert mechanic. He is untrained, has no masters from Brunel - a great engineering university. What he knows has come from the graft. He has been hounded out by other mechanics aggrieved he's been taking their business, but, but he lives 25 km away.

I tried him.

I can come down tomorrow, as I have got a hospital appointment for my daughter, but I might have a small window so I'll see if I have half an hour.

He arrived by noon. We bear hugged. We've not seen each other for many years, then he set to task.

"Don't ever buy one of these cars again", he poked laughing. "See hear, it used sensors. It's all computerised which helps efficiency but is no match for the equivalent cylinder model".

He opened the engine with a couple of tools, looked at the spark plugs and noted though my oil levels were high, the oil wasn't the problem.

He turned the engine over. It chugged, coughed and then died. "Ok I'll return tomorrow with my tool box and have a look".

At 7 a.m there was a message. At 8 a.m he rang.

"Do you have spare keys?"

"Er Yes!"

"Have you been next to a micorwave?"

" I have been everywhere, not sure really"

"Could you try your other key and ring me back"

5 minutes later

brrrllhhh brrrllhh .... brrrllhh brrrllhh
" Hi is that you joe.. you're a genius, how did you know, it started almost instantly"
"Yep your key has a chip which was probably ruined by going to neat a microwave. I alway advise my clients to have a spare key otherwise that's a lot of money for a tow. but go to your dealer and they will reprogramme it for you at 30 ukp. I'll come down later anyway"

And so he did.

The morale to all of this.

1.The experts: whether they're mechanics from reputable breakdown services or even broadcast professionals, don't always know best, even when it's basic.

2. The core of innovation comes from experince and literally getting you hands dirty with the tools. Working in ivory towers is great for your pay cheque, but it doesn't neccesarily mean you have solutions to this new digital broadcast paradigm or computerised-engine car.

3. The meek will inherit the earth.

4. Those presumed to have no power, often don't want it. What they want is just to find solutions

5. And this the last from my friend joe when asked where my garrage was. Don't use a so called expert within a cluster of other experts. They are in control. Go where your business will be valued by someone willing to spend time and effort and not clock watch. This ladies and gentlemen has always been my own motto for the students, clients, or journalists I have worked with.

Game theory - story cube

1. Top David voice over for African wars project
2. David and Scott Rensberger share thoughts over videojournalism package
3. Interview Chatham House former head
4. Reporting with West African-US Special Forces
5. In New York -from making of an Intel officer


I bang on (British expression) about the Outernet and video deep linking quite a bit because a) I'm delluded and b) think within game theory it has the potential to do something.

All stories have a thread which have tangential roots elsewhere - an nth degree of culmination. Often we streamline that process to tell you a 1.30 linear story on TV news, filled out to 40 mins as a doc, if lucky; and then 1hour.50 mins if Hollywood gets its hands on and 4 hours if you're a Bollywood fan.

Believe me I have had my fair share of Seeta and Geeta, Sholay and The Burning Train -70s Indian films.

My parents are Ghanaian and I have spent a fair amount of time in Ghana and one thing that sticks with me is the powerful impression of oral storytelling. Sometimes I could barely understand the vernacular, but the stories, one person standing up and handing over to another person and so magically unfolded like a huge quilt.

While linking allows us to drill for info (much like my Ghanaian storytellers passing it on), its not uncommon for links on a page to take on that detached expression of news. The blog could act as the bridge between personalisation and impersonal to add/stregthen a story, but then. . .

Examining one of the Outernet projects I co-built a while back which was the runners-up in Channel 4s digital media comp, the power of play, cause and effect, win win, was an intrinsic variable.

Game theory cropped up again when myself and a colleague, Chris Horrie presented to Vin Ray - a senior figure at the BBC - our model of a virtual learning newsroom. The BBC subsequently acquired the idea, using us as consultants to build its flagship journalism training programme for its Journalism college. Nice! but nooooo we 're not rich as a result; our university didn't do too bad though.

Screen grab from 2001 promo for computer arts magazine exploring 3d web built in Illustrator and FCP
Spatial planning - the essence of information architect lends a hand in the next idea I'm currently coding. The IM6 project presented as a cuboid has an interesting rubikness about it, peeling back on a story within its finite sides: 6 in fact. But all connected in some way, which is where the numerated bullets at the top fit in.

I have long argued that a 3d interface web would be a boon for the representation of data and information, so I'm enjoying pulling various assets together. There's an end game which would likely involve speaking to someone at EA Games, but that thought is for another blog

Katrina=News=York Information not News

It would beeasy to be angry. Listening to BBC Radio 4's Today Programme an item, finally a piece (doh!) on the floods in New Orleans, Louisanna two years on and how victims of those floods are still suffering.

There are parrallels with what's happened in the UK e.g. York and Oxford. Indeed there are lessons to be shared between two different peoples touched by the same disaster, albeit the rage of New Orleans' flood arrived by differing traumatic circumstances.

At this point sit down and ask what the purpose of news is? Is it merely a commodity to race our insatiable appetiite for information. Is it public service? When it wants News does this and appeals very well. Editorial teams will judge what news items merit this special quality. Otherwise they are transient affairs - often for those not in the heart of the storm.

This is where broadband or news with space to spare ( 24 hour) has the potential to revolutionise our precept of news and its 21st century role.

If you're a resident of the aformentioned polar communities, there's information to be shared. The post- effect of floods bring on new challenges say the experts and I daren't say people could draw strength, hope, navigate their individual lives, but collective sufferings by having a continuous passage of sustained information, which in are modern parlance, unfortunately, no longer qualifies as NEWS.

Interactive multimedia video journalism

An early model included this, The Family, taking a doc and distilling it for the web in spatial form in 2001, but with more bandwidth I can now experiment with this- a rubik film cube through IM6. It's no where near finished. I'll add to it over the days/weeks.

Lev Manovic who is to New Media what Mchullan is to Global Comms touched a nerve talking about the narrative form of film makers harking to the Greenaways - experimentalalists, auters who massaged function and form.

Some of those ideas congeal into contemporists: Minority Report, The Matrix. Momento. Film theorists will quote BattleShip Potemkin as a crossroad: revolutionary then, and still fresh now.

Figgi's timecode split the screen. Film makers are forever looking to expand the language or radicalise form via computer assisted design, new film stock (under-exposed) cinematography, Se7en or putting the squeeze on the story structure.

Some of the most exciting directors now e,g, Paul Greengrass (Bourne trilogy) The Scotts ( Man of Fire/ Black Hawk Down) transmorficate documentary and photojournalism into photo reality films that are "dirty"- no clean line of sight.

Just look at the trailer for ghosts of citesoleil.com a searingly disturbing film with searingly daring film making.

Is video journalism really a new profession? Perhaps. Can we really define what its is? Does anyone care? All the audiences wants is to be pulled down the rabbit hole. To be given their monies worth. So whether its vjism or not it's about pushing the end. And on the Net I believe there's no compromise. Until the web becomes the main platform (when??) producing online can't simply be about transposing TV's DNA. It has to be something more. We should be able to experiment. The medium asks it.

The film crew way; the vj way; and the IM6 Way

It's a matter of horses for courses. So symphonies will always be preferable as a spectacle and experience above one man and his band. Unless you're Brian Eno of course.

I love working in crews. The product is superior for the intended project. We can share and realise bigger dreams. But my approach to compound work has also been tweeked by individual skills. What I know as a videojournalist helps me understand producing, directing and editing and vice versa.

Mind you, what came first? Network production and team work at the BBC and Channel 4 before heavy lifting in videojournalism. Videojournalism allows one person to make a professional standard looking film.

There are many standards of video journalism. If you've got a camera and you shoot you're a Video journalist. The style I have gravitated to over the years has gradually taken on other elements, which leads me to why i'm posting this today.

Thanks for the email Siobhan. IM6, and there are two installments to come demonstrates something in excess of video journalism. It's design meets coding meets film making.

Infact It's 6 different ways of production and as i realised meeting other VJs pulls from different disciplines I have worked in which are:

1.Television - the Im here is video and post using after effects
2. Radio - the im here is podcasting
3. Jon Staton Poductions - Ad making
4. Academia - coding and web
5. Magazines - writing and copy writing
6. re-active - Design and web CSS

IM6 therefore adds to the strengths of video journalism. Imagine that! A team of four with the above skills working on multiple projects.

For Ewan Macgregor going around the world on his motorbike again with Charlie Boorman, there's a kernal of this working style within their team directed by one of the most gifted one camera- one laptop film makers - video journalists Claudio Von Planta - whose previous films include going/filming up the Himalaya with the British army.

As an IM6 You DONT have to neccessarily do everything, but what you're equipped with is the skill to understand the language of others ie geek speak. You're a linguist.

As an Im6 I now know how possibe it is to really make do with one of the slogans of the broadcast industry; "kill what you can eat".

From my A1 sony camera, the principle is the (1) video, but from that I have audio for a (2) radio package as you can hear on the Gallipoli package. Then there's the (3) stills that I have used to construct the story, and built the (4) site, and worked a (5) Flash and video viral promo for internet distribution and (6) the article and accompaying blog.

So Siobhan the idea in the training is to tool you up to understand how all these work coherently together. Then you choose how you want to use your skills, but things like compression, using After effects, typography, Flash, should not be as intimdating as they first were.

Remember the baseline is story telling. Simple factual story telling. All the rest merely enhance the process for varyiing methods of distribution.

Coming up a re-work dux of a 6 minute promo on Intel seeing that the Bourne Ultimatum is out and has got me excited. And to finally answer Siobhan' s question, yes I teach and train in this area, bt as seperate entities and am looking to offer this as part of a project in the future so please let me know what you're up to, yes and that means you as well. Thanks and I'm off to go on a bouncy castle afternoon.

Photomontages

Been watching this The Reach of War.

Some things need little production to make them work. It's purely the story. As a former freelance radio correspondent and producer who's reported on conflict, this has all the emotion of heroism and "where mortals fear to tread" about it, so reportage like this is special.

But could we, without tampering with thre core of the story, give it a more visceral and gutteral sense? This is what radio does very well.

I had the benefit in my early career to work alongside some of the UK's best/award winning radio producers who produce for that bastion of radio, BBC Radio 4.

Radio as a medium, podcasts, and the montage here at the audio level can do some extraordinary things. It may sound strange but there is an iambic rhythm within the voice as an instrument that conveys all the elements of a symphony.

Micheal Kamber's voice reaches some of those. His narrative is compelling, because he's describing scenes in which he was present. But, perhaps, perhaps, the absence of a radio producer mitigates some of the stronger elements.

This is not a criticism of Michael. He is photograper and a damn fine one.

In making, perhaps what I might consider one of my best radio documentaries for BBC Radio 4, The Successor Generation, I made the point of "getting into my interviews head" when they were at their most relaxed. (* just noticed I need to reload SG - shummin wrong with it)

The pauses and um's become accentuated. You're like a tobogganist visually and mentally unravelling the course/story. Your voice begins to retell the stresses and reliefs. I'm not sure how "The Reach of War" was produced. The narrative and pictures match so the a half way house of matching pics to Michael's story perhaps was key. That said in video journalism, as in photojournalism ( obviously) the pics drive the narrative. So what could you do here?

The package - the name given to an assembled story - worked incredibly well with "actuality", where you could hear background atmos ( soldiers talking/ helicopters etc.) More of this would have stretched the photo docs narrative. On its own you could even make a doc work in the observational doc mode.

Yannis Kontos another amazaing photographer has given me his pics for a brave trip he made to mexico to cover people traficking. I have since advised Yannis to take a small mp3 recorder and leave it running when in the field.

Photo package and flash will get better but for the mean time one thing they do lack is the ability to mimic rostrum shooting with the zooms and pulls. Flash isn't there yet and unless you know the code, tweening between shots produces a stutter ( yuk) effect.

We'll always be drawn in by war pics. By dint of what they are they portray human kind, people at their rawest. In coming blogs, I'll talk about shooting video in the field as a video journalist - a dangerous pursuit, particulalrly if you're on your own.

But in developing training for those who want to shoot conflict, whether its firefighters at work, ambulances attending to a scene, hospital wards for gun shot victims, one of the key's is to shoot "dirty".

Black Hawk Down is a film I reccommend and the Bourne films. Here a combination of documentary compositional structuring and its visceral gene work incredibly well in taking you into the guts of the story

and some

Hollywood has movie making down to a formula, so could we learn a thing or two?

More on that later, but in the meantime a short trailer on super cars and some changes to Viewmag - how it originally looked - retro within its 18 month cycle.

And what about the idea of everyone making a film? Hoping to get an interview probably in a couple of months with one of the hottest directors and hottest films in the business. Just got back from a short break so need to rewire myself back into my mainframe. Email and no phone and blogging for a week. AWesome