Nokia Now, Future Project then

As Adrian Monck would say you get nothing in this game for being first, but here was our concept to the BBC on news futures, three years ago.

Illustation then 2004 and article


reality now.




Now if I can just show you can get a gas cooker into your back pocket to play mp3s while microwaving your dinner

FT's Rising Cost of Food

The FT's The Rising Cost of Food

Financial Journalism made immersive using the whole range of multimedia furniture.

Very nice

Multimedia, Innovative Mobile Phone Reportage, ONA and Reuters

Reuters Mobile Reporting Phone Kit

A lot of things can happen in er a day.

Thanks to Peter Ralph at shooting by Numbers who had me in stitches and still has when he emailed me a response to a my earlier missive about the trailer for "So you want to be a multimedia journalists?.

Cmon Peter it was the high definition version that came in at a miniscule 7mb, which is why I sent an ee out.

Peter's response.

"I do, I do!

Please send cap and scarf!"

Fab - that's all I can say. An art in how to bring a fellow brit down a peg or two - fantastic.


Reuters
Yesterday's Reuter's Online News Association gathering was lovely - not a word I use often.

The whole set up with two hours of Q and A with four/five of their team walking us through the whole mobile phone correspondence kit.

Good turn out of heavyweight writers/ journalists and bloggers as well. Kevin Anderson from the Guardian, Martin Stabb from Press Gazette, and that talented multimedia correspondent Tim Overdiek.

Apparently the ONA's been growing at rate of knots.

Someone needs to correct me but some 45% in the last year and most of that out of the US.

Anyways so what I liked about the talk was the honesty from the Reuters crew; we're trying this out and we haven't mastered eveything, but we're looking at what it can do, they said.

I think I jumped on ilicco their mobile products manager when a point came up about neswpaper journos prefering the Nokia system to the A1 HDDV cam I use.

Video's not for everyone, yes, but those who have taken it - some 200 plus to date - are doing some fine work. I can give a fuller list in later postings.

Anyway others weighed in.

What are limitations in bandwidth?

Do the phones have a built in stabiliser to minise shake?

How long do the batteries last?

I'll post that video once I complete this post, and so on and so on.

In the hands of Citizen jo it'll be formidable - the whole kit looks like a point and click affair.

Only pressure I can see is from the I-phone - which I have seen at work from Robb Montgomery.

Now that is special.

Onto a good thing
But Reuters are on to a good thing and they know it.

A question about quality and camera steadiness was a red herring according to Paul Brannan (BBC); if the shoot is newsworthy who cares - his point?

Reuters grabbed interviews with William Gibson ( Cyber), Vince Serf and Peter Bazelgette ( Big Brother Boss) and aside from some film motion - me thinks it has something to do with the chroma shift or compression ( what do I know) - it looked and sounded fine.

Mobiles are the future
Mobiles are the future, now that looks a certainty.

That much was talked up today by marketing mogul Ricky Chopra from Quba.com talking to Commercial Music undergrads at Uni.

I gate crashed to see if I was missing anything in SEO, which he discussed.

Ricky, confident in his presentation spoke about the dash for digital downloads i.e. everyone wants to be on mobiles and how bluetoothing films, at festivals etc, was becoming the norm.

You can even go mobile: all you need is a back pack with a transreceiver, cost about 1400 dollars, and a laptop and some poor soul to lug it around.

Anyway what happens when you get passed by the cyborgy person is you get pinged with "hey here's my film", if you've got your bluetooth device on.

Does that mean Web sites will soon become redundant ?


The New Marketeers
But the best part of his talk involved the subversive area of "article marketing".

Mmmm the art of creating a buzz around your product by conversing with your market in "clever" somtimes underhanded ways.

The more savvy of you will recall Loreal and Microsoft's debacle, so it has huge negatives.

The positives: students can earn around 3200 dollars a month for "article marketing" around their blogs, and says Ricky they drove traffic from 1000 a week to 2000 a day or thereabouts when they took on a campaign.

I have got to get more facebook friends. Damn!

Meanwhile at the same time a department head went all google adwords today. Took us minutes to get on - further linning thoss nice levis pockets of google.

How much are google making from ad words alone - really - nice!

Intercontinental classrooms
And then back home Robb Montgomery from Visual Editors ask if I'll skype into a class he's taking so we can talk multimedia.

We're back where we started because I'm somewhere near producing this multimedia piece I have been banging on about- but meanwhile get some of this.



The FT have pulled a big multimedia bunny from the hat: The Rising Cost of Food I like this. And I'm sure you will to, particularly as it addresses a huge topical subject with such clarity and style.

yes yes the FT are friends, but this is still brill

Reuters herald future of reportage with mobile phone kit

Late night just returned from Reuters with the Online News Association.

Thoroughly nice people and as usual nice crowd fom the ONA.

I'll post more tomorrow including video that I shot where they show the kit and answer some difficult questions

But here's the link to their site showing their shiny new phones.

Cross post - Micheal Rosenblum

Got a nice hello-ping from Michael Rosenblum, who trained me and several other VJs- the first in the UK back in 1993/94.

I posted longish giving some background to the Channel.

Often people confuse Channel One with Live TV - that did Topless darts and Bunny news - and a post on Michael's blog illustrates this.

There's scant info on Channel One which often gives rise to this.

NY1 which it was modelled on has been going strong now for 15 years.

Happy Burfday NY1.

I had the pleasure of visiting it twice; in its early days and when one of the trainers, peter, became its head of news.

Anyway's here's what Julian Aston had to say about Channel One from the Daily Mail site on 3rd September 1998

Channel One, the local information television station for London and Bristol, which is wholly owned by DMGT, is to close this month.

Says Managing Director Julian Aston: "Our projected level of cable subscriptions will not enable Channel One to break-even by the end of the present licence period so, sadly, the Channel will stop transmitting this month."

"During four years on air, Channel One has pioneered quality, local television news and information programming, introducing fresh technical and news-gathering techniques that have since been adopted by both terrestrial and satellite broadcasters. The Channel has also been, over the last four years, the broadcast industry's unofficial training school."

media, transmedia storytelling and Journalistic innovation in a digital world

Here's a curious example of circular flows and personal mash up at play.

This article was first written for journalism.co.uk back in January 07 and was picked up by Communities Dominate Brands which has been generating renewed hits of late.

With an article annd video piece being prepped looking at this space, I have dumped the orginal piece here to re-audit.

What's changed since?

Well you decide?
---------------------------------------

The latest chapter of the 'what to do with broadband' soap opera is upon us but already it would appear the script is wearing thin.

Television Networks and publishers eager to enter and go beyond Web 2.0 are using it as a repository for repeats. At best meeting the need from 'cash rich, time poor' audience. At worst just plugging a nuisance gap: 'what do we do with this all this capacity?'

David: Some have responded e.g. Spooks sets of a whole phalanx of ideas - from clips to becoming an slueth. The networks have gone all web 2.0 space. See what your competitors are doing and copy.

There are echoes of satellite TV's grand arrival where an opportunity to broaden the news agenda and perhaps even diversify simply turned to the broadcast economics law of recycling for the sake of advertising returns.

Broadband's ever-expanding capacity offers scintillating prospects for innovation - it would be a great shame to waste it.

When it comes to made-for-broadband and mobile news and current affairs the UK has some catching up with the US.
D: Jay Rosen at a recent meeting of top flight journalist at the University of Central Lancashire says we're still behind.

Stateside
Stateside the Washington Post is blazing a trail by hosting work by the award-winning Travis Fox.
D: One of our Masters students researching video online rang him up. He rang back. He's very nice she proclaims. Being a star shoudn't make you a tsar - as Travis proves

Other US leaders in the area include Mercury News' | Susanna Frohman, the New York Times , Ourmedia.org and slate.com

In the UK, there are some notables include felixstowetv.co.uk and 18 Doughty Street - but we're only just off the blocks. It will be interesting to see what the soon-to-launch ITV.com has to offer in this area.

It might be that it's non-news programming that is really showing us the future. As far back as 1999, the hit police drama Homicide ran a parallel online series - called Second Shift - on Homicide.com to add an extra dimension to its TV offerings.

Marketing Week reports there's a real economy for developing original broadband content that could be worth millions, nay billions by 2010.

It's not just a great idea for addicts of Homicide. It's mother network NBC then, like CBS now with hit show Jericho, was thinking of broadband in terms of 'platforming' - a personalised broadcast outlet with added value for the viewer beyond that of the original show.

Giving show life beyond the limitations of the broadcast shedule is something we're experimenting with here in the UK. By taking The Trouble with Black Men - a show originally run on BBC 3 television – I've tried to look at some of the 'adding value' possibilities of following up and replying to TV shows using the web.

When first aired, the show attracted harsh criticism. Broadband has offered us the opportunity to reply to the original show and continue the debate.

Broadbandcasting and Viewmagazine.tv
At viewmagazine.tv is that reply. A film featuring MP Diane Abbot, former heavyweight boxer Lennox Lewis, Doreen Lawrence, Kwame Akwei and the film's original author. It's called The trouble with the Trouble with Black men - it reworks it and lets it go as a pod.

But broadband’s possibilities are more than just an offering of mash-up programming. It should become a first destination for UK video journalists.

British regional newspaper video journalists are having a go. Alice Klein, of Exeter's Express & Echo, got shortlisted on "Oh My Newsnight" after just two weeks' video journalism tuition. The Liverpool Echo's John Dempsey sold footage of crime stories, shot by staff, to the BBC and Granada.

D: Alice Klein has since joined the Daily Telegraph as one of the 10 super multimedia journalists picked from 800 applicants using all manner of tests e.g. psychometric etc

But these are isolated examples. For every idea that makes it, scores will go untouched.

This new-ish industry needs more champions, bodies willing to stir this burgeoning market, stimulate innovation, pool unseen talent and diverse opinions and present this new frontier as an opportunity rather than a threat to the status quo.

It's not that we lack innovation. It's just we don't know what to do with spare room yet.

Still images from Multimedia Short

Interactive Multimedia Videojournalism Manifesto add ons

From the original 1-23 Video Journalist decree

24. Create alternatives to the convention ~ that may surprise you

25. Experiment or expire - a run on demo or die from MIT

26. Acknowledge that online the environment is interactive, your package can have multiple entry points.

27. Think expansively, shoot lean. Think like a detective entering a crime scene. If you think too narrowly, too traditionally, you're in danger of missing the new story, the new clues.

28. Videojournalism, blogging, photography are daughters of multimedia which may well require a multi modal language approach i.e. you could be the one to better define the new language.

29. Mi6 VJ says you can shoot and strip a package 6 ways,. You're a conductor controlling the play of any instrument at any time in unison. But you'll need to appreciate the capabilities of the instruments.

30. Add value to the visual conversation rather than exclusively always seeking a reaction. There is a difference. Being confrontational does not always lean towards resolution

31. It's not multimedia that is impossible. it's how you're conditioning your thinking.

32. It is an evolving language with atracting jack of all trades and masters of all.

The end of the World

Underlying this natural beauty spot in Norway was a wind that almost took us of our feet

The Multimedia Video Journalism Manifesto

Expanding on the popular theme, with an updated manifesto to follow soon, but this is a conceptual visual rep ~ made on FCP.
Many many thanks to Robb Montgomery of visualeditors.com who shot the behind-the-story scene vid and pics and provides the voice clip ( part of a bigger package)

Sacre Bleu! BBC walkies

Gasp ! A walkies shot on BBC News - a sport report on who will succeed the sacked England coach.

What's a walkie?.

Well, it's a set up shot, where often the camera operator asks the interviewer to walk from one point to another. In this case to walk inside a room and sit at a desk.

What's the problem?

It's a staged shot and the media have been saying they want to stamp that out.

Channel 5, a national news channel, said it was ridding the news of noddies (another staged shot) and others.

Why should it matter?
It's staid and lazy tired visual journalism; the construct of journalism can be done without set up shots.

My experience working for ABC News in South Africa was the networked eschewed set up shots.

As a videojournalist all I'll tell my interviewer is to do whatever they'd be doing and to ignore me as I film around them.

The shot then is more natural.

Doesn't sound a big deal then really

Depends whether you're into expanding the visual language of reportage in the same way that we should avoid cliches such as " their dream became a nightmare", and "It remains to be seen".

VJ Swarm

We have Howard Rheingold and the RAND to thank for the term in the manner which I'm using it: VJ swarms, where groups of VJs are pursuing the different stories but taking angles on the same person.

A trite intimidating, but I show this picture for another reason.

Working over in Soho with an MD - an Ex Saatchi head - promos and advertising were the rage.

A peculiar, but briliant set up for ads was the tilt- shift effect, which enabled you to produce the most striking pictures where a section of the same plane would be out of focus.

Equally the set up would create the impression that the image was a miniture box set.

It's been used brilliantly for shots near the Tate Gallery London and the bridge that spans North and South London.

But you can go some way, as highlighted by Helmut Kobler in Wired to achieving something of the same effect, which I have done with the inage at the top.

Open photoshop

press quick mask on the tool bar

Seect the gradien tool and reflected gradient from the top tab

Click hthe area you want to be in focus- you'll get a red streak informing you of the area

Press the quick mask again and apply a guassian blur from your filters.

To get the staurated look.

Dup the image in the layers pallatte

and apply multiply from the layers tab and play around with the fill.

Alternatively nip over to Soho for the whole set up

Blade Runner released

Ridley Scott in Wired Mag, Film Review and BBC this mornng on his final cut of one of the best sci-fi films ever, Blade Runner.

First there was the Studio 25 years ago - a flop used Voice over and mushy ending

Then 10 years on the Director's cut - a sucess scraped all the studio bumf

And now the Director's Final Cut - Ridley's Opus, finally satisfied should make very interesting viewing.

NGOs and web 2.0 on face book

I have been invited to act as adminstrator for Facebook community: NGOs and web 2.0 and my opening discussion looks at an issue reported in the Guardian recently.

Topic: Should Aid agencies act as reporters and film makers?

It's a perennial issue, which Glenda Cooper of The Guardian
addressed (Monday November 5 2007) and one I feel in the climate of web 2+ merits wider attention.

Here's a snippet of what he says below:

"New technology is altering how we report, where we report from and who is doing the reporting of disasters. And that means that journalists and aid agencies are having to rethink their roles...... The result: aid agencies are turning their own staff into citizen journalists and filmmakers, in order to get their message across."
more here

Should aid agencies report?
Should there be guidance and rules ?
Should there be increased levels of training?
Are journalists doing a adequate job in reporting aid issues?

Why not join the group?

Failing is good

" I believe I'm a better man than I was 18 months ago.
It's a failure but we move on"

Ex England Boss Steve Maclaren, responding to his sacking as England football boss.

The team despite a bumper crop of talent did not make it to Euro 2008.

There's something in Maclaren's admission

Actually there's a lot, which I'd previously trans-posted on "The Making of a Multimedia Journo".

If Maclaren were given the job or a similar one, would he fair any better?

Some societies see failure as the coat of a pariah, a person to be shunned, ostracised from any public or private office.

Others see it differently.

Failure entails we should not repeat our mistakes; once bitten. . .

We're stronger for the experience of going through the pain.

Clearly Sven Goran - the previous England boss has a chairman in Manchester City who believes that.

I put my money on Maclaren popping up in the US or Emirates, not because it's a softer touch but his collective experience may prove more receptive to those who see this one phase of his life as a valuable lesson they could use: how not to fail.

It's only when you've been through the experience that you really appreciate its mechanics

Video shooting in London ? You must read this

If you ever plan or have shot video, particularly in the City of London, expect to get stopped by the Police.

And it matters less whether you're holding a small DV Camera or are the Financial Times.

In one of my assignments with the FT, three of its VJs were ordered twice by different police to produce some ID and a chit showing they had permission to film.

If you're a film crew, yes. If you're a journalist not obstructing public pathways etc. no.

The last set of police we encountered were not prepared to budge when we demonstrated aptly who we were.

Now I have a communique from one of the UK's leading Media Lawyers, himself also an Editor, and a senior figure in one of the UK's largest news outfits saying in effect: THE POLICE HAVE NO JURISDICTION TO STOP YOU FILMING ON PUBLIC LAND.

Careful Now
But, beware they may still find ways of scuppering your vital shoot on the day.

Firstly by quoting a law that does not exist, and if you resist while making the call to the City of London Press Office, issue you with a fixed penalty notice for obstruction.

That's £80 around $160.

Best bet, play it cool and note the badge number.

On the other hand, lots and lots of police men and women are very accomodating and will balance the risk of querying you against the backdrop of terror in the city.

Read below. Many many thanks for Mike's help here

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear David.

I spoke today to the City of London Police press office and was told that there is no need for journalists and broadcasters to have consent from the Corporation of London for filming in public places (not all areas of the City are public, I gather).

In the event of some police officer telling you otherwise, ask him or her to contact the force press office and ask about the current guidance.

If you have any problems, please let me know, so I can take it up with them directly.

The press office did stress that it was reasonable for an officer to check that people claiming to be journalists could show that they were working for a media organisation, or doing media training.

The force has a policy document available on its website at:
City of London.

This states, in paragraph A 1.2.12: (I have added the emphasis)
A.1.2.12 Photographers and broadcasters Press photographers and news broadcasters have a right to take pictures or
film wherever they wish, so long as they are in a public place and are not causing a public nuisance or an obstruction.

Police officers have no legal right to prevent photographers or news crews from taking pictures during any operation or investigation, if they are outside police cordons.

If there are legitimate concerns that photographers and/or crews are getting too close to a crime scene, the cordons should be moved.

Police officers should work with the media, where possible, to assist in providing them with a reasonable vantage point as this will make management much easier. If difficulties are experienced during handling of an ongoing incident, officers should contact the media liaison officer.

The force website is at: cityoflondon.police.uk - go to News and Information in the centre of the page and click on Media Centre.

When that comes up there is a red box on the right of the page marked Download (PDF) which contains the Media Relations Policy document.

Hope this is of some use.

Mike

Editor
Media Lawyer
W: Medialawyer.press.net

The politics of perfidy

The government loses the personal records of 25 milliion people in the UK who claim Child Benefit.

Sensing the right thing, it duely apologises within the House of Commons.

But in minutes later, during Prime Ministers Q and A where PM Gordon Brown is rightly criticised by the opposition leader David Cameron, Brown turns the saga into a point scoring match.

The awkward forced smile morphing into smugness from the Prime Minister, caught by the TV cameras, has the hallmarks of the politics of perfidy.

No one is to blame, no one is to take responsibility and if you're lucky you might get a begrudging apology.

In recent years politics has become less decent, branded by the motif of:

Don't admit your mistakes, your short comings.

Don't you dare raise your hands in the air, head bowed, sincerely uttering sorry. . . mia culpa, justice must be served.

Instead the face the stamps this affair is the crude carapace of arrogance

25 million people is a fraudulent time bomb and the damage is one that lay in wait - perhaps far beyond the term of office of the current PM.

It is the politics of perfidy.

Meanwhile, a national football coach is set to lose his job for not taking the team to the Euro World Cup.

At least he offered humility, which will not be enough.

ONA meeting

Missed the last couple of Online News Association meetings, but hopefully will be at the next one and if all parties agree with VJ it.

They're talking mobile phone reporting which equally excites me.

This is an image - a set- soon to be incorporated into the multimedia package: Making of a Multimedia Journalist.

It conceptualises a more robust mobile phone editing kit.



Thanks to fomer MAJI student Lucas. We worked together on this some time back

Here's what they're be discussing.

Look forward to seeing you if you're a member or new one

"Backpack Journalism? So last year! Learn to be a MoJo! Digital news video. Shoot it. Post it. All from your mobile. Come see how it’s done.

The Online News Association and Reuters will host the Reuters MoJo team, Monday night, November 26, 2007"...

Details on Facebook. Why not join up

Image from Making of a Multimedia Journalist

Images from the pages of "The Making of a Multimedia Journalist".



Picture here reveals hidden video and a voice over which plays when you open the file talking about why we need to fail. You need to listen to the whole to find out that I haven't completely lost it.




Found this shot walking through our university. I have encoded it so that when you click the corridor you see my reel which is an example of motion graphics - a strong point for multimedia.

Facebook catches criminal

There you go, the world is set to become a better place and the naysayers of web 2.0 can now breathe a little easier as a fugitive charged with murder is tracked down via email on his Face book account.
Next week how Facebook can help you safeguard your bike.

( 2 hours later) Actually I caught the tail end of this item on the news, but in retrospect shouldn't be to flippant, as I now see it concerns the capture of someone alleged to have been involved in the murder of a English Student in Ital.