A moving story of a former news anchor now sleeping rough

I hadn't made the item at first.

The man sounded extremely articulate, and was beng interviewed on BBC Radio.

He'd been sleeping rough, visited by a charity offering a cup of soup et al and as it would happen one of the attendants worked for the local newspaper.

The nationals then picked up the story: an ex ITN newsreader who accumulated so much debt he's now homeless, sleeping rough but sounding rather chipper.

He'd applied to sweep the streets to no avail.

This may indeed be the extreme end of a story, which has Hollywood written all over it.

The little publicity he's garnered may well turn his life around.

But Ed Mitchell's story is not unique, at least in the security of working the media.

A significant percent entering the broadcasting profession will do so when they are young and up for the pressures and relentless hours.

Each job you come by will not necessarily guarantee your next; and at some point the feast-famine existence will gnaw at you.

You'll then need to make a decision- one not predicated on your abilities, but how successful you are at securing jobs.

Here's the piece from the Times Online

David returns to Apple London with a little help from Visual Editors

The date needs sorting but I'm going to be back at Apple Regent Street London for an evening of fun and play.

It's going to be an hour and half session with 30mins Q&A and its free for you to attend.

So what can you do in that time?

In the past I have used Apple sessions to showcase work.

This time, I'm thinking about concentrating soley on video and aggressive videojournalism, which means it'll be far more practical.

Also I'm looking to get video of my buddy, Rob Montgomery from Visual Editors showing how he uses his i-phone as a reporting tool ( We hung out in Cairo where we worked on a joint reporting project).

I'll deconstruct one of the UK's most cutting edge series I worked on as a Reporter/Assistant Producer in the 80s/90s: BBC's Reportage, which could easliy be the gene for Current.tv.


David reporting on the UK Brain Drain for network current affairs youth programme BBC Reportage.

Click below for show

Brain Dran

Britains Youth Crime system

The programme invested in a style which in now all but redundant, but as I'll show it was right on the money in the way it mixed genres and could be invaluable for big set piece video programmes. e.g the Telegraph for instance, which is planning a major series on politics.

Several of its original casts are huge names in the industry.

Apple Time after session
Hopefully they'll also be time for looking at multi-entry story telling, so if you're a flash designer do pitch so we can have a discussion.

So what do I mean by aggressive videojournalism?

In effect there's broadly, for me at least, two types of video journalism.

You shoot with a DVCam, you're a VJ and you likely shoot very well.

That style is solid follows the rigours of the 3:6:9 rule and is very apt for TV, and in some cases you're award winning.

There are some incredible VJs that shoot like that and I'm a big fan of their work e.g.

Then there's a style where you manipulate the lens and direction on-the-fly to dictate the nature of the shot and object-subject.

There's a fluidity within the camera and the narrative; the camera mimicks eye movement; cuts are often fast; and the shooting and editing is symphonic.

Two different short cuts include:

This Reuters demonstrating their mobile phone kit

8 Days - the story of the UK's first newspapers journalists turned videojournalists.

Rules of thirds and compositions are bent to accomodate fresh direction.

If you're a big fan of the BBC series Spooks, you'll note how its style has fundamentally changed from last season to this.

Similarly, Paul Greengrass and Tony and Ridley Scott offer the sort of inspiration and guidance e.g Scott's Man O fire with Denzel Washington and more recently JJ Abrams "Cloverfield" ( WATCH THIS).

The style - shoot to edit - involves multiples direction and thinking in 4-6 second cuts - almost predicting or trying to the next shot - with one camera.

See you apple. I'll drop the date in when I find out when.

* Write up of David's first presentation at Apple UK's Regent Street talking Hillman Curtis, Heavy.com and Newstoday to name a few.

Allo News Hub, Adieu Christmas news office sex party

Like a deck of cards being shuffled, that sound you're hearing is of a cacophony of newsrooms alterating their state.

"sllller...eeek", there goes another one.

The longitudinal plane you used to negotiate, throwing jolly 'hellos' across desks before 2 minutes later you arrived at yours is likely no more.

Your office now resembles something out of the starship enterprise.

In the name of super efficiciency, speeding up the transaction between raw story and multiple outplay, the office you once loved for all its faults, and well memories, is well stardust.

More worrying as you scope the office in expectation of this year's Christmas tidings, the In flagrante of mmmm sex sex sex at your desk far end of the room, will have to be revised.

In the new concentric office arrangment there is no blind spot. Bummer!


Grrr
Bloody management.

And remember the 100metres dash after the 30th rum punch, skirt pulled to your knee, tie undone to somehow emphasise your masculinity, that's now become the 10 metres walk.

The hub is many things, but a freind for human indiscretion, Naaaaah.

Though we sapiens are an ingenious lot, so watch out this Christmas for the lights going off and the shrill of laughter.

For the uninitiated the only light that penerates the hub room is on the circumference and that light fades as a squared mutliple in distance towards the centre, meaning the best place to be is the epicentre of the hub.

Which also suggest the best position ( woops sorry) to be in the middle of the black out is with the editors - nice if you fancy one of them in the process.

At this point you're beginning to question this leap into 21st century architecture.

But hold out hope that Tim or Jane that you fancy may well be in your office reach - that dark spot - once again in, say five years time.


Times Change
There is a junction down my street which over the ten years has changed more times than an aging movie star's visit to the plastic surgeon.

Next year in a bid to ease traffic flow, the council will try something new - a revert to the old.

The Net may have resulted in a radical furniture shift in this big warehouse news space, but how long till something else comes along and disrupts it back?

If you still have your old office as thousands of newsroom do, you might want to think twice of changing it, if nothing for the fulfillment of human pleasure.

BBC faux pas

BBC News runs an item about people who ring the emergency services for the most bizarre requests.

"Er is that 999? Perhaps you can tell me what the time is?"

"Is that the police? Perhaps you can help me, is there a post office near by?".

Perhaps if we fined these imbeciles or put them in the slammer for 24 hours, they'd come to their sense about what the services are there for.

And whilst we're doing that, perhaps we could fine Fiona Bruce - the BBC news presenter as well.

She thought it was dead funny and laughed at the incredulity of the news item.

Call me a spoil sport, but I doubt that's the response emergency chiefs were hoping for.

Quids on, the services get innundated with these moronic calls, on the basis that hey, if you do get on BBC News it's considered funny.

"Iis that the emergency services? If I'm really stoopid and say something crass like where can I buy some bathroom paper; I have run out of bathroom paper you see and it's pretty late, can you make sure I get on the BBC?"

Yeah funny!

Desert Island Discs - BBC radio 4

Just been listening to one of the BBC's longest running Q&A progs on BBC Radio 4 desert island discs and it's welled me up a bit.

Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys - the scientist who discovered genetic finger printing is talking about the very first time the technique was used in the UK and recounted the story of my family.

Yes, it's an incredible story; I'm more detached to talk about it, but the dispute was whether my kid brother who'd returned from a long holiday in Ghana, was who he claimed to be.

DNA genetic fringer printing had never been used in a live case.

This was the first time it was taken out of the lab.

We'd fought a two year battle trying to prove our case, almost exhausted all options then we got a call from our solicitors.

A new technique would resolve the dispute.

It did.

Today my not so kid brother has one child and is doing pretty well.

Parrallel lives eh.

It could all have been different if it were not for this science.

Ironically, years after the case, I went on to study Applied Chemistry at university, before turning to radio after graduating.

In Leicester I covered a conference with the likes of Baroness Warnock and Dr Alec Jeffries as he was then, and thanked him profusely.

He won't remember.

Time to say thank you again.



a strand of David's DNA fingerprint, unique in that no one else will have the same marker, but the clustering will reveal patterns within families

Ouuch! - BBC Radio 4

"Alex Fergusson (Manchester United Manager) has a limited vocal repertoire" - Jim Naughty

" I don't mean to be rude but footballer managers have about seven words that they use" - Jim Naughty

A career in television

Yer don't have to be a woman to know this. Hands up those of you after watching this go... "yeaaahh" I know people jus like dat".

Yeah me!

I mean that was me

One of the shows I worked on, the producer was the son of an MP.

He got a wopping life long contract.

And he was a l**** **^%£%£d

At the house of a former commissioner, she noted her daughter was dilligently working her way through tele and that everyone was pleased with her progress so much so the phone was ringing of the hook for her to return.

"Clever girl.... I wonder why"

But lets not be cynical or bitter because....

"Wot! Your'e going to give me a payrise and promotion if I don't post this".

Er I don't work in tele any longer .. doh!

Here's an angry reflection rant based on that great TV question from your boss.. where would you like to be in 5 yers time

Thanks to BBC's Paul Brannan for posting across our Facebook.

er p.s don't forget to watch the other Charlie clips like this

The new new thing

David (behind camera) working with Phd colleagues at the Smart Lab in cooperative, sharing exercises.

You meet a guy/girl you have never met.

They do something remarkable that you don't do and perhaps therefore you would wish to be in possession of this.

Conversely, and you're not to know, they may be thinking the same thing about you.

You exchange some tentative words, find you overlap on their space and again conversely they're asking you questions.


Now here's the dilemma.

In that time you probably get a good idea of what they do and you could if you perservered incorporate that into your own way of working.

They might be thinking the same, though again you don't know.

But then something extraordinary happens in this extraordinary climate.


Share Culture

It began many years back; when sapirn sussed that in a bid to stay alive it would be more beneficial if they hunted together which would yield greater rewards.

They cooperated.

But the word found favour and pop stardom in the era of the Open Source - the Net.

Share, Share, Share.

It somehow goes against the grain of things we've come to believe - and often I find its strongest opponents, strangely but naturally, in the alliances of new journalists.

At school you most likely curled your hand around your work to avoid it being seen by others or engaged in subterfuge to get the highest marks above your colleagues - and perhaps, perhaps there was good reason for that.

John slept all day while Jane swotted to pass exams and she'll be damned if she was going to do John that Lazy ********d any favours.

But then we enter a new phase of out lives: dependency from birth gives way to independence ( quick hide your work) then from there hopefully interdependence.

The matra: what you do adds to what we do sits at the front of the cortex.

That's how Robb Montgomery and I in the space of a few minutes of meeting each other in Cairo decided without consultation, without any fuss, how we would mutually we would work together.

It's a bond of trust of understanding which is difficult to determine, to even predict.

And many, many, many of us are doing - much still to the bewilderment of business.

Somewhere in the time continuum of high school to university or life in teens to twenties it may reveal itself.

But how do you engineer it?


How do you effect change

There are cultures and personalities I have come across over the years in my lecturing that eschew partnering.

There are a number of reasons why, often very legitimate in the way we must also respect others customs.

....this profession however, this new dawn of a profession however begs cooperation.

It requires, graphic artist speak to coders, journalists speak to Flash designers, speak to photojos, speak to managers, speak to employers - NOT as a top down.

An ideal state and perhaps a naive one you might say, but there is much value, huge value in this.

And within the ecosystem of cooperation people find each other.

"I will find you" barked Daniel Day lewis in The Last Mohican.


Smartest Person

I'm forever using the phrase borrowed from Dan Gilmor of the smartest person in the room syndrome amongst those I'm sharing ideas with.

Sometimes I'll be asked a question and jokingly refuse to answer because I sense the person posing the question hasn't turned other side of themselves to ask someone else.

That somone who've they've been sharing space with for a considerable time may just know the answer.

70-80% of what you think you know ( the percentage is not definitive) is apparent when you end up teaching someone else.

There are twin rewards.

Confirmation of your own knowledge and more so adding to this unconventional transaction of helping someone else.

Before the film "pass it on" that's what we knew it by.


The road less travelled

Many years ago I got lost in Brindisi, Italy with a friend travelling through Europe.

A young girl, barely able to speak English; our only italian was thank you, took us to her home - shooing us to be quiet as we walked upstair.

Her dad, she showed pictures of was a boxer and we could hear him yelling in the background.

Next day as we set off, creeping downstairs, we offered whar money we had left.

She declined and she didn't have to say what she expected of us.


Dilemma
In essence that's where we are with Prisoners Dilemma; if you don't know it already as part of game theory it's worth investigating.

And that for me is one of the challenges to new journalism, not the technology which we'll have to wrap our heads around but the unwritten quid pro quo.

Meeting new people like Robb and getting excited very quickly at what he does; of talking to students who when you put something in the bank return it with interest.

It is the story of IMB and the open Sources who declined any money; and in my case Al Jazeera's creative director Morgan Almeida who took my site Viewmgazine.tv to make their own site and in which I went back to their site to see how I might modify my own.

The difference in approach resides in the value of new thinking; how working together - as new age hunters gets us to the fastest prey, gets us to new planes, gets us away from how our Gimme gimme gimme ways will end up undermining us.

It is being played on the world stage with climate control.

The biggest game of Prisoners Dilemma manifesting itself because some nations have no respect for others and so would probably want to go down togther than find common ground.

But I digress.

There's good reason I hope that as the Net digs deeper into the unit of our work-life's currency; when Net Neutrality reigns, that journalism - the exchange, interpretation of data and information creates something even more powerful and wonderous than we're seeing today.

That is from those already paving the way for change and they quietly know who they are.

GRAZIE

Nancy's one take video

You've probably seen her on viewmagazine.tv

Nancy Ginindza - rock chic ( as in sheek) heads back to Swaziland for a while, but not before we knock off her next video: Hunt me like an animal from her myspace.

The one above was a one take wonder: 3 minutes work for a 2.40 vid, handheld using the A1Sony

This time we're plannng something a bit more...well..it involves paint.

But if we can do it "Lars von Trier" style in a couple of minutes/hours...

Bourne......

The Bourne Ultimatum DVD..witth explosive bonus content...300....Apocalypto......Blood Diamonds..

Long nite in deconstructing how did they do that.

I think I'm going to re-mail Paul Greengrass; missed an interview with him by a whisker last time.

Ok loading Bourne..where's the popadoms

multimedia story Part 1

Just got the news that completes the Multimedia story package. Senior BBC Exec has agreed to the interview in the new year.

I'm thrilled.

Yeah the things that make me happy eh :)

Making of MM Journalist
Meanwhile Robb Montgomery from Visual Editors and me should be able to start The making of a multimedia Journalist from Egypt.

I apologise to the purists but it's a bit like pseudo bourne style meets wannabe Tony Scott.

You saw the trailer here some time back; if not here it is again: Trailer - Be a multimedia Journalist

Web 2.0 plus journalists

Hi David,

I jotted down a short list of items that we might want to talk about for our pod this Friday. Let me know what you think?

Web-Analytics and SEO:
- integration into publishing platforms
- Promotion of content
- tools that the PR industry uses to track online conversation, ie.
Buzz and how that might influence journalists

Datamining and Mashups:
- the role of journalists as explainers
- how to do effective datamining ie. Database journalism
- Mashup editors and how they can be used by journalists to explain
complex/data heavy subjects

Mobile Content.
I did something in this space just after we talked on monday. That
afternoon/evening I created a new service called SemaCard. When you
get a business card you only keep it until you have transcribed the
information into your electronic addressbook. That's a very tedious
process. Here's how you improve that whole process: Have you seen
those 2D barcodes (their called Semacodes)? They look kind of like a
mosaic. You generate one for yourself at my website, print it onto a
card and the next time you want to give someone your contact details
heres what you do:
They take a picture of the semacode and email it to find@semacard.com.
The system recognizes the barcode and replies with the contact details
which you can immediately add to your address book.
Now I'm thinking of expanding that concept to any content at all. Say
you create a semacode for a youtube video. If you take a picture of
that and send it to the above address you will get the video back, if
its for a song you get the MP3. Essentially what we have here is an
easy way to enter a URL on a phone.

Frederick
+++++++++++++


Bloody Marvelous mate - blinding



David

Welcome to Museum TV - but not as you know it

Some of the best museums in the world, renowned for their cultural and enterprising educational value could also be some of the best online TV stations around.

A couple of months back I had lunch with senior figures from some of London's top museums, which in turn came about from Jude Kelly, e new artistic director of the South Bank, drawing people to some of my previous installation-news work at one of her functions I attended.

They'd just had an Iraq exhibition of antiquities and were bouyed by the reception.

TV had covered it in the news with features, but when I asked whether they had their own films - they were a little surprised.

The Terracotta Army works in London present an interesting feature as well, also documented on the News and in this case a longish feature -a programme in itself.

But for every nugget that finds TV thousands of exhibits don't.

And here's where Museums are losing out in the content game.

There exists an overwheling feeling amongst the arts that TV is abandoning it.

TV Figures do show a decline as an observation rather than from emprical data which I don't have to hand.

But could the execs at the museum up their game?


Corporate VJs to the rescue

Here's how.

Raid the journalism colleges in your vicinity and attach a videojournalist, with also web skills ( SEO copy writing) to your unit.

They film those in between important events, even the high powered meeting discussing whether Banksy should be given pride of place in the main hall.

Weeks before the show, release the film and watch your attendance rise.

Firstly, less you fely you need a TV film crew; you don't and the cost of a VJ is well, affordable.

Secondly, you may well end up owning the rights.

And if there is one way of wooing TV back to an issue, it's when you have archive et al to give it context.

So if you're from the Smithsonian, Guggenheim - where I filmed some time back as part of CIRCOM ( Regional TV body) and am yet to post.

Or you're from the VA, you might want to consider this.

Last night I had an email from one of the UK's forward thinking companies wanting to give me a press release.

I emailed her back to say a videojo, video new release - call it what you will would be better served for the Youtube - visual age.

We'll see.

Future Programming Now

This is interesting.

It's the back page of the Guardian newspaper beckoning readers to fill in this makeshift scheduling menu with the raft of quality programmes Virgin Media cable has to offer.

Now why can't I pick out the programmes I want from an I-phone or similar device.

That way I can either watch them on the handheld or if I wanted to watch them at home send a data request form to my TV which puts my chosen programmes into a holding pen ready to go when i'm in

Do that and we won't only avoid turkeys this Christmas but all year around

Dis-integrating videojournalism and multimedia

Viewmagazine.tv is a resource, a sand box, as well as my mnemonic - where I brain dump

And now it's getting a bit unwieldly, so hopefully to simplify things I'm dis-intiing the site into presentations and "how tos?" against vj - multimedia features.


There's going to be some overlap, a lot at first and I'll have to change the nav system so it lands were it ought to.



These are some snap shots of the viewmagazine.tv

Hopefully it's self explanatory.

One has me very excited - the Outernet.

The picture is a set to animate online which was the kernal for Viewmagazine and interactive magazine's online.


I'm going to be talking about this at Cultural EXchange, but please feel free to lob questions etc as you've been doing via email etc.

How many journalists check their web analytics against articles each morning?

Frederick is somone you don't wanna mess with.


A former student at the University of Westminster now running his own business, he has an eye for the back end coder wtih an radar for the new new thing.

So when I got skyping with him about SEO and rich key word linking, Frederick already had some ideas to give an article more google juice.

More on that on Thursday when I'll record a brief interview with him.

He's already built an application that facilitates symmetrical up-download from your site or outernet.

Clever lad.

But to that question.

How many journalists check the google ranking via a range of analytics in the morning?

And how soon before we reach more defined ground where writing for human consumption is still the end goal, but you have to satisfy the google beast or bots first on the way.

Looking at in and outbound links, as well as key rich word density.

Data mining journalism
We truly are heading for an automative journalism society.

And the future reall will have more and more clever clogs writing articles and avoidng filtering software to reach higher penetrations in the same way spammers rewrite code all the while to beat filters.

This morning in a bid to monitor bots entering Viewmag I found myself writing a new robot.txt file.

Then we delved into myphp database.

Frederick touched on a subject already made popular by Adrian Holovaty, but not used anywhere near as much- public data.

The amount of data available by government bodies etc is there to be mined by journalists, according to Frederick.

More on than and more on Thursday

New media training for the newsroom Continues

Following on from recent posting on New Media training for the newsroom, one of a series of video clips to drop into the theme.

This looks at the classic interview/ Q and A/ you see on TV.

In many ways it's the easy pick - the low hanging fruit.

I have shortened the timeline of the process but the technique should appear obvious inspite of a muddled audio.

This was a sequence picked up by another VJ and I wasn't miked for the process.

Three different shots which visually move on the narrative to give you various cut aways and establishers.

Somewhere in an archive posting is an interview with 7/7 survivor Rachel North done in the fashion described.


INTERVIEW, CUT AND POST IN 10 MINS

We ran an experiment at a Skup in Norway.

An interview with four questions, one edited out, cut and posted took ten minutes.

Because I'm shooting to edit, my timeline in FCP is clean.

All I have to do is mask the question I have removed and provide enough drop in shots to make the interview look interesting.

A decade plus ago, perhaps even now, TV will tell you you need two three people to execute that interview.

In 1994 we proved then, as now that a lot of the visual cues and language of TV was outmoded.

There was a swifter way of doing it.

Today a lot of my interviews tend to be handheld; that's a conscious filming style which allows me to work more creatively and swifter.

You can see an example of a more fluid interview here - one I did with super blogger and academic Andy Dickinson and respected Doc maker and also part of the MELD team Paul Egglestone

Brit Grit - Commiserations Hatton, Lennox reflection

When we were Champs


Woke to the news this morning of Ricky Hatton's failed quest to capture the WBC welterweight title from Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s

Commiserations Hatton, but in sporting tradition, a tipped hat to Mayweather.

The event made me reflect on my involvement with another champ, Lennox Lewis, before his title fight with Tyson.

His camp had seen and heard about my work and together with an acclaimed video director, Ken, brought me into camp base for a three month run that intensified nearer to the date.


Life Experiences
There are few experiences I will never forget and this was one of them.

The unswerving attutude of his camp, I'd imagine similar to Hatton.

The training regime: I got onto the canvas with him soon after the shoot above where he's working his rotations.

He's a quiet man, and reserved but if he likes your vibe he'll give you some good shots said his crew, disregarding the fact that this was their video.

During one train session he simulated punches to my camera and ribs: the video's in my archive somewhere and if you watch carefully you see me wince the camera.

Lennox got so close I thought crikey he's going to hit me.

I'm pretty sure the Lennox Camp, they're still close to one another, would have watched the fight willing Hatton as much as Mayweather on.


The King and Champ
In the home of Elvis, Memphis, where Lennox' fight took place I doubled the evening up by flitting first from the fight to a sports cafe and back again, shooting furiously and interviewing on the fly.

All the footage is now with Lennox; he acquired the rights or shot his own footage for what may well be a definitive doc in the future.

The above and one or two other minutes were shot on another mini-dv; yep I had two with me, sometimes shooting simultaneously.

That evening or early morning at three oclock I was writing copy for his site; it's here somewhere if I can find it, and then creating some flash promos.

Bleary eyed through lack of sleep, we then set off to the party driving along a stretch of road, his minder/driver so tired that I had to drive the 4x4 part of the way.

The project had taken me form the UK, Pocono Mountains, UK, and Memphis with the option to go to Ghana where he was due to celebrate with his business manager, junior, who is Ghanaian.

Anyhow's just some random thoughts.

I have never really written about it; I should.

But I do recall one amusing story ringing up two nationals in the UK to give a live eye witness account in the inner circle - they both turned me down.

That's life huh!

Viewmagazine reverts to classic look

A range of articles and video looking to talks coming up on Viewmagazine.tv - first the World Newspaper Association - four hundred of the world's newspaper editors discuss trends and their industry

Multimedia thinking - see below

Is this how it could be?

Within the ecology of the article above lay many strands.

As an introduction to this thinking; the text resembles blocks of information.

Right side brain interprets it almost as a picture, given its shape which is dominant over left side, literary.

See Leonard Shlein.

The skewed nation of the positioning may suggest a hierachy, but truthfully it was placed randomly around an aesthetic.

Each block should be able to expand to the screen or shrink.

Key words light up other texts; they're viral.

Eack key word can activate video.

There looks to be a beginning born from the latest posting, but it's a circular dialogue.

The picture is video - a multi-deliverable asset combining Flash, Video and Text.

The video in itself is the programme and not the programme.

The real programme had Riz Khan interviewing Designer Ozwald Boateng.

I have gone behind the scene to capture elements that could add to the interview or stand alone.

There are various nodal point along the lines of the interview which could activate other films such as this one - an earlier interview with Ozwald .


In this film you'll see some of the emerging ideas of what I might call "outer space" interviews.

Ozwald asks me a question designed to be off camera but is kept in to reveal the nature of discussions: the interview and the non official interview.

If you wan't to read the linear form see previous post.

Soon I'll post the interview