future tv camp vj

A friend from one of the US' big networks ( Nope can't mention them) dropped me a line. Things are pretty dire he says with no clear strategy for this digital future.

Having content is great, but if your constituents don't find it "cool". I'm playing on Mcluhan's Hot-Cool notion, then you're a gonner.

Here's some observations which I'll process into a empirical data about brand awareness, programming and the likes.

Here's the odd bullet point

It's nay impossible to control the digital mushroom cloud. There are just too many players with different programming variants. In the 70s and 80s with a finite number of media and primacy of emerging programme/ news statisticians you could give baby boomers what they wanted. The market, whatever that is, is a series of tails.

American idol, Gladiators, Oliver - the big reality progs are the money and audience deliverers, but they're few and far between. The dilemma also is do we flood the channel and risk a backlash or play it safe? Alternatively should we buy one of the shelf, but how do we know it's going to be a hit? The net provides some answers here in Second Shift aeshetics.

Every department needs a futures lab. What's happening now is good, what's happening tomorrow is worthwhile investing in, and what's happening in the future is the stuff of model simulation and the Delphi proceedure amongst others.

Programmes can no longer rest on their laurels as unitary packages. Those triple plays you once discarded combine to keep an audience in your loop.

At Camp VJ we showed how we could push into the realms of high end creative programme and news making. That coupled with creative data minning gives us the ability to respond fast to Hot programmes.

Video journalism -Come into the light

This is version one of a promo created for Camp VJ. About to do some colouring and some post effects for later version

Find more videos like this on Camp Video Journalism

Lets play video journalism tag

Last few weeks have been some heavy lifting. Hence the lack of a regular postings, which I should be able to pick up soon.

That said I'll be migrating from blog soon to word press as there is I now perceive a greater degree of flexibility and robustness that will help me describe the myriad things crossing my path.

Meanwhile lots and lots of Masters student's thesis/ work to mark and my PhD on Innovation in Journalism is providing some very steep but exhilarating discoveries.

At an event called Camp Video journalism with the ebullient Robb Montgomery I was able to share a few of those with the attendants.

Essentially it involved me demonstrating, using empirical evidence, the art of story telling as it exists now through contemporary and new television and less so because I really didn't want to go too theoritical examining the renaissance masters work.

Why?

Because all the modern day guidelines you hear at journalism colleges and tv studios developed from visual essayists over the years and then broken artists.

Rules such as the 180 degree, crossing the line, and the rule of 2/3s are NOT rules; they're guidelines to help us often get the best from a piece of work.

But if you believe television/cinema/music is a creative medium, then right now you've probably identified a dozen or so people who's work you so admire and the reason often is because they're discarded some of the 'rules" we hold sacrosanct.


Meeting Angela Grant

Angela Grant at News Videographer and one of the engaging, let alone talented video journalists I have come across will be the subject of a 5 minute Q and A.

She inspiring for this new evolving profession, and the new generation having graduated from Uni some two years ago. She reminds me of a colleague Rachel Elllison, now an MBE - a rare title handed down from the Queen for services to people etc - and I wold not be surprised if Angela pretty soon attracted such high praise from public servants higher up in the US.
[NB sorry you can't get and MBE if you're not British]

There are a couple of films we're making and then I'll park a shedload of articles etc on viewmagazine and Camp Videojournalism.co.uk as well as Mrdot.co.uk so please drop by.

One of the areas I'm really keen on talking about is Sports Videojournalism, and from some of my morning runs I'll be talking about some of the creative areas of sports productions using videojournalism.

That's it. Hopefully see you soon. I'm back to cut the promo.

Live on Stickam

Going be online tomorrow. Time to be insterted soon. Meanwhile live stream now talking videojournalism with graphics experts, and videojournalists from across the US and Canada.

Tips for online students entering on the job market

You might be a budding broadcaster, even destined for the heights of national newspaper journalism, but along the way you'll cross the path of online production, and probbaly ignore it. Stop and pause a minute.

If its newspaper cutting you're trying to get to the atention of your intended editor, he/she's hardly going to read it in from this glossy mag you've sent, at least for now.

And that broadcast piece, DVDs are out of the question and while Youtube saves all, it's compression can often be so ropey as to diminish the experience.

You've got a blog. Good and it's driving traffic, but you're mainly engaging on your page, rather than challenging other discourses elsewhere.

Your website, well do you really need one?
And what's it for?
How do you get underneath the nose of an editor?
And what exactly goes into your showreel?

These may seem like intricate question, but merely requires an application of common tought. Then again, you'll get that job as many students do year on year without the aid of anything remotely online.

Training the Trainer

It's one of those facts of life, once we require knowledge we endeavor to share with others. In journalism, those that are sent of for videojournalism training often become the trainer-in-residence for the rest of the team and group as well.

It's not uncommon for a newly minted video journalist to be given a few scores of people to train.

More often than not that training will be adequate, but consider the converse, at university what usually takes a lecture-student learning relationship a good many weeks is condensed into a few days within the commercial sector.

Which is how training the trainer will be a feature that I intend to talk about at the forth coming Video journalism Camp and in Sweden's World Newspaper Association.

What can we do to strengthen the hand of VJs turned trainers?
Do they needed added training, beyond what we deliver in those few days?
And how do they motivate their colleagues?
And how can recently graduated journalists feedback into the cycle to aid the next intake?

Just some of the things I hope to report on in the coming weeks

There will be blood - A Video journalism short story response

A wee story if I may - a post in response to There will be blood on News Videographer

Video journalism as a tag is something of a misnomer. A blessing to some and achilles heel to others. In essence it's digital film making [with a news bent], though news organisations might tell you to try the big auditorium at the end of the road, if you approached them as a film maker.

For as long technology has helped resize film and audio equipment we've worked together, alone, and together with new permutations. And the ethical and social debate about our working practice has never gone away, as it shouldn't.

I was reading over some of the press reports in the UK from 1994 when me and 29 others jumped in head first to become VJs and the comments were hard core from all sides.

There was already a huge bun-fight going on in the networks about becoming bi-media savvy( TV and Radio). Becoming a VJ was asking for it.

The BBC didn't much like it at the time, though six years on it would take the plunge, whilst some three decades earlier it was brandishing its own form of "man with a movie camera" with its current affairs progs.

Back then the Bolex ruled. In radio, the suitcase-sized Nagra, downsized to the UHER and handheld Sony followed.

In effect, the VJ has come to mirror the RJ, radio journalist. From the townships of Soweto and Katlehong circa 1992-94 me and indeed many others, stringers and freelancers, worked solo before filing our packages to outfits such as the BBC World Service.

The editor trusted you and you repaid them with the integrity of the highest level of journalism: tell the story and tell the truth.

At about the same time, I also had a Hi-8, though I didn't call myself a VJ and DP/AP'ed for a number of indies and the odd big boy e.g. ABC News.

At at a prior job at BBC Network in London, Reportage, the Hi-8 was used as an aesthetic film camera for dramatic motion graphic shots (we loved the graininess :)).

And even though in 1993 I never shot whole films, that would come a year later, it was the glue that helped working with camera and editors. Now, for once, I could speak their language and appreciate their craft better without saying: "Can we do that thingy?/*%$@ - You know that thing!!!!".

It was this that enabled the swift turn around of a the pilot series of "Through the Eyes of a Child", which I'm still drawn to today.

Back in London and as Channel One took off Messr. Burn Out was waiting at every corner. Worse for us, we used Vinten tripods and Beta cams BVWs/UVWs. Here's a pic of Rachel Ellison, now knighted an MBE [Order of the British Empire] whom at a little over 5 feet and slight build must have exhibited herculean powers to carry one of these.

Not really solo reporting gear, but you did get your head around things like back focus, white balance to using interchangeable lens. At the end of the year many of us averaged between 400-500 stories; two a day.

The station had its own osteopath and management in an attempt to stem the tide of discontent and give the VJs some freedom came up with shooting rotas called 'The gang of four".

Four Vjs would leave the news desk and work a 7 day fortnight and were required to produce three films. A luxury.

From C1 have come some of the UK industry's talented broadcasters whom will probably say that regime and other programme making skills set them up.

Nick Pollard who would later become head of Sky News had made it worth our while.

I can't think of many other managers with his track record from ITN whom during our three months training, would go out and shoot a piece.

He returned with admiration for us, which was reciprocated.

There's a sense of deja vu at what's going on now. Equally intriguing, you might think, that the first VJ outfit in the UK was owned by a newspaper outfit, Associated Newspapers publishers of the Evening Standard and Daily Mail.

Our intrigue, wonderment, pessimism, fears will never go away; extracts from another profession altogether Modernist Painters ( a 100 years ago) moving away from a tradition (500 years) painting style, could transfer to today's VJ-TV debate.

But I guess in the end it's all about telling stories; stories that you know of that I may never come across until its made.

Benjamin Franklin said: "I haven't failed, I've had 10,000 ideas that didn't work" We can't get better at this by not making mistakes and by making mistakes and pushing on, we build upon these news skills. That much the indie film makers have shown us.

Cheers david
p.s

And to the "solo" VJ paradigm, we (at our university) discovered "swarming", VJs working together during Nato War exercises was more beneficial for the reportage. What is going on?

Solid film this from Washington Post

Thanks for the link from Cliff at bluprojekt - a solid film from Travis Fox.

Travis has a third eye not just for the primary and secondary subjects in a shoot, but the abstract that move the narrative.

This is some shoot as it take in quite an expanse, literally, of material.

And the subject matter is highly topical though not something you'll see on broadcasters' news agendas.

Actually, its a feature piece.

I have often thought that the discourse of news in an age of terrible wraths and anxieties should in cases as this, by default, do more than the the British briadcaster, the BBC's dictum, to Inform, educate and Entertain, which has stood the test of time.

To react, do something, news you can use. This Food crisis piece does that, provoke's a reaction.

The video ( financial) Journalist VFJ

His kit will leave you envious; his specialist knowledge, beached.

Unless you're a trader or avid market watcher the bulk of what he's saying here on The London Stock Exchange may leave you flumoxed, but google him and you'll find out he knows his market and they know him; from city traders to the lay person wanting to invest.

Quietly away from the hulabaloo of zeitgeist talks of video journalism and ocassional dog fights between professionals, a new video practitioner is making their mark.

For a while they've operated from office with fixed ISDN and T1 lines, with studios in a basement which they'd hurried to when the broadcasters called.

That was the 90s.

Today, Sandy Jadeja exemplifies a new breed. Not so much as journalist, which he is, but pundit extraordinaire. The guy who comments why the markets are going bonkers, with an assortment of gear; green screen, panasonic VX, Seinheiser pro mikes.

And while the office with its array of squiggly lines, numbers fluctutating by the second, and squark talk is where a bulk of the the new Vj play takes plac ( more vlog at present), Sandy is on the road, constantly: Dubai, China, India, France.

If news telling is about access, which it is, then Sandy could be the Economics News Editor for any media conglomerate.

The concept of the VFJ isn't a pipe dream, but getting the news out to whosoever may want it, without say, being reliant on financial news broadcasters, is gearing up.

You can already catch Sandy twice every week on CNBC, a column in respected financial city paper, and endless spots elsewhere, but spending a couple of hours with him today shows he's writing a new dawn.

Chatham House rules apply so I can't tell you what we spoke about, other than being deeply impressed. And there are many beneficiaries in his vision, including the new crop of journalists entering institutions like the University of Westminster, whom are keen to become VFJs.

Watch out for the name: Sandy, that's all I can say.

Frenzied activity

The indefatigable Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com and Prof at CUNY makes me want have regressive therapy and become a 19 year old again.

We've crossed paths a couple of times and I interviewed him a while back at the WeMedia conference in the UK. And I'm hoping we'll catch up [ we're throwing balls in the air] when I'm in Chicago and NY.

Here's Jeff



Meanwhile what is Current Affairs and documentary making? Continued musings at the BBC after Tim Samuels, mega RTS award-winning film maker behind The Zimmers..

If this debate breaks free of the TV Land, then it could have interesting bent for new dv/ video journalist film makers. Is it popualr journalism without teeth which brings in an audience or is it the paradigm in engaged journalism - a sort of gonzo that has the presenter and treatment become overwhelming stars?

Later today Adrian Monck, professor at City University lanuches his book, "Can you Trust the Media". Adrian's piece in the Guardian is a must read as he puts a couple of things, often taken for granted, into perspective.

Still working on the education- journalism set of articles with some interesting stuff coming up. Too little hours in a day

Blogging - writings of the neurotic

This came through today, which was nice. Why?

Well you know. Blogging. It's like the actions of a schizo, the writer in you trying to break out. And sometimes it drives you insane and other many times it's a joy. But you do it because like many writers, you're fulfiling your pleasure and if others find something a wee bit interesting, all the better. So this is a nice lift to say. Yeah go on.. keep writing, even if nobody reads, cuz you know what recently I have taken my foot of the blog pedal.

Just too much work going on. But today like a gazelle in a sea of new spring shoots grazing away, I'll add two more posts before I turn in. Thank you kind people.


Dear David Dunkley Gyimah,

Our editors recently reviewed your blog and have given it an 8.3 score
out of (10) in the Technology category of Blogged.com.
This is quite an achievement!

http://www.blogged.com/directory/technology

We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of
Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style.
After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given
its 8.3 score.

We've also created Blogged.com score badges with your score prominently
displayed. Simply visit your website's summary page on Blogged.com:



Click on the "Show this rating on your blog!" link underneath the score
and follow the instructions provided.


Please accept my congratulations on a blog well-done!!


Sincerely,


Amy Liu
Marketing
amy@blogged.com
www.blogged.com

Wired Journalism - The Game Changers

The Daily Telegraph is in bouyant mood. Its website traffic is outstripping its UK competitors it says.

It's a far cry from the news item you can watch me presenting as a newsreader in 1994 in which the Telegraph attracted 30,000 readers.

A senior exec tells viewmagazine.tv how they've become a leading multimedia provider.



And we bring you an exclusive short film about its new super journalists: 12 young men and women picked from arround 800 applicants, trained over a period of a year in the broad spectrum of traditional and new wired journalism.

It leads me to ask in our special journalism-academia section, what today is journalism?

Does this confluence of multi skills show us how broken traditional journalism is in coping with today's newsgathering and more pluralistic story telling demands? And how well is academia and training sectors doing in nurturing the new journalists?

More

TV Camera - VJ shooters - Online (Newspapers) - which one?

David shooting with the Digibeta 700

I was at lunch and I was asked the question. So what d you think about TV and TV making versus the VJ thing?

Here we go, I thought, and by the time I'd finished my questioner looked a little surprised.

How did it go...

"I think the them and us is a non argument in my book. It's really horses for courses.. Truth this is really such a well worn point that.. phrew!

I started off as journalist before learning how to use a camera - the Hi8 - whilst at BBC Reportage and then the beta 400 and digi beta- as part of video journalism.

I have been into cameras since I was a teenager and still have my Super 8mm, not the exact one. That got busted.

I was at a second hand shop and bought a replacement. Great camera, Schneider lens; the works. There's nothing more liberating than creating a film, and I suppose journalism was that release.

I enjoyed the reportage, but was always fascinated by what happened the other side. Anytime I was out with a crew I always carried the tripod (camera operators would never ever give you their camera) and ask lots of questions.

I'd follow articles in American Cinematographer, intrigued by how light and tone could create a mood.

And when I turned to producing at ITN's Channel 4 News, I discovered I could talk to each side of the production process in a language we all understood.

Hey Tim you got a female - female for the XLR jack. Yep I'm running bars. View finder looks fuzzy, dunno whether it's that or the back focus.

The same with editing: Could we L cut here please? Yep the tape's blacked. These were the days of the transition from linear to non linear , which at the time was never going to work.




VJ ORIGINAL START UP
When we started out in the UK I can, now looking back, understand the resentment from some TV people. TV News had just made substantial changes to the work force.

The three/four person crew: Camera, sound, producer/fixer, journalist had turned into the Cameraman/woman and reporter. Camera operators discovered that their fees were being squeezed and that news desk preferred an all in one.

And you had to have your own camera and the better yours was the more you got called for gigs.

It's one reason why Camera men/women invest a lot in their gear, particularly lens, Matt boxes, filters and sound.

I don't think a proper debate ever happened about VJ and TV and there was unease and an amount of ridicule back then about the young upstarts.

When we started at Channel One, we were supposed to use hi-8s but the management got cold feet, thinking the industry would not take us seriously if we turned up with smallish cameras, and even after the betas, they went for the DSR200s.

I did have some choice moments interviewing MPs on a small Hi8 and found on a feature shoot on the Island of Falaraki in Greece, which was rampant with young Brits and publicity shy Greeks, the Hi 8 came in handy. Remember this is 1995.

But I have an important mantra, let the pros do what they do best. I might VJ, but if there's a camera person on the shoot, a friend etc, whom I could work with I'd beg to have them on board.

No secret also, kerzillions of camera operators may work the news route by day, but away from the office are busy doing their own shoots, directing, producing short and dockies.

So in effect as someone like Scott Rensberger will tell you, and we had a good chat about this in Bilbao last year, ain't much difference between the camera - Director - producer and the VJ.


THE BIG DIFFERENCE
Aha, wait..! Claudio Von Planta, one of the most experienced camera operators in the UK sums it up.

In 2000 he had the whole works, several cameras in which the lens alone could buy a house, then he changed over to smaller lighter the A1, which he uses to shoot for CNN international and the rest.

He's a canny lighting camera so knows how to use light. By the way, he doesn't call himself a Video journalist, and more often than not working in TV I didn't either.

He's fast on the draw, inconspicuous with his camera, likes to go get in tight,and catch his subject when they've figured the cameras stopped rolling.

A set shot in Congo with a former militia had the subject talking in the third person about atrocities that had been committed.

But on the journey back to town in car, the subject started to confess his involvement. Claudio says he whipped out his camera very swiftly and in cramped conditions resumed filming, which they used in the final cut. Very Compelling stuff!

If you google Claudio you'll find out about his pedigree - from shooting in Borneo with special forces to climbing the Himalayas etc.

The more common argument with Vjism is how it can be used to mimic the newspaper beat. In other words VJs see themselves as scooping up news items before TV gets onto it.

"

That in effect has nothing to do with camera work and individual production techniques, but the paradigm of how newspapers and TV News works.


PD VERSUS VJ
The call from the BBC yesterday to ask whether I was interested in an international shoot is indicative of the PD understanding - Producer/Director shooter.

Video journalism has connotations that, yes have changed over the years, but still often attract the wrong sort of publicity.

TV news has rules for reasons that Hollywood Cinema has, unless that is you're making an art movie or are an independent. We're going into auteur here. Actually far less basic.

From the Evil Deads to Once, low budget and DV film makers have often experimented with form, and then Hollywood has caught wind and reigned the directors in to become part of the fold. There's a great read about Mirimax's history.


On some shoots, I've occasionally attracted comments that "hey that looks like TV", and I say yes, because I don't believe in throwing away the baby and the bath water (I have always thought what a crude analogy that is.. who dreams up this things.) And TV's bags of tricks do offer get out clauses.

Whatever we might say about VJ its a derivative of TV. It was born from TV, but then aping what's good about newish media, has broken away to invent its own rules.


TV BEFORE DIGITAL AND AFTER DIGITAL
Understanding first shift and second shift aesthetics in TV - New Media lets me appreciate both. One we know about all too well, the other is experiential.

One has a cost element and emphasis on lens clarity that it's appreciation would be lost on everyday turnaround newspapers online, who've now come to inherit Video journalism.

One allows me to be more discreet, the other tells you I'm a cameraman/director. I often tell them I'm also the reporter, but when I am using a digi or beta, rarely do stand ups.

The them and us is merely in my mind the old fight of a division of labour: history is littered with them. One of the best, newspapers saying TV wouldn't last and then having to change their game to include more analysis news and commentary.

I imagine a few old editors having a chuckle now at the direction their papers are taking, but somewhere there's a middle ground (huge) where we'll all meet, and then of course some will always be on he fringes: it's the "bell curve" of life.

The VJ - small size jack of all - works mainly because of cost and the medium, online. Truth, that's been the life line of Vjism, broadband!

Like I said Vj lets us know what TV would have liked to continue doing which is to innovate in visual terms, in the same way independent cinema has done.

And whether it's the term we feel queezy by, it's really about creating films, not as a maniacal practitioner, but as someone who's passionate about storytelling and would like to have more input into realising their ideas. There!

Game Changers

I liked the phrase "game changer", used by a senior Yahoo exec when I interviewed him.

I have wanted to also write about some of the things that get me worked up in Education and the Media so I have combined the good, bad and well help from friends to russle up something in an area that we all have something to say.

That's next week. but you can glimpse the front page at viewmagazine.tv

Image shows former International Masters Journalism Students from 2006 - doing amazingly good things at present. Couple of videos in the pipeline e.g Rania in Egypt - one of the few women editors to edit a national newspaper.

Videojournalism wanted

Just got a message on my phone from a national broadcaster with a project for a VJ that involves three continents.

Sadly, I can't do it - other commitments so if you're a VJ based in the UK and up for it, drop a comment with a link back to your work and I'll have the producer look it over or if you want privacy email david(at)mrdot.co.uk

My guess cuz of the travel etc, you're going to have to be experienced. One of the locations is in an African state where filming on the street attracts the wrong sort of attention and could get you easily arrested.

Also you're most likely be working with a producer, and ex producer back in London, so you'll have tobe good at taking and executing briefs.

It'll probably be exciting and hair raising and pay decently - though I don't have any figures.

Go on. You'll dine out on this for years

Video Journalism and Camp Video Journalism - Chicago

Front page of Videojournalism site for the UK's first regional newspaper videojournalists. The combination of VJ, site building and multimedia is what David refers to as Integrated Multimedia Video Journalism IMVJ.

More here

I'm in Chicago soon to meet friends, talk and mix it up with practical and theoretical ideas 'bout Video journalism, and exchange views into the small of the night.

I'll be joining Angela Grant whom I've not met but know her work - great stuff - from News Videographer.com and Robb Montgomery from VisualEditors.com in what's been penned as CAMP VIDEOJOURNALISM.

It's something we dreamt up while in Cairo together

I'm hoping to see some of the different styles emerging and see if I can spot some Video journalism trends and trajectories.

There are a range of international VJs/ solo news film makers whose work I so admire: Washington Post's Travis Fox whose film about a bereaved 911 father who helps rebuild the pentagon is a constant source for my students year on year.

Last year one of them rang him up. He missed the call and duly rang her back. Top Bloke!

Then there are the VJ/ solo film makers I've had the privilege of meeting: Naka Nathaniel - awesome a truly nice guy to boot; Scott Rensberger who should frankly stop winning awards; Dutch Ruud Elmendorp - an award winning VJ based in East Africa, and Stephan Bachenheimer whom made Guantanamo Unplugged. Watch it!

There are some things we share in common, some things we do differently but often arrive at the same goal, and some things that are poles apart.

You say Tomato and we say Tomato.

Just as television has its cultural nuances and flows ( see Raymond Williams, the same could be said of video journalism. Though good stuff invariably travels well irrespective.

But as film makers what we do is learn, borrow and God forbid steal visual ideas from each other.

In my career one of the most invaluable pieces of advice was: Listen and Learn. ABC News' style is different from the BBC, which was not the same as defunct agency WTN, which is another kettle of fish to Channel 4 News, which looks to have nothing in common with Channel One TV - a VJ station.

I worked at all of these at some point.

But all provide recombinant DNA for something else, which could either work or be bloody messy.

However there is no prescriptive route to creativity and its execution. We learn assimilate and then take the stabilisers off and find a setting that enables us to replicate, but also surpass those around us.

Tutors teach students whom will likely, very quickly, streak past their tutors own knowledge in this speedy media scape. Experience is crucial, but we also need an injection of the zeitgeist - what's happening now. It also keeps us sprightly.

Traditional film and TV making skills are still crucial - absolutely. TV lets us know what video journalism can do, and multimedia news making when that becomes the norm will thumb its nose at video journalism. Hah!

We have endless debates online about video, video journalism, which are absolutely necessary; the end goal is about a product, so a major solution is to go do.

We'll succeed and fail and do it again and then succeed some more and then find our voice - and when we do that voice will be unique to its author.

After all we are painters with video and you wouldn't expect craftsmen and women to all paint the same.

Promote yourself on the web young journalists

First impressions count and you've seconds to make your case to be considered for that job which hasn't yet made it onto the market.

Unfortunately it's one of the few things we rarely talk about as graduate journalists: promoting yourself.

In years gone by, you sent out a show reel on VHS and hoped for a miracle someone would actually watch it and call you - fat chance!

Now it's all about the web.

Two years ago, Anthony Moor, Associate Managing Editor/Online at the Orlando Sentinel, and editor of OrlandoSentinel.com wrote this seminal piece for the OJR Go to the Web, young journalist!

If you've never read it please do. One of his points, the web is yours go own it.

In 1997 when I built my first site, I had terrible guilt pangs. A website showing my work, how terribly narcissistic. It took a colleague, a graphic designer to make the case why it had value as a record of work.


As a journalist I started buying Computer Arts International and DV World - The Creative Digital Video Magazine ( now defunct) from issue 1.

If you are a graphic designer, building up a portfolio for future jobs is almost a must.

If you're in the UK (I'm told you can only subscribe in the US) and are a regular reader of Computer Arts International, it won't have escaped you how rich in tips and advice the mag is for designers selling themselves.

Some of this is apt for young journalists.

From the above issue take the following do's and don'ts: Ten Tips for making your portfolio. These three below, which I have paraphrased, hit the mark.

Get on the web: make a site/blog and keep it updated regularly.

Be Creative: Stand out from the crowd by offering innovation and creativity in your work

Watch your attitude: Don't be arrogant, your personality should shine through on your work.

In our Masters in Journalism lectures, I often refer to the sell as the elevator pitch or the "8 second sell".

Within 8 seconds the visual feel of your site must woo the attention of its recipient.

It's a subjective thing. You may be one of the finest writers/bloggers around, but you'll need your cash-rich, time-poor acquaintance to read it first.

A common practice by many bloggers wanting to stand out is to include testimonial straps: "one of the finest emerging bloggers", says the head of global news international federation.

The architecture must guide the reader so that within a minute they know enough about you to come to a decision as someone to watch or another one bites the dust.

A minute thereabouts is as much as you can expect - this isn't absolute but an illustration of the cursory attention span you can expect first time around.

If your work is a blinder, then you're in luck.

In effect, your site is a visual CV and you can develop as many landing pages specific to the potential job in question.

A wee bit of advice. Youtube videos look great on blogs; on personal sites you're better of with something more refined and aesthetic.

Viewmagazine profiles Doug Hughes
Doug Hughes featured in the Viewmagazine.tv imitation of Time Magazine; a cover which has had an indelible impression on me, was an International Journalism Masters student two years ago.

It was patently clear in lectures, he clearly understood the potential of the web and now is successful and growing in stature. This is his site Doug Hughes Marketing and Design. If you're in the California region drop him a line.

Further testimony of the viability and usefulness of the web as a journalists PR tool can be obtained from Ed, a student last year whom I bumped into at the Financial Times.

Here's a short interview I conducted with him shot on my Canon Digital IXUS 70, a camera that fits into the palm of your hand.

Of course, you've got to have something to show first on your web site. Don't wait! Don't wait to be given that assignment before you feel able to pick up a camera and shoot.

Be creative. The amazing Film/commercial maker Tarsem Singh used his first year at film school to build up a portfolio which would lead to the gig to direct REMs ground breaking Losing my Religion.

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On viewmagazine.tv How to podcast

Videojournalism, Interactivity and London Underground

You've probably seen them going in and out of London's tube stations. Interactive advertisements - images revolving around on electronic screens.

In the summer of 2001 we were approached by Viacom UK - The outdoor advertisers. They had seen our work, a combination of interactive play and video journalism whilst at re-active .

So how did video journalism come to play a role in devising a campaign for Viacom? What was the five degrees of motion that Viacom- underground would have us develop, which would affect price modelling? And what could we learn from today in the burgeoning environment of IM6VJ and Interactivity.

Also on Mrdot.co.uk: Before and After. For the doc 8 days I shot just over an hour for what I perceived would be a 30 min doc. It would in fact be 15 mins.

When I got back to base within an hour I had laid down the structure which changed very little in the final cut. Then and after is what I'll be revealing on Mrdot, and how the shoot-to-edit paradigm allowed for fast turnaround.

And The Harvard Business Review has often been food for thought in Journalism etc. This month Stewart D Friedman writes about the dynamics of change, as founder director of Wharton's leadership program. In Total Leadership: be a better leader, have a richer life, Prof Friedman offers words which will comfort Journalism innovators.

Experiment, and how do you know your experiment is working, he asks. His guide rather reminds me of some of the mantras I have become attached to such a "protect your golden hour" and "capitalising on your creative period", which I'll elaborate in future posts.

Video journalism - what does it take to be one - before and after the web?

South Africa circa 1994. The whole world holds its breath for THE elecction to consign apartheid to the history books.

I'm in South Africa multiskilling, working with ABC News, independent production companies and filing radio reports to the BBC World Service.

I have a hi8 camera and Sony recorder I'm using in the townships in areas like Katlehong described as the murder capital of the world.

Nine months later, a total of 18 months in South Africa, I'll be in London going through the ropes on this new thing video journalism.

We often talk about the tools to become a videojournalist, but what about the qualities?

Back then:

Alpha male or female. You needed to be scrapping with national news for stories and the few crews who'd lob insults at you for debasing the craft of TV news making.

Passion and a self starter. You had to know how to solve problems, find a way to bring the story in.

Some appreciation of journalism - Generally broadcasters including the BBC took newspaper journalists and trained them to become visual. Most of the VJs were at the start of their careers and came from newspapers.

People's person. You had to like people and know how to banter to keep an interviewee occupied or open up an interviewer.

Tough skin. Had to know how to take (constructive) criticism.

Ambitious. It's no coincidence that Video journalists went on to work and are still at the likes of BBC Breakfast, News 24, Sky, BBC London, CNBC.

Relentless. We all had pagers and mobile phones and were in regular contact with the office, often filing two stories a day using track and rushes. In one year 500 stories was not uncommon.

Fearless, but not reckless. I did night duty for three months starting at 9 p.m. till 9 a.m. On one story in Brixton my car with tripod was broken into and a group of three were after my beta camera.

Creative. We did not have archive stock so had to be innovative on feature length stories.

Stiickler for facts. You owned your story and needed to be on top of ethics and the law. We were governed by the guidelines of the ITC now Ofcom, which overseas television.

And what about the qualities today. Much the same I guess with noticeable exceptions.

Any respect for video journalism? - Shooting by Numbers

Peter at Shootingbynmbers writes:

"There is one significant difference between the luminaries of the new wave and the evangelists of video journalism.

Godard, Rohmer, Chabrol etc. complained that the leading French moviemakers of the fifties had no respect for the art of moviemaking and accused them of “holding cinema in contempt”.

The most strident VJ evangelists espouse the new paradigm only because it is fast and cheap. They have no respect for the talents of the producers or the discernment of the audiences." Read more here...


And I responded
Hi Peter, ultimately therein lies the crux. Video journalism's strength in a more tech-savvy environment might also prescribe a weakness, depending on one's point of view.

It is the low hanging fruit. Pick up a camera, shoot, et voila.

Photographers may still happily embrace the tag, "Amateur Photographer", the same goes for by Super 8mm Bolex users.

But you're unlikely to find this anywhere in video journalism.

There is, and it's not an argument for me, no distinction between the grades of video journalism inter alia.

Perhaps partly because it's relatively new; relative with regard to the newspaper video journalism boom, and also peer review is thin on the ground.

Renoir, Spielberg would not call themselves auters. They were bloody good to anyone who knew their work, but it took that mag that would evolve into an influential read and spark a movment in itself, Cahiers du cinéma, to bestow such a label: auter.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Hence you've a basis to argue that videojournalism is in fact DVCam film making for news and more, which has always been my point here

But that's a mouthful and video journalist, like radio, magazine, newspaper journalist has more bite.

But if we entertain the idea VJ is digital film making then like film it has rules that require being pushed, just as Lars Von Trier's Dogme movement added to the new wave of low budget film makers emerging en masse on the scene from the 80s. [Here's one of my fav snapshot articles about that era].

But we're talking about video journalism, posts like yours and many others that talk about the process, form, style guide us to think further beyond its monetary advantages.

DIY TV, Cheap and Chearful TV, Robocop TV - these were some of the nicer adjectives we attracted when we went Vj solo in the 90s.. Get a load of those cameras!

We might have been partly to blame: yep I can do the job, (er badly someone just shouted LOL) of three some of us gleefully pronounced.

For me years, I'd like to have thought we should have moved on.

d

p.s Now here's a humdinger, Is videojournalism art?
p.p.s just going through Bergman's collection - Seventh Seal. Watched it when I was knee high to a grasshopper, but makes more sense now. What about posting a pool of your cine favs that could lend to auterism.