Creative walk abouts

Brilliant day down in central London at the South Bank centre talking creative stuff with Rob, the ronin, whom I consider one of the UK's most contemporary visual essayist for his generation.

We got to hang out exploring some of the world movies on show e.g. French and history of Cubby Broccoli, behind James Bond.

For a bank holiday and in spite of the rain, the centre was pretty packed. It's such a creative place to settle down for a coffee. In fact next time I there I'm going with my laptop as the lounge bars offer free wifi access.

On my way home I was inspired to make this doodle. Can't remember the last time I tried to draw. LOL The Birth of VJ Cool.

VideoJournalism - the art of

Videojournalism on Viewmgazine.tv

It would be simple enough to assume videojournalism is an outright extension of TV news journalism, just as printing was initially thought to be nothing more than a medium to expand one's teachings.

But it misses the point that plugged into the environment, armed with a camera, you're across the myriad operas that surround you.

To be capable of hearing visuals, seeing sound, being empathetic with your canvas, affords the video journalism I have come to practice and teach that bit more credibility it deserves as an art form.

Viewmagazine's David on The Videojournalism Manifesto Redux and how Vj is being used to produce international programmes.

I'm going to be on and offline intermittently for a while as I'm involved in a related project to my thesis which involves one of the largest creative content providers in Europe.

I believe the outcome/findings will be kinda cool for the art/science of solo Vjism.
When I'm back in the swing of things, hopefully I'll have the interviews up with Nelson Mandela at a press conference, Louis Farrakhan the Nation of Islam and how we made the Obama film.

videojournalism - writing the next training chapter

IMVideojournalism - a 3rd way to visual data representation,
in so far as the film is not enough on viewmagazine.tv

Videojournalism Chapter -Training.

What hasn't been written about videojournalism today in blogs and tweets that needs writing about?

Sorry. Im being glib. To suggest we know everything there is about this visual creative process. Not so. Art evolves and continues to do so and videojournalism is an art as much as a science. It would be a brave person that said videojournalism, this is it folks.

That said there's sufficient data and info online to launch endless regiments of videojournalists: "Ten ways to do this and the three rules of framing". Much of this is good brain food.


The future of journalism? Made a couple of years back, soon to be reduxed from Viewmagazine.tv's david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Then there's being in the ring sparring with a tutor. Being told the earth really is round and then finding empirical data to support this through countless experiments is my joy of the journey.

Fascinatingly, videojournalism is maturing, beginning to splinter into many genres. We can duff our caps to those that have worked the genre, unravelled or designed its core and continue to do so. Rosenblum, Tom Kennedy, Travis Fox, Peter Ralph are are but a few name drops in this now vast ocean.

But as the net, now today less dominated by the English language, or in English is being enveloped by territories such as India, China and native Spanish, French, German, Italian and Arabic speaking countries, we'll begin to learn more of the auters whose culture impacts their visual sensibilities and thus have quietly been carving their niche and style.

Framing Videojournalism
The UK's first regional newspapers to turn videojournalist feed back to David their trainer

We're entering an exciting tipping point, when soon, just soon, we'll see videojournalism become somethings it's presently not; pull itself away from being "the illegitimate off-spring" of news. Divorce itself as the derivative of point-shoot, to a semiotic of re framing of factual info.

And by framing I don't mean that literally in the sense of mis en scene, but how visual narratology in the hands of creative technicians can create strong intoxicating emotional codes.

In years gone by at the BBC - bimedia- working, radio and TV, had huge detractors. Now we're being birthed into a heter-homogeneous media: many media have now become one.

Training Days - the Videojournalism Way.
Videojournalism presentation at the world association of Newspaper and some conference humour on viewmagazine.tv

The medium I first fell in love with listening to the crackles of short wave radio in a dormitory almost literally under the equator; my first film: Bed knobs and Broomsticks, the novels of Enid Blyton all conspire into these new gene pool - the science of storytelling

Recently a well known US publisher has endorsed the idea of a book, in which I would want to pull together ideas of videojournalism and its pre resonance whilst working within broadcasting as well as punt some of its more imaginative acquisitions.



In 1997 two of Africa's oldest broadcast networks undertook their first state-to-state broadcast using videojournalism to construct not just 3 minute packages of news info but a series of 6 X40 minute programmes in 7 days.

It's one of the most memorable and proudest things I have ever done. But the landscape now demands more. For by pushing at the margins we can build a new mainstream to rework the BBC's Lord Reith, construct, deconstruct and share.

This new economy is rightfully so getting busy.

Major casualty - Press Gazette, death of journalism's caretakers

Major casualty - death of journalism's caretakers. The phrase may seem a bit melodramatic, indeed the "caretaker" bit, but that's what The Press Gazette has been doing for all these years.

A magazine that looks at the journalism industry and goes beyond the headlines, seeking much needed comment and analysis.

There have been a number of high profile casualties, particularly in the US. The Press Gazette will be a huge loss for the UK industry.

Its absence from the shop shelves may go unnoticed, just about, but the wider impact on journalism in the long run will be deep; the lack of insight by those in the know sharing their wisdom and knowledge with outsiders will be marked.

It's difficult to think of how they'll salvage something, as only two years ago their fate also hung in the balance until a reprieve.

My thanks to its staff and Dominic, the editor. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude. In 2004, when I sensed a way of exploring the web and online, pushing embedded video, hypervideo, multimedia stories, Dominic got it.

What started off as a 10 minute meeting in a pub ran for an hour plus as we explored some of the new questions about to impact multimedia, video and the web.

Five months later I was awarded the Batten Award for first place. Dominic must have seen something beyond me waxing about a future of near science fiction.

My heart felt thanks and deepest acknowledgments.

#Wemedia Film coming

Miami by dawn- part of a shoot/story for #Wemedia 2009 which I'm working on as a videojournalism package
It's an amazing spectacle, but at dawn these birds of prey dance around the skies using early morning convention currents to soar. I tried to match their flight and what I have got will play well to something like Wagner.


Self shot looking at the birds.

Did you know -"Did you know"?

The people who put this together should be congratulated. For at the v least it's a conversation point to interrogate some of their claims and the verification of that or otherwise should get us re-aligning ourselves.

That much is already going on. The G20s's widely reported success in their final communique is in part because the Asian countries had the capacity to play an active part.

It's a while since I visited Chatham House, which I have been a member of for some 15 years, but the org will have been tracking issues like this for a long long while to influence their international relations agenda.

China for instance becoming the largest English speaking country presents a dynamic, hitherto not fully comprehensible.

But the UK knows something, I attended an international seminar on this, that by 2012 the number of international students from China is likely to fall, and with it the foreign currency the UK accrues from students.

If anything the West has a strong motive now to discourage mercantilism and self-interests as illustrated at the recent G20 summit.

I recently was emailed by an international PR group who tell me, and I have no reason not to believe from their figures, that international language websites are the fastest growing on the web, outstripping English language.

So China or India can have their cake and eat it too, either communicating in any number of their native languages and also through English. Either way this has implications for commerce.

Did you know? it's probably a good time to.

The Wire - good for videojournalism

Solo - a film about videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Chapter 13.

The Wire - good for videojournalism

Detective: The reporter comes with us?
Producer: He's a VJ..
Detective: A what?
Producer: You know they film and edit their own stuff
Detective: Unions let you do that shit?
Producer: What unions! Stopped paying subs when we lost an injunction to you guys be able to film us for records.
Detective: Yeah times move on. Guess your VJ will get an Oscar for this.
Reporter: Oscar does films, most likely shot at. Does he get a vest?
Detective: You been watching too many dramas!
Reporter: He gets a vest!
Detective: In the f*****ing Wire he do. Here we so damn down on it, be lucky if you get steel cap boots.
Reporter: Where are we anyways?
Detective: Dagenham.
Reporter **** where?
Detective: Outside London somewhere!
Reporter: Then why the hell are we talking like we Americans
Detective: We're having a "Life on Mars" moment.
Reporter: True...
[ pause]
Reporter: Does he get a vest?


There's no denying The Wire's huge influence. Realms of thesis have been written and combed over. It's only just started its BBC run.

If men would knit in public and police could be exposed for cross dressing, you'd find it in The Wire. So what's it got to do with videojournalism?

Not a lot except that it inspires to go beyond the mundane. For original VJ inspiration, Homicide - Life on the Street, is the bible. In one scene it breaks 5 TV rules. But what The Wire does is inspire thought for the way contemporary chat has moved on.

The way you might speak and access info differs broadly from the way news speaks to you in intellectual high tones. That doesn't mean journalism should dumb down, but that there is a new language that's required, a new semiotic.

As I mentioned at SXSW - the film is not enough. Now where's my vest?

what you did next?

Mid year recuperation. Not out of the woods yet.

The second semester is like a vice. Some times the students think they have it bad. I compound my diary by my own studies. Actually I'm into learning the new, but the modules on research... ughh!

Sometimes I think I'm the drill seargent in Officer and a Gentleman, except I'm feeble and there's no slugfest ( heaven's forbid) in any ring.

But the recurring message over the years wears on the synapses. Exhaustion isn't really it, more as Denzel Washington's character Cready said in Man O fire: "I wish I had more time".

Lately, I have taken to uploading more of my vids. On ocassions I catch myself out thinking about broadcasting, only fleetingly though, because unless it's punditry or autonomy, it's pretty difficult rolling with commission deadlines and night edits.

If you could only define your own job. In fact you can. I have. Stuart ( Apple) when are we meeting.

Broadcasting certainly isn't what it used to be and is changing by the season. It's a great time to be a trainee producer, just to be part of the new discourse, but it's equally precarious.

It's equally an extraordinary time being in academia helping to shape new ideas. One of my students reading my palms, yes reading my palms says I have more learning to do.

I can do that. Meanwhile: "I wish I had more time". When's the deadline for this book again??

Reporting conflict from South Africa-BBC WS

Having posted in Adrian Monck's blog re: him talking about the death of a talented young journalists in Iraq, I started thinking of some of the things I got upto in South Africa circa 1992-94.

Here right white militants have exploded a bomb in joberg on the eve of the election. It shook the house I was staying in. The BBC WS whom I'd now built up a relationship with rang and asked for a two way. I'd been down to the scenes past the police cordon flashing my media badge.

Below is the original post from Adrian's site and my reaction.

Journalism education: my unfinished business

Thursday, 19 March, 2009

Whenever people ask me why I left television news (a world which - I have to say - I loved) to run a J-School, I never give the real answer.

Because the real answer is just the name of someone they (and you) probably won’t ever have heard of: Richard Wild.

Richard is gone now. He was shot dead in Baghdad in 2003. I wrote the letter that got him in to Iraq. [more…]

-- my response.

david dunkley gyimah 04.01.09 at 8:46 am

That’s a tough one to carry around Adrian. I remember reading about Richard in The Guardian and posted briefly on him last year.

It struck me as well, as often when asked by friends wanting to get a relative into journalism my advice was along the lines of ..”travel if you can to the story”.

If it’s a hot zone and you consider you have a good head, then be cautious, but go for it. I gave such advice to a senior exec from Chatham House, who would become my mentor.

For it was while fortuitously in a BBC studio interviewing South Africa’s Embassy head Kent Durr about the Boipatong Massacres with my soon -to-be-mentor there, that following the discussion, I made the decision to relocate to South Africa for 18 months.

One of the then BBC’s producers in Joberg was a savvy, streetwise, six-languages speaking journo who would take me off to see the local Totseis. ” David you just need these people to see you. They carry a lot of clout”, he’d whisper.

Though I was extremely cautious, I look back on those times travelling around the townships; night time drives in some of the worst troubled spots, and sometimes question what I was doing. I was a freelancer. A report brought in 200 UKP, but on one occasion I signed a disclaimer as I climbed into a truck for a night patrol in Katlehong - then designated the murder capital of the world.

My advice to new journalists now has changed somewhat. Richard’s death was one of the straws.

MA in podcasts and Facebook - what’s the problem?

News reported in The Telegraph that Birmingham City University is to offer a one year Masters in Social Media is likely to produce polarised responses.

You can see it now. From the traditional guardians of journalism practice, a splutter and harumph in their morning Earl Grey, accompanied by a curled lip “MA in Podcasts and Facebook!”

Journalism isn’t what is used to be. And if you recall [Newsnight's] Jeremy Paxman’s salvo on media courses some moons ago, it most certainly isn’t what is used to be. But could Birmingham be onto a thing or two?

One of its most popular academics Paul Bradshaw has certainly proved there is currency to be gained from examining journalism in this mash-up culture.

And it’s obvious from anyone who understands the dynamics of launching and validating a university course there would have been a fair few meetings and thought put to creating the course.

So what’s behind this? For the answer I’d have to get in touch with Jon Hickman, the course convener, according to the Telegraph [an email is on its way]; I have already emailed Paul Bradshaw to find out more.

Broader Issues
But lets look at some broader issues.

There’s no denying Twitter and indeed Facebook have proved useful, if not must-have social accessories for the digital native.

Only a couple of days ago, videojournalism expert Michael Rosenblum proved its worth by advertising for a presenter for a new show only to be inundated within hours.

And during the Mumbai terrorism attacks Twitter became the ticker wire service.

Most students you can almost assume already have a Facebook account, even if they don’t have a blog, and as for twitter, Facebook’s new interface is all but a Twitter in name.

Critics might argue that beyond the common use of @,# and Rt in Tweet speak where’s the beef?

Friends Reunited
Perhaps that while you might have 500 friends and above on Facebook would you know how to mash it with google map? Do you care? Or how would you muster a tweet swarm?

Last month in Miami, Wemedia, a gathering of innovating web 2.0 plus folks they did just that coming second in Twitter’s rankings, much to the delight of organisers.

Whilst sheer finger power might do posting endlessly to your Twit, behind many of the social apps lies an increasingly sophisticated use which requires some understanding of APIs [Application Programme Interfaces] and code.

That much journalism educators have come to know from watching Adrian Holovaty weave his code magic on his Million dollar Knight Foundation funded Everyblock, though I doubt from the telegraph’s article [ still need to speak to Jon Hickman] Birmingham’s going down that road.

Wider journalism debate
The wider debate is whether Journalism should be indulging itself in deconstructing software apps and media?

Until recently a related subject caught steam in the US with academics pondering whether online journalism students needed to learn HTML or how much action scripting they needed to know for devising multimedia reports.

JD Lassica a popular blogger, advocate and pioneering social networker was of the opinion the field should be leveled so those practicing journalism spent less time on the back end and more on the front working the stories.

To an extent that’s almost the case as a raft of blog templates,free Java scripts and templates are now freely available on the web.

Yet somewhere in the mix of new journalism or weburnalism to this generation, gaining an understanding of what new apps can be kneaded together, whilst still retaining the core values of journalism, is becoming a prerequesite.

Question is where does it stop and finish? There are some home truths that if you’re adept at social software, understand your SEO talk and visit your Blog/Twit/Facebook regularly you’re likely to build up a following.

Yes it may even not be journalism per se, but good story telling pulling in an audience. See my boyfriend is a twat that has won a fair few blog awards.

But I take sides with Birmingham’s intent, for in some way as you can see from the work of our students from the International Masters (1), (2), (3) and Masters programme,(1) our journalism department is attempting to inform our students about social networking apps and how they can be used in conjunction with journalism to forge networks.

Birmingham City’s message, reported in The Telegraph, however hints at something lost in translation; that journalism has become a techno ecosystem, which I don’t believe it has.

I imagine a fair number of academics, journalists, social bloggers, entrepreneurs will be watching Birmingham closely.

Postscript: Just before posting this I went on to Paul Bradshaw’s site to discover his own post on their soon-to-be-launched course. After reading it, frankly I was inclined to rewrite the above piece. Paul links through to the MA Social Media programme which says:

This MA programme will explore the techniques of social media, consider the development and direction of social media as a creative industry, and will contribute new research and knowledge to the field.

The course appears to be broader than the Telegraph’s reportage.

Now I am categorically not implying any wrong doing; I’m not to know, but I thought as a way of illustrating to my students about the need to consult widely and contact the subjects when quoting from a reported piece, leaving the post as it is turns it into an example of zoo writing: a piece about a piece illustrating what can happen following up a story.

David Dunkley Gyimah lectures in Online journalism and is one of the Directors of the Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC), which provides accreditation and guidelines for University and College courses in Broadcast Journalism. The opinions expressed here are his own.

MA in twitter and podcasts

Birmingham City offering a £4000 MA in learning about web 2.o apps twitter etc. Here's the link to the story in the telegraph, but there's a bigger issue here.

So before your colleague leaning over you thinks er!!!!, consider how tech apps, APIs and the rest are now driving the new journalism ecosystem.

I'll post something more substantial soon

The Observer in blog-tweet read

The Observer in tweet read. Call it the power read (skim, stop, speed read, digest)

Obama Show hits London - I caught Clinton's UK visit once. Obama's GSummit visit razzmatazz n all will bring London to a halt. As the article says, when President Obama travels, a small city - part of Washington and the mobile White house comes with him.

Myspace nosedives. They've been forecasting its demise since it begun, but now, er now, The Observer speaks of how Facebook etc are picking of members. Message in a bottle: everything has a shelf life. How long till twitter slays Facebook. No wait, Facebook has already gone on the offensive changing its interface recently to mimicking Tweet. Watch out for Life-Work, a new network that manages you.

Suicide kit £35. Combination drugs that help you call it a day. Grim but for euthanasia advocates about time. Life the price of a pair of sneakers.

Tweet chef recipe:) Recipes in Tweets. Now c'mon this makes no sense. Here goes my own. Rice n peas:
Soak kidney beans day. boil, add to boiling rice. Chop onions, add tomatoes, spices and curry paste. Roast chicken legs with stew paste. EAT..

Trust who, BBC vs Blogger: Nick Cohen pours over the inevitability of now: the Net pummeling journalism citing Clay Shirky's example of Alisara Chirapongse, thai fashion student whom turned her hand to hard journalism during Thailand's 2006 Military coup.

"In this time of upheaval", Cohen says " the BBC has a public duty to invest and broadcast he journalism that others can't afford. It is failing spectacularly to live up to its responsibilities".

* Next week I'm at the BBC talking with one of its top execs, so will loop this as a pick up interview.

The above were came off the back of tweets from reading The Observer. So long as there are great writers and strong stories, I'll lay akimbo reading.

Sports videojournalism - cult of personality

David, vjing at base camp: Lennox vs Tyson World title fight. Apparently I was one of few, if not the only journalist allowed to stay in his camp and watch, record him train. But even more significant I was then hired by the Camp.

Endless debates surrounding videojournalism invariably fall within the ecosystem of news production. Sounds tautological: video journalism, journalism dah!

But videojournalism is a style, not exclusively a genre.

"Hey you shoot like a VJ", connotes a personalised subject narrative form of story telling c.f Tom Kennedy ( fmr Washngton Post head of video).

I started a post a couple of days ago, not finished, because it dawned on me there was a wider debate, which I could fold into my thesis.

It embraces an Alice in Wonderland moment - going down the rabbit hole. More on that in time. Could it be part of a chapter for my publishers on emerging story telling?

Nervously, I hope so. Due date, fairly soon, Gulp!

So videojournalism, the stark link outside of the artificial walls of journalism is "sportsjournalism".

Lets see video-sportsjournalism? Sports-vid-journalism? V-SportJournalism?

You get my point. Not quite a beguiling axiom. Answers on a postcard please for a suitable one.

10 sporting moments
But reading The Observers Sports Monthly and Max Davidson's The 10 Most Sporting Gestures, rekindled a passion for sports story telling.

Davidson's list is truly humanising and wrenching. At the 36 Berlin Olympics German long jumper Lutz is caught offering advice to Jesse Owens who is one jump away from being disqualified. The advice to remark his run-up earns Owens the Gold, Lutz, Silver and Hitler, an almighty slap in the face.

Owens later expresses how all the medals in the world could not hold up to the friendship offered by Lutz at that moment.

My favourite, and er , woops a de facto indictment on television is Cricketer Andrew Flintoff offering a consoling handshake to Australian Brett Lee, after England narrowly clinch the Ashes- Cricket's supreme prize.

Er TV missed the magic moment. A photographer did not.

The Alice in Wonderland theme develops a notion of peripheral story telling around the principle subject. TV films the scene, photography/ VJ captures the space. The space is bigger than the scene, which is why as you read this zoned in to the screen, you notice nothing of your surroundings before something catches your eye.

Peripheral vision then comes into play and an automotive action of you turning away from what you're doing. ( long breath)

Double click to play Flash Promo
size 224k
dur 110'

That peripheral played a part in capturing this set of pictures whilst covering Lennox Lewis Vs Tyson for their 2002 Undisputed World title fight.

These aren't exclusives; other TV crew were shooting Tyson's departure from his weigh-in, but I held this shot for about a minute. This in VJ is the plumb line for my arc. Meaning it changes everything.

When I captured these into FCP way back in 2002, you can see from my file name what I thought about the shot. Tyson looks bothered.

Click to enlarge

Creative story telling

Sports journalism has always had a freedom that news journalism craves. Objectivity and impartiality untouched, the film making is expressive, the language is replete with idioms and the play of words.

Oddly though it has no place i.e. Sports docs on TV. You try selling one to commissioner.

For visually stunning filming, you can turn to any number of sporting events, but often it's not the scene spectacle that captures the individual triumphs as much as the space. Super bowl films are classics for this.

The touchline filming offers a POV, difficult to capture with TV's semiotics. When Dan Marino unleashed the ball and the camera tracked it; SF 49 ers Montana ran those invaluable yards, his eyes mimicking the million mile stare; or when Marcus Allen soared through the clouds to evade that defensive line, you needed to see it at field level and slow moed to feel the grace.

Documentary makers have done us a huge service.

SV journalism ( ah there!) could do as well, inconspicuously filming on the line. This shot here is me at Twickenham England Vs Rugby, shot on my A, processed as a swf file for an online promo.



In training the UK's first regional newspapers to become videojournalist's Charlie a sports journalist spoke about a scene he needed to film that evening: a swimming gala in which the main subject was an Olympiad.

He had a choice, go TV, VJ (as many of us have come to know it) or free frame filming - an advanced iteration of VJ.

You can see the opening shot now: the swimmer on their marks, arms dangling in slow mo, eyes focused down the tunnel, the start-whistle jerked backwards, everybody tense, silence, then a hard splash on the water and an explosion of sound and energy and then she speaks and when she does she's lying down in her bed looking at the ceiling. Muscle memory.

All the while the videos slightly off centered. Charlies also did a good job. Sports videojournalism - cult of personality

New Media versus Old Media. Wise guys

New Media versus Old Media. Colleague Rob Ojok told me a story that I have reworked.

Editor of a newspaper at a conference gets indignant at a young new media guy telling him about what's wrong with the newspaper.

Editor: "What do you know.... Tell you what if ask me anything about our company and if I can't reply I'll give you $100. I'll ask you something about new whatever and if you fail, you pay me $5."

New media guy nods.

Editor: "Why can't an RSS feed provide me with the grab headline, pic for the story that would have originally done the same for me in my newspaper?"

New Media guy ( mumbles under breath... "that's not the point &^%@*") Hands over $5.

The audience cheer

New Media guy: "If the economy continued on last year's growth trajectory, could you forecast as I have done to the nearest thousand dollars, what impact AIG would have made on your company's earnings?"

Editor ( looking baffled): "Er, what...!" then smiles and takes out 100 dollars and hands over to the young new media guy.

Audience animated, and rowdy....

After it all calms down.

Editor: "Ok bright spark, tell us all here. What's the answer?"

Young New Media guy gets up, walks over to the panel, digs into his pocket and hands over $5.

Audience silenced...

Moral : There isn't any other than. We don't always know the answers, but it doesn't pay to be a smart Alec pretending you do. Cuz there's always someone else out there smarter, even when they don't have the abs solution.

Cyber realism story telling

Just wanted to lhighlight this: Cyber realism story telling. Fascinating article I came across essentially saying back to front, complex story-lined multiple narratives are in vogue.

21 gram, Pulp fiction, Babel are just a few examples of cyber realist films says article by James Harkin which owe their popularity to the....Net.

Lots to say about that as a fair few of my VJ pieces ff what might appear to be discombobulated story lines.

But the story is worth a good read and is accompanied by a nice mash-up google site Cyburia.tv

Everybody loves the Sunshine- Roy Ayers Interview

Interview coming up in a couple of minutes

George "the funkadelic" Clinton BBC Radio interview

It started at Uni.Varsity I became a DJ earning myself 50-100 UKP a week.

Most of that went back onto a record collection, my spare time spent rummaging through record fares looking for rare and old records from say the King Label or Chocolate City.

I was a burgeoning news junkie, but my left side wanted to be a DJ. Decisions, decisions. In 1987 I got my first gig in radio as a radio reporter. I have located one of the early reports.

A week ago I received this note from an old friend from those days

Greetings from an old friend !

Cast your mind back to your crazy days in Leicester. For some reason you
popped into my mind out of the blue, so I Googled you !

Judging by everything I see on the internet you've done well for
yourself. And to think you used to give Vijay kittens everytime you did
a piece on air - ah those were the days. Well if you're ever in
Leicester, or in the vacinity, give me a shout, and we'll have a beer.

Your old friend and collegue,

Dips

Deepak Patel

-------------

In early 90s the two passions collided, hosting a radio show and playing music on BBC's London station. Producing/presenting the show meant we, Sheryl Simms co-presenter and I, could ring any number of celebs/stars to ask them on courtesy of our listeners of course.

So its from that era onwards to around 2000 that I've built up an archive of radio interviews, which I'd like to share. Most of the interviews are still on reels, such as a 10 second clip interview with Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam. We spoke for an hour.

But for the moment, here's George 'bad funkadelic" Clinton, the Jay-z/P Diddy of his time whose anthem One Nation Under the Groove was just peachy.

George fused soul, funk with rock, drawing inspiration from one Jimmy James aka Jimmy Hendricks. A brief visit back to the halycon days of carefree, warehouse parties and mobile phone that were the size of potato sacks.

Actually mobiles phones weren't around. One Nation stands as one of the aspirant records, which social networks are realising in their own way. Njoi. I'm dancing in the kitchen now.

Video and the Net, Web 1994. The Guardian.A decade before youtube

On viewmagazine.tv -The Newspapers and the Net circa 1994.

It's difficult to fathom. Video and the web 1994.

It's the year of Friends, Celine Dion's The Power of Love, and an advert which had bizarrely cross over value, which ad people call "overlook". Remember "Hello Boys, Wonderbra".

So in 1994, the web had just been conceived, Marc Andreesen cracks a browser code, Mosaic. At an interview for my new job, the managing director asks me if I know anything about the Internet.

I say yes, blagging it a bit. I'd worked on a gas-model flow programme in 1987 for the Net, but the web is different. However I soon have an account with compuserve and my first graphic design tool, Corel Draw.

1994. Fifteen years ago, a generation in itself. Video on the web was being trialled. Cybercafe off Charlotte street was one of the venues.

At the station, I Videojo a piece on the new chip thieves. there is a growing trend in thefts of memory cards and hard drives, particularly if your card is top of the range e.g. 112mb.

My colleague however catches the zeitgeist. What influence will the web have on the newspapers, such as The Sunday Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian.

It's worth a visit to see for the social history of the web and:

1. what the newspapers said
2. videojournalism in 1994

Epics Mad and brilliant viral video

Who ever dreamt this up for the TV company; it's a viral deserves all the awards that exist. Shame you don't see the creatives/directors credits.

It's Epic, Mad and brilliant. Bonkers brilliant. Thanks to Alice Klein for pinging me

Soul Music Archive - Not videojournalism :)

Trawling through the archives, I am coming across reels and reels of interviews from the BBC radio show I used to co-present with the fabulous all roound presenter Sheryl Simms.

I'll create a page on Viewmagazine.tv and upload as many as I can, after they've been digitised. No small feat!

This is a clip from Omar doing some amazing vocals. Omar had a hit with "There's nothing like this", which led to work with Stevie Wonder.