The ubiquity of video is as necessary as Darwinism, which is why broadcasters and newspapers needn't really panic.
Those that have a pedigree and are talented will always find kindred souls attentive to their station.
Video's flurry though is being played in an environment of short term gains and commercialism.
A small blip in any institution's balance sheet will have huge knock-ons as many of us are witnessing from the present sick economy.
But just as speech is on tap, the ability to write spread like a virus, our notion of meritocracy and the commonwealth ideas firmed, there are still defining principles that govern us and those that are good at what they do like an organic nucleophilic reaction continue to fizz.
We're attracted to the aesthetic, the sublime and the incredulous and we hanker information - the antithesis to sitting in a room mind-dead. Immanuel Kant famously coined our definition from the former, aesthetics.
Aesthetics Why do we look and admire something we have no intimate relationship before hand?
It's stood the test of time and is so profound it will serve as the alpha of how we perceive that which continues to arouse our senses.
We're also creatures of trust. It's immanent, exist as an index which cannot be bought. It's there. Sometimes it arises by association, often it's worked through overtime. Brand loyalty is the ethereal currency.
This year many students will graduate unsure of their next destination. The rational word from conversation shops is don't panic. Cold comfort, but this scenario is not without precedent.
This year higher education applications are up. In times of recession, further studies or even buying good time have good purpose.
My own experience back in 91 annoyingly at the time led me to do something I never contemplated doing, leaving the UK. It's not an easy and available option. And then seeking further studies years on at the LSE.
Playing the long game in today's break-neck speed society, which isn't easy, may provide the time to develop your own aesthetic and where possible nourish the mind.
The recession has become the bogey man, but the ubiquity and low-hanging fruit paradigm of today's digital garden would have compound matters anyway and will continue to do so in this fluid dynamic state.
McLuhan in Understanding Media gives this a perspective:
After three thousand years of specialist explosion, and of increasing specialism and alienation in the technological extensions of our bodies, our world has become compressional by dramatic reversal"
If everyone can do what you can do, where is the value? They said that about speech and writing as well, they'll soon say that with videography (which means writing with video) and videojournalism.
Seeking the aesthetic in its phenomenologically sense, may not be a bad start.
This combines the technical skills the new journalist will need (plus the old ones), new ways of collaborating with audiences and journalists across the globe; and most importantly an entrepreneurial edge to create an army of “creative entrepreneurs”. more
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Very nice Adam,
But then you've been sparky from the go.One thing whilst the use of the word "journalist" is appropriate in situating your argument, could it be that the finder of news will not be called a "journalist" - an arcane word?
And could it be that if The Media Standard Trust et al work through a trusted-kite mark system to acknowledge journalists who meet the new "standard", it's likely they'll be further fragmentation, such that old style journalism will persist, new will hold its own and then there's the unknown?
The unknown presents an interesting scenario. I remember working in the dotcom boom of 2000 in Soho and whilst we knew web Mk II as we called it would happen, we couldn't envisage this.
Now, if we trend extrapolate, much of what we see now has intensified in the last five years of the web's more or less populous 15 years and the next disruption/liberation could be even more startling.
For IM6's, one of the names I have given it :Game theory; News grids; 3d web (metaverse) facilitated by game graphic cards; new non sequential narratologies, and greater filtering could be the norm. And the delivery of news could increasingly occupy public spaces.
In 2001 Viacom asked our company then to work on something called XTP ( Cross track projection) - visuals on the underground. Public space, also was a key point in Beyond Broadcast- Media Futures 2000.
Professional filters seems to be something lecturers will become, according to one former Vice Chancellor advising the UK government. I have got that link somewhere.
SMARTlab's ethos of practice-based learning is captured in Kate Sicchio's performance at Stratford, East London. Here for her amazing showreel.
"What's it like?", he asked. There was a hesitant pause.
"No, really what's it like?"
In between the question and the actual answering, several contemplations computed, like the flapping time-change mechanism of a train station's timetable.
Either way you wouldn't understand was the final thudding-to-a-stop thought.
"It's OK!"
But that's such a cop-out, such a disinterested lie.
In the film The Matrix, Morpheus says to Neo: "Unfortunately no one can be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself".
That readily sums it up: "Unfortunately no one can be told what a PhD is. You have to experience it yourself".
Welcome to the house of pain you %$£!*&^$£@@!***!
Apologies!
There is no experience I can share with you that comes close to the emotional and physical ride of this study programme.
It does not discriminate. It does not favour. It hurts your sinuses as if you were tussling with nature's elements and it leaves you exhilarated when one of its several summits has been breached.
At this point there are two broad reactions to this description. This moment where you are in reading this text you can either say: stop whining or phew.
Frankly both work. That's why this programme is unique.
You hate it, love it, would quit, would push further, and those feelings are wrapped in a big ball of energy, that releases unpredictably. A Nova of sorts.
SMARTlab week
SMARTlab morning warm-up sessions. A stand-up massage on each other in the lab's space.
One giant step.. It's been a week of that. Small steps, and the one large one, working towards finding a new plateau for creativity.
For the last year and half we have gathered. Some have been gathering much longer, much much longer, but the motive is the same.
To scratch that itch. The question: Is what I'm doing, what I am about to tell you about, does it constitute new knowledge?
Can that knowledge, your epistemology, can it stand the rigorous bludgering of others - those with bigger shoes before you.
PhD student Will Pearson takes five, before the next programme.
The answer is not yet forthcoming, but the belief matched by physical work is what will provide a window of exploration.
No one can tell you what it's like.
There are many programmes, but I can tell you of only one, and draw on comparative hearsay and the grapevine: SMARTlab.
SMARTlab is The Matrix. It is the matrix of the most incredible people you will ever come across. Not just, as I'll explain in what they know, but, and this is crucial, in what they give. SMARTlab is the gift lab, run and managed by extraordinary people, whose head Prof Liz Goodman, for the uneasiness of sycophancy I shall just nod and say enuff said.
The ethos draws people from different strides of life; many accomplished at something over many years, thirty is not unusual, at their peak.
And now they are trying to wrap that in theory. When we stand in a circle, it's very easy, as many have testified to say: "Frankly I don't know why I am here".
The Meaning of Life
Bruce Damer, like everyone else embodies this selfless learning, a figure whom on the other hand will leave you in awe and utterly breathless. His background includes NASA. His PhD addresses quite literally the meaning of life.
Bruce is creating the EVO grid which will simulate the beginning of life and how we came to be.
That line in the Matrix rings in my head when Cypher exclaims: "Jesus", after asking Neo if he knows why he is here.
Chrissie Poulter researching theatre games unpacks one of four bags replete with books to demonstrate the level of work involved in away weeks at the SMART lab
A glance to the left and there is award winning Cathy O'Kennedy, dancer and choreographer, researching The Devine Normal. I cried at her presentation this year.
It was so, so beautiful as she spoke about her influences, her own journey and read out her mission in what reached my ears in poetic verse.
Minutes earlier she had danced mellifluously. The dance alone I would have paid to watch in London's West End in the same frame of mind not to long ago I watched the acclaimed Sylvie Guillem & Russell Maliphant's PUSH at Sadler's Wells Theatre.
Steve Cooney's research in Melody and Rhythm eloquently deconstructs music, to show how he has devised teaching aids to understand scale, how the Beattles used chords to set the mood followed by those meaningful lyrics, where in Steve sighed to say that's the brilliance of song writing.
A day earlier Steve had been playing with Sinead O'connor . Here he is on the right in this video with Sinead.
"What was the set up like it Steve?" I asked.
"Oh there were three of us on stage playing to a big audience. I imagined big as an understatement, something more Glanstonburyish.
And it goes on forty to fiftish cohorts at full strength sharing this space, presenting to each other critiquing - all with the aim of adding something that little bit or lot more to what we know about what we know so far.
All the while we are guided by a team of experts.
Interactive videojournalism And somewhere in there I'm wrestling with my demons, 25 years of media condensed into this singularity of studies aided by many extraordinary supervisors, particularly Dr Chris Hales and Dr Sher Doruff.
Can I show how video through various constructions induce different emotions? No that's not the PhD, but an aspect of solo videojournalism wrapped around an individual with the skill set of online innovative spatial production.
We've just completed our annual retreat, one of three in the year at UEL, living off 4 hours sleep for the last five days - 6 hours the previous weeks prepping thesis chapters and the rest.
So this is in way an introduction to the group, and a journey,and something I intend to come back to again and again in the hope of continuing that ethos that drives us all; creative journey's that expand the mind.
Not enough will be said today that captures the greatness of Walter Cronkite who passed away at the age of 92.
To a generation before the 70s, the name won't mean much. But as the eulogies flow, some of which I imagine I'll keep ( I have cuttings from Alistair Cooke), it's a moment to reflect on the stirrings of journalism.
Bombastic and supine now, wrapped in commercialism bereft of objectivity and values, the journalism Cronkite et al created was anything technical as we've come to know journalism.
It was so natural it was more an honest conversation.
Working at ABC News in the mid-90s, I was introduced to another bastion of the art of story telling, Peter Jennings. I recall it well, as I would not let his hand go.
There were things they did, some I imagine by default, but it served the profession well.
Cronkite, Murrows, Jennings, Bradley spoke in a tone that you understood and followed. The average speech speed is three words per second.
These news doyens shaved around 2 +. That didn't make it 'plonky' - an uninvited term for broadcasters because they knew how to sell a story through the sonorous power of the voice.
And when that didn't work, the odd tilt of the head, gesture telegraphed their understanding.
Shout Journalism Today, much of journalism is about shouting the loudest, literally too. It's often said on the hustings, that journalist broadcast to other journalists and editors seeking their next job.
Complex arithmetic sentences obscure true meanings when simpler language would do.
The Cronkites' were folk of the wire service. Words cost in the transmission, so they needed to be judicious. Furthermore, their copy often left the bureaux with little or no change the other end.
You try telling the tragic story of an event, delivered in that inverted pyramidal style, where there are no changes. It's Amadeus in journalism.
Yes the world has changed, and it started slowly, that is the decline of journalism, from the day they let the number crunchers in. When accountants started to run networks.
But there are still those we trust who bear the crest of the old guard, who respect the rules and tell us their truths, that we often agree with.
And no matter any number of tweets, blogs, their word stands tall in a sea of sometimes, almost often, white noise.
When I grow up I'd like to become a reporter just like them. Being honest and humble is probably a good start. The journalism bit you can learn.
End
David, a former broadcaster has worked for the BBC, Channel 4, WTN and ABC News ( South Africa). In 1994 he became a videojournalist. Today he is an Artist-in-Residence at the South Bank. You can find his latest video on his site www.viewmagazine.tv
How many times have you heard it said to a young person:" Stop mucking ( playing) around.
We get so wrapped up with ourselves that our own values : seriousness are foistered on others.
Play is an important constituent of child growth, but when and why does it stop?
Our propensity to play is counterbalanced by accusations of immaturity.
Today, I had a rather playful session with Chinese student and academic from our own China media centre.
The theme, the difference between seeing and perception which sits at the heart of visual intelligence.
The power of the image Here's an observation I'm fascinated by at the moment. Given how image-based we are as a 21st century community e.g web, tv, posters, mags etc, it's remarkable how little we are taught about visual perception.
So today I played out a series of test to show for instance, the power of association: things that look the same are grouped. things that are stable are accepted.
What's really pertinent about all this is the notion hat we could be on the cusp ( could be 100 years, 10 years or less) on a higher consciousness.
We got it in the 13th, 17th and 20th century and as we approach a critical mass in visual literacy. It will happen, we may leap frog a means of communications that makes a nonsense in what we're doing at present.
I find that riveting and had a lot of time and books to eat into whilst on a walking holiday in Wales.
It rather underpins what at the moment is either the norm for you or something to be in awe of ie videojournalism.
I rather guess the next level of visual journalism playing about with semiotics ie language et al is already taking shape, but rather slowly.
The point where journalism - a fixed narrative - opens up to the provocation of reaction through art. It may not seem as barmy as it appears, for montage almost a 100 years old was conceived as cinematic art.
I have had this itch for a while, and further more have rationalised how my applied chemistry past could play an important role. So there's a message at hand.
Unengaged - photo taken at Art Gallery opening in Beirut. Why does this work? And how does the videojournalism need to be informed? Bit more space to the right.
If videojournalism gave over itself to qualitative empiricism we might tap into something science has known for millenia.
OMG! It is the phrase that proceeds the sight of wonderment.
As an Organic Chemistry graduate, I'd mumble it almost every week we entered the lab.
Benzene, the equivalent of Final Cut, waited patiently for a new substrate to come in contact with it.
Then it did its magic, often on its own in the right conditions, sometimes requiring the right intervention, the deft editing hand pushing video clips around that would yield the right film.
Benzene was also the Jack the Ripper of the chemical world, highly elusive in its manifestation.
In basic chemistry, we know oxygen and hydrogen makes water and is fairly stable. We can simulate the molecules with lego bricks enough to make a 6 year old understand.
Benzene was a different matter. To grasp it you had to as Kekule did be highly creative, even a bit mad. You see Benzene exists in a dynamic state of flux between two similar but different chemical structures.
Madder still when you left the practice of the lab and went metaphysical talking nucleophilic reactions, you entered the philosophical world of chemical reactions. OMG, there I go again.
And then you learn that power of empiricism. Science got better by testing and retesting. And each time a "rule" came along, there were others looking to finesse or even break them putting themselves up for peer scrutiny.
Beirut by night, Cheek by Jowl. Commercialism rubs shoulders with the legacy of Beirut's struggles.
In videojournalism we can go molecular as well. How do you get good pictures for instance. The trainer you're working with will tell you "rule of 3rds". But why is it 3rd and not 5th?
And might it be considered that the rule of 3rd was a matter of convenience for George Field one of the progenitors that lent the rule, which really is a guide.
That's not to say the technique isn't invaluable and is responsible for some of the best images around but packaging as it is makes good commercial sense.
The rule of 3rds is benzene inside the lab. So what happens when we go to the drawing board?
For that we have to indulge in cognitive reasoning. The science of seeing and perceiving. You see words on this page, but what you perceive is something different. How do you make sense of these words, and why will its context mean different things to different people?
See you next week
+++++ David is off to the Welsh valleys for some RnR and great walks across the felds.
Been a busy couple of weeks and there's no let up. A number of things are planned which may have some currency.
I was at the Beyond Broadcast conference and interviewed some of the key speakers. web TV launches are nothing special nowadays but Don Boyle's venture has the element of station launch about it, so what is Hibrow TV?
Rob Chiu, one of the UK's most talented and young motion graphics artists. He regularly presents at Flash on the Beach and OFFF, shot his first short story with a crew and high end production gear which included Red cameras. I shot a behind the scenes and should put that together soon.
Why online tv makers fail to understand audiences. There's something like the law of diminishing returns here in that the nuclear proliferation in video and videojournalism non curated appears to be baffling for users.
Dipping in and out of a service like Youtube may be fine, but many still want a dialogue with the brand. Simplicity is good. That explains the ipod and bbc iplayer. I'll be returning to my own site and deconstructing it for this purpose.
And fusing video and online narraritives. this year I have set the Masters student the challenge of telling stories to pull in interest, how are they doing?
So just some of the things I'll be looking at in the days ahead. Not to mention material from Beirut and an important discussion on leadership from one of the UK's leading innovative leaders.
As a young girl Jude Kelly would stage plays and charge family and friends to attend. She wanted to be a director. She became one, a very successful one.
But she says it was not about her per se, but about the act of giving something to others.
Her beliefs have made her one of the most sought after directors and personnel in the arts, not to mention the works she's accomplished as the cultural director of the London 2012 Olympics.
In front of a collective that nurtures leadership qualities, she offered a candid and personnel testament of leadership and what's expected from good leaders.
This could quite easily have been a TED talk, inspiring in its content, deeply illuminating in its delivery.
"I purposefully today wore clothes so you could see my body shape, because line of sight is important in judging people", she said at the beginning.
Leadership, very much like the arts is about innovating, finding spaces and creatively filling them, she concluded.
You can watch the film I shot about her this event in a couple of weeks.
Viewmag’s David at one of Beirut’s thriving Art Bazaars, which comes alive at night. TRY HARDER - is the title of a short film
A personal poem
Returning from Beirut, I'm reminded why I wanted to tell factual stories.
But I should try harder.
I recall in 92 how driven by idealism I made my way to South Africa, looking for the next generation.
And knew then I should try harder.
There as with Beirut, a state was shaking of the yoke of its perceived image, pleading for the documentarists:
to try harder.
To see past the news, the simplified mimetic discourse which feeds a cycle of recycled news.
That's why we should try harder.
For invariably, in all communities, states, our minds ferment more complex thoughts which require the light of day.
To show just how hard we are trying.
And in many cases it's been driven by the young, the successor generation,
who are trying really hard.
Their endeavors often go unnoticed, their voice drowned by three letter acronyms of news internationalists.
Are THEY really trying hard?
It is not the job of news, the argument goes, to tell anything other than that of news value.
But try this hard description for size then.
What is news?
Videographers, artists, bloggers, photojos, journalists, designers have within their reach the potential to show how THEIR view can turn yours on its axis.
Hard. Try. Try. Hard. Though I might add not through propaganda.
What is art is a perennial question ?
That which challenges us unlike no other to perceive beyond our station, to reprocess ingrained thoughts.
And that's why it matters.
Returning from Beirut I've rekindled the flame of why story telling keeps me awake.
Because the more we try, the easier it gets.
And the more easier it gets, the more we should most definitely try harder.
------ I sat down and brain dumped the above this morning, digitising footage for which I plan to make a short film from Beirut. Sadly, I hadn't planned any story or interviews, so really haven't done myself justice ( I was here for other, specific, reasons looking at the work of other VJS) But in any case, I figure I'd like to go back soon and in this case I should try harder.
There's lots I can say, but alas don't quite have the time at the mo, but please drop by over the weekend when I'll round up my visit to Beirut and to one of the top newspapers and there incredible team of Videojournalists- a real joy.
A tad long perhaps, but this interesting film frames the practice of Vjing. That's video jockeying.
Interestingly, it's now a recurrent theme. "I'm a VJ", which then follows a period of acknowledgment, only for at some point someone to say:" Oh I thought you were a VJ".
I am, but that's video journalist.
So what came first in that entangled debate of the chicken and the egg?
Though the term seems to have become popular around 2000 ie video jockey, you could argue early video artists and even the psychadelics of the 60s might have called themselves such.
Yes it wasn't video, and sound would arrive later, but the lead into special effects around Vaudeville were early incarnations of using projected visuals in live entertainment.
Equally video journalism, the practise, not necessarily the use of the exact tools has its roots bang on film's emergence, with the bolexetal playing a hand in where we are in today.
In practice these semiotics and simulacrum are never quite clear cut, but there is a great deal of common ground and appreciation of form.
One uses music to carry narrative and motion; the other uses narrative to inform music choice motivated by the performance. And then when you watch a video documentary by a video jockey about videojockeying, what then?
And even where there are no obvious mind melds, there's every reason to look at this burgeoning form and ask what can be borrowed, inculcated into either.
Experimenting in the grey zones
A VJ piece live at the Purcell Rooms to Classical Music - the Shirley Thompson ensemble
It's in the cracks of semiotics where some of the most interesting and passionate debates take place as much as new developments.
Whether its in the basement jack or the multimillion pound extravaganza roadshow of U2, or the corporaredom of the AV industry, to the heightened launch of the next BMW series behind discordant visual themes, or any number of the zeigeist VJs to the film makers turned installation artists like Peter Greenaway, it's the experimentation of the form that is vital.
Incidentally, one thing that is very common with my shoots, is something called the dance - an as live shoot of a film, bit like drama, where I am being influenced by narrative and music.
You'll find quite a few on viewmagazine.tv and the recent Fight Club piece (posted two day's earlier) or Obama video projected live over Shirley's Classical score are examples of how live VJ videojournalism mixes its form.
So what came first VJ or VJ.
Yes I agree with you. Who cares? So long as you come away feeling nourished.
An Iranian woman struggles to exit a wagon in Tehran's Metro. Image by YannisKontos at YannisKontos.com
The world is turning on its axis and in reference to Bushism's legacy, axis needs to reclaim its more appropriate usage.
Bluster-diplomacy is giving way to the more refined process of language nuances. Is there a cultural-socio shift really in the offing?
Obama's Cairo speech, Netanyahu's response, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's announced probe into Iran's recent elections. On the lighter side, Buckingham Palace planting it's own vegs in a new allotment??
These in retrospect may be the normal on goings as the world turns on its, yes, axis; night follows day, weeks to months and a new bout of things to deal with.
Yet if there is change a foot, we still haven't cracked the one which gives journalism sleepless nights: the deteriorating health of newspapers, with no cash injection life support to keep it going. Conversations are being held.
Hell, some as high up in Government, but it follows that all too familiar sound of the few discussing what's percieved good for the many.
It may not be the right subject bed fellow, but when the conversation started against Facebook'sownership of your material, it went nuclear, driven by you and I, then change happened. Actually a revert to common sense ground.
Perhaps, this pay-as-you-surf is not in our best interests.
But this thought was not what got me writing today. Though there is a relation. I've been clearing out my study; magazines and articles that date back to the early 90s, some in pristine condition.
The 1990s The late 90s came flooding back with a series or re finds and there in lay a lesson.
Does anyone remember First 9 months?
In 1999/2000 an amazing piece of work by a graphic designer doodling around with Flash 3/4 hit the web. It documented the journey of his first child - from conception to the final image of himself and wife.
First 9 Months was simply a stunning piece of work.
It had not been done before. Flash had not been used to the best of my knowledge in a way that brought together journalism, Graphics and motion graphics.
And what about Hillman Curtis's multimedia promos and in particular his story, as I recall about a journey, not his, across Afghanistan ( I think!).
What made it so mesmerizing was the use of typography in telling a story. There was no Flash involved, but you kept reading. This was the era of the wild west, legendary Saul Bass's reincarnation through the work of graphic designer Brendan Dawes.
What was, did not exist before. There was no standard. It was fresh exciting, anarchic , banksyish, sometimes, but above all it dared to do it.
Do what?
It!
That's all changed somewhat, though you can still find clusters of "the thinkers". The serial idea brokers, who play the numbers game releasing as many great ideas that see the light and many perhaps that slow burned away.
What happens behind the scenes offers value, which we sometimes give scant regard to. When we get the headline idea, the news, that's it.
It's milked, before the cow runs dry and then is slaughtered. Innovation yields to commercialisation. One source of news and that even might do.
Behind the scene Obama's Cairo speech, Netanyahu's response, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's probe into Iran's elections are fantastic stories, but what lies either side of them provides the sort of needed context to understand the complexities of these crucial items.
No it's not about the big story per se, but watching Rageh Omar's brilliant Iran feature, interviewing ordinary ( small "O") people gave some idea of how the schism in a state reported for its overall control, could happen.
It's the "either side" of the dominant news that provides us with both context and revealing content, which is why White House photographer Pete D Souza's pictures are so compelling.
Rageh is a highly skilled programme maker, but his pleading with an Iranian music star for an interview gave the feature that of-the-cuff videojournalism moment and pathos of the film wanting to be everything that TV doc features aren't in being too rehearsed.
For that moment I even had a heart chuckle remembering the Rageh I bumped into time and time again as we were both attempting to launch our careers with the BBC African Service in 1992.
These small cameras we have access to are something much bigger than often I find from the value given them.
Yes, they have multiple functions indeed for the big story, and even the obscure ones, but above all, they should allow for stories, a bolder approach to producing, not performed in that metronomic way of news, but perhaps more reflective of the whys?
And that's an axis worth looking at in greater detail.
Some of them set the tone; early creatives undeterred about what you or I said, because frankly there was no standard.
No wait, what standard did exist they made up. But these weren't whims or wild guesses. They were gudied by their own strong sense of design and creativity
In the last 15 years I have been charting their progress, from subscribing from the first editions of Computer Arts International, Video Age, to attending some of the first One Dot Zeros.
And now? Why now, we've got all formulaic. Going back to basics and with a new look and feel to some of the videos and projects coming up here and on Viewmagazine.tv
There is an iteration of videojournalism as a newsgathering unit which has yet to find a widely acceptable lease of life.
I'm not referring to the individual. There are magnificent videojournalists around, but how it works as a unit and with a news agenda that delivers on a new approach to the audience.
David Brewer a fantastical media manager who's been behind some of the biggest online launches around e.g BBC, Al Jazeera, ITV, and CNN International gave a presentation in Podgorica, Montenegro.
I may show it here one day, but the essence of it was how a newsgathering unit becomes reliant on the "diary" by as much as 70%, when it should be driving its own news by that amount.
That's a lot of money and resources. Actually it's not and depends much on your underlying strategy at driving a well oiled news system.
At Miami University, the students' coverage of the Special Olympics targeting the family of the Olympians is an example of innovative reportage.
Videojournalism at its basic form is a a device to collate more material, but just like a burgeoning Net which is unrecognisable from the time I built my first web site in 1996, it is much much more.
The video I have posted provides a basis of that thinking, when I say it stands to be a language in itself.
Having worked for the BBC in radio and TV, Channel 4 News, WTN... I'll stop, but you'll get my point, videojournalism's operating practice has for me been an exercise in the modifying the strengths and revising the weaknesses of its related disciplines.
Motion graphics, photography, cinema, TV, radio, montage, online, social network, innovation and the Outtherenet - my own area of research.
But what makes me terribly excited is what might come from the interaction with artists - at the South Bank.
Here, perhaps is the opportunity to push again and new vigour outside that comfort zone we inhabit when co-opting technology.
And throughout the summer, I'll be looking to put on a few masterclasses and gatherings that seek to address some of these evolving issues.
See you there!
NB. If you're interested in training - you can contact me on Viewmagazine.tv
It is a humbling experience to be sat at a table surrounded by people who excel in their own fields to be told "why don’t you show your work".
This morning's meeting with some of the artists-in-residence at the south bank yielded such an occasion.
Humility is a word that often loses respect; we tend to forget this at conferences and the like.
There was Martin whose meme diagrams are works of fantastical scale and art; and Martin's new deal of the mind seeks to be the 21st century blue print for how creative talent can work us out of austerity.
Meeting people whom by dint of their presence may challenge sometimes your own epistemologies can be an experience. In the commercial world it can easily degenerate into bear bating.
You said videojournalism is better than broadcasting. what the *** do you know?
But in an artistic setting you’re allowed your space. Indeed the criteria amongst the gathering AIRS is to be nice.
Being nice helps, certainly for the newbies, but it's about being afforded creative space to say what you want and when.
An important lesson my alma mater share is everyone is addressed as senior, irrespective of the year you graduated. And if you know the lesson of the first captain and crew studies in the 70s, then enough said.
In ten minutes it is both futile and in my case an exercise in linguistic slaloms to tell my story, but it is an invaluable introduction to initiate further dialogue. For it’s through shared space and talk that we begin to pick out areas of interest and mine deeper.
And there's the theme of reciprocity.
Creative Audits Call it an audit; there is value in that, yet commercialism would sometimes have the quick fix.
Taking time out to explain is something I feel is done less well nowadays, and when it is it’s obfuscated in meetings about meetings and the power card: "here's my card... call me"
A couple of years ago my father passed away. I remember hurtling down the stretch between Kumasi and Accra, a section of which is known as the road of death for good reason, when our driver found himself sandwiched between two articulated trucks, as we all let out wails and screams.
I was being taken to see the queen mother of the village my dad had grown up in and indeed I’d spent some of my formative years.
Why were we going?
In part to pay our respect, but also to find that space to talk. And the queen mother, one of the humblest people I had ever met was a good listener and talker.
We sat on her balcony and she offered us water, which she retrieved herself. Yes she did have servants. And we spoke about the world, this and that, and left.
I often find myself reflecting on those times and others when in a big spacious place.
I left with several impressions this morning, a sense that I had found the queen mothers balcony, closer to home.
And for that I’m grateful. Grateful that I felt invigorated at a new chapter in learning and that it was not my story that mattered, but that I'm looking to engage in with everyone else in this new space of the mind.
It looks like something out of youtube, which in itself has its own aesthetic, but videojournalism film making is all about different forms and applying them.
I'd probably have preferred going handheld peaking. See 8 days or Reuters for a good example. but freeframing, is the dogsville of filming, surfing blindly not so much as looking for a set, but feeling it.
So this VJ shoot, most likely the only one you'll find on a non corporate site, of the BBCs recently appointed Head of Multimedia News raises a number of things.
Firstly deep thanks to the Mary for granting me the time. She's extremely busy. We met in Podgorica, Montenegro on a training presentation programme.
Mary wasn't excpecting a camera when I got to the BBC and neither was I really in the mood to do a "crafted" shoot.
The intention was for a show around the BBC's new multimedia studios, so while I had my camera frankly its incidental all the way through and I never make any real attempt to focus up or frame. Mostly it's being framed by spatial awareness.
It's evident because Mary and I are actually having a conversation, rather than an interview, and the camera is almost always at waist level focusing up, with me throwing the odd glance at the viewer.
Freeframing Freeframing is something that's catching fire and the real proponents of this shoot so carefreely, that so what if you hive of a head or get the composition wrong.
If you're a trained VJ it's more difficult, but there is a time and place for freeframing and I have come across many instances whereby it's the only option for the shoot.
In this case, given time constraints and the attention given to the conversational exchange, I'd let this through.
By the way, at Channel One we use to freeframe a lot. Bear in mind we were using BVW betas with no flip out screens, so the question is how did you know what your framing looked like ona fast turnaround shoot.
A more refined version of freeframing is peaking - cf 24. and this short piece on Reuters launching their mobile phone.
I'm going to be engineering variants of this following a summer programme of being an artist-in-residence at the South Bank supporting work which I'm feeding in from my research.
Next week I'll post a tour given to me by the head of the media department at Cairo Univerity - where President Obama has just visited. Here I'm in shoot mode.
