A tipped hat from Brian Storm of media storm

I don't do compliments very well. If you're doing something you truly love, then the demons and angels are between you and yourself. You become your worst critic. That said I'm grateful to anyone for the conversation to share thoughts.

In Miami last year Brian Storm of media storm was one such encounter. You don't need me to tell you their brand status - a true powerhouse in the new age of multimedia journalism.

So I truly was taken aback when inside one of my questions he started to talk about my work. It's always heartening when anyone does that. That's the strange power of the web.

In broadcasting you took it in your stride: I'm only doing my work. In digital times, one's reach is somewhat farther - though that it self is a fallacy.

I had four odd memorable years sharing ideas with the Press Association and its videojournalism programme. And once in a while an ol student will ping me to share their aspirations. All good, really, all good.

I guess if we limeys could do it better, we'd be more outgoingly expressive of compliments - some how it's not quite cricket. But the odd reflection now and then can't hurt.

You can find Brian's interview on viewmagazine here

p.s Brian if you this crosses your eyes I'm still trying to get hold of you :)

How Ruper Murdoch's charging strategy changed online.

When history reflected this much talked about saga, the result was unequivocal" Murdoch won.

He did so not by subtlety of persuasion, but by brute force - something those who have squared up to him in boardrooms and been on the sharp end of him in the unions e.g. Wapping, know all too well.

Taking on the world was a different matter, but Murdoch, extending Foucaults concept that power begets more power, had more to gain, than lose - rewriting history and the bloggersphere as the man who saved journalism and kicked those "petulant free-loading Net kids" back to their craggy bedrooms.

When the pecuniary seed was sown for paying to read online journalism, critics laughed, many waited to see what the grand ol' newspaper tycoon had as his deck. They waited, and waited. Some penned blogs ridiculing his approach - the non-strategy.

But they forgot the measure of the man. They forgot his radical and unheard of strategy to towards the British Premiership; its history reveals

The League decided to take the radical step of assigning television rights to Sky TV. At the time charging fans to watch televised sport was a relatively new concept...

They forgot his battles at Wapping or any number of thousands of deals he'd won and lost.

Quietly while net experts derided him, the industry held its collective breath wishing him to succeed. Murdoch's success would be theirs in a climate when mostly all newspapers were running on red.

If we can get the news elsewhere, particularly at the BBC, why bother with his newspapers, was the argument. Also unlike time-sensitive news ( financial) it carried no premium. Other than being written by experienced, expensive journalists.

It wasn't soon after until his populist News of the World went paywall, then the nation's populist red top, the Sun and across the pond the the New York Times followed. Then the damn broke and en masse they followed erecting walls.

Professional journalism had stayed an imminent execution, but more importantly forced the argument that it needs to be paid for. You want quality, you pay.

Murdoch's strategy was simple, no different from a General testing the defences of his opposing force with strikes and retreat, from the siege of Malta to the likes of Operation Just Cause when with loud music blaring from speakers, the instructions were simple: just wait.

Wait!

Few media moguls could afford such a strategy. Here's the maths. Go paywall lose out on advertising, lose customers and dollars/pounds.

So how did he cushion the blow? By getting the more profitable wings of News corp to shore up his losses. But how many subscribers could the newspaper realistically have expected from potential registrants, having lost 2/3rds of its audience in 2010.

Dan Sabbagh, formerly the media editor of the Times, puts that figure at 150,000 user between free subscribers and online registrants of 15,000. This may have seemed paltry, compared to the Time's advertising income, measurably more, but at £2 a throw for a week, that works out at £120,000 a month, more than a million pounds a year.

1995, the web and newspapers



As this rare piece of footage shows way back in 1995, me presenting the news, a year after the Internet and web eased its way into newspapers, the fundamental mistake they made back then was, as with most new platforms e.g. CDRoms, kiosks, was to give their assets away.

But they had to. They Net was new and big news. It was free, and you'd be damned as a newspaper proprietor for not taking advantage of a free medium to sell you wares - which became the rub.

The Times online in 1995 attracted 30,000 online subscribers - a massive number for those times. It was a land grab. By 2000 newspapers, though off to a good start, would be playing catch up with the intelligent web.

But by 2000s the mystic of web journalism had disappeared. What the newspapers couldn't fathom, they could buy in and that's when the debate started to turn.

Profit margins of 15-30% were now under threat. The economy was on a bender. Murdoch had lost in his acquisition of MY Space and now someone needed to pay. The papers oomed and aarmed. The New York Times did and then retreated, but Murdoch had the bit between his teeth and as his spat with websites and google grew, it became obvious this was personal.

And so long as his pockets allowed, he'd bunker down. And the longer he bunkered down, the more others joined him. To the point, news or primary valued-news undertaken by all the major newspapers recognised its premium status and went paywall.

And that ladies and gentlemen in 2016 was how we came to pay for the web.

P.s Just so you know, I'm no Murdochite. This piece emerged from studies I'm doing independently for a Phd study around TV and supervening processes and trending.

The science of new journalism from multi, trans, and cis

Science sheet - found in my old suitcase - diagrams to solve organic chemistry puzzles

I graduated in Applied Chemistry, and truthfully by the second year constantly wondered what I was doing. It was too theoretical, too abstract. What job would I pursue when I finish ? Because the idea of standing in a lab checking samples filled me with dread.

Organic Chemistry, a heavy component of the degree, though was CSI Miami in waiting. We'd test samples on compounds we'd made running them through a GCMS and then Infra red gauge - each filled in a piece of the puzzle for the compound you wanted to name.

Aha, there's a peak at 1700, that's an OH molecule. It's the same as a doctor reading their chart.

The science of journalism
Science, reads the world, with an eye to explain everything. Hence Hawkin's recent super nova claim that the universe can now, heretically, be explained without God.

In the past, science solved the mystery that the world was round, or through Galileo that things fell down, worked on later by Newton, before passing through to Einstein who posited the theory of relativity.

Journalism has had its fair share of scientific involvement and enquiry. The camera was an object for scientific recording to prove a point e.g. Eadweard Muybridge's galloping horse.

The interview is both a legal concept of truth abeted by science's non disputable notion of truth.

The report, film, you're making is wrapped with science. It's responsible for the algorithms in FCP. The colours you see that animate the sense boils down to the occular science. I could go on.

Last year, I interviewed one of the most venerated figures in this evolving media, Henry Jenkins.

Jenkins coined the word "Trans" in describing an aspect of media. Effectively meaning literally in latin, "the other side". Trans was being used to elaborate on an unfolding trend of different media, supporting one another, though distinct in their own right.

Yesterday, I had a back to basics moment. My Applied Chemistry matter, yielded an interesting question.

Trans Debate
Trans emerges in science from Organic Chemistry with compounds that share the same chemicals but are mirror images of themselves, isomers. When the distinguishing compounds say H20 and Cl are on opposite planes they're referred to as Trans.

When they're on the same plane, they're called Cis.

The conversation then comes back to journalism or media. If Trans Media is about different objects fitting together likes some transformer, what's Cis?

The references is that it's the same. The article you're writing that I attempt to replicate in video - that's cis, but what are the defining qualities.

It matters because science has, and can be used to provide us with answers to questions that lurk, that have not yet become the zeitgeist.

Transmedia has and it makes sense for the media practitioner of the future attempted five different ways to catch your attention. but within each of those five ways there's a Cis that allows us to extrapolate, mine deeper for questions.

It may be that it's the cis that holds the report to account. Haiti, Pakistan, China - places that have suffered crisis in earthquakes and floods, but once they disappear from the TV screen, we the viewer deem them as "not relevant anymore".

Cis becomes the continuum, the sequel and prequel to contextualise within that media, what we didn't know, but adds to our knowledge.

Cis is the manner in which through video hyperlinking we can knit relevant media and reports of others to share.

It's a thought, and I more than think we'll come by it more aggressively, if not in name, but in practice.

I'm at Apple stores London talking in say, November. By then I should have something to show, but please do weigh in with your thoughts.

Photos to share

View from ...... (behind my study)


Book of light.... (Expo)

Shop till you drop... ( Shanghai shopping centre)

Road to nowhere... actually Wales

That's why it's called the Valleys

Making of a Multimedia Journalist - and Trans Journalist

Interview with James Woolsey, CIA head in the 90s

[cross post from viewmagazine.tv

Very few words have exerted a strain on modern journalism as "multimedia", which has come to symbolise something akin to next generation reportage.

Within the profession it means different things; in other disciplines, such as graphic design, it connotes something wider than the journalism term.

The BBC may deliver multimedia news, with different elements, but is it multimedia in offering multi-entry, multi faceted news wrapped together to deliver a far richer unitary experience?

Self contained packages such as Filmmakers in Residence reveal the contemporary mesh of text, sound and video - the concept of new cinema as envisagd by Marinetti's 1916 "The Futurist Cinema".

This single story approach is the limited experience Hollywood gives us through the release of selling its films e.g. Shylaman's movie, Skyline and previously, one of my favourites, now deprecated Kingdom.

Our prediliction today at mastering new tools e.g. blogs, podcasts and video, mainly an economic production imperative makes us multiskilled, but no more adept to understanding a new combined language.

Does this all matter? If we believe language evolves, that we seek fresh ways of engaging users who are more media literate, then yes.

**Breaking the rules **

But then even multimedia becomes defunct and the concept to engage you, the 21st Century futuristic cinema evolves into Transmedia.

Where Multimedia in the contemporary sense is univocal - one package - trans correlates different media, providing different entry points and experience. You build from the beginning the total experiences.

One of the first to do this was US Series Homicide Life on the Street, where you could help solve a murder online, and see how that was written into the US network show. The Matrix then raised the stakes e.g. Comics, Games, Animation, Movie, online.

The practice of IM Videojournalism - a multimedia transition to Transmedia, is being updated on the following the pages over the next few weeks.

From the IMVJ decree, interviews with the likes of MIT Transmedia expert Henry Jenkins, to listing some of the formidable pract-itioners e.g. Rich Kocci in this area, and some of my work, such as the award winning 8 Days.

Trans, as much as Multimedia involves modularity of thinking, an imbrication of ideas, and an understanding of your audience's behaviour. It is the media set to grow alongside the many platforms still evolving.

Conversation continues on viewmagazine.tv

Mr President - how can we help. A crisis from nowhere

Picture the scene at the Oval Office. It's 8.45 a.m fresh from the daily security briefing from the NIS, FBI and CIA.

In the room, Home security, Mrs Clinton and dept heads, national security advisers, Defence advisers, Religious leaders, television producers, press advisers and a political strategist.

The President walks in: "OK lets cut to the chase, what do we do?"

A Pentecostal preacher is a problem the president does not need in the face of lasting damage it will do for US foreign relations and the small matter of President Obama's poll ratings.

Defence advisers have made it clear the ramifications to US troops will be cataclysmic. The sight of a burning Qur'an will not allow for intellectual distinguishing arguments. All of a sudden the pastor to the civvie in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq is the embodiment of all America.

Moderate Islamists will be stretched in their understanding of why this was allowed to happen.

"But he is the President, he could stop this anytime!" will be the universal chorus.

It's a sickening, worrying thought to think one man, with a deep-seated hatred of Islam is the poster face of the US.

For TV and the press , they can't make this go away but can they starve the pastor of the oxygen he needs?. A media blackout. That would mean the big networks working in concert. At the most reduce the item to a 20 second voicer.

The indies might catch these inflammatory pictures online, but it's the CNNI, Sky and BBC - international networks which the WH will foremost be thinking about. Question is whether some networks like Fox who could syndicate pictures, will fall in line.

Alternatively, but its unlikely at this stage, news works by diaries to plan for big events, by putting their productions into action way in advance. The absence of a pre-planed news on the 13th has provided the pastor with the window he needed.

The newspapers call this a spoiler. Come up with something which pushes that news of its pedestal, reducing it to the media-fame of a desperate pastor.

This issue transcends bi-partisan politics seeing GOP and D'crats working together, except ....
...the right of the party may see reasons to sit on their hands and let the president handle it. Your bad! Well not true, but its his watch.

First ammendment rights vs a crime to insight racial hatred - the lawyers have their work cut out for them. And whether by default or design, the pastor's playing down any rhetoric which gives the law more teeth to keep him down.

The right have found a soft underbelly of the president. The dilemma cuts to a lecture 101 of public relations and ethics. The might of the Oval office Vs A small, hitherto unknown church with no more members on a good day than the combined line up of a game of football, American football.

So, says Obama's advisers, we can't be seen to be too heavy, so the strategy is without appeasement to have someone talk to "this pastor".

Home affairs is now looking up the names of parishioners, whom unlike their pastor, may not understand what the aftermath of this will be. "May" is the operative word. "Will he listen to you?", goes the telephone conversation.

The last ditch attempt involves home security working to the premise that the site, where this despicable event is to take place is destined a site of national security, cordoning of the area. That will take some coordination, but it's not an out-of-reach scenario.

So in the meantime it's a wait and see. As a former television news producer, as we speak it's more than likely, correspondents and producers are being placed strategically throughout the Arab speaking world.

This may be a US issue, but the dissemination of this falls squarely on the news media. They'll have to check their conscious and the consequence of talking up and showing someone who in PR terms has played them.

When you pick up the camera - as a videojournalist consider who's watching!

This is a matter of record, interviewing the great Quincy Jones, but who's watching?

It would a gross underestimation to say media news is at a diffused crossroad.

The networks continue to lose figures, with hard data from the likes of Business Insider and one study after another tells us something we already know. No news organsation has as yet cracked any discernible strategy.

The crux for the super News is beyond upgrades in the graphics, newsroom set, and personality-driven news presenters and reporters to stem the flow

For the teleported vision of news and its concurring costs, the dilemma is one mimicked in related genres such as docs, which has eased from science and legal frameworks of authenticity to their own branded reality: The observational doc to the reality show.

When you pick up the camera, those explicit choices, though hidden bring on hard choices.

Do you

• explicitly turn your camera into a tool for the simple recording, capturing truth of records by legal standards?
• or do you expressively become the film maker indulging aesthetic and style with truth?

Largely, the institutions with deep pockets e.g. the BBC will seek to maintain integrity through the news camera being a tool of science and uncontested truths. This requires training and investment to find that subtle form of performance.

Get it marginally wrong and the news becomes at worst boring, if no drama ensues. When there is seemingly no story what do you do? I had the privilege couple of days ago talking to a BBC senior figure.

The Videojournalism News Today
Present day audiences will just about sneak scheduled news, but unless the footage is dramatic, in which case it would have been accessed elsewhere, they'll eschew their appointment with the news.

The videojournalist, and I'm speaking from its manifest of 1994 ( Channel One TV) was sought to work the margins, not so much the primary what - which the big news outfits would cover - , but the how something occurred.

Here, aesthetic has more leeway, with the result the VJ can craft miniature films. And here is where the long and short tail audiences online have shown their appreciation.

There's no schedule, guarantee of appointment, but if its enjoyable non fiction, which works on the premise of most dramatic arc stories, of some form of populist resolution, the viewer and videojournalist both win.

There is no panacea for the fragmented loss of audiences, other than a wholesale shift to a semiotic which meets the zeitgeist requirement of your dominant audience - which for the moment may be baby boomers.

This differs for each territory and a bespoke approach is required as I have found working in Egypt (where Television is still strong); China, where investigative journalism is big business; and the UK, where purely on population figures, diversity and increased choice they'll test their braodcasters.

And the generations of 1990s who are unaware of the politics and in some cases the value of news proof versus news aesthetic, will look to sate their appetite elsewhere for news ( The Star Trek effect) . Historically young groups have always been difficult to capture.

So when you pick up your camera consider your bipolar standing.

In my case an interview with Quincy Jones as a record may amount to very little. What you may want to see is innovation within its content, by which it means I'm forced to weigh up aesthetics and creativity of content against scientific truth to win over the audience.

Mmmm

Viewmagazine's Videojournalism DNA grid

Here for bigger version download

1. Main site of viewmagazine.tv I build using CSS, dreamweaver and Flash. I have been using these since 1999. Source code is hugely important for bot penetration and google ranking. I restrict a number of bots raiding my site via robots.txt. The site is designed for ipod aesthetic, though I'll have to expand it to include HTML5.

2. EAT - Promos, motion graphics etc a form of visual music cut is one of the many iterations of videojournalism. Understanding how to communicate a narrative with pictures and sound. In CSI Miami, music breaks of this nature are regularly deployed.

3. BBC at its best. In the 90s the BBC pioneered a series of shows that revolutionised BBC programme making. Not only is this still present today, but many of its staff have become big names in the industry. The programme Reportage, was highly stylised and editorial.

Its nearest comparison is Current.tv. Reportage had a unique way of programme making and 'pulling sot" that created real watchability. This piece is about Britain's young brain drain, that I'm reporting on.

4. Filmminute: an outstanding one minute global film festival. They wanted an online show, so in less than a week shot over three continents and working with their exec producer Sabaa Qua, I put together this show. This is something that as a videojournalist I believe you should be able to do: conceive a programme and shoot it. At Channel One, the UK's first and only VJ station, all the programmes were made with the Videojournalism concept

5 Technological camera determinism. They say its all in the gear, that's just part of the story. The camera I'm using goes back to principles of early film and the use of say the Arri Flex and fixed lenses. Zoom lens were introduced into cameras to give the film maker more freedom, but it also took away a huge aesthetic and craft in lens technology.

That needs revisiting. There's a reason we still find the movies attractive; the cameras they use being one of many. I'm using a converter and a couple of prime lens with a JVC

6 The Artist and Talks: Viewmagazine contains a number of videos where I have been fortunate to give talks, these are samples at Apple Stores UK, SXSW, World Association of Newspapers and at the National Press Club in Washington.

How do you film yourself and get multiple angles. I can often time events in my talk that allow me to focus on particular subjects. In the last year having become an artists in residence at the Southbank, the boundaries of Art and Journalism are becoming fascinatingly more defused.


7. Reputation Management. A growing feature of the web particularly faced with the many talented individuals, who are themselves brand. I shared a stage with CNN's Christine Amanpour and told her "the Amanpour brand" through television already had a presence which could easily be transferred to the web.

But what about you? You're good at what you do, but beyond your immediate circle who knows? In my broadcasting days I produced Jon Snow, so when I left he provided me with this video recommendation. It's branding by proxy, and I believe has little to do with self aggrandisement, but serves the same function as Linked.

One of my grads worked for Sir David Frost. Frost I'm told liked him. By the time he told me, my advice came too late. He'd missed an opportunity to be endorsed by him. Recommendations may nto get you the job but make others feel comfortable about your credibility.
Included in my batch are Blogger and Professor Jeff Jarvis and Media Storms Brian Storm


8. Promo and Assignments: I once had a call to ask if I could produce an ad for a US-based client destined for CNN International in 12 hours with no brief, no funds etc. I named my price and set about recruiting a team: voice over artists, graphics artist and a studio to work through the night. This is where videojournalism training circa 1994 was a boon.

My training took three months, but it was also built on a foundation of news and current affairs with the likes of BBC Reportage and Newsnight. Today I'm still learning. Please don't be fooled into thinking after a week that's it. That intense training you get - even over a year - should be the spark to continue to innovate. The commercial got to CNN spot on time and aired many times through out the day.

In this section I'll also highlight promos made for World Press Photographer Yannis Kontos and my time hired by the undisputed world heavyweight champion of the world Lennox Lewis to film and create a series of promos for him in his fight with Tyson in Memphis.

9. The first causality of war is truth, but many of us still push to towards realism in war. Embedded Videojournalism is one aspect. In this section I show video and talk about Nato and other EU defence executives desire to understand journalism by running global military training between them and inviting a select group of journalists to report a war you've probably never seen or heard of.

In one of the pioneering programmes I acted as editor to a team of 25 journalists from around the world. The news we made was created and on the spot satellited to Military executives in England observing flaws and making their own recommendations

10. Videojournalism and hard news, and the interview first popularised by Anstey's Housing problem (1935). But how do we create interviews as films. Errol Morris has accomplished this superbly as in Fog of War, but for the VJ.

Here I'm interviewing former head of the CIA James Woolsey after meeting him at one of the think tanks I belong to Chatham House. The interview took place in Washington and explored the why and what it took for graduates to join the clandestine service. It uses a range of film techniques to move the narrative.

11. Global Cinematic Reportage. Some of the packages listed here include: Reuters in house discussion on the mobile phone, a reconstructive face-building operation in Ghana and the Ferrari 599 GTI.

Once again I'm attempting to illustrate various narratives that should be open for the videojournalist. Intimacy is a given, speed of turnover is something I indulge in and teach others. It's not about preconceived thoughts, but how you shape your narrative to resemble your timeline with the information presented to you.

12. Cairo's Nile Television is an outfit that's taken the plunge in understanding a new language for videojournalism. Just to set out my stall; there's videojournalism the technology of person and camera, and then there's videojournalism a semiotical attempt to explore new film aesthetics: reverses, flutter cuts, shift aesthetics, motion (4m) when you engineer all the facets of the film to be moving: camera, subject, music and cinematic dialogue.

This will be my third time going back to Cairo and this time will involve creating a film show with the videojournalists becoming the stars. It's not the first time it's been done if you recall Julia Ceaser on Paint it Red, but its being contemporised.

13. One of the groups I had the joy of working with was the Financial Times. The Financial Times is one of the few outfits where video creates a revenue stream, so how do they do it.

Of course time sensitive info helps, but they've used the brand to leverage businesses who are just as excited seeing themselves on screen as they would in the paper. My view were clear and the video we created pointed to that, for the big stories such as the Budget, we should be tuning into the FT.

14- 16. One of several trips in a year, but this was special in Miami for I met up with individuals whose work I admired from afar: Brian Storm of Media Storm and Tome Kennedy the brains behind the Washington Posts online video and many awards until recently.

I interviewed Brian at length, whine you can see on viewmagaazine.tv Also in this section presenting at Apple, where I'm due to go back and speak in Novemberish and one of those rare moments of meeting royalty and being described to them as a multimedia videojournalist.

To tell you the truth I can't remember what HRH Prince Charles said.

17. This site is about the gene of viewmagazine's videojournalism and the picture you see here is my actual genetic code. For reasons I won't go into detail here, I was, with my family the first to have DNA genetic finger mapping in the UK for a civil case. Yep that's my DNA rearing itself as me in my work.

This is the first version of this digital map. The next iteration should be more comprehensive with greater links. See you soon.

David's been a videojournalist for 17 years and a broadcaster for 23. He's a senior lecturer and undertakes several projects a year around media productions. He is midway through a longitudinal study on future media.

Videojournalism - a Masters study guide via viewmagazine.tv

Reputation Management as news anchor Jon Snow endorses Viewmagazine.tv's David - a growing area on the web.

In 2005 when viewmagazine.tv picked up a Batten Award, it's remit was to illustrate a way ahead of accessing video and text, via videojournalism.

Using embedded video with SEO text within the main frame of a 15 inch window, I suggested the transition to a purpose screen, TV or Outernet system would be ideal.

Luckily Batten liked the idea, as did Apple and magazine's such as the UK Press Gazette.

That world has long been caught up; the future of the present is now. But I'm fascinated with learning as much as I am with swapping ideas and the rest, so viewmagazine.tv is taking on a new direction and one that I hope will lead to further engagement.

The site is being branded not so much as to highlight individual stories and I can tell you there are hundreds embedded behind the site; I have two thousand plus taped stories I've yet to upload. Now that would be overkill.

Viewmagazine.tv therefore will stay faithful to its first principle, but also act as a study guide. One that illustrates epistemology's of media making.

If you're starting off in this field, or have been round the blocks a couple of times, then I believe there's much we can talk about.

So below is a lite version one deconstructing what's in the site, which I will attach individual notes and findings in my role as a senior lecturer, lecturing in multimedia and videojournalism, as an artists in residence exploring the boundaries of art and journalism as a researcher currently undertaking a longitudinal study into media futures, and as a practitioner myself.

I've annotated the numbers corresponding to the icons in the pictures and in time will expand on their modularity and increase the range of material on the grid to give my own insight into the mesh of media.

See you soon.

Here for bigger version download

1. Main site of viewmagazine.tv I build using CSS, dreamweaver and Flash. I have been using these since 1999. Source code is hugely important for bot penetration and google ranking. I restrict a number of bots raiding my site via robots.txt. The site is designed for ipod aesthetic, though I'll have to expand it to include HTML5.

2. EAT - Promos, motion graphics etc a form of visual music cut is one of the many iterations of videojournalism. Understanding how to communicate a narrative with pictures and sound. In CSI Miami, music breaks of this nature are regularly deployed.

3. BBC at its best. In the 90s the BBC pioneered a series of shows that revolutionised BBC programme making. Not only is this still present today, but many of its staff have become big names in the industry. The programme Reportage, was highly stylised and editorial.

Its nearest comparison is Current.tv. Reportage had a unique way of programme making and 'pulling sot" that created real watchability. This piece is about Britain's young brain drain, that I'm reporting on.

4. Filmminute: an outstanding one minute global film festival. They wanted an online show, so in less than a week shot over three continents and working with their exec producer Sabaa Qua, I put together this show. This is something that as a videojournalist I believe you should be able to do: conceive a programme and shoot it. At Channel One, the UK's first and only VJ station, all the programmes were made with the Videojournalism concept

5 Technological camera determinism. They say its all in the gear, that's just part of the story. The camera I'm using goes back to principles of early film and the use of say the Arri Flex and fixed lenses. Zoom lens were introduced into cameras to give the film maker more freedom, but it also took away a huge aesthetic and craft in lens technology.

That needs revisiting. There's a reason we still find the movies attractive; the cameras they use being one of many. I'm using a converter and a couple of prime lens with a JVC

6 The Artist and Talks: Viewmagazine contains a number of videos where I have been fortunate to give talks, these are samples at Apple Stores UK, SXSW, World Association of Newspapers and at the National Press Club in Washington.

How do you film yourself and get multiple angles. I can often time events in my talk that allow me to focus on particular subjects. In the last year having become an artists in residence at the Southbank, the boundaries of Art and Journalism are becoming fascinatingly more defused.


7. Reputation Management. A growing feature of the web particularly faced with the many talented individuals, who are themselves brand. I shared a stage with CNN's Christine Amanpour and told her "the Amanpour brand" through television already had a presence which could easily be transferred to the web.

But what about you? You're good at what you do, but beyond your immediate circle who knows? In my broadcasting days I produced Jon Snow, so when I left he provided me with this video recommendation. It's branding by proxy, and I believe has little to do with self aggrandisement, but serves the same function as Linked.

One of my grads worked for Sir David Frost. Frost I'm told liked him. By the time he told me, my advice came too late. He'd missed an opportunity to be endorsed by him. Recommendations may nto get you the job but make others feel comfortable about your credibility.
Included in my batch are Blogger and Professor Jeff Jarvis and Media Storms Brian Storm


8. Promo and Assignments: I once had a call to ask if I could produce an ad for a US-based client destined for CNN International in 12 hours with no brief, no funds etc. I named my price and set about recruiting a team: voice over artists, graphics artist and a studio to work through the night. This is where videojournalism training circa 1994 was a boon.

My training took three months, but it was also built on a foundation of news and current affairs with the likes of BBC Reportage and Newsnight. Today I'm still learning. Please don't be fooled into thinking after a week that's it. That intense training you get - even over a year - should be the spark to continue to innovate. The commercial got to CNN spot on time and aired many times through out the day.

In this section I'll also highlight promos made for World Press Photographer Yannis Kontos and my time hired by the undisputed world heavyweight champion of the world Lennox Lewis to film and create a series of promos for him in his fight with Tyson in Memphis.

9. The first causality of war is truth, but many of us still push to towards realism in war. Embedded Videojournalism is one aspect. In this section I show video and talk about Nato and other EU defence executives desire to understand journalism by running global military training between them and inviting a select group of journalists to report a war you've probably never seen or heard of.

In one of the pioneering programmes I acted as editor to a team of 25 journalists from around the world. The news we made was created and on the spot satellited to Military executives in England observing flaws and making their own recommendations

10. Videojournalism and hard news, and the interview first popularised by Anstey's Housing problem (1935). But how do we create interviews as films. Errol Morris has accomplished this superbly as in Fog of War, but for the VJ.

Here I'm interviewing former head of the CIA James Woolsey after meeting him at one of the think tanks I belong to Chatham House. The interview took place in Washington and explored the why and what it took for graduates to join the clandestine service. It uses a range of film techniques to move the narrative.

11. Global Cinematic Reportage. Some of the packages listed here include: Reuters in house discussion on the mobile phone, a reconstructive face-building operation in Ghana and the Ferrari 599 GTI.

Once again I'm attempting to illustrate various narratives that should be open for the videojournalist. Intimacy is a given, speed of turnover is something I indulge in and teach others. It's not about preconceived thoughts, but how you shape your narrative to resemble your timeline with the information presented to you.

12. Cairo's Nile Television is an outfit that's taken the plunge in understanding a new language for videojournalism. Just to set out my stall; there's videojournalism the technology of person and camera, and then there's videojournalism a semiotical attempt to explore new film aesthetics: reverses, flutter cuts, shift aesthetics, motion (4m) when you engineer all the facets of the film to be moving: camera, subject, music and cinematic dialogue.

This will be my third time going back to Cairo and this time will involve creating a film show with the videojournalists becoming the stars. It's not the first time it's been done if you recall Julia Ceaser on Paint it Red, but its being contemporised.

13. One of the groups I had the joy of working with was the Financial Times. The Financial Times is one of the few outfits where video creates a revenue stream, so how do they do it.

Of course time sensitive info helps, but they've used the brand to leverage businesses who are just as excited seeing themselves on screen as they would in the paper. My view were clear and the video we created pointed to that, for the big stories such as the Budget, we should be tuning into the FT.

14- 16. One of several trips in a year, but this was special in Miami for I met up with individuals whose work I admired from afar: Brian Storm of Media Storm and Tome Kennedy the brains behind the Washington Posts online video and many awards until recently.

I interviewed Brian at length, whine you can see on viewmagaazine.tv Also in this section presenting at Apple, where I'm due to go back and speak in Novemberish and one of those rare moments of meeting royalty and being described to them as a multimedia videojournalist.

To tell you the truth I can't remember what HRH Prince Charles said.

17. This site is about the gene of viewmagazine's videojournalism and the picture you see here is my actual genetic code. For reasons I won't go into detail here, I was, with my family the first to have DNA genetic finger mapping in the UK for a civil case. Yep that's my DNA rearing itself as me in my work.

This is the first version of this digital map. The next iteration should be more comprehensive with greater links. See you soon.

David's been a videojournalist for 17 years and a broadcaster for 23. He's a senior lecturer and undertakes several projects a year around media productions. He is midway through a longitudinal study on future media.

Corporate PR videojournalism- look at this now; all else please ponder

BA Willie Walsh in an in-house video characterised by its PR semiotic and corporate language

British Airways' protracted dispute with its staff, supported by their representative union, Unite, had a curious moment for me in spring.

The potential strike action surrounded disagreements over pay and conditions for cabin crew, which may still flare up in the future.

The message from both sides was being fought in the glaring spotlight of the news media, except look closely and British Airways' Willie Walsh was playing an interesting hand.

On several occasions instead of answering to the media for interviews, BA's corporate video arm FlyBritishAirways filmed Walsh and put the video out for the media to grab, and they did.

For PR firms this was a major coup; the YouTube era was batting on both fronts and since the media was in HD, a simple download or access to the main films would suffice for television - though there are few artifacts to correct.

This command and control delivery of media represented a big breakthrough for corporate PR, and banished some old ghosts and many corporates also run their own video news e.g. BP

Firstly for a running story as newsworthy as this, so long as FlyBritishAirways could get video online addressing the main concerns of news media, there would be a strong urge for the news media to use it. FlyBritishAirways would most likely have former broadcast journalists working for them, otherwise they'd bring one in.

The advantage is that Walsh doesn't have to suffer the unpredictable and relentless questioning from news media. Its a command and controlled environment.

As the videos stand at the moment, they have running through them the DNA of all corporate vidoes - jaunty corporate music intros that mark out PR akin to listening to a Chaplin ditties screaming, "This is Chaplin" or that controlled backdrop that looks too contrived. But that will change.

Simply because this YouTube audience is far more sophisticated in media than previous generations and will begin to discern and filter where the message is coming from.

Broadcast Media Control
The media itself has its own insurance policy, qualifying the origins of external media, though not as vigilant as they should otherwise you'd get APTV and Reuters plastered all over the screen. (this is a side argument as APTV and Reuters are impartial news outfits).

For the use of external videos, its not just good policy in attribution, but necessary for integrity of the host, but the media historians in you will know that attribution is only a relatively recent act.

It took an incident with GreenPeace where the BBC felt it had been compromised for the broadcaster to firstly put a ban on the use of video news releases, or heavily censor them showing where they came from.

The daddy of the video wars in the 90s was Brent Spar: Shell versus GreenPeace, which serves as lecture 101 for all PR firms understanding the dynamics of video news. I was invited to speak to a Fortune top 10 company recently who felt it was getting a raw deal from the media.

Video Undercurrents, an activist company also proved in the 90s if you've got exclusives, the broadcasters will eat out of your hands:

Well would ITN be interested"?
We phoned them up and the said, "No not really, shot on video, we could never use it".
So, we went down to ITN and said "we are here and we shot on Beta".
We had shot it on Hi-8 and the ITN man said,"I thought it was Beta", and we said "Oh well we made a mistake."
So he watched it and just could not believe it.....
..It was just something he had never seen before; everything up to then filmed from the ground upwards, but this was actually on it (the roof).
He used it and it went national
( taken from Lets do it - Campaigning video news magazine by Paul Oconnor

Future News Media Verusus Corporate Videojournalism

Dorothy Byrne Channel 4's Head of News and Current Affairs speaking to David

So what does this all mean for future media. I interviewed Dorothy Byrne Channel 4's Head of News and Current Affairs and in our conversation she mooted as much the complexities of news and news organisation's approach to curating video news releases.

For the videojournalist or videojournalist firms of the future, they'll play a stronger hand not just in corporate head2head interviews, but turning over insider packages, but with the likely caveat of a less PR schtick, at least as we know it now.

David interviews the then director of Chatham House

This interview I did with one of the UK's leading think tanks Chatham House is independent enough. I asked the questions and got no direction, but it's sufficiently robust and shows their former director engaging in issues, very frankly, to the point, that it explains what Chatham House is about. You can watch the video here.

Steve Punter, a veteran news editor and talented programme maker, makes the point more succinctly. Everyone now has their own media and the job of the expert will be in their craftsmanship of making watchable, intelligent, informative programmes.

That's the next rung for videojournalists perfecting their skills. It's not about the camera, and not about the technology, but the ability to understand the semiotics of video news and audiences.

In many ways then the relationship we have with this new video form will at some point be inverted. When the practitioners amongst us see videojournalism not as the low hanging fruit but a complex set of skills. That much the Guardian's former Head of Video Robert Freeman confirms.

And then all sorts of media, with your integrity intact, will be open for business. PR firms talk about changes to their industry, this is an area, the use of video, where there is still enormous growth to observe.

How Star Trek boldly takes storytelling and journalism where its never been before.. Journailism Trek

One of the best Star Trek franchises ever, but how did they do it and what can others learn?

I've been watching Star Wars, again! Perhaps it's the fact that it's playing on Sky, but truthfully I wouldn't give much time to other films when I have a stack of Wong Kar Wai films to get through. I have just finished the stunningly stylistic 2046.

I grew up on Star Trek, and perhaps like every young male fantasising about space flight and Uhuras appreciated Roddenberry's contribution to my development.

But JJ Abrams did do something special to the franchise; he was given free reign which included not having to stay loyal to its old fans forewarning them in ads: "this is not your father's Star Trek". He had the license to do something new.

Frankly give over journalism to JJ or the JJs. Let the leading news studios say it: "try something new". Janet Street Porter, was powerful and creative enough to try this on British television and youth current affairs in the 80s with Network 7 and then Def II.

It may seem so anodyne now, but back then, when I worked on Reportage, it really was Star Trek.

Journalism Trek

The Retwitter Show titles - journalism 2046 from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

But back to the film. I had a mini eureka moment watching Bones talk about telemetry and beam ups. For some weird spatial moment I got thinking about my Applied Chemistry moments, co-efficient of friction and refluxing of crystals.

Each, as with much of Chemistry, involves equations; equations with variables which when altered change the state and outcome of that being experimented upon.

The beauty with sciences is a problem can be attempted to be solved by often identifying what could constitute a variable and then set about devising an equation.

Simplified, the coefficient of friction, identifies the point of contact between two surfaces e.g. your tyre and the road. On a rainy surface it's different and this therefore requires engineers to set about looking at your brakes, the nature of your tyres, load of car.. all sorts of things. A naturally occurring event has been broken down into stages.

In the purification of chemical substances, purified yields tend to be rare, there's always some imperfection, but scientist keep honing, much in the same way news and documentary continually search for the truth, but there's always an impurity.

Put another way, there's no such thing as truth in news, which is a recording of an event; there's an approximation that comes close, but it's disputable. The only way you get the truth of what you see is by being there, but even then in the interpretation is suffers from distortions...impurities..

So, what does this all mean for videojournalism? Well a couple of things:

• Stick the creatives in a room and leave them alone, but with the knowledge that there will be support. I've got a venue at the Southbank Centre to do this, but need your help.
  
• Don't be afraid to upset the baby boomers, if you want a new generation to tune in.
  
• Break down the variables of a new semiotic into mathematical variables, which is what I have been doing in my PhD study. Yes, Applied Chemistry applied to filming. I smiled first when I thought about it. My first supervisor sowed the seed when I began extolling Art and Physics.
• Lastly, let the random thinking that pushes science beyond its border, the science fiction bit, infuse the creative and money men to think beyond their station. I recently came across a device no bigger than a button, which I'm convinced will be the next phone device, and oddly enough its very similar to the Comms device in S.T.
• Now, anyone for a creative fight club or a chat about about this. Email me here David@viewmagazine.tv
  

Lets see if we can boldly take this somewhere else. See you on viewmagazine.tv and please don't hesitate to write :) LLAP


David Dunkley Gyimah creates and trains in video and storytelling, with brands such as the Financial Times and the first regional newspaper journos in the UK going video. He graduated in Applied Chemistry.

Viewmagazine.tv

The Retweeter Shows titles - to be a good journalist, videojournalist

The Retwitter Show titles - journalism 2046 from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

This video you might watch came about from this post below. After it was retweeded, I created this title intro for a fictitious Retweet show to thank those who pinged this to their friends.

Do you speak a video. DO YOU SPEAK VIDEO. YEAH YOU

It's really what you do with the camera. David shooting and directing for Channel 4 News, (1999)

The spitting can be quite over whelming; rain coat at the ready

Do you speak ( ...fuzzy sound...) Damn I hear you.

That declaration often comes after three or four forceful recitals. The English do it best, believing at each utterance, by raising your voice further the poor soul, looking you squarely in the eyes will get it.

You know substitute "English" for "Video". Course!

Except that now, everyone speaks video. All you need to do is point and shoot, which for the cinematographers amongst you does you head in no end.

But you daren't not raise this in the forums for fear of being branded elitist. So there you are pleased as punch, but sneering under your Budweiser's: "See that, none of yous can speak video".

Cuz the experts will tell you, candidly that pointing the camera and following a bus is no different than Judy five years old pointing at Uncle Jim, whose just stolen her sherbet.

It's a reflex action. If you didn't do it your ECGs aren't that healthy.

Video, film, is a reflexive art. It's like painting, You produce, you destroy, you reflect, you learn.

Then you start again, except this time you're wiser and you do it at a moment's notice at some point, before you get bored with the same protocol and decide you want to try something new.

Mark Cousins speaks video. You can hear him and other artists on Collisions, a site I created with the Southbank Artists in Residence programme.

It's a pain, but an intoxicating one. Do you speak video? Course you do.

Look at this. Sometimes just leaving the camera to observe is good plenty, often you'll be praised because you're the only one to have captured the duck chasing off the pit bull

But do you...?

"Now look up for a moment. Look at the spill of light on the left, how non-uniform it is, several grades. Look at the reflection on the table from the tungsten light. Look at the architectural spaces between the table, and its foreshortening to the door. The bin, because of perspective is the same size. Look at the sign that says "silent zone" and the grid above it - the patterns; the row of books that look like transformers and the paper isolated in the corner. Then imagine, something not of your control is about to happen, but you do have control if you anticipate. Now close your eyes, get up an act upon it, on the basis that everything you're seeing, you're seeing for the first time, and it all means something".

Now this could all be a load of b***, but in speaking video one of my exercises is relearning to see a new, remembering the gate of the lens can only see what you tell it; it has no periphery vision.

In Venice you learn to look upwards for the beauty, and down to avoid the dogs doodies. In what one of my favourite philosophers Deleuze says the image is never static. Your positioning affects the image and the consequences, but it's always moving on, and where are you?

Reading Cineast Voll VII No.1 from 1967 I came across this Gian Maria Volonte speaking about Godard

"He really was trying to do the impossible - to negate himself as a director and see what would happen. He experimented with the possibilities of interaction between the traditional relationships within a film crew and the need for a less authoritarian and more collective work process, but to the point he wanted to just give the camera to anyone and let them do their part of the film. ..... ....He is too preoccupied with only one type of problem - his problems - which make him forget the essential - the function of the cinema as a means of communication with the masses, the relationship between creation, production and distribution

Luvely. On the other hand, someones shouting, just bloody shoot the thing. What's the bet they speak video?

Where next for technical videojournalism news?

1Techniques for videojournalism- because it's about reducing the mediation in storytelling

Techniques for videojournalism. There are a range of VJ techniques, the subject of a book on hold at the moment, that comes from the fusion of different disciplines I've been engaged in over my 23 years.

But yes technique alone doesn't cut it; there's more to take on board about "the self" . I'll post on this in the future. The self is more subjective, revolving around experiential learning. But the job, the job? I need to complete what I need in as swift time as possible and get it out looking within the aesthetic I fashion on sight of the report.

We're back to the making the film in your head as seen online, with no edits. It involves visualization skills - eked from Arts practice. ( See Collision- When Artists Collide)

In China: Videojournalism

Take the following. I'm in Chongqing China, I'm interviewing the management team of well known Net firm about what they do. It's an open question, which frankly I really don't need, but it provides so many windows of opportunities. The photo above shows me engaging with my subject, but there's an element of guile on my part, to prevent them from acting or being directed for the camera.

2 using the filmic space

So, one minute I'm filming and engaging and the next minute I have moved away as she is busily focused on explaining an action. She hasn't noticed and will likely not know I'm gone for about 4 seconds. I have picked up a relevant ( *in camera) sequence. This points to a major principle of videojournalism film making, which I'll put in bold: Film around your subject, don't direct them; the less intervention, the nearer the reality.

3. Re engaging for the question

I then set up for a question I'm needing to ask, which is a closed question. I regularly judge my mediation, a bit like the corporate press officer knowing when to intervene. and often depending on the nature of the report will tell the interviewees what I will use.

This sets up an interesting reflective, when sometimes the interviewee will prefer a quote wasn't used. That's the exchange I believe the viewer is interested in. In this case the parties were fine.

4. reviews. Using flash cards for reviews

Below where next for videojournalism news?

Werner Herzog said, they're all movies..

We professionalise the moving image in the view to making it inimical to anyone not in the magic circle. It becomes simplified through pecuniary means, and hostile in its functionality to those on the outside.

TV, the music business, the army - all socially formed structures of work adhered to some form of insiderness.

Videojournalism is the latest, but it's different. In 1994 it was insiderness; in 2010 its externalised and its rebirth came in public view. If you missed some of the 1994 incarnations go here.

Now, you even know some of the terms: GVS, Stand up; you could build a videojournalism outfit from reading manual notes online.

The trouble is with news as a form of 21st century discourse. It has many things right with it and wrong. The burning flaw is wanting to tell stories that have already happened.

We find that unacceptable for doc making, unless there is a denouement or we find new revelations, but we tolerate rehearsed action in news, in videojournalism.

It's a curious notion, because the concept of news is among many things, new! But the news construct is built upon events that have in many cases already happened, with an attempt at finding a means to divulge that material in an accessible way.

Its worked thus far, but now a more intelligent viewer is beginning to see and chuckle at the cracks. So videojournalism, TV News seeks more of the dramatics and in the absence of action this has to be constructed within videojournalism's cinematography.

The difficulty is to be less rigidly tied to formats, but to devise one's own. That I'm afraid will take time; the innovation reside in individuals, subjectivity of the news may now be tolerated if you can demonstrate professionalism to the audience.

That's not to say structures will ever disappear. We build them all the time, once we get momentum. The innovator has an option to sell his/her ideas for followers.

Now, it's like the running of a top Formulae 1 Car. They (F1s) all run at more or less near enough the same speeds, but modifications from the pits, by technicians and engineers' wit with years of experience makes their difference.

So in distinguishing content ( the F1) from process (the pit experts), we're back where we begun...Werner Herzog saying they (news, docs, videojournalism) are all movies..

But then Herzog is a supreme pit expert.

Follow up with this.

1. Do you speak a video, Yes You!

How do you creative brainstorm yourself - here's mine

Is this art?

It looks non-descript but trust me, what exists on those colourful notes are liminal thoughts that should save me.

Firstly liminal, what is it? This site provides a wonderful expression

In “Liminality and Communitas,” Turner begins by defining liminal individuals or entities as “neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremony” (1969: 95).

So they're the thoughts, sometimes random you get when you're in a creative moment, or day dreaming. They're there one moment and if you don't capture them, like the character in Usual Suspects blowing his fingers, they're gone, and annoyingly so.

Moments of creativity can often be the catalytic converters to more rigorous thoughts and the process I have developed using my wall at home has also been miniaturised when I go on site as a videojournalist. ( though you won't see it :) )

Remember there's often a lot of noise around you, at home and in the field, and you need something to capture those Tourette syndrome thoughts.

So here's what I do, at least at home with my creative wall. I'm currently in the middle of doctorate research programme to illustrate news and television in the future.

Yep I do pick em, so usually when I get up in the morning, around 5.30-6.00 I have these liminal thoughts about something I might have read the day before or mulled over just that morning. These inchoate thoughts find themselves to the creative wall.

I then set about writing and developing my chapters independently. If I get another thought say like writing now, I then stop and put that on the wall.

In time I then in a reflective mood go back to the wall and see how those lightening thoughts square with the more measured reflective self. The results are often staggering and will lead me to rework scripts.

In the field it's a more active process, but I will switch off momentarily to reflect or grab postits I might have made. In away it's a fashioning of the reflective writer/ videojournalist working from creative spurts.

Thus questioning or forging fresh methods. It's a jekyll and Hyde approach in the absence of anyone around you to bounce of ideas.

I used a similar technique working in advertising, and I know many many editors who use the same technique. If I can eventually get my book out from underneath all the present projects I talk about some more knowledge building exercises.

This one might work for you.