REDUX - how to produce deeply affective, immersive stories for the screen generation.

Speakers point of view at Newsrewired

Former broadcast journalist, turned academic, Doctoral student and trainer David Dunkley Gyimah on Affective Reportage. He has previously presented to BBC Execs at the World Service and trained newspapers such as the Financial Times in videojournalism


Last Friday I presented at Newswire, where I attempted to explain an unveiling manner of engaging storytelling that used subconsciously or otherwise information as an affective aesthetic artifact.

It can become 'Integrated News [c]inema which you could called 'Vinema' - a hybrid source horrible word. I use this [c] term because of how ideologically loaded cinema as a word has become.

BBC Reportage from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

I played this clip from BBC Reportage circa 1992, which I worked on at the time, and compared it to something else. Here I'm using the trailer from Tahrir Memento, which I made last year.

Tahrir Memento from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

The production modes might look remarkably similar, even though they are almost 20 years apart. However there are huge differences, which you may not notice. The obvious in (i) it's a team effort of around 8 people. In (ii) it's just me.

The differences become more acute when you compare me here reporting for London Tonight. However these aren't necessarily new points.

Reportage ITV's London Tonight from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

But all of a sudden my method of explaining change can be delineated through the programmes I have worked on over the 20 years, such as WTN, Newsnight, Channel 4 News etc. It's a process called Phenomenology.

Meaning of words
The term aesthetic, I used about in this context refers to the look and feel, whilst [c]inema is how configured shots and narrative give over to a physical form of film making that uses technique, process, and style to affect us.

News experts may argue it's always been there.

It's called getting "close to the story",  or "good solid journalism",  but I would argue it's been a challenge to create as late and, that is "getting close", because it's dependent on a number of esoteric variables.

The more generic reasons include: zealous control of media and pictures by story sources, our own self-censoring, how reporting has often slid into get-it-out-quick churnalism and the lack of meaningful thought given to constructing a report.

Getting close to a story is the hallmark of great journalism (re: Murrows et al),  but an Integrated [c]inema is a contemporary quality - a 21t century concept that collapses a host of forms and aesthetic platforms.

It's almost as if CSS which bears no relationship to video now share common features... and they do!

And I don't proclaim to own it the process. Other than state that it's happening, and is growing.  The goal posts are being inexorably moved.

And whilst getting close to a story has a cinematic effect, it does not make Integrated [c]inema. The  sustained semiotic we, as news viewers* have become accustomed to means there's a way in which we differentiate news from cinema-like pictures, which I tried to get across in my Pecha Kucha.

Again, the idea of getting close physically and metaphorically comes with problems. Say you've been told there are gunmen or snipers nearby. You'd much prefer to be 400 metres way than 100 metres. It's human instinct. Good reportage though depends on you getting close, seeking out trouble, but ill-defined lines of conflict do not make give you that blanket safety zone anymore. The risks you weigh up now are more heightened. The society you once knew has changed.

David reporting from South Africa in BBC Ariel 1992

Getting to the story
If you'll allow me this slight deviation and personal story. I was always amazed how close Soweto was to Johannesburg when I freelanced as a reporter in South Africa during the 1992-94 conflicted transition from Apartheid to democratic state.

Residents in Sandton, an affluent surburb, could virtually live in peace, while thirty odd minutes away in the townships there were massacres. So to report we (reporters) had to search out trouble.

Oh and less I forget, the term [c]inema requires all sorts of unpacking and then describing what sort of cinema you're employing, which I do in my thesis, so I can only touch the void in this post.

I aim to give a master class in this soon.








Breakdown of the story
So, to BBC Correspondent Paul Wood's report with his Cameraman Fred Scott in Homs, Syria.

The team are risking their lives to bring us this report. I have picked up a segment to deconstruct. Woods has announced they've been smuggled in by forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad's forces.



 A metonyn of war - the shattered glass. It's how close up the lens is to the shards that tells us this is a dangerous area. Side shots equals snipers. And then the pan, to the next shot.


A deserted street. the grey cubic architecture, space... Cinema.

Importantly, this cinematic shot has been found. The team could easily have not got into a car, or could have chosen not to film this section. The narrative has them being smuggled into a conflict zone. You could hold this shot for as long to reinforce  Wood's point.

In this PTC or stand up Wood's cameraman Scott is employing a shallow-depth-of-field. Though as a period style I don't place emphasis on this for [c]inema, its the composition and muted colours.

Our focus is drawn to the defocused end-of-street-shot. There's something lurking there? This is playing with repressed or symptomatic feelings. Paul makes no specific mention to this. If you're a student deconstructing this, what would you have said and do next, particularly as a videojournalist.

videojournalist story, because this form of categorisation would be crass. This was a reporter-camera shoot. However its worth thinking about this as an exercise and what you might have done.

This shot emphasis where the reportage team is. The end of the cold war heralded this shift in what could be defined as fast changing front lines in conflict. This is one such example. Close quarter fighting in which the reportage team are in as much risk as those with guns. This is cinematic. You're right in the action.

The same with this shot. Life imitates art imitates life. If I showed you this shot and said this was from Greenzone ( Dir Paul Greengrass)  you might say, "yeah and so?"

Fictional cinema has often stolen from factual cinema to look believable and the dominance of cinema at large means we become accustomed to shots that say something from fictional cinema, rather than factual. But show this to a class without the captions and see how a large proportion may tell you this is Greenzone.

If the cameraman was ten feet away from where the fighters it may not have produced the impact the camera man desired.

A metonymic shot if there ever was one. This shot above embodies all there is about war. The cameraman is at eye level. He's noticed the fear writ across the fighter's face; a blurred gun turret in the background, and that one fleeting gaze captures the moving image moment. 

Any photojournalist would be pleased with this shot. Again its compositional arrangement and blue background isolate the face. 

One...

 two...

 three..

four..

Four frames that I have chosen portray Wood's experiences as he reacts gun fire. This is not embedded journalism. This is the risk that this BBC team have taken to produce footage to verify the denials of what's going on in a region.

There's no grandstanding, looking for the perfect akimbo stance to deliver the stand-up. This shot places the reporter within the zone of peril. "We are in the thick of things here",  the cameraman is telling us, specifically referring to the reporter.


This shot pulls the focus onto the movement of the fighters but also draws attention to the cameraman moving at pace to catch up but also acting cautiously.

Journalism not for the meek. Independent verification. Please note, a construct could possess many cinematic effects and not classify as cinema ( whose cinema, what cinema??)

But there is an overall hacceity that comes to bear when watching something in which you suspend the gaze attributed to television for the sustained look - something you give over to darkened room cinema.

I can only allude tot this as it requires far more unpacking than I have spaced for, but as a general term it possesses the currency,  others have limited to personal, immediate, immersive and so on.

NB * Viewers - here I'm looking at those who would say they grew up on television as opposed to cinema


In my next post I use semiotics t show you how Sherlock Holmes faked his death in the BBC TV series

Log onto viewmagazine.tv for more media

Cinema, Michael Mann, Luck and Abel Gance

How Michael Mann could have made the horse sequences 80 years ago.  The true genius of Abel Gance

Redux - how to produce affective, immersive stories.

Speakers point of view at Newsrewired

Former broadcast journalist, turned academic, Doctoral student and trainer David Dunkley Gyimah on Affective Reportage


Last Friday I presented at Newswire, where I attempted to explain an unveiling manner of engaging storytelling that used subconsciously or otherwise information as an affective aesthetic artifact.

It can become 'Integrated News [c]inema which you could called 'Vinema' - a hybrid source horrible word. I use this [c] term because of how ideologically loaded cinema as a word has become.

BBC Reportage from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

I played this clip from BBC Reportage circa 1992, which I worked on at the time, and compared it to something else. Here I'm using the trailer from Tahrir Memento, which I made last year.

Tahrir Memento from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

The production modes might look remarkably similar, even though they are almost 20 years apart. However there are huge differences, which you may not notice. The obvious in (i) it's a team effort of around 8 people. In (ii) it's just me.

The differences become more acute when you compare me here reporting for London Tonight. However these aren't necessarily new points.

Reportage ITV's London Tonight from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

But all of a sudden my method of explaining change can be delineated through the programmes I have worked on over the 20 years. It's a process called Phenomenology

Aesthetic in this context refers to the look and feel, whilst [c]inema is how configured shots and narrative give over to a physical form of film making that uses technique, process, and style to affect us.

News experts may argue it's always been there.

It's called getting "close to the story",  or "good solid journalism",  but I would argue it's been a challenge to create as late and, that is "getting close", because it's dependent on a number of esoteric variables which I'm writing up in my PhD.

The more generic reasons include: zealous control of media and pictures by story sources, our own self-censoring, how reporting has often slid into get-it-out-quick churnalism and the lack of meaningful thought given to constructing a report.

Getting close to a story is the hallmark of great journalism (re: Murrows et al),  but an Integrated [c]inema is a contemporary quality - a 21t century ideation that collapses a host of form and aesthetic platforms.

And I don't proclaim to own it. Other than claim that it's happening, and is growing.  The goal posts are being inexorably moved, but so imperceptibly as not to be noticed.

And whilst getting close to a story has a cinematic effect, it does not make Integrated [c]inema. The  sustained semiotic we, as news viewers* have become accustomed to means there's a way in which we differentiate news from cinema-like pictures, which I tried to get across in my Pecha Kucha.

Again, the idea of getting close physically and metaphorically comes with problems. Say you've been told there are gunmen or snipers nearby. You'd much prefer to be 400 metres way than 100 metres. It's human instinct. Good reportage though depends on you getting close, seeking out trouble, but ill-defined lines of conflict do not make give you that blanket safety zone anymore. The risks you weigh up now are more heightened. The society you once knew has changed.

David reporting from South Africa in BBC Ariel 1992

If you'll allow me this slight deviation and personal story. I was always amazed how close Soweto was to Johannesburg when I freelanced as a reporter in South Africa during the 1992-94 conflicted transition from Apartheid to democratic state.

Residents in Sandton, an affluent surburb, could virtually live in peace, while thirty odd minutes away in the townships there were massacres. So to report we (reporters) had to search out trouble.

Oh and less I forget, the term [c]inema requires all sorts of unpacking and then describing what sort of cinema you're employing, which I do in my thesis, so I can only touch the void in this post.

I aim to give a master class in this soon.








So, to BBC Correspondent Paul Wood's report with his Cameraman Fred Scott in Homs, Syria.

The team are risking their lives to bring us this report. I have picked up a segment to deconstruct. Woods has announced they've been smuggled in by forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

 A metonyn of war - the shattered glass. It's how close up the lens is to the shards that tells us this is a dangerous area. Side shots equals snipers. And then the pan, to the next shot.

A deserted street. the grey cubic architecture, space... Cinema.

Importantly, this cinematic shot has been found. The team could easily have not got into a car, or could have chosen not to film this section. The narrative has them being smuggled into a conflict zone. You could hold this shot for as long to reinforce  Wood's point.

In this PTC or stand up Wood's cameraman Scott is employing a shallow-depth-of-field. Though as a period style I don't place emphasis on this for [c]inema, its the composition and muted colours.

Our focus is drawn to the defocused end-of-street-shot. There's something lurking there? This is playing with repressed or symptomatic feelings. Paul makes no specific mention to this. If you're a student deconstructing this, what would you have said and do next, particularly as a videojournalist.

videojournalist story, because this form of categorisation would be crass. This was a reporter-camera shoot. However its worth thinking about this as an exercise and what you might have done.

This shot emphasis where the reportage team is. The end of the cold war heralded this shift in what could be defined as fast changing front lines in conflict. This is one such example. Close quarter fighting in which the reportage team are in as much risk as those with guns. This is cinematic. You're right in the action.

The same with this shot. Life imitates art imitates life. If I showed you this shot and said this was from Greenzone ( Dir Paul Greengrass)  you might say, "yeah and so?"

Fictional cinema has often stolen from factual cinema to look believable and the dominance of cinema at large means we become accustomed to shots that say something from fictional cinema, rather than factual. But show this to a class without the captions and see how a large proportion may tell you this is Greenzone.

If the cameraman was ten feet away from where the fighters it may not have produced the impact the camera man desired.

A metonymic shot if there ever was one. This shot above embodies all there is about war. The cameraman is at eye level. He's noticed the fear writ across the fighter's face; a blurred gun turret in the background, and that one fleeting gaze captures the moving image moment. 

Any photojournalist would be pleased with this shot. Again its compositional arrangement and blue background isolate the face. 

One...

 two...

 three..

four..

Four frames that I have chosen portray Wood's experiences as he reacts gun fire. This is not embedded journalism. This is the risk that this BBC team have taken to produce footage to verify the denials of what's going on in a region.

There's no grandstanding, looking for the perfect akimbo stance to deliver the stand-up. This shot places the reporter within the zone of peril. "We are in the thick of things here",  the cameraman is telling us, specifically referring to the reporter.

This shot pulls the focus onto the movement of the fighters but also draws attention to the cameraman moving at pace to catch up but also acting cautiously.

Journalism not for the meek. Independent verification. Please note, a construct could possess many cinematic effects and not classify as cinema ( whose cinema, what cinema??)

But there is an overall hacceity that comes to bear when watching something in which you suspend the gaze attributed to television for the sustained look - something you give over to darkened room cinema.

I can only allude tot this as it requires far more unpacking than I have spaced for, but as a general term it possesses the currency,  others have limited to personal, immediate, immersive and so on.

NB * Viewers - here I'm looking at those who would say they grew up on television as opposed to cinema


In my next post I use semiotics t show you how Sherlock Holmes faked his death in the BBC TV series

Log onto viewmagazine.tv for more media 

David Dunkley Gyimah's Newswire Media in Motion presentation

I'm David Dunkley Gyimah and have worked for TV News, doctcoms, videojournalism outfits over the last 25 years. It was good to see some friends in the room: the FT (their story here), that I did some work with, and Joel from the Guardian newspaper, whose colleague Cameron I know.

One of the 20th centuries most eminent philosopher Gilles Deleuze marvelled at the work of another philosopher Henri Bergson for discovering something that was yet to be popularised.

Deleuze said of Bergson that: "the discovery of the movement-image, beyond the conditions of natural perception, was the extraordinary invention of the first chapter of Matter and Memory" (Deleuze, 1986, p.2)

Now, I'd like us to park that thought, as we'll come back to it.

So if you'll forgive me, I'd like to make an assumption - a big one at that.   That my being at this event, is I will assume, based on the notion I have something to offer, be it a tip or an idea.

That  essentially my experience may have some currency in assisting you. Perhaps that's why you've paid to be here, and why I have taken up being an academic.

If that's so then my experience holds something, and in talking about my experience I also aim to reach a conclusion - which unveils my tip or mega rule as I want to call it. 

This idea of hearing one's experience is partly the basis of phenomenology, but much richer under another philosopher, Heidegger.

So this is BBC Reportage (watch and read about its past here). I'm not sure you're aware of the programme, but in 1992 you could describe it as the Youtube of the BBC. It was a revolutionary programme, made by young people, that would change the style of BBC current affairs. These are not my words but execs who worked on the show such as Rachel Purnell.

Some of the figures behind Reportage are international and household names  e.g. Bruce Goodison who made Shoot to Kill for Channel 4 News and the indefatigable Hardeep Singh Koli, whom I worked with.

If Reportage taught how to discard the rules at a time when conventions were being challenged. Note, this was the time of  the YBA - the art movement; The Face magazine, Brit Fashion and the New Romantics.

Newsnight which I'd worked on before the programme removed the idea for me that news is immutable; that it can exist in what ever form you want: a discussion, a feature, a short news piece and on rare ocassions 20 min short stories, and so on.

In 1992 I could not find work in he UK, so relocated to a country which had the world's eyes trained on it. In South Africa I did many things radio, TV for ABC News, magazines, but it was the prospect of wiring up four young South Africans about to vote in their first ever election at 20 plus for BBC Radio 4 which got me going.

First time Voters  (FTV) used radio in a way that  got intimate with the four stars and they were stars. The feature played on Radio 4, the world service and on the eve of the South Africa's historic election after being bought and played by their network. My interviewees in South Africa today are huge e.g. Eric Miyeni and Niemann Fellow Gale Smith. In 1999 working for Channel 4 News I remade FTV to Successor Generation.

In the UK in 1994, a strange irony, the Internet has gone public, and Associated newspapers launched a strange concept called videojournalism.  Here I'm presenting an item for the web in 1995.

The motto for me was if you can think it you can do it. Most videojournalist shot two to three stories a day, totting up 500 plus in a year.  You can spot some celebs from here that now appear on BBC Breakfast TV.

After Channel One and short stint at WTN I became a regular freelance at Channel 4 News for four years, while prodding here and there, for what was possible. A report for the World Service involved an unusual deep sea dive to war graves from World War One.

To get my listeners to understand what it was like 40 metres below the sea I took an extended chord and tied a condom onto the microphone. Also I nearly met the big fellow up there, when I fell on some live arms and ended up running out of air.

The following years had their moments; videojournalism in Africa (Click the image for video behind it) , creative director for an ad agency, and working in one of the dotcoms that's still around today.

Then 2005 hits the year of You tube. Videojournalism has come full circle. The Press Association and me put together a programme to help train the UK's regional journalists. That very first programme we do is 8 day, because in 8 Days they had to learn Videojournalism because they were going live soon afterwards.

PA's programme over the years fulfil a curious thought, however much you think you've moved away from something you're still standing still. It's 1994 again.

From work, academics in China, showing how our university trains, to consulting for a newspaper in Beirut ( film here), to a four year study working with young journalists inside state TV in Egypt - an extraordinary programme that showed how much could be achieved if you're willing to go down the rabbit hole.

Mohammed - one VJ shoots like Hathor - and mad forty VJ reports in a month.

So from 1992 with this short insert from reportage - to this promo from Cairo, there's a theme that runs through these - we're back at phenomenology - the study of my experience, and when I do reflect something keeps cropping up.

Not that you have to chase and experiment in finding some of this field's elusive answers.

Not that sometime you have to travel to regions where the story is - as so many people have done.

But that the thread in this is.... Cinema!

Firstly I realise how laughable this might seem or indeed absurd, even dangerous.

Because at this point you're prone to thinking I have a tendency to fictionalise accounts; I'm not to be trusted. In the years I have practiced this craft of factual storytelling, integrity and truthfulness have met everything, so fiction is not a feature in my book.

However, if this was 1930, you would have no problem with the term "cinema". We'd be talking about Grierson or at least Hitchcock would. Then, experts differentiated from what they called commercial cinema, motion pictures and cinema documentaries and factual films.

Same could be said of the years to follow. But the notion of cinema I evoke is not exclusively physical  though I also claim a cinematic concept of story telling. Principally my notion is more a mental attribute. The thing that affects you. Information that is affective.

That's what Deleuze talking about Bergson was all about. Bergson talked about cinema and affectivity even before the machines that made cinema had been made.

When I approach a subject, I'm having an internal dialogue saying how best can I portray this so the audience, the viewer feels this like I am.

Now, if you still believe cinema is exclusively Hollywood - listen to one of the best film makers alive making a close point.



But now we have a conundrum. If you, as I do think cinema, the next question is who's cinema? What cinema? That's the interesting really, truly interesting question - and while I have an answer, this again is not the forum.

However, the reason why general tips about trends can be counterproductive is for that reason. Cinema, physical, goes in and out of season, it's mental state is what draws you to any number of artifacts.

Today it's shallow depth of field, a generation before and beyond it will be deep focus.

If you can agree, and if not there is a plethora of info that talks about cinema as factual film, ( so I'm not saying anything new) then we must also appreciate cinema is diverse.

I gave Rachel, the News Editor of Journalism.co.uk, and organisers of today's event, some water. She prefered non-fizzy, but it's still water, I said.

That's the problem with cinema. It's so vast, but it has inherent qualities. The films shown by Josh ( FT),  John from the Guardian mimic cinema's qualities e.g overhead shot of St Paul's former Canon; the head to head - which is Errol Morris, or the Lady in the Lake, which is a POV film.

But the question is what cinema are we talking about, even though cinema's internal engine is about affectivity. This is too big a conversation to go into here, but it's one I have ponder for a long while.

What do you make of this image below?

Here's the photojournalism film I made for Yannis as he won the world press award. It takes the cinema of affectivity into cinema physical. This by the way is still a favourite,

Can you figure out how this was taken?

In China, commercial cinema, the concept of hyper reality, has taken a step into interactive cinema. the seats and auditorium moves and as this young child is doing you interact with the screen.

We blithely, and I confess I harboured such thoughts too that TV was on its last feet.

Not a chance. I mooted as much at SXSW and for the last couple of years sitting as one of the judges on the RTS awards, what's coming through illustrates innovation and cinematic qualities - at least in my head.

These then are old established qualities

So to my Mega rule 1.

And those exemplars include Fellini, Godard, Marker, but yes there are contemporary ones who openly talk about how they've been influenced by that past.

Mediastorm - is an outfit that needs no introduction. They've won unteempth awards

Which leads me to Mega Rule II

And here I learned a lesson in1996, which would materialise in 2006 which perhaps was the knod from the Batten awards. I wanted to after all those years put into practice this understanding of media, So I coded, designed, made the videos and built this site.

So two strong ideas that guide me, a holistic look at the whole workflow and cinema. If we stop trying follow trends, and seek exemplars we'll be more diverse. Most of the companies you might quote as exemplars rarely followed others.

Remember that lovely moment in Facebook the film  - I know its fictional - but MZ connects Facebook to work, based on behaviours, what people want to do - connect. An idea as established as Hobbs Commonwealth.

So whilst I'm guided by trends I believe in a quality that Bergson promotes: that information has affective qualities. If we can do this in the construct the audience will watch. If not we run the risk of treating all info as equal - the problem with the package.


You can learn more about my methodology and training here me, whilst my Apple profile and all sorts of  gubbings exists here.

My parting links that excite me. 

http://mediaville.info/londonair/ FMR MASTERS STUDENT WITH HER AGENCY

http://www.make-your-choice.co.uk/site.html

http://archivo.elfaro.net/secciones/migracion/nacimiento_muro/index.html

http://stinkdigital.com/  AGENCY

http://vimeo.com/8191217 LAST MINUTE WITH ODEN ~ Eliot Rausch

Intimate film/ video making - what it means!

Intimate interviewing and filming -a former apartheid government head of a hit squad reveals all in this intimate interview

The British newspaper remarked: "This is one of the most explosive articles you'll ever read".

I have interviewed many VIPs, newsworthy people and intimate subjects in my time, and used any number of cameras, as the picture below illustrates.

That is Dirk Coetzee and within a matter of minutes meeting him, he was telling me how his team murdered an activist and burnt his body and how they were all having a barbeque nearby.

When I asked if he was carrying a gun, he took it out and showed me his custom-made Glock explaining how he went to the bathroom with it, because he was fearful of reprisals.

I gulped inside, but continued to press engaged by what he was saying, but never losing focus that this was contrived conversation ( an interview). He wasn't my friend, but we'd connected in some inexplicable way.

From using the Digibeta 700, the VX1000, Super 8mm, Pd150s and even Super VHS,  I would say I have almost always managed the level of intimacy I wanted, so there's a conundrum.

How is it that a doc film maker or videojournalist is able to film a subject, yet irrespective of the size of the camera comes away with something intimate?

I know good videojournailsts who use beta cameras and film "intimate"; similarly, the glut of consumer cameras allow for many to film intimacy.

So there's something else going on. It's not the camera per se, but the individual, though this rationalisation is not reducible to an either/ or.

Yet an individual aware of her filmic space, and presence can use a smaller sized camera to a new effect of abstraction.

However at large, the art of intimacy is captured in the Ashanti phrase, which states:

Me ne wo yE honam baako. 

It literally means we live in the same skin, but its interpretation in Twi is how you become one and the same with someone. There is a deeper understanding between you and the subject which in the absence of the camera, as artifact, goes beyond intimacy, and is not sexual.

Twi, spoken by the Ashantis of Ghana, has a very rich linguistic vernacular. The medical condition Kwashiokor - the malnutrition of children with distended bellies is a Ghanaian word.

Think of " honam baako",  as footsteps in the sand, where two people are walking: the film maker and the subject, but you see only one set of prints

To me that's what's been taking place within the matrix of filming, permission space, intimacy and getting something which gets ever closer to the reality of the subject sans film equipment.

I can't find the lyrical equivalent in English, though I suspect very much it exists. Perhaps though those perceived richer lyrical languages: French, Spanish, and Native American Indians e.g. Navajo
may possess similar tropes.

With regards to how you get it, there's no magic pill, but the chemistry between you and subject can be strengthened by honesty e.g. physical eye contact; trust, sympathetic, etc.

Hell and Back Again- Up for an Oscar

News that Hell and Back Again, the incredible story told by one man outfit Danfung Dennis has been nominated for an Oscar, so I have pulled out this piece I did seeing him at the Sheffield Doc Festival.

Danfung Dennis in conversation with Beadie Finzi @SheffieldDocFest

Why do you wanna be a soldier?
Because I wanna kill people.

This and other mind-gnawing exchanges emerge from  Hell and Back Again (2011)   one of many memorable days at the 2011 Sheffield Documentary Festival. Thus far the film has punched through the independent cinema festival circuit garnering accolades and awe, as well as awards.

The World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Award and World Cinema Cinematography could just be middle-layer, because you suspect the topping could be the Big- O, though Hollywood's predilection to narrative -issue NIMBYISM, doesn't bode well.

Twenty-five year old Sergeant Harris says in the film the army's recruiting team said that was the best answer they'd ever had.

(Fade to black - Sheffield Documentary Festival Day four closes )


Hell and Back Again clip  Danfung Dennis on Vimeo.



Off limits
There is a conversation that resists being shared when going into conflict. Individually, it weighs on your mind, but you don't speak about it. In any case, skill, experience, maturity and providence are meant do their job.

Reporting from Ghana on US Forces training ECOWAS forces for Liberia campaign 97 and South Africa reportage from Townships in 1992

I believe I know this because I grew up in a country which was shaken by military coups: Ghana, in the 1970s and 80s and that much later I would re-locate to South Africa, reporting at the time of its taut transition from Apartheid to democracy.



David reporting from the troubled townships of South Africa. A freelance report broadcast on the BBC World Service circa 1992.

Yet, comparisons to Danfung's Hell and Back Again, though relative, are diametrically starkly different.

At the Sheffield doc fest, in conversation with Beadie Finzi of C4s BritDoc Foundation Danfung is peeling back layers of the "how" and "what" for Hell and Back Again and the result gives rise to liminal thoughts about "this conversation".

The audience learns how Danfung, a photojournalist already embedded with the US army is looking to be dropped with Echo Company going the farthest into Taliban territory.

The soldiers were destined to be there "for a long time", and the intel and hollowing emerging from later  arms exchanges suggested they had little idea of the Taliban's strength. Electricity and water would either be absent or hard to come by. Danfung with all this knowledge is set on going.  Beadie's pensive look and sharp intake of breath could be an acknowledgement to "this conversation".

Just before boarding the Chinook Danfung's tells us his camera button jams. His inner voice poses the question, what is the point of me going, if I can't shoot anything. Weaker minds would have capitulated.

However the malfunctioning button is resolved by the same ingenuity and tenacity that's become Danfung's trademark in either his camera set-up, the rig, or Condition One - the new immersive viewing screen he's pioneering. This time it was his finger nail digging out the dirt to set him back in course.

Inside the Kill Zone
There is a scene in one of my most absorbing war movies: We Were Soldiers (2002), starring Mel Gibson as Lt. Col Hal Moore in which a young photojournalist Joe Galloway boards a chopper to the LZ zone - the kill zone.

The soldiers have been been stirred by their Colonel. All of you will be coming back, but not all of you alive. Joe Galloway played by Barry Pepper witnesses a deeply horrific mind-numbing assault on the unit by the People's Army of Vietnam.

The morning after, pool photographers and TV camera crew are flown into a sanitised kill zone. As a gaggle, they search for motifs to relay this bloody battle and then come across Galloway.

That conversation now!  Galloway has become the story doing something the rest of his colleagues could either not do or would prefer not to. Forty six years on, Danfung has become Galloway.

When the audience applauds, I find myself doing so not just because of his film which is shot with the hand of Malick, the eye of Lelouch and coruscating brutality of Lu Chuan (City of Death 2011), but that he also had the kwai to tread into the unknown - the kill zone.

That is the conversation. Invariably it's one FOCs (Foreign Correspondents) talk about when the beers are flowing, when they might also light-heartily joke about near-misses. It's all about trust, says Danfung in relation to the unit he was with, which was reciprocated by Sergeant Nathan Harris et al - who would become his main character.

Self belief and trust can be endemically unwavering. In 2002 when I was assigned to be Lennox Lewis' videojournalist, I entered camp with a a hint of doubt. What if Tyson actually won. I was chastened not to think that away. Two weeks in camp I was a convert. There was no way I now thought Lennox was every going to lose his heavy-weight crown to this bruiser.

The Art of War
At the Southbank Centre, where I am an Artist in Residence, last year about this time I'm spell bound by a clip online called Battle For Hearts and Mind*, later changed to Hell and Back Again. I email the photojournalist and he promptly replies.


For two and a bit hours given the bent of my research  my questions to Danfung have a specific line of enquiry. His answers are illuminating and in my guise as artist, journalist and academic, I'm continually digging and documenting precious responses.

Then Charlotte Cook, one of the most erudite, social media practitioners I know, who is part of that august outfit, the Front Line Club emails to request whether I wouldn't mind being part of Sheffield Doc Fests debate on Cinema Journalism.

She's looking to Danfung as one of the panelist. She's hardly finished the sentence and needs no convincing before I nonetheless weigh in: "You gotta get Danfung, You gota get Danfung".


The Cinematic discussion
Restrepo (2010), by the the brilliant Tim Hetherington, whose life was cut dramatically short showed war as the new breed of photojournalists would realise it. The Bang Bang Club (Carter et al) painted South Africa behind the news headlines in 1990s. Yannis Kontos I have had the privilege of working, a World Press Photographer Award Winner and some 18 other international prizes, continually delivers on the immanence of the image.


PIXELS WITHOUT BORDERS from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
Yannis Kontos Promo I produced for his 2006 World Photojournalism Award. For more go here

Yet, Danfung, many affirm, has done something quite different, so different.

 Hell and Back Again and the small team that shaped it: Roast Beef Production Producers Mike Lerner and Martin Herring; the editor Fiona Otway whose Felliniesque intercut and parrallel editing weaves silk through the film. In addition, Sabotage films, Thought Engine and the Britdoc foundation are contributing to Gombrich's schema plus correction model for narrative-art film making.

The cinematography is lush, the characterisation indelible, its narrative reflexively beautiful, the finished product - a must see.

Academics, and I am one of them in film will reflect on the frenzy. We're not being priggish. In wars gone by (WWII) many photojournalists and cinematographers assigned to the US Army's photographic unit shot with small Bell and Howells.

In contemporary history, Vaughn Smith of the Front Line Club covered wars with his Hi-8 in the 1980s; Inigo Gilmore a one-man-band whose work I deeply respect, also a panelist has too covered conflicts; Veteran film maker Bill Gentile, now of Washington State who is pioneering Backpack journalism has the eye of Odin.

So what's changed? The reconstitution of cinematography and full-feature narrative (parrallel storytelling) designed for the cinematic space.

A profession whose technical and creative efficacy would traditionally have tapped many skills and which points to an uncompromising epistemology of non-fiction movie-making is problematic to emulate.

For Hollywood et al to approve of Hell and Back Again, as it did giving a nod to Restrepo is to acknowledge finally the world is no longer flat; civilisations of DSLR technology exists beyond the horizon and they're coming. Oh Yes they're £$££@@% coning. And they debunk the Fordisation structure for professional film making.  Woops!

Danfung, in his calm and collected way refers to it as Immersive film-making. Immersive for the viewer in its aestheticism, yet the embodiment of its filmmaker in hostile territory to get the story is overwhelmingly impressive. That conversation!

+++ END

* thanks to Saeed Taji Farouky for pointing out

Coming Soon: What camera to use where and visual hallucinations on film


Tahrir Memento from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

David Dunkley Gyimah was a contrributing panelists to Cinema Journalism at the Sheffield DocFest. He's been a journalist since 1987 freelancing for BBC, ABC News, and C4 and has covered conflicts. As a dedicated one man band videojournalist since 1994, he now teaches videojournalism and cinejournalism to clients such as the FT, PA, in  the UK and around the world. His film Tahrir Momento - about Cairos revolution was previewed at Sheffield. He is an Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre and is completing his PhD in film and news. He publishes viewmagazine.tv.

P.S to comprehend more on cinematography study Turner