DSLR Cinema videojournalism - a personal view from research study

Presenting at the University of Reading last Tuesday gave me the opportunity to précis a four year PhD study in videojournalism across a filmic expanse culminating in DSLR videojournalism.

It was followed up yesterday with a great meeting at the Southbank Centre where I'm looking to get creative with one of the most exciting movements in modern times - Simon Bolivar Orchestra

In itself there's much to talk about, but my thesis slants towards a lived experience (phenomenology), which enriches the research data. I have been a dedicated videojournalist since 1994 - one of the first official ones in the UK, but have worked in the media, starting with the BBC in 1987.

Below I give a visual history of my work and some of my thoughts -some of which I shared last week.

Undoubtedly DSLR opens an interesting chapter for videojournalism and film making. It is both seductive and functional. Here I'm in Tahir Square shooting an elliptical piece on Egypt's uprising. The trailer's showing on viewmagazine.tv at present

The shoot suited the style of camera and look, which is ultimately the point. Art philosopher Gombrich's well known dictum of "schema plus variation" posits we are always set to improve upon what we do, yet the choices we make are as stylistic as they are functional.

The DSLR was the appropriate choice; just as an artist might choose different paints, easels and strokes to express themselves.

Below's film was with Heavyweight boxer Lennox Lewis in the period he was gearing up for his unifying fight with Mike Tyson in 2002. I was one of only two film makers allowed into his camp for two weeks and in this case the only film maker allowed into the ring.

The DSLR lens' clarity might have been welcome, but I could still achieve a shallow depth-of-field with a BVW camera. I did however double up with a VX1000 which drew quite a lot of mirth during the press conference.

I shared this shoot giving one of my talks at Apple Store. What has been a requisite in all story formulation has been news training which provides the ability to think fast and often shoot a piece with no fat. 

This isn't a given in news production. For instance at Channel One TV we the videojournalists couldn't afford the time for twenty questions, like the network journalists, so four five questions in we made a decision and would end the interview, often telling the interviewee what quote we would use.

On more exploratory shoots, what might be termed documentary, though this term is loosely used as well as there are several genres of documentary, we would go 'fishing', looking for meaning.

DSLR Cinema Breakout

Yesterday I had the good pleasure of speaking to Dr Kurt Lancaster behind one of the unique books on the market DSLR Cinema. He gave his insight into the shaping of DSLR form and we shared some parallel thoughts. He alerted me to this link Dan Chung's disco where professionals were expressing this general theme.

This methodology of cognitive shooting in my case comes from a combination of working at Channel One TV - the UK's first and only dedicated videojournalism station, where myself and 29 others often shot 3, sometimes 4 pieces a day, written and voiced. 

And, working at the likes of WTN which would become APTV. At the point that you're watching four monitors of feeds and three clients are on the phone to you requesting dope sheets (notes and shot list) and footage, if you can't turn around fast copy....

So the skill is to "kill what you can eat". If your piece is three minutes, then you shouldn't be shooting for a documentary. A test we did in Norway showed how to shoot a three minute filmed interview and then edited and load in 9 minutes. Furthermore, I carry out a test on clients that tests their confidence in what they observe and what should be on tape. 

Novice videojournalists start from shooting around 20 minutes for a three minute shoot to 12 minutes in the next.

Meeting one of the greats in Cinema Albert Maysles was one of the rare moments, but I also had my Schneider super 8mm camera with me. The look regarding this doyen of film making is exactly what I needed. Super 16mm with a bolex would have been even more preferable.

 At Channel One, news presenting was one of the skills we were opened up to, which concentrated the mind. A previous job in radio presenting on the London station GLR slotted in between Vanessa Feltz and Chris Evans, and at BBC Radio Leicester in the 1980s meant the ability to synthesis ideas and rework them became habitual.

When we talk about videojournalism we often negate its cognate fields e.g. radio, writing, presenting - but these are important assets in your arsenal that gives you choice. I have preserved some of my favourite interviews which include the late Eartha Kitt, Mario and Marvin Van Peebles, and James Brown's saxophonist Maceo Parker.

The combination of VJ shoot and Radio was highly beneficial when producing for both TV and Radio. In this piece here diving with Turkish and British Navy to find a wreck in Gallipoli, I could sell the radio to the BBC World World Service.


This is one of my favourite cameras and probably expensive, the Digibeta 900. At the time it costs, with lens, about $50,000.

I used it on a number of videojournalism stories for Channel 4 News, particularly in South Africa 1999 on a follow up story called the Successor Generation.

The three photos show off that workhorse of a camera - the VX1000. In the mid 90s this was the camera of choice, and the image below is of the first generation of Macs for editing.  I actually took a flight to the US for 300UKP return to buy it which was still cheaper than buying it in the UK.

One of the most memorable pieces was the runners-up piece for Channel 4's competition Unleash the Talent - a multimedia piece which still stands the test of time. See what yout think?

A measure of how good the VX1000 was comes from this shoot below. We're returning from a Nato War Games exercise in HRH's private plane. The cutlery is silver and the royal crest is everywhere to be seen.

During the exercise all the cameras we had were ruined because of the high salt content of the environment. The VX1000 though did not buckle.

On our way back at 40,000 feet we were tagged by this Tornado to escort us part of the way, or shoot us down, if we ignored their call sign.

At one point we were so close to each other I could clearly see the face of the copilot. He obviously saw me too as in  the footage I have of this event, he quickly closes his visor.

So we end with Soweto, 1995. I had lived and worked in South Africa as a freelance foreign correspondent working for about four outlets: BBC, ABC News, SABC and a couple of magazines - entrepreneurial journalism 1992.

I have worked with several cameras and I presently have four including the DSLR, but it really is horses for courses. My PhD thesis reveals a more fundamental issue which has to do with the interpretation of reality and how it's codified through the image.

The cinematic has the ability to innervate the image and suspend judgement, but that's a more philosophical post for later.

The upshot is how you extract meaning from the story and how you perceive an intended audience will do so without taking the eye of the prize - that takes experience. As my next post will argue when technology is levelled, and there are no advantage to be accrued from aesthetic excesses, you go back to the fundamental cognitive element, the story.

And this intangible - the story hides a number of cues that require excavation, that won't always work.

Dr Lancaster's book on DSLR Cinema places Hollywood's ability towards the motor sensory experience of film in the hands of a new generation of film makers such as Eliot Rausch - who spoke to us a couple of weeks ago - and some old hands pushing the form such as Shane Hulburt.

David Dunkley Gyimah is a senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster in online journalism, and multimedia projects. He runs a module in Television, Docs and Videojournalism and is an Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre. His PhD is a phenomenology of news making. 

Starting an online TV or media venture- let me help you

Panelist, and photographer David Dunkley Gyimah at Sheffield Docs with Danfung Dennis exhibiting his new IPad App for immersive visual viewing.

You're keen to start that online future TV idea - mixing the net and something along the lines of television, which I spoke privately to delegates about at this year's superb Newsrewired event. 

Your ambition is about to bear fruit. The figures have been crunched. You probably already have an income stream from another side of your business and are looking to diversify.

You've lined up advertising, otherwise are certain to guarantee up 1st, 2nd even 3rd quarter funding.

The gap in the market looks even more attractive, now it's time to get this new media venture up and running.

Wait!

There's a strong chance your model apes current offline television offerings. If it does it's the wrong approach. You might have launched a successful show on television, but then you had a sizable budget, had focus groups involved or truthfully you're a dab hand at television.

Online is a different matter. The mantra should be "Stop trying to copy television, and invent a new vision".

Despite it's low entry point programming still costs, so having an infra structure like a Telcom helps, otherwise, it's a slow steady ascent into the programming game.

Changing the Social Network Game
In 1999 I was filming one of Johannesburg's most savvy media practitioners, editor of a hip magazine called Y, for the UK's Channel 4 News.

Ithumelang said something profound about South Africa's 94 transition. There's been an economical transformation, but not a social one.  You could say the same thing for the media industry at large.

Money sees us mimic successful models to replicate online and thus far the social changes in media has been co-opted to suit television's model and also been compartmentalised into something called Social Media.

You need a Social Media unit now before you're worth your salt. That's Ford's 1920s division of labour at work again. It's so rubbish. You don't need a unit, you have to be. Any freelancer making a living will tell you of the need to socially network way before FB and Tweeter existed.

We share because we want to, and these apps have been a real send to the entrepreneur. There are heuristic and experiential strategies to facilitate our growth,  but we need to share something of value first.

You need content before you share and this is where we tend to fall.

Pearson Publishing Training
Last Monday I spoke to a nice group of executives from Pearson publishing about the underlying trend in video production and videojournalism, website interfacing and how with good content you can activate strong SEO articles.

The case studies I gave come from my own lectures, one put into practise by a student of mine and the other my piece on Kony2012.

The video you'll probably know is a phenomenal success. My analysis of Kony2012 is worth a sneak as it alludes to their strategic use of symbolic and implicit codes. This page shot of google when I imput "kony2012", shows where the article appears on the front page of some 40 million ranks.

Google page on imputing "kony2012"

Viewmag.blogspots blog, 2 postings, come in on the front page

Time of googling was 1.58 on Wednesday 18th April.

In google's rankings at the time of writing, 1.58  it ranked on the first page.


Television was once a breakthrough
However this is not the point of this post. Media historians and enthusiasts will likely tell you how badly television is made - not as individual programmes where there have been huge successes, but that television was a poor cousin of its main visual media competition cinema.

And if there's one thing cinema could not compete with Television it was Liveness - the ability to go live and offer immediate gratification.  Television largely suffered against cinema for spectacle but when it mimicked live it was untouchable.

Look at American Idol, the best drama series like ER, and The Apprentice - they're cinematic spectacles and in mentalitie'. In Idol and the Apprentice - they also push the notion of happening live - even when they're pre-recorded.

That twin combination has been at the mainstay of  French philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, and this Thursday, tomorrow, I'll be speaking at JAM about how such strong ideas relate to our vision pleasure in the digital age.

In the past I have shared similar ideas with networks in Beirut, Egypt - where I am due to return - the US, South Africa and in the UK with newspapers. 8 Days was the documentary I made about the newspapers training programme, effectively a digital ethnographic study.

Experiential learning is a powerful teacher; I know enough from working within the BBC, Channel 4 News and a stint at ABC News to understand the semiotics of programme making, but as Deleuze stresses practical put-in-place philosophy enables the user to break down problems and reconstruct them seeking out answers to basic, fundamental questions often missed in contemporary society.

We want to copy television because it offers solutions; indeed it has excelled by relearning from itself, but its original premise only 60 years ago was a poor one; poor in the sense it didn't have the funds to do what the best of cinema could do.

Now you can. If you want to invent the future, it means educating the audience; it'll be slow at first, but in the long run you'll inherit a lasting legacy. There have been a number of case studies I have investigated that could have done that, but they lost their way.

The door in now wide open.

David Dunkley Gyimah is competing his PhD in the moving image. He's a senior lecturer and trainer with a background in broadcasting from 1987. He's been on the Net since 1995 and builds sites and creates factual and news products. You can read more about the future of programmes from the US Award winning site he built Viewmagazine.tv 

Interrogating the media for the nest best thing

Now can you read this. Joe Dubois' daughter passed with flying colours. But something was still wrong. His daughter continued squinting at home when reading, so he brought her back to the doctor, who was not assumed having already diagnosed her as having 2020 vision.

This time Joe had the doctor turn away and observe as her dad asked her to identify letters on the chart. She squinted, couldn't and the Doctor was fascinated.

Somehow he was transferring to the little girl what he wanted her to tell him, because seemingly she'd memorised the grid.

This scene comes from the US series Medium starring Patricia Arquette as  detective Allsion DuBois who sees the future etc, but it's poignancy is vast.

You're often hear the following:

Video on the web should be below 2 minutes, and people don't read online, they skim. Ask yourself how you know this.

Because someone knowledgeable told you, and sometimes depending on your speaker, he or she found out in that great repository of knowledge - the web.

But here's the crunch. The web, indeed even research can tell you anything you want to hear. Let's leave research out for the moment.

The web says so, with a link to some firm or company, with no methodology of how they know - is one of the enduring myths of erroneous information on the web.

So how do you know videos should be so long? Because teenagers are telling you so. Well teenagers say a lot of things, as do non-teenagers, so the next best thing you need to do is undertake an empirical study. That means test the hypothesis you have.

Now depending on your questions you can also influence the answers. A subtle shift is giving times in ascending order 2 minutes, 4 minutes etc. Also if you're in a hurry to finish a survey how does your own time needs influence the outcome.

Research needn't be boring. Here goes. Firstly you can trend extrapolate - examining past trends. Why do we like short videos? Well if we look hard enough we'll find there's a trend in diminishing length.

But why does it apply to the web? Here you could examine features and lifestyles associated with the web - lean forward, you watching at work when you shouldn't, the brightness of the screens that makes you tired and so on.

Then you test those.

One of the things as a videojournalist/film maker I like doing is using film to examine live-studies. It's a practise that has a long lineage in ethnographic films, but given our level of Social Network activity has renewed purpose.

And from what I would call these films of inside records, we can begin to understand not just by hyperbole or more pointedly interviews, but also letting the camera observe in an impressionistic way - that's small details.

Details about what we do and how will come fast and furious at us, and even though the web is a gem, it doesn't have all the answers. Rigour and knowing how to devise and extract data will undoubtedly become a bigger industry than it has so far.

Because rightly we really truly want to know what's going on and that often emerges from deeper analysis than ..because she told me.

Codes, subjects and that thing videojournalism

It was not us the viewer that designed exclusively the world as it should look on a TV screen, nor was it the artist. The artist painted, sculptured, wrote and we the audience negotiated with the form.  What we liked, we pursued, when we didn't the artist retreated into oblivion.

It was the executive whose own preferences dominated by a perception of the medium's codes and cloaked behind the muses of the audience curtailed what could be.

In penning his masterpieces, Daniel Defoe 300 years ago drew the ire of critics because his serialisation of short stories would corrupt the form of exquisite writing.

In painting, Claude Monet was rounded upon by important figures just over a 100 years ago because he couldn't paint. Indeed his unfinished art works were sketches, or impressions. The name would stick and soon audiences flocked.

Robert Drew the pioneer behind Cinéma vérité was criticised for wanting to film in a completely new way. "The television news didn't understand", he told me. "I'd show them some pictures and they'd say you've got some fine pictures there Bob"... and left it at that.

Similar stories of excellence can be traced from any of the creative arts and the theme here is in its beauty often quite simple. The artist creates for themselves with one eye perhaps on friends, but it is their individualism we buy into.

Theirs is to perfect their form in a manner in which philosopher Schopenhauer would comment, the author must has something to say. The true author is haunted to express and what she or he produces will not always be immediately, if ever, understood.

We're perpetually moving, so this is not a critique of the continuing fault lines in videojournalism and the rest. The wisdom of crowds contributes heartily itself to development. However there is a fundamental caveat.

Writing, as I'm doing now, does not create the form. Granted it has other values. Doing it does. And the businesses may initially fail to understand, because if its new and exciting it will challenge existing codes of cause - new style - and effect - what's the return.

But make no mistake, codes and the myths of ideas that work on a grand scale (ideology) continue to mind-numbingly shape what we do, and create conventional meaning. The artist does not always respect that.

The danger we entertain is critiquing forms, not as logical rhetoricians - another blog in itself - but in not doing and understanding the matrix of codes that dominate our lives and that the art of new takes time, otherwise we risk cloning circular ideas.

The breakthrough in creativity in a new filmic discourses is not to be prescriptive, but flexi.

The window lay in businesses, telecoms, creative Net sites supporting both intellectually and with resources the ideas of artists who are busily. by default, reshaping the way we see the world.

And guess what it's beautiful, when you see it!

Prospective job hunters and entrepreneurial multi skillers use websites

With nothing to lose and everything to gain, Alice Lee has achieved that elusive of Warholism, even if she has yet to hear back from Instagram about that job.

A couple of weeks ago, this enterprising student set bloggers et al talking with a website: dear instagram aimed at Instagram prospecting for a job. Instagram is a photo sharing site/app with an assortment of filters to transform your pictures.

With swirling typefaces and a GSOH, bordering at times on youth exuberance; she says she skipped classes to create the site, Lee pitched her tent site.

Clever? That's the debate amongst interested parties and educationists, as the question gets asked, will this be the way we apply for jobs in the future? Is the CV dead?

Lee, if anything showed some enterprising spirit and previous jobs at Foursquare demonstrate her tenacity.  Then there's  Neta Marshall who also wants to work at Instagram, but by comparative analysis has set herself a tall order with lee

Finding that job
As part of our Masters Online module, we press are journalists-to-be to use cognitive and semiotic skills to appeal to potential employers, not through bespoke sites, but tailored to their overall strengths and what their choice employer would be looking for.

Take a look for yourself at the about us pages of

• Sense of London
• Colour my London

which links to individual sites and play juror, before we assess their work in the coming week or so.
Some of the characteristics you might consider are cleanness of the site, its simplicity, weight and zen quality. That is when you cohere all the qualities you get the whole. Consider the parameters below:

• Aesthetics and style
• Clear communication of design
• Content, its quality and layout
• Navigation
• Miscellaneous innovations

It stands to reason, if you are wanting to work for an online site, it's appropriate you demonstrate this within your limited window off opportunity. And there's experiential evidence that shows this works, at least my end.

Entrepreneurial skills
Stuart Cosgrove, a well known figure in the UK's television industry - a senior executive at Channel 4- once said CVs were difficult to believe because a candidate's history could not be verified.

It gave me an idea, in 1997 looking for my next job, I devised what I called a Visual CV. Whilst working in South Africa, I had interviewed Nelson Mandela at a press conferences, but who would believe me, so the CV contained a column with icons illustrating just that.

It worked, as I would later get a call from the then deputy editor of Channel 4 News Peter Barron, now a senior google exec, to come and see him. I would become a regular freelance at Channel 4 News for about four years.

This shot of me much interviewing the former head of the CIA James Woolsey illustrated, without hearing the interview, that I had an interest in international affairs and I could interview leading news people.

Now as the next generation job-hunt, the market perceptively looks more difficult. Employers have become more discerning and their job at picking a candidate as a BBC editor told me, more difficult.

For every job, they'll be a hundred applicants and out of them at least five could do the job admirably; I call it the 5 percent rule.

So anything you can do to demonstrate key skills is paramount. And in the expression of wanting that job, it's not enough to say you're multi-skilled as mostly everyone is, the key is whether you understand the medium and the production and affective state of content.

You've got a limited amount of time to strike. What are you going to do. The next step is yours?

David Dunkley Gyimah is a senior lecturer and Phd researcher in online site building using css, flash, etc, combining cognitivism and semiotics, with videojournalism and docs at Viewmagazine.tv

How to get good grades in your exams

Thought this might interest those submitting for your second semester modules since it's a universal theme.

1. Read the fine print of what's required and talk to colleagues. If an essay says 1500 words and you create 2500 that may be viewed as not disciplined and may lose you marks.

2. Wow yourself and others.  Surprise yourself by creating something exceptional, but don't be blinded by your own invention. Seek advice, the wisdom of crowd from others. If the work you've produced was too easy, then look at it again.

3. Hand in your work on time and check and double check before submission.

4. Use your work, particularly if you're publishing online to impress future employers. And if that is the case ensure there's a strong sense of denotation as to whom that employer might be. If it's a website, who are you and is it obvious what your strengths are so anyone might guess a probable employer. Makes recommendation easier as well.

5. Enjoy the process. This is the last time you'll probably undertake such voluminous work, before your  career. Critique in the literary objective sense, rather than the rhetorical yellow journalism method.

6. Reflect on what you've done and write it up whether you've been asked to or not. Reflective writing is the art of philosophical musings, where you the "self" asserts qualities discovered and refined along the way. It is storytelling par excellence of the autobiographical kind.

7. Look to  industry standard rather than the academic ceiling. If it's the academic ceiling you're aiming for, you could do brilliantly but that might not make you industry-ready. Of course that all depends on how practically and theoretically-orientated your course is to industry.

8. Ask when you're unsure and have consulted with friends, rather than sending 80 emails to your Professors and lecturers, as at this time of the year she will be inundated with emails. The more organised lecturers would have tried to supply as much info on modules course site or blackboard.

Obviously there are occasions when you'll be unsure and need to ask your lecturer will be paramount.

9. Remember profs and lecturers have two personalities, the lecturer and the marker. Sometimes they meld, often they don't. So don't be ambiguous. Remember the art of storytelling and examples given when storytelling. Lecture's are readers too. Their job is to help you along, so the marking regime is based on parameters that meet those requirements.

10. Get yourself a drink and talk with friends and lecturing team about the term and what may lay in store in the future. The lecture room is just the tip of the iceberg for the career ahead, and keep in contact.

The industry is pretty small and you never know when you'll walk into that job and find the lecturer you left years ago sitting, waiting for the morning meeting.  One of our lecturing team did this last year moving over to CNN.

How to get good grades in your exams

Thought this might interest those submitting for your second semester modules since it's a universal theme.

1. Read the fine print of what's required and talk to colleagues. If an essay says 1500 words and you create 2000 that may be viewed as not disciplined and may lose you marks.

2. Wow yourself and others.  Surprise yourself by creating something exceptional, but don't be blinded by your own invention. Seek advice, the wisdom of crowd from others. If the work you've produced was too easy, then look at it again.

3. Hand in your work on time and check and double check before submission.

4. Use your work, particularly if you're publishing online, to impress future employers. And if that is the case ensure there's a strong sense of denotation in answering the fundamental questions of your intended employer. If it's a website, who are you and is it obvious what your strengths to a third party.

5. Enjoy the process. This is the last time you'll probably undertake such voluminous work, before your 
career. Critique in the literary objective sense, rather than the rhetorical yellow journalism method.

6. Reflect on what you've done and write it up whether you've been asked to or not. Reflective writing is the art of philosophical musings, where you the self asserts qualities discovered and refined along the way. It is storytelling par excellence of the autobiographical kind

7. Look to  industry standard rather than the academic ceiling. If its the academic ceiling you're aiming for, you could do brilliantly but that might not make you industry-ready. Of course that all depends on how practically and theoretically-orientated your course is to industry.

8. Ask when you're unsure and have consulted with friends, rather than sending 80 emails to your Professors and lecturers, as at this time of the year she will be inundated with emails.

The more organised lecturers would have tried to supply as much info on modules courses or blackboard, but obviously there are occasions when you'll be unsure  and need to ask staff.

9. Remember profs and lecturers have two personalities, the lecturer and the marker. Sometimes they meld, often they don't. So strip away the personality of your lecturer in submitting work. Tell a story with appropriate examples rather than a litany of facts. The art of the narrative is about engagement and the more enjoyable the read, the more you stand to gain.

10. Get yourself a drink and talk with friends and lecturing team about the term and what may lay in store. the lecture room is just the tip of the iceberg for the career ahead and keep in contact. The industry is pretty small and you never know when you'll walk into that job and find the lecturer you left years ago sitting, waiting for the morning meeting.  One of our lecturing team did this last year moving over to CNN.

Politics, story telling an Narratives

You have to love politics.

Here goes. There's been a by-election in the UK; where a city elects a new member of parliament, because the previous one resigned, died or any number of things.

Bradford-West in the North of England has many qualities, but the one news touts is its large Muslim population. Until yesterday, it was a shoe-in for the Labour Party. That's the political group led by someone known as Ed Milliband.

Late last evening when the results were announced, to Ed's utter amazement; his speech was all prepared to congratulate his colleague who would win the seat, Labour lost.  By the way his colleague's name, few people know who this person is.

The scale of Labour's loss is eye-wattering. What was a place where they dominated for over 20 years, they lost by 10,000 votes and to of all people a man by the name of George Galloway.

Galloway formed his own party called Respect a while back and then went on reality Big Brother show purring like a cat.

His win was 56% of the electorate vote to his closest rival - that labour person, who won 25 percent. In fact if you put all the losers votes together, they would still fall short of Galloway, known to some as "Gorgeous George".

Now there's a lot more to say about Galloway, but forget him now. Ed Milliband ashen-faced shocked says he's disappointed and that he needs to find out why that's happened.

That's half the story. The backdrop has been this week when the Tories budget which hit middle incomers and gave a tax break to the rich. A week when Pensioners were also hit in the pocket. Oh and tax (VAT) put on those who eat pies. Yes pies. A week when the Tories, the government in power... Oh sorry that would be the Lib-dems. No, that in practice that's the tories have done everything to become unpopular, including yesterday telling everyone to store up petrol because the country will run dry.

So the punch line and this is why you'll love politics. Ed Milliband confused he's lost is being interviewed by all the networks. There's a code you don't cross if you're a political journalist.

Oh you might ask the question, everyone else is thinking, but you'll move on.. And what is that question, that labours own lot and many others think their leader is well, unelectable.

He's so bad, the current government could do anything they wanted, and the electorate won't vote for him. Why not?

Well that's a bigger question, but the long winded point I'm getting at here is that journalism needs to get out from behind the sofa and start stating what everyone else is thinking.

Can we talk - series

Can we talk?

How to be the best at video making, or whatever you do

No, no, no, no, no ! No!

If you're learning how to become a story telling using video, a videojournalist or even designer and your trainer says "You must do it this way", please make your excuse and leave.

I pride myself on one thing, that I recognise that creativity is not a science, where exact answers are required.  I might suggest, as we start our training telling you what works, but these are not hard and fasts rules, and might only likely work now in this zeitgeist, until another period takes over.

So my rule is never to stop anyone doing what they want, and I never stop learning to anticipate the next era and other styles, because the expression within story making is inherently that you MUST be able to develop your own style.

Unfortunately in an institutional setting like a university, parameters are prescribed to quicken up your understanding within a time frame.

Makes you think how some of the greatest painters would have fared on a Masters program.

Being the best is also in today's day and age anachronistic. You can aspire to, but in an Internet age of untold comparisons, it's impossible.

In part because by categorisation you can be the best footballer in Africa, best film maker in Ghana, best videojournalist in Germany, but when you start combining territories it's nay impossible. What you get is people who are different to you, but one system cannot trounce another.

So consider this, to shoot a good documentary you need a tripod, good camera, you'll shoot rules of thirds and grab interviews. How do you know that? Because your lecturer told you so? How does she know that? Because presumably someone told her, and so on.

We therefore arrive at a crossroad, not so long ago in the evolution of film, when there was no, "she told me so". From starting at that base, a couple of experimenters did something, and guess what some worked, some didn't.

The bit where it says hold your camera yourself didn't work because the camera was too heavy, and when the film maker did carry it, the shots were all wobbly.

Then Abel Gance and a group of film makers came along and said, actually we want to show you what it's like when you watch something in a heightened state.

They moved the camera here and there, even attempted to keep it steady by holding their breath. Audiences looked at it and marvelled. The film makers called it impressionism. And that too would become part of the tick box that seemed to work, BUT for a certain type of film and a certain period.

Heightened states invariably use handheld now; 24 the series, police dramas; Bourne trilogy, and the likes, but if you're Terence Malick the style is cinema poetics re: The Thin Red Line.

Film works as many scholars have noted not because it's preordained too. Film has no language, it has a system that's built up like making castles in the sand. Sometimes the castle works, sometimes it doesn't, but when it does, the chances are you know exactly what you'll do when you go to the next beach.

There are a million ways to shoot your friend's face, but in literary language only a definite number of phrases to describe your friend. The beauty of film, design and creativity is anyone can be fabulous, but to do that you need someone who will let you develop. That's why apprenticeships worked. You had time to learn from your mentor.

The essence of creativity and film is therefore an appreciation of human behaviour, because ultimately what works in film is, or was easily found in what you saw. You just had to be prodded where and how to look.

David is a senior lecturer in videojournalism, TV and Docs, and design and online. He is completing his doctorate in future film making and has worked as producer and videojournalist for some of the world top news brands.

Digital Futurism in Academia - what you might want to know

Ilicco Elia, Head of Mobile at Lbi - an Academic Professional guest lectring

This article explores the emergence of the new PAs (Professionals - Academics) and how Post Century Digital is only now beginning to shape up to what will be teutonic changes (Doctoral stuff).

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There was a time when as the erroneous saying went, those that couldn't make it taught.

It was wrong then, it's absurd now, because you dare not stand in front of a lecture without being digitally armed, and analogue confident.

Firstly,  the assumption that digital would usurp the media ways of old is still in its infancy so whilst there have been technological shifts, the seeds of comprehension can still be found in traditional norms.

You use twitter to successfully inform others. De facto, you possess strong research skills, finding and critically appraising good articles.

You garner new friends via Social Networks, but guess what, the rules and social etiquette of making friends lay in cognitive, not digital behaviour. Being selfless and loving thy neighbour is a caring human attribute.

Furthermore if you possess News subbing skills, and can turn the long winded into poignant copy text, twitter is a breeze, once you learn its own aphorisms.

Masters students, Michel and Creg in shot listening to Ilicco 

The most important page on your website is not your home page per se, but your article page. Browsers come to you via your articles, only those that know you come by your home page. 

Ilicco Elia, talking to students.

THE RISE OF NEW UNFIXED LEARNING
Talking of subbing skills, the story of the Fishmonger's shop sign"We Daily Sell Fresh Fish Here", is the example par excellence. You don't need "Daily" said a friend, because you're here. Neither do you need "Fresh" because you wouldn't sell stale fish. And for good measure, you don't need "Fish", because its obvious. Here's Garr Reynold's take.

But those who use this story often fail to discuss the flip side to this, what I call "cognitive impressionism"

When I tell you don't think about the elephant in the room. What do you think about? So while in literary terms the Fresh Fish story has redundancies, we need the superfluous to trigger sub conscious actions. And you know all this because it has little to do with digital.

The digital trade winds that have swept through many professions, such as media, travel and music, have  impacted upon academia, but I believe this has, by and large, been minimal and reactive, and that a more nuclear impact is imminent.

In part it's being buoyed by the changes in society as baby boomers in the digital world mature, and  fiscal changes to macro and micro economies take root; crashes worldwide are hitting local economies. But also cultural and psycho-happening factors spawning new codes and new philosophies.

Thus the institutions of fixed learning is mutating. This article on "Universities face crisis as cuts crash in on academia" could apply to many universities in Britain and across the world. Will students in 2050 be learning en mass in settings as digital becomes all pervasive is a thought taxing educationists, if not it should?

The more here and now aspect of change is evident, albeit it'll be unrecognisable in a decade. You can see it in the following, the academic-professional Neos, or think along the lines of the Digital Futurians e.g. Kate Craig-wood.

No, they don't hack main frames, but they see the world as a matrix, creating bridges and forging alliances. They exist in the media-doing world and the academic, either lecturing or researching, eliding successfully between the two.

They run successful courses, sometimes their own and deliver needed assets to the industry at large. The world has really become just code, but with a soul.

You know of them through the likes of :

• Brian Storm (@BrianStorm) 
• Jason Samuels (@profsamuels_nyu)
• Adam Westbrook (@AdamWestbrook)
• Kathryn Korrick (@Kcorrick)
• Claire Waddle (@cward1e)
• Richard Koci (@koci) 
• DJ Clark (@djclark)
• Tom Kennedy (@TomKennedy)
• and apologies for the many others I know and have left out.

The BBC's Social Network event, organised byClaire Waddle was full of APs

With their growth, fixed tertiary education can at the moment still rest on its legacy of brand awareness as a unique selling point. Another being the institution's accrediting status, but for how long?  Brands are not infallible ask Hoover the vacuum cleaner, better still Dyson.

And Vogue magazine's move into the sector of creating its own degree sets a game changing precedent. This year it's rumoured a national newspaper is set to launch its own degree programme.

If "Did You Know" is anything to go by then much of this below is just the beginning.

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist, using technologies yet to be invented, in order to solve problems which require a philosophical understanding of not what's right, but more appropriate.

THE ACADEMIC PROFESSIONAL
Increasingly too, I have identified a growing pattern amongst the PAs ( Professionals-Academic).
They're what I would call Post Century, which is a take on post structuralism with a twist.

If post structuralism believed language in itself could not yield convincing answers and that reasoning needed to be situated in where you were ( society), and what was going on ( culture), Post Century - the age of the Digital Renaissance scores various philosophies in a way that tries to make sense of existing theories and certainly ones within the shadow of the digital age.

Two things to note from unpacking the last paragraph. Philosophy, the art of clarification, whilst never prescriptive is now begging us; I mean seriously begging us to entertain what was meant and what's going on now. We need answers.

The time when philosophy, as a presumed impenetrable obscure subject was meant only for academics should be abandon. Correction, indeed various positions are being challenged.

Tom Kennedy, Jessica, and Brian Storm talking with Rich Beckman, Miami University

Last Tuesday, I invited Brian Storm to talk to our Masters students by Skype. Asked if he considered his stories to be one side as a journalist or thereabouts by a student, his reply was that he ceased to call himself a journalist because the idea journalism can be impartial is impossible, and misleading.

A week ago, I interviewed Richard Sambrook, one of the UK's most revered media figures who is my Morpheus pushing the analogy of The Matrix. He explained how ethics and impartiality emerged; yellow journalism and Pulitzer as standards to help the reader. And that it's needed today now more than ever.

Post Centurists get both arguments, and are informed thereon. The reasoning then becomes dialectic, persuasion through acceptance; rather than rhetorical, persuasion through force of argument sometimes veering on dogma.

My own penny's worth is the rediscovery of cinema without narrative, a place where Heidegger's Dassein emerges as a primary force. Here's a simple more recent logic. I just saw a tweet from the father of videojournalism Michael Rosenblum on the primacy of the iphone (Online course here) as a shooting device and one from Tom Kennedy on photographers shooting cinematically.

So first it was film, then video, then DSLR cameras, and now iphone. Reductive thinking would tell you simply it's not the device by itself and what it creates, but something else is going on inside the brain of the being. That's the frontier we're burrowing ever deeper to understand and explore. That's a strong area for me of what Digital Futurism is all about.

David Dunkley Gyimah is completing his PhD in Film and Video

The Cinematography of War, Storytelling, 5Ds and Recruitment - Act of Valour

"I feel the need, the need for speed". Anyone who remembers the excesses of the 80s will recall Bruckheimer's Top Gun (1986), which featured arresting visual photography, a typical Hollywood script that would make any teenager recite the aphorism above, and it didn't do to bad as a recruitment drive for fighter pilots.

With the same theme comes a 2012 simulucrum; Act of Valour.

The team are calling this a new kind of movie and to its credit it's trying hard to justify this. The first is its stars; actual Navy Seal.

This won't have been the first time professionals take on acting roles: Boogie Nights featured actual Porn stars, Platoon had army men in the film and advisors.

Act of Valor's claim is where you fictionalise fact based around what could happen, by taking what's real and hyperrealising it. The extras become the stars. They may not win Oscars, but there's no faking it.

In February's edition of American Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, cinematographer on Act of Valour gives big jack boots to the other stars, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR.

The team worked with 15 to make this, in a technique I described in this post some years back called "Swarming".

The technical specs include shoot exteriors at 5,200k and Shooting action around T4/5.6 and T2.8 for Shallow Depth of Field effect. In all the effects are impressive and on the back end of Danfung Dennis' Oscar nominated To Hell and Back Again, cement the little Canon as a big beast in the indie movie world.

It won't blow a hole in your budget either. Act of Valour is doing the rounds at the moment, and by any expectation, a new slogan will emerge for a new crop of young people wanting to join the SEALS, if you can get past their rigorous training regime.

Transferable skills of the modern day journalist

Shot on the Ipad 2

He was the former BBC director of global news and an employee of theirs for 30 years.

Then two years ago he joined Edelman, described as the world's largest Public Relations Agency, with 63 offices and more than 4200 employees as global vice-chairman. In September, he becomes the director of the Centre for Journalism at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies.

For the doctorate study I have been pursuing, I have interviewed around 90 experts and game changers who point the way to a new horizon in communications, weighted by their experience.  I'm grateful to Richard as I am to all of those who have been generous with their time and been patient while I asked questions.

The future of journalism is a subject we keep coming back to, but its part of a wider debate on communications and the impact of society and culture.

The tools have been the enablers, but as Professor Brian Winston points out there exists a supervening neccessity to make do with the technology. If we did not have a penchant to communicate, to share, to become blase about our social axis, twitter would be redundant.

Now more so than ever, in this excerpt from Sambrook, the integrity of News and its transferable craft skills is called upon.Transferable because since every one is a publisher, clients can and do publish their own news.

But news comes with a number of codes about its probity. In Public Relations that's a soght after quality, as much as the art and what constitutes a story, which goes back to my doctorate study.

We face an ongoing collision of disciplines; the key is to understand the present, reconstitute that with the past, and be confident about the future, It's a great time to study the art of storytelling.

Kony 2012 - Should we be worried ? Charlie Brooker thinks so.

This by Charlie Brooker offers a counter to the fan fare accompanying 2012. In a previous post I was effusive over the techniques used. Many people have been.

But I didn't look at Invisible Children the company. Brooker puts forward a perspective that makes you ponder what's really going on. Worth a look and comment.

Is Booker doing what journalist should be doing?

Pocket Rig, Videojournalism and Edelkrone problem solved?

Taken from Promotional Video, Pocket Rig in action

The purist videojournalist adheres to steadfast principles: be discreet, be mobile, move fast, and get into privileged space.

A dilution in its essence, spawned by a tilt towards an ecology and lucrative trappings of DSLR-indiewood film making accessories, has meant videojournalism has often been by passed.

If you've all the time you need in making that Hollwoodesque film, all's well and good. The trouble is often in news the image and issue decomposes quickly, and also you don't want to draw attention to yourself.

That's why this pocket rig by Edelkrone looks an ideal product. It's small, looks compact and thus will offer the type of discretion needed compared to an array of rigs.  Watch the video from 7 minutes onwards.

RECENT INSERT - Please read one customer's legitimate concern about the rig's hidden costs.



It's built on the principle of the collapsible rifle butt, which aficionados of the Fox 1973 Day of the Jackal might notice.

I spent a considerable amount of time on their site to learn more. Edelkrone have garnered a degree of publicity from what appears is a good OK ( Read above link) marketing campaign.

And that's desperately sought after in a multi-million dollar market, where any good product will win  global sales and overturn competitor's advantage.

The story of Sony's 5D is the tell-tale story. You could almost see executives at JVC and Panasonic  smacking their lips when the  5D hit the market with a blaze of viral publicity and ate into their market.

As both a videojournalist/film maker the pocket rig would have been ideal for shoots with Nato and some of the more intense work in West Africa filming special forces, a film I made for Africa's DSTV.
As an educator, I'm keen to know what our Master's students think.

David filming in West Africa

David and team on Nato training

Here's the rub though and its one that's a critique about independent journalism. I like the product, but the website, based in Turkey, posts this notice that the product ships in 2 weeks, and they've run out of supporting bundle accessories. It doesn't inspire confidence.

Having trawled the web for some time, and though I lecture in SEO no doubt I have missed the sites which have given a critical review of Edelkrone's Pocket Rig. However the two I did find high up the rankings were Shane McGlaun from Slash Gear  and Frank Doorhof.

So if you've tried it as a videojournalist and have feedback from the company perhaps you could share that.

One of the Achilles of the web is how you separate independent reviews from listings of PR, where bloggers merely recycle their adoration for a product. The effect is the top pages of google rankings becomes weighted with promotional listings and very little about details which would benefit the consumer.

The question partly answered by Free film at NAB is

1. What's the product truly like through testing?
2. Is there a seller in their region, where consumers can talk to sales people.

That's not asking too much is it?


Click here for insight into major new findings on

What is videojournalism on the web, in multimedia and offline - a major study and film - and why it matters

Renewing your approach to communications - critical writing and video

David gets ready to talk at his session on IM Videojournalism at SXSW 09

One of the achilles of traditional journalism was it avoided exegesis, which is a critical understanding of issues.  No, that was left to the artsy literature folk.

Perhaps it was right to do this; journalism and audiences have broadly been served well. The evidence has been in viewing figures and the existing use of the word "Mass media".

In the 1950s as TV News was being created, the experts baulked at anything being beyond 2 minutes. Goodness that's a whole 120 seconds.

That approach combined with the sign of the times contributed to the adoption of television's most powerful media and language theories - Myths.

Myths in lay person's language means fables e.g. superman flying, Nike running faster than lightening, and so on. But the myth in media form is about the illusion of reality TV reposits, as we come to acknowledge.

We love a good Myth. Men are better drivers than women, people less well off are less intelligent, and the hero always wears a white hat, are just some of them.

And television in its short hand syntax to tell you a story plays on myths, otherwise it wouldn't only bring you stories of people suffering in drought regions, when there might be many other stories in the region.

The Net and you were meant to veer away from those perennial myths, and to some extent we have. Twitter allows for many more stories to be traded, though the super myths still reign. In any case, just as a technology like Twitter emerges, the phenomenon of re-mediation kicks in.

Here, those traditional media relearn the new skill, adopt it and et voila use it for their old myths again. You can't win?  But oh, but you can, not all old media is able to, or wants to match the new. There might be institutional reasons, or cultural reasons

This is not about who's right, but that simply if say you're playing basketball, you're not allowed says the institution of Basketball to kick the ball, otherwise you're playing football.

On the net, coupled with what I would call the flattening of cultural norms. Some people playing basketball want to kick the ball. What Chinese teenagers want today on closer observation you could posit is no different from California youngsters seek. Yes there might be differences, but those desires have levelled far more than perceived in the 1960s.

Yesterday, in a lecture, we broke down the story form of myth into component , and how playing on old myths we could conjure up relational new ones. That's where we're inching towards, but need to do more. Because for all the technology and learning about new apps, it means nothing if it does not bring about susbstantive change.

And by change, not just the speed of transmission of information, but of enriching and supportive ones.

After all the biggest myth is that we've entered the world of social network, but until social issues of the kind that assist each other and humanity are prevalent, rather than those that pit "them and us", we've made little progress.

Fiftyyears on we still, when we have the chance, don't want to be critical.

Creating your own job in the connected youth market -Entrepreneurial Journalism

In the 1950s, neighbours shut their windows or yelled out. In today's Face book neighbourhood such a performance would have brought out people cheering both couples.

Entrepreneurial journalism, self-employed, freelancer, media tart.

It's never been so good.

The point of working is to make a living, and that depends upon consumers buying your product, which in turn means you're able to attract a constituent in the first place.

The classical approach was join an institution, a brand - if you were lucky. It already has an existing consumer base e.g. Saatchi and Saatchi, BBC etc.  And it has become increasingly aggressive at protecting it.

The BBC is set to launch a new show called The Voice, which threatens ITV's fan base for Britain's Got Talent, so the latter has gone on the offensive.

Audiences and for that matter consumers are dynamic, they shift and flow, yet are susceptible to becoming loyal. And irrespective of the generation from Modernism onwards being young is at odds with an older generation. It's a perennial semantic field.

In a Street Car Named Desire, (above), Brandon's brooding love call, as much as 50s Icon James Dean's petulance  in Rebel Without a Cause, or West Side Story, the cult of youth and misunderstanding by an older generation is shown not to be a new phenomenon.

The issue has always been you had limited means of connecting with someone who shared your values.

For instance, when I lived in Ghana, I had a pen pal in the US (OMG). Pen pal??? What's that you ask? Someone I wrote to via airmail letters, which took about six weeks for us to swap niceties. We sent pics to each other, but never met in person. Think Facebook-in-the-making.

So to recycle the aforementioned thought again. If the nature of making a living is to attract a constituent, then what's changed is how that constituent can now come together, even as a Long Tail (read the book), to become an attractive market.

The university lecturing scenes in Kony 2012 is redolent of this. Students seeking knowledge in which the presumed hypodermic approach of mass media is seen as a failure.  Read here why Kony 2012 represents new forms in doc making.

Anyone who has entertained a charismatic speaker able to command the attention of an audience will defacto appreciate that person has a market.

And for those practising new journalism, that's it!  What?  The audience. Because unlike the paleontologist 1990s, the audience can now connect to you. Question is do you know how to make yourself visible?

Onliners researching new writing habots

This I posted on how to get that job Masters students, and where you'd like to be in 4 years time.

We've been looking under the hood of online journalism recently showing how a strong idea, SEO, and good writing, can bring much needed exposure.

I'm due to give a workshop to one of the world's biggest publishers about this. That is how they can share in a more symmetrical way, which is a win win for prosumer as well.

There are new added issues, such as almost everyone wanting to become a prosumer, so who's doing the buying? The lack of either a unique selling point; and that to sell in the market, you need to understand how broadly it works.

In Stephen Covey's epic book 7 ways of highly successful people, or Micahel Hyatt's 7 ways successful creatives think differently, both speak specifically of interdependency. In the networked age, that's more crucial than ever, a sort of interconnecter-dependency.

And there's ample evidence, successful start ups do this.

What's intriguing is this. If the networked generation, as has been amply demonstrated, move collectively, though not blithely, and their values in important areas are at odd with oldies, then the door is still wide open to recreate the new News brands of this millenia.

If you've the tools and interconnecter-dependency thinking you're at a head start.

David Dunkley Gyimah speaks creates in Viewmagazine.tv on new areas in journalism