Two videos merge into one this morning illustrating the point over and over again.
South Africa, 1994 - THE story, that needed telling. The end of Apartheid
By David Dunkley Gyimah. Connect with him on Google What is one of THE stories in the world, now! Put another way, one of THE worst events in the world that is not being told, but should be told.
I know there are many, but I'm talking about one with a currency that, that is univerally so gripping that if it came to you, you'd give it the time of day.
But then at some point you'd switch off. It's also the type of story, that you may not necessarily share because it's not funny (haha) story.
So I make videos, in fact I make lots of things and have done for a while and the drill was to always focus on who we needed to appeal to.
In broadcasting it was the guy in the pub. ITN News had a saying, it's got to be simple enough to be understood by the people in Wigan, which is as un PC as you can say to Wigan folks.
But back to the point, which is. I like the striking visuals, I like the stories, but in order for them not to be transient, the core skill, which has several terms e.g. 360 ( BBC) in early 2000s, to the marketer - All platforms, is the cinema experience.
Backstory
In the early 90s I came across one of those stories. I got pretty incensed why no one was paying attention. So cutting a long story short, I left London to go and live in South Africa, during the tail end of Apartheid and with the little knowledge I had got to understand the story close-up and why we weren't listening. But the story did travel on radio, print and TV.
I'm on one of those stories now. I'm absolutely riveted by it, but I KNOW that to get anyone to see what I am seeing I have got to get you more. It really is not just the story, though I think I can do a pretty good job on this one. It's the whole cinema experience.
It's about the familiarity of experience. It's what was refined by the Star Wars franchise and pushed to the Nth by Apple.
Code everything to that lasting experience. The film, the people behind the film, the magazine piece, the facebook page for feedback, the pictures you can use, the transaction that identifies YOU (user) as integral to making the whole story work.
Because now, you, are that part of the story not in a cliched, figurative way, but in the eyes of content creators, asking ourselves, how we allow you in and you want more.
I'm involved in one of the world's worst stories. I need to find that way, for you to see what I see. P.S there's a Chatham House rule on the story at the moment, that's why I can't be explicit.
Fab story this one ( No this is not the story I'm involed with) and it works for the reasons of semantic fields. Take one field as diadactically different from one and drop it into another
By David Dunkley Gyimah. Connect with him on Google Google "video journalism" and there's a slim chance viewmagazine.tv or Mrdot.co.uk, two sites I created may appear on the front page.
Its SEO rankings is not the result of link baiting, or a successful optimisation campaign, but that the sites reflect the discipline of videojournalism at a time when there was little knowledge on the Internet about videojournalism.
There are two main periods, 2005, 2006 when Viewmagazine.tv and Mtdot.co.uk were built, and then an earlier period in 1994 in the UK, when I learned the craft and there were around 100 people in the world who could count themselves as videojournalists. This clip below comes from 1994. The full documentary will be published online at some point.
In 2005 viewmagazine.tv won the Knight Batten Awards in the US for merging videojournalism with a new approach then to online publishing in layout, css, and Flash. It used magazine layout and embedded video. That is you clicked the video or picture on the web page.
It might be difficult to understand this as a revolutionary concept when it's so commonplace today, but in 2005-2007 it didn't exist. This is a meeting I attended at the BBC in 2007 when they were trying the idea of embedded video. You'll notice the video does not have any play buttons because at the time, Flash's play button was not as common, and for aesthetic reasons I wanted the videos to be free of the buttons.
This is a feature on an Online News Association gathering at Reuters who were pioneering the use of mobile camera filming.
There were two main concepts that guided viewmagazine.tv.
the articles needed to reflect new ideas in journalism, and written according to the rules of Jakob Nielsen. By new ideas that meant expanding the repertoire of journalism stories and secondly writing them in a hip way- something like a Wired Magazine piece
and the imagery and video used a standard idea today of embedded video, where in some case the videos had hyperlinks.
The Batten Awards described viewmagazine.tv as follows:
It might be difficult to understand what this meant at the time, because YouTube had yet to launch. In fact the idea of shared video was frowned upon. When you visited a website the idea was to keep the reader in your site at all costs.
Here's an example of viewmagazine's pages in 2005:
menu page - where all the pictures are moving
The menu page include Jay-Z meeting Prince Charles and an exclusive photo show with Bob Marley
David in the US
In 2005 filming with your camera was still rare. This shot comes from Times Square, where I sat one evening to watch what people were doing
Can you Trust the Media
One of the results from winning a couple of awards that year was the number of conferences I was invited to speak at, which also gave me the opportunity to meet and interview some of the leading theorists at the time e.g. Dan Gillmor and Craig NewMark (video report here).
You can find this report on the Restoring the Trust website. What was unique about this gathering, was that the overall documentation by the conference providers gives a clear indication about what was happening in 2005.
Digital Cinema
Computers, broadband and affordable cameras had as much an impact on videojournalism as digital cinema and the first edition was able to document this. The result of this was an invitation to speak to the BFI, the British Film Industry and to share ideas on videojournalism
Nato war Games
Probably one of the more extraordinary reports, because the effects of 2005/2006 affected the reporting of an industry, which appeared immune from digital, War. In a two week period, working with an international team we looked at how reportage was being affected in the digital age.
In this report above we explored how mobile phones in 2005 would change reporting
Videojournalism revisited.
International Videoournalism Awards Berlin from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
8 Days (2005) on the site MrDot.co.uk reflected the birth of videojournalism amongst regional newspapers in the UK. It won the International videojournalism Awards in Berlin. The story is about the first regional newpapers in the UK attempting to understand videojournalism. Yet the sub plot is about the theoretical work of their training - which was how I trained them. Below is a trailer of 8 days.
2005 and 2006 therefore are crucial periods in videojournalism and digital history. Firstly, there was hardly any theory in any textbook in English about videojournalism. Facebook was something that existed only in university colleges, as this extract from speaking to an American academic referring to 2006 illustrates, and average broadband speeds in the UK were 2mbs.
So what informed the theory of those that would write about videojournalism? Appropriately, a wealth of material is derived from interviewing other videojournalists, but there's a catch, which I share in a detail in my research.
In 2009 in an hour presentation at SXSW in Austin, Texas, I talked about how the framing of videojournalism could produce skewed results if not executed properly. In this clip from presenting at SXSW I'm talking about how videojournalism is being used in a multimedia capacity, however this was not its primary aim.
Many scholars and practitioners will state their understanding of videojournalism. The predominate discourse is that it is a derivative of television journalism, which has resulted in many practitioners from television speaking knowledgeably about the form, otherwise the polar opposite is a documentary Cinéma Vérité approach.
This theory is further supported by research of videojournalists. To understand videojournalism is to seek out the practice of videojournalists, but the question is where did those videojournalists learn videojournalism, and how do they define it?
That narrative we know today begins to creak, when you come to realise that what you might have thought of the source of videojournalism may be incorrect. Today, videojournalism resides, or so we're made to think in the institutions and corridors of the web.
There are two issues to contend with, firstly broadcasters, publishers, imported the form from elsewhere, but where, is the question. Whilst the web has proved enormously fertile, the form that comes across through research is often too diffusive and sometimes lacks the appropriate provenance to create credibility around the form.
That does not mean there are not some brilliantly original videojournalists around, but you have to dig deep to find them out.
In my research I have come across three organisations who started from a blank canvas and wrote the guidelines. That is from the ground upwards they devised a set of theories and practice and my research shows how these were fundamentally different to what is known today.
French philosopher Michel Foucalt had a name for this phenomenon. He called it discursive formation (search discursive formation inside the book) and scholar Paddy Scannell provides an easily digestible description that essentially says how institutions perform a discursive formation by changing something to suit their own systems.
Amongst the nearly 100 interviewees for this publication include senior managers who were responsible for bringing videojournalism to the major broadcasters, and those on the ground with first hand experience of trying to forge something new, such as Brian Storm of the brilliant Mediastorm and Michael Rosenblum, who remains a legend.
Can we look to operate a different form of journalism in the 21st century? Not only do we have to, but if we don't the industry will atrophy. The reason is simple. Videojournalism is a language, and like any language if it fails to add to its lexicon it become irrelevant.
Cultures and society are also dynamic and as they change we need systems that change to meet their needs. Imagine having a mobile phone from 1990 as your operational phone now. Yep I know what you're thinking.
So devising a way to communicate with dynamic societies as twitter and Facebook have shown are not just coincidences, but a form of natural selection.
Can videojournalism entertain values akin to emotional journalism, whatever that may mean? I have been visiting Cairo since 2006 and on one session after presenting a delegate said something that I'd like you to listen to. Is she right?
What is a videojournalist has become a tested and vexed questions and the reply is predicated on who you ask. To define it as someone who films and reports is correct, as I do too, but it is inadequate. To believe it is about a person who can film and report their own becomes flawed at some point. It's like saying The judges at the International awards defined videojournalism, or at least my entry by different criteria.
Why is videojournalism described by a person filming their own report insufficient, because the practice of filming and reporting your own reports has already been done. What videojournalism is becomes an academic exercise of little importance, if the theory that underpins it is not unique.
That word "uniqiue" is not to be used lightly, but there are fundamental characteristics that distinguishes videojournalism from any other form. The evidence stems not from 2005 alone, but in the UK 1994 and over those years there has been two opposing stories that have emerged.
The first I have already mentioned i.e. holding a camera. The second, chances are you know very little about but from my research emerges a universal narrative that has been lost, subsumed into this generic, or television narrative.
That's a shame, because it is by far the most exciting and far-reaching development yet and is in danger of being written out of history. For instance in 1997 we (myself working with CNN International took the traditional form of videojournalism to Ghana and South Africa for this ground breaking series on the continent.
But then whilst I'm not comparing those videojournalists to the likes of Vertov, Vertov's Man with a Movie (1929) camera was dismissed by his contemporaries as mischief making.
I don't believe we can wait for a revisionist history to set the story right. My involvement in videojournalism stems from the three periods: 1994 with Channel One TV, the first videojournalism station in the UK; Being invited to share ideas with the BBC's videojournalism scheme in 2001 and working with the UK Press Association in 2005 to help launch their programme.
There as also various articles in the late 90s and early 2000s that I write for specialist magazines, such as:
But if I was able to be excited, beyond the various trainings that I have given in the US, China (see below), Tunisia, Egypt, Serbia, then it has been the 100,000 words that form the thesis that painstakingly provides a rhetoric of what and how videojournalism works as discipline that is different in every conceivable way to television journalism and the increasing trend for documentary Cinéma Vérité.
In investigating the latter, I had the rare opportunity of interviewing some of the architects of Cinéma Vérité who were responsible for its birth e.g. Albert Maysles and Robert Drew.
David with Albert Maysles at the Sheffield Documentary Festival
The methodology I submit to make such a claim stems from what social scientists call an autoethnographic approach. I have worked in videojournalism, television news as a reporter, and producer, for the BBC, Channel 4 News, ABC News and ITV, so I have a perspective of videojournalism from working in the field. In this package below, is the classic television news reportage for London Tonight in 1997.
A strong autoethnographic statement is also predicated on how trustworthy the writer is. That is do I have any credibility when talking about news and videojournalism. Jon Snow is perhaps one of the best known news presenters in the UK who provides this in support the statement of credibility
Yet videojournaism's representation to use that horrible word, "postmodernism" is a postmodernist variation of television. This is a clip, a music break as part of a bigger videojournalism story in China. Notice how one of the young women in offering me food addresses me (David) behind the camera.
The thesis examines the practice with a historical eye and a look to it future and I should make it available within a couple of months.
David Dunkley Gyimah is going through the final edits of his 100,000 word thesis which examines the future of news in videojournalism. He currently works for the University of Westminster and s a consulatant for several companies including Soho Theatre as their knowledge transfer associate. You can find more about his work from Viewmagazine.tv
I met Salmer Almer three years ago. I was on my way for my final [ I did not know it at the time] training session with the state broadcaster, Nile Television.
Tarek, my host and instigator of the project had made significant gains in building trust four years since he first got me involved in one of the richest experiences, I have had.
One morning leaving my hotel for Nile TV, a taxi cab driver spoke to me in Arabic. I didn't understand I said. In English he then accused me of selling out my culture. But I am not Egyptian I replied. No, he chided, suggesting what was happening was unacceptable. You are Nubian.
The conversation continued, turning from irritation to intrigue captured on camera by my new friend Rob Montgmery, a clever clogs in newspaper design and all things multimedia.
Incidents like this and bumping into Salmer who became one of the Nile TV volunteers, she adds, by sheer chance, were carat gold memories.
Salmer was, and is georgeous, but truthfully I mean this in a way that undermines how we evaluate aesthetics. We look at someone and make an opinion, a mild raise of the eyebrows and its connotations.
No, in training you're so blinded, everyone is an individual challenge to help them achieve their goal. Gorgeous though because anyone who knows Salmer must think her brain deserves to be, like so many other talent I have come across in Egypt, preserved in a museum. Though this rather unintentional macabre thought takes away from her personality, fleeting mind, enquiring attitude and her doggedness.
When I returned to Egypt, barely a month after its first uprising, to present at a summit, Salmer was on my list to call. I would do the presentation I said, no fee, if I could stay a day longer, otherwise it was in at 9.00 pm on a monday, present Tuesday at 10.a.m and catch the flight home at 3.p.m.
I mean where is the fun in that!
They agreed and through Salmer and Ahmed Montasser a fabulous assistant and friend too, we had less than a day to make this film called Tahrir Memento.
It's a videojournalism - art film that reflects the thoughts of five people including Salmer influenced by Resnais's Hiroshima Mon Amour.
Thoughts guide our narrative. We all know and saw what happened during the uprising, but go deeper into the minds of people who can be seen thinking through their words and what we get is a meditative film, which I have shown around the world, more recently in Denmark to a training session with the country's leading photographers, cameramen and women and videojournalists.
Evolutionary Video with Salmer Almer
The film is part of my PhD thesis into new story forms from videojournalism.
I last met Salmer in February, too briefly, but she looked great and was radiating from celebrating a year in a relationship. Her boyfriend must be feeling mixed emotions because of Salmer's new odyssey.
Yesterday, on Facebook, I saw a short message from Salmer. It read:
Egypt. You've been wonderful to me and this is tougher than imaginable, but its time to hit the road, و يا ريت تنهنضي في غيابي — at Cairo Airport, Terminal 3. Egypt.
There then followed a flood of messages enquiring to know more, including me.
I felt moved and in response rather than wishing her luck I wrote this to her.
You don't need luck. Columbia is in for a ride. If
any of the profs. students really want to understand the intricacies of the Arab
Spring, she's right on their doorstep. If they want to engage in a debate of
new journalism that allows for personalisation without a loss of integrity or
professionalism she's staring right at them. Gerlfriend what I'd like from you
is to inject Egyptian, arab storytelling discourse into the debates. Remember
in videojournalism and journalism too the West's hegemonic methods, as
brilliant as they have proved to be, leave no room for counter dialects and
dialogical debates particularly outside of the West's ideological thinking.
Typical is this in the West we believe voxpops on the street serve some
intellectual purpose to a report -- the woman/ man on the street's opinion.
They would never dare of going into someone's home for a vox pop, but in the arab
world, the dinner table, the patriach and matriach, children, extensive
families interacting is a cultural milieu that underpins culture and meaningful
comments.. Your aesthetics, cultural codes and new thinking is what is needed
to rationalise and mobilise a new journalism, a new mode of understanding. That
much was evident in that little film we made Tahrir Memento. Sarah's actions
contributed to actions at large, but significant changes at home. The need for
Naguib Mahfouz's and Nawal El Saadawi's of the 21st century is more pressing
than ever, particularly in mastering the medium of a new language in video and
videojournalism, There needs to be more film makers and journalists exploring Wadjda . Go freakin get them
gerl
And so that's that. All the same Good luck. InshaAllah to your family, friends and soul mate you've left behind physically. You leave a significant hole in the lives of people who know you, that much I am sure off, even though I have only known you for three years. Oh and that bit about the gorgeous mind and person, c'mon she's gorgeous looking too. That her friends also agree !
David Dunkley Gyimah is a former BBC, ABC News and Channel 4 News Journalist. He's worked in news since 1987 and travelled throughout the world teaching and training in videojournalism, which he and thirty other practitioners were trained in the UK in 1994. He is currently a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster and completing his PhD which examines the future of news within videojournalism. He is the recipient of a number of awards and publishes from his acclaimed magazine viewmagazine.tv
You touch, you broadcast. Video embeds in video. Tweet feeds sit on your video, but the tweet feed is still active. You move around your blog feed, pull up a picture from Pinterest.
Your limitations are your imagination. Few apps are gathering apace as this is one is. The label game changer does not do it justice and if you don't believe me, one of the world's biggest publishers appears comfortably wrapping its colossal arms around it and the group.
Confidential conversation, so I can't tell you more. Except this...
A couple of months ago Charley reached out to me. I'm a bit fortunate, I guess because I'm a geek-art-borg, I get the odd wow "hello release". Not PR, but whadyathinkathis.
Things like the rotoheli cameras or Danfung Dennis' amazing Condition One. which transforms the experience of watching linear cinema. If you know anything about Abel Gance's 1922 Napolean which used Triptych, this builds on that.
Charley sent me something. Please don't show anyone, but have a look and tell us what you think?
Oh my good *&^%$$£ What the good *&^%$. I spluttered and said something like. OK what next?
Then the group said they were on the way to the UK. Charley and I had one of those, "we've-never met-before-but-we-share-the-same-interest" conversations.
How's Tuesday looking? Duhh! I'm in Denmark working with some of the coolest photographers on planet earth. Why do I use "cool" a lot.
Because, I might have had my fair share of thrills, but I still damn well get excited at sharing the stage with Bombay Flying Club @BombayFC or US Videojournalist Darren Durlach @DarrenDurlach and the good folk that is Videoplayground, Soren, Martin et al. And I guess if my kinder Masters students read this they might agree.
Ok I can't make the meeting, but I'm going to ping a friend who is the Global head of Digital at [Confidential] . Yes really reader, it wouldn't be fair if I gave you who he was. Maybe when he says I can, but that's business.
Peter, not his real name, got back in 5 mins and set up a meeting. Independently, at the same time, they'd also made contact. I mean they're making all sorts of contacts, so mine was just one of those serendipity things.
Yesterday it sounds like they had "jolly good time" as suits looked on, cocked their heads to one side and it appears did what I did...&^%$$£ .
So that's Touchcast and it's available on iTunes. And no I'm not their PR, but I guess in that roundabout way when you see something cool, and you're told you can, you wanna shout about it.
For the last couple of years I have been lucky to sit as a juror on something called the RTS awards. The US equivalent is the EMMYs for news. I can't imagine any of the jurors not being impressed with touchcast used well by one of the TV programmes. And we haven't even spoken about E-learning.
So in a couple of weeks, I'm going to one of the conflict trouble spots. I have for a good while wanted to blend in hypervideo I spoke to the Economist about and a new form of journalism, emerging from my PhD, which I reckon will be one of the biggest thing in comms in the unfolding years. No that's not me saying, but the people I have interviewed.
David Dunkley Gyimah is a geek-videoborg !!! He's been a videojournalists for 20 years. Worked for traditional outfits like the BBC, ABC News and Commercial advertisers as a traditional producer going back to 1988, and builds websites and makes videos. His PhD research completed looks at news, video and technology, and cognitive behaviour. He occasionally gets invited to talk to creative managers, such as the BBC. You can find out more from his site viewmagazine.tv
Dear David,
We are currently organising BBC Worldwide’s annual Leadership Conference in October which is aimed at the top 150 senior leaders across the company. We would like to invite you to speak at a session focusing on ‘Creativity and Innovation: Creating the Winning Idea’ which currently has speakers including Innocent; Ten Alps and Bebo.
With your fantastic experience in both old and new media and your insights into next generation TV both in the UK and US, you would be a valuable addition to the panel.
About the Leadership GroupOur Leadership Group consists of around 150 of our senior staff from across our seven business areas: Global TV Sales, Global Channels, Content & Production, Magazines, Digital Media, Home Entertainment and Children’s. They are a lively and talented group of people who would greatly enjoy the opportunity to hear you speak and we very much hope that you will find the event interesting too.
