International: A British journalism and video affair

This is journalism, as a very British affair. Cue: Rule Britannia.

It may have an international reach, might even be undertaken by an internationalist, with a global view, but ultimately it emanates from a particular place, these shores, with a British sensibility.

There's no point arguing. 

For instance, when the British wanted to enhance their news filmic storytelling in the 1960s, when the world was swallowing new great ideas far more significant than today by the measure of some scholars, they turned to America.

ITN's Cox saw something about what NBC's news pioneer Frank Reuven was doing. His 'aha' moment was this:

"After studying the half-hour bulletins transmitted by the three American networks and examining their newsroom organisations I am convinced that not only will ITN take the half-hour bulletin in its stride, but will produce a better, more varied and flexible show than either CBS, NBC or ABC."

British journalism in the making ,1967, using an Auricon camera

So today the news story form from the Brits has a significantly different proposition to the Americans. Better? Well, that's business hyperbole; by whose standards? 


Fifty years later, this time the Americans would look across stream for their aha moment. Last year NBC hired its first President of News who was a woman (several men had glass in their shirt collars), but, also a Brit.

The French speaking, MBA-shaped, dynamic Deborah Turness was also the first woman editor for ITN. 

Among many things, she is doing a very British affair in journalism in the US at the moment. 

When she tells her staff, I want the "Queen on the loo" stories, the reference is piquantly British. It means searching for those impossible stories.  Ur hum, "loo" is bathroom, the actual porcelain we sit on [TMI].  More on Turness in a minute.

British Media Summit.

Tomorrow I attend the Guardian Media Summit 2014. A stellar line-up as always, The Guardian, an internationalist, but very British newspaper presents...

keynote panel: Digital content in a mobile-first world

As the opening key note, it features the erudite US Jeff Jarvis as moderator with a nice line-up of a British knowledge.

Vincent Blaney, European brand director – media & digital,  Millward Brown
Lori Cunningham, director of digital strategy and revenue, Telegraph Media Group
Paul Hayes, managing director, News UK Commercial
Ben Huh, founder, Cheezburger and Circa
Robert Picard, director, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford

It's not a controversial point, and I am not being jingoistic. Attendants will, for instance, hear how the Telegraph accomplished its aims. Jarvis' guile, knowledge and being from the US gives him a perspective in perceiving what others, perhaps, will not.

In fact, the two left to their own could indulge in that transatlantic pursuit, "You say tomato, I say tomato". The  point which I'll crystallise fully in a moment, is that there is no international standard to journalism. No one way of doing something.

An international view, yes, perhaps, but the vibrancy of journalism, its sociology, is still made fascinating, by how other people in different countries do things. And how they just might work elsewhere.

As my Masters  students research in Online Journalism showed last week, people who read the Telegraph online are likely to have £100,000 tucked away in savings. Betcha you never considered that as part of your strategy.

Searching for Utopian Journalism

Journalism, as a construct, is exciting by the new ideas, from yonder that shape it where it's being debated at source. 

The Internet may have connected us as friends and family by Facebook, but Brits still dunk their biscuits in sugared, milked tea, much to the opprobrium of the French, and Americans. Thanks for the video Joey on how we Brits love cream in our tea.

And sometimes, our search for a journalism of the 21st century requires a "why" question, from a point and place, that might often be overlooked, and considered too puerile.

We constantly intellectualise media and journalism, with searches for Neo's media Matrix that it's almost impossible not to think why we shouldn't debate things like, how having our own personal satellites, will necessitate an evil twin as gateways. p.s you really need to read the last link and yes the personal satellites was the idea of another much respected news maker.

A former Master student of mine asked a basic question. Why does British Journalism engage itself in ruin, rather than advocacy to effect change. If knowledge is power, how is it endlessly used to pursue a pop star's downfall, when searing concentrated attention on politics e.g. Crimea might have more of an impact.

Remember in the 90s when all the websites turned their screens blank in protest or Wiki went offline for a while. What if all the newscasts in the world, showed the same news condemning what was happening in Crimea for 24 hours. Solidarity, yes! Silly,  and impracticable you might think too. Journalism means different things to all.


So back to Turness. Turness contributes to another sensibility of Britishness - my PhD.

A theoretical and practical document, which examines an emergent, powerful 21st century form of journalism and video form which is not yet public access. Though it lurks  under the radar.

For the last six years, double-bent over a Mac, or positioned in any number of areas: 

• Inside ITN's archive vault - examining their media and archive as film

• filming near the Syrian border where young filmmakers spoke about their influences and how they set about storytelling. Many risked their lives daily, which I have made into a self-contained film.
• using my background and expertise to interview experts and observe the best of what the British do, such as Turness, and scores of other talented journalists.

I have been picking at the seams of this knowledge, contorting myself in knots many times, and awakening in moments of clarity to bash out another 5000 words.

Yesterday, culling 6000 words, 97,726 words finally stared at me from the screens. I am exhausted and it still needs to pass through the channels of academia, so in respect of that process I can't talk about its exact contents.

However, I can frame its general ideas. Firstly, there is no such thing as a universal form of video with journalism. Nope, sorry it doesn't exist. If you've been searching for it, breath a sigh of relief. That's my 3000 words of the thesis. 

And far from dancing on the head of the pin, what I write about for 30 percent of the time is a very British affair  - acknowledging a form of journalism which emerged in the 90s, then (sphew!) disappeared.

Does that matter? Well, it's a bit like an archaeologist stumbling across findings  e.g. Ötzi the iceman and realising that, hey wait a minute so we got that wrong. Because what followed afterwards, was a direction by powerful media forces that reverted to the tried and tested tradition.

By way of analogy, if Twitter and Facebook had been devised by traditional media, they would have used to to publicise their running orders to their own journalists in the field.  Just as well then!  But that's what happened in video news storyform.

This exhaustive research has had its moments. A couple of examples.

What connects this figure below, as a reporter twenty years ago, with this BAFTA award winning film, The Imposter?
 

Dimtri of Raw TV

And the connection to this photojournalist, whose day job was a British Editor, who was the top of his game with GMTV during the Gulf War, who helped the BBC comprehend videojournalism?

These two and 28 others were part of an informal movement, ( an experiment by default) chosen from 3000 applicants. Illustrated in the below figure. For every person chose, 100 people were considered. 

So what was it that defined the group and how has it been that they have been able to tap into innovative behaviour?

I'll shed some light on that in the coming days. How the research took three critical strands to investigate innovative form of  journalism, and how it commenced  following events in 2005, and 2006, when I recieved: The knight Batten Awards and International Videojournalism Awards. 

It wasn't the awards per se, but what happened next with dialogues between groups and individuals.

   
 

Stealth techniques of audience attention (dis) order

"She woke at midnight, She always woke up then without having to rely on an alarm clock. A wish that had taken root in her awoke her with great accuracy".

 "I stare up through the gaps in the sea-grass parasol at the bluest of skies, summer blue, Mediterranean blue, with a contented sigh. Christian is beside me, stretched out on a sun lounge". 

A rough calculation of the first text puts it at around 500,000 words. The second estimated at 120,000. The first - an opening para comes from Naguib Mahfouz ( wait..wait), the only winner of the Nobel Prize for literature for Cairo Trilogy, with an Arabic heritage.

The second para is lifted from the raunchy read: Fifty Shades, the sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey.

It's all in the opening para, yet how much we forget that.  

Technological fecundity and a fetishism that determines how a human's GDP is determined.

Oh you didn't know. It's  how many times you tweet divided by how many new followers you gain. I didn't know that either  -- I was just told.

But the point I'm making is the art of the opening is a diminishing concern.

So you follow a lead from a tweet to a blog, and within the space of three seconds decide, I'll pass. Something about the opening and the turgid lines of sentences that followed.

Film scholars know it as the 'initiating incident', to literary writers, it's in media res, which generally means in the middle. 

You the reader are planted in the middle of that thing. If its drama is compelling, human curiosity seeks closure. You'll continue to read. 

Those newly weds consummating in a free fall parachute dive, is at the end of this text ( sorry, human curiosity. Closure. My point)

Both cinema and literary devices are just as valid in blogs as they are in  videojournalism, which describes why, the formula about what durations worked on line, were in fact myths.

The simple test for you, me  and the audience, is, if your first para couldn't pull you off watching True Detectives, why should it pull anyone else.

The Art of a New Journalism

Imagine this as a hypothetical. A newsroom gets wind of Solomon's artistry and wants to record his story writes David Dunkley Gyimah. 

David will be presenting at the International journalism festival on producing 21st century news story forms from his 6 year PhD research.

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Solomon's story has been done many times in some way in contemporary [rags to riches] news stories.

They send a reporter and after much hair preening, their camera operator sets about to record pictures. If luck is on the camera operator's side, they might get this shot.

Might? Because the beautification of the image is something either a news team might ignore, or not likely seek out.  It is after all, a news film --as if news films are preordained to be shot in a particular way. 

The camera operator working with her reporter will have to figure out blocking. That is where to place the camera in relation to actors to get this symmetrically weighted shot.

It is an intimate scene, so to capture this mood, the operator would have to play with the lens. Not too much light and the focal plane is approaching a deep focus shot. We can just about see the figures with a degree of clarity behind Solomon.  If the camera was on a standard tripod, then its extended by half its height.

And the reporting team, ought to hurry up before the shot decomposes, which begs another question, what's about to happen next which promotes the "cause and effect" sequence.

He is seated. He is listening. His actions have a cause. What is the effect? Cut to something else!


There's a high probability the team would miss this shot, though it's likely a large swathe of pictures will feature the reporter in shot. That after all is the language of news ! Or is it?

But how would you get this shot and what difference does it make?

I'm at the tail end of six years of research into story form, and from my  results, I have made this illustration.






Most people who work in news occupy the centre circle. They have sensibilities towards the other genres. They admire a Rembrandt, when they see one, but what has that got to do with news -- what they do?

The Artists and Cineist see the same story matrix as the news team, but see something different. The see the thing that cognitively strikes the audience's sense of reception.

The thing that makes you recall what you saw and heard.

The Artists and Cineist see a swamp, with kids panning for gold and take this shot.

Courtesy of Yannis Kontos

The traditional newsmaker may miss this shot, or Solomon's because of the deficiency in seeing cinema and art, or otherwise that they lack the theory.  I observed this recently in a network news story from Syria.

This deficiency stems from our education. We are taught to read a book, but not so vigorously how to read art or moving images.

This photo below taken when I was taking a break from lecturing/ presenting in China illustrates the several theories, artist/ journalists engage with either unwittingly or overtly.

In the first few seconds of seeing the scene, all practitioners go through a "journey of ideas and discovery", TV news or otherwise. But those in the art cinema circle engage with film theory, digital theory, artistic theory etc. and synthesis different possibilities.

12 Years a Slave
12 Years a Slave is based on a true story, and its theme persists as McQueen reminded the audience at his Oscar reception speech [see Kontos photo above]. 

So, a modern day 12 Years could be told, but why won't you ever see something like this in news or traditional docs?

You're probably thinking, what a stupid question. This is cinema, and news is news.

So my next question to you is, what do you mean this is cinema, and what do you mean news is news?

You'll likely deliver an answer. But my next question is so how do you know what you know?  This is where it gets interesting, because for the last six years this vexed question of, that's cinema and that's news, has been the focus my findings.

It could be that I'm ignorant of the way news works, but I have spent several years in news working with Channel 4, BBC, ABC News ( South Africa) and WTN - either freelancing or contract.



News is a construct. Simply put. First there was art, then through a combination of factors was fashioned TV News -- a curtailed industrial Ford-like mechanism to create a story.  

Like Ford's production line it works perfectly, until... 

Reviews
The reviews to 12 Years from cinema goers on Fox Searchlight makes for a further interesting case in my investigation.

"HORRIBLE. I was not prepared for the violence and hopelessness. I walked out".

This was a common comment. We've become inured to violence of a kind in news that is censored, or movies where its so theatrical e.g. explosions, that raw unmitigated violence unsettles us. Cinema after all is supposed to be a pleasurable excursion.

But McQueen has done something, which is his métier, that may alter cinema and also reflects in several case studies in my thesis, that our notions of acceptability is being pushed.

Often, irrespective of the audience's appetite, it is the perceived realism of the director seeking the truth, which attempts to set the tone. Remember the Passion of Christ and its inescapable brutal scenes.

Studios want to placate audiences by delivering for the focus groups, but there are directors, particularly from independent art cinema, that push to create experiences that don't pull their punches.


If the text's says a man was garroted, this is how it happened. The news versus cinema is one I'm intimately privy to. Four years ago, I was appointed as artist-in-residence at London's Southbank Centre.

The premise by which Jude Kelly OBE, the Southbank's Artistic Director appointed me was that news and cinema could merge. It was quite possible, we discussed, for something of news value to be created as cinema. But to do so required an appreciation of both forms from the artist.

To create the above scene, McQueen set up the shot, but it's likely he had in mind, as stated on previous films, Renaissance painters. In this case Caravaggio and Rembrandt.

In other words an appreciation of the works of these artists would provide the camera operator with the schema to capture Solomon's scene if they were to come across it - as news.

And what herein is the point of news as cinema?

Cinema is realism. It exists but requires a trained eye to find it. And when found, we don't easily forget it. It is an indelible product seared on our minds. It creates a lasting impression on us. It allows for anything and everything to be in our view finder. It is in everyday life ( read Jean Rouch and Vertov). It is the product of unlimited aesthetics, but it differs from the televisual.

Not to be confused by the images with fidelity, which alludes to the cinemacity, cinema is an all together more complex paradoxical product. It's job is to capture, as to provoke.

That is after all what news does, or should do, particularly seen from lens of an artist. 

I'll be presenting more of my findings from my six-year doctorate research in Perugia and the International Journalism Festival.















At Perugia, I'll be showing my cinema news film We Are Syria.

The history of learning new filmic journalism in days

I

Frame from the film 37 Days to War

"In our administrative department we call this a period preparatory to war", says the count to Prime minister Asquith.

"Are you impressed with all those apostrophes?", the Prime Minister of Britain, seated opposite asks his minister.

Meanwhile, 1,000, 000 Russian soldiers were amassing at the Austrian border. This happened some 100 years ago.

Today, somewhat presciently, Russia gathers its troops in and on the outskirts of Ukraine. More double dutch follows from politicians with, we are defending the Russian people of Ukraine.

History is the greatest teacher in many circumstances, and we could do with investing more of our time in her. 

This "prepatory to war" dialogue emerges from the BBC's 37 Days  a three part drama that charts how the first world war started.

It's also an affirmation of what the BBC does better with public money, coming of the back of Royal Cousins at War, which shows how the royals falling out with each other contributed to the war.

On the Andrew Marr show, a political chat show which sets the days news agenda, Marr interviewed Tim Piggot-Smith, one of Brit's finest actors. 

Tim Piggot-Smith plays Asquith in 37 Days

Piggot-Smith plays Asquith, a prime minister, who historians documented was also a drunk and liked writing love letters to women in high society. At one cabinet meeting he wrote five to socialite Venetia Stanley.

Firstly, cherish the thought of writing a love letter, and on the brink of war! Often, the events of every day life are far more interesting and real than fiction.

And that's what the BBC have capitalised on, by bringing what Piggot-Smith identifies as a documentary team together to produce  37 Days.  Whilst Hollywood  film makers, such as Oliver Stone, start of with cinema in mind, with films such as Nixon, before employing advisers for accuracy, this film takes the opposite approach.

Produced by Hardy Pictures, whose creative director Justin Hardy has an MA in history from Oxford and studied film at UCLA, what you get is a more conscientious film fronting the facts first, but not letting go the importance of narrative and visual film schemas.

In many ways that's what videojournalism, as it was first touted in the 1990s, tried to do with news by looking for the dramatisation that helped construct the background to an event. 37 Days, appears to be doing this admirably and Piggot-Smith says the information is educative and intelligent. 

A similar style was the BBC's 10 Days to War  (You can see a pattern here). "What happened in the run up to the Iraqi war?", asked BBC Newsnight. Under the editorship of Peter Barron, who has since become a towering figure in Google, the BBC filled in the gaps, with journalist, documentary maker and cineists producing a set of great programmes.

One of the most compelling was this talk by Colonel Tim Collins.

I used this an example at a presentation at SXSW to state what happens when you collapse these disciplines into constructing a form that becomes an alloy of all of them. 

Videojournalist, filmmaker and former BBC Producer David Dunkley Gyimah presents at SXSW. Pic Steve Garfield.

In 2009, I interviewed an amazing photojournalist, Danfung Dennis who, in the right place and time, captured this and with his team went on to create his Oscar-nominated To Hell and Back Again. 

HELL AND BACK AGAIN Trailer from Danfung Dennis on Vimeo.

When we talk about new forms of image making and knowledge, the key to these answers often lives in the archives. Unfortunately, we dismiss anything over a decade old as irrelevant, and that makes us us poorer for understanding  the contemporary and the that waiting to be birthed.

And whilst this mode of working mixing forms, is not new, there is a claim that it inhabits new sensibilities in the digital age. That is rather than doing because we could, talent are actively seeking to disrupt the very citadels and boundaries created by policy makers from the past.

And, it seems the BBCs not alone on thinking of this bridge, between filling in the gaps of our knowledge. If you want to know what it was like to be one of the UK's first regional newspaper videojournalists, then you might find some answers in my own film made in 2005 called 8 days.

Dunkley-Gyimah's videojournalism 8 Days

Clearly, there's something in this "Day" business and the implicit arguments in 8 Days about creating factual drama ( with a reporter) make me reflect even deeper on what the BBC is doing with the likes of 37 days..

David Dunkley Gyimah is a videojournalist, filmmaker and former BBC producer. He is theorizing a new approach to filmmaking in his Doctorate thesis. David is the chair of jurors at the RTS's Broadcast Innovative category. He writes and makes films at Viewmagazine.tv 

Oh we remember the 80s -- Warehouse parties n' all

My Uni buddy Tony Minvielle from the 1980s is one of the most respected Jazz DJs and reminded me that  we hosted the 1st Warehouse Party in Leicester in the 1980s.

Here's some of my fav tracks from the playlist. They don't make music like this anymore

PLAY LOUD NJOI

Here's viewmagazine.tv's DJ playlist. 

1. Across the Tracks - Maceo Parker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Dkt61NWSI

2.Message to the Soul Sisters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyOFZ8rQZf0

3. Bobby Byrd You know you got Soul
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUYNrPYS2JE

4. Action Speak Louder Than Words-Chocolate Milk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgoZUHO4uMc&feature=kp

5. The Blackbyrds - Rock Creek Park 1975
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbLYsuudJuA

6 Larry Young's Fuel - Turn Off The Lights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdpGkCTwEhk

7. Tom Browne - Funkin' For Jamaica
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBWHTVMnut4

8. The Fatback Band - gotta get my hands on some
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWPclV0DDa0

9. Leo's Sunshipp - Give Me The Sunshine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7S5GmBM6_g

10. Lakeside - Fantastic Voyage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1YjmXSyHa8

10,000 hours, 5 minutes and 1 sec - getting perfection right - nearly

The Long Game Part 2: the missing chapter from Delve on Vimeo.

It's cold again. The bolognese that is. Thank goodness for bin liners in bins. That's the third time this week and regularly over the last five years I've forgotten to eat. Fruit, that'll do.  When I touch the key board mouse, my nerve endings scream at me.

One thing though is constant: books, read, watch film, read, critique, read, write, rewrite, write again, get critiqued, write again, and again.

[ Pause - I have just burnt the chicken in the oven --really]

[resume - and then write, critique, make film.

It's been relentless. A sink hole where there is no end in sight, and the hole consumes you, fills up. Live burial !!

Except that in the last three months, more than any time I can see the torch light. Nearly there! Adam Westbrook's film captures that journey of knowledge many of use aspire to formally and informally.

Geniuses are rare in the world, unless they're like Dynamo, the magician, where the inexplicable stares you in the face.  In Westwood's film, Tiger Woods must have possessed that magical qualities, but it was worked upon. The Williams sisters too had it in them, but their father provided the currency of realising hard work pays.

You'll often hear football pundits talk about protecting young football stars from the glare of the media, so that they can develop, and not be seduced by the dross journalists write to sell newspapers and inevitably destroy fragile minds in the process.

Westbrook's Missing Chapter
Westbrook's film details the honorary Doctorate at work. These are the individuals whose craft exemplifies extraordinary feats they have obtained outside the strict formalities of education.
Every year 100s of talented people are bestowed this title.

Yet the film  also implicitly marks the formal doctorate -- that relentless search for deep knowledge, in which sacrifices are made that many of us would not entertain.

Da Vinci's grafting that eventually leads to his fame, Coltrane's years of practising , Westbrook provides an easily accessible guide to what Gladwell calls the 10,000 rule. And whether it's exactly 10,000 hours or not, the obvious statement is, doing things well takes a long time.

Since the point of the essay is to yield debate, that is the video essay does not need to be an Aristotelian structure with completion, I thought I'd add to Westbook's essay using myself as an example.

My PhD has taken me six years, and in common with the theme Westbrook focuses upon, there is an autoethnography about my research. Auto ethnography is the combination of autobiography and ethnograpy. Ethnography is in its simplest terms, is the science of gaining evidence and the experience of people from a community.

Those six years involve consuming vast amounts of knowledge, in which in the early years, but only on reflection do I realise I was like a bull in a China shop. I crashed into everything and wanted to know everything. The word I use for this is digital flaneurism. Flaneurs are those dainty Frenchmen who would dress up and simply go for walks to explore their city.  Digital flaneurism is strolling in and out of libraries and bookmarks.

Westbrook's remit did not allow him to deviate into this next area, but every grafter needs a figure head or heads to push them. Most geniuses, humble enough, will have someone or many in mind who they measure themselves against, or study.  Tiger Woods was chasing Jack Nicklaus, Caravaggio, one of the greatest painters of all time was in battle with Michelangelo.  Me, I fixed on everyone.

My interview with Robert Drew, the founder of American Cinema Verite kept me up for weeks afterwards dissecting what he meant. Then there is your critic. In PhD terms it's your supervisor. If you're to succeed then a huge debt of gratitude must go to the supervisor.

It can often not be an easy relationship; a good supervisor is someone who acts as a pastor and a cattle rancher. When things go wrong, there are no niceties about it. You need your harsh critics around you -- something the human soul fights.

The small light in the Tunnel
As I draw towards the end of the research, I only now realise what I've done. I used myself as the knowledge bank, and I justify this with some of the ambitions things that I did e.g. 1997 taking Ghana's state TV to South Africa to create a series of programmes using videojournalism.

But I did something else, I studied a movement in 1990s who claimed they were innovative. Their legacy is hidden, but if I put on my TV almost every week I see one or two of them still punching above their weight. They're older now, but what was it about that period that shaped them. Proving or disproving this meant tracking many of them down and counteracting this with their critics.

It sucked the life out of me, because I needed to find films about what they did and systematically break that down to show the reader, whether their claim was correct.

I could and should have stopped there, but I then extended the research to look at contemporary talent. What was it that they were doing that was working with audiences? These three themes connect with each other and then threaded 
back to significant parts in history, asking the question, why we do what we do and what does it mean?

Meaning, the art of meaning is culturally defined. That is what I am talking about here will mean something to you in the US or UK, but may not have any currency if you're in China.

The other open sore then was justifying in that rhetorical way critics write why I used specific philosophies and methodologies. Phenomenology, Heurestics, artistic methods etc. Why? Why ? Why!

It's been a long road, but the one thing it has taught me, beyond the obvious: discipline, determination, wealth of knowledge, a greater understanding of myself, is humility.

Humility because I doff my hat to those who are in Westbrook's film and the scores of you who are not who sit down every so often behind a PC to write and share, to acquire knowledge and dispense it. 
At the point that you may even dispute what others say, the respect is that they've sacrificied long years to get where they are.

It is indeed a lost chapter and an unfinished book.

I see cinema in people - cine-videojournalism

Vertov, Wikipedia creative commons

Almost 100 years ago, a young Russian poet and futurist had a vision. A newish image form had been taking the world by storm.

In its short existence, over in France, it went through a radical change before it was exported it to Russia, much to the chagrin of this artist.

The young poet's vision was to return the image form to its origins.

This story seems archival, from a world so far removed from our own. However it is as relevant today, if not more so, than 100 years ago

The poets name was Dziga Vertov, known for his incredible films, notably, Man With a Movie Camera. - voted the best 8th movie by movie mag Sight and Sound in 2012

This is where we part company with this story, but the thing to bear in mind is that Vertov and some key figures that followed before TV was popularised believed in a powerful concept.

You may think to rubbish the idea,  however it's been proven to be so powerful that scores of experts and scholars believe in this too.

Cinema is out there. It exists as a vision, a subject, a scene, it's a thing, an idealistic phenomenon.

Take this shot here.

and this shot here

They look identical and could have come from the same film. Derelict buildings,  rubble and human turmoil on an unimaginable scale. 

However, the first image comes from the BBC report from the BBC's Lyse Doucet in Yamouk. This second one from Limbo City in Inception.

Both have the scale and expressive qualities to be cinema, but one is treated televisually. 

Another shot from Doucet's film

This woman is stricken with grief. She has been under siege. She wants out. The audience feels for her, but it's too fleeting. We would like to empathise with her, but the production, doesn't allow this. The image and sound are treated in the news way, detached, professional, restrained.

There are several more examples I could draw you attention to.

Now, please don't  misunderstand me. Lyse Doucet is an exemplary reporter and so is the BBC camera operator. This is not a criticism of Doucet's film, but an alternative way of treating a scene. 

That treatment is a professional one in understanding the ethos of a subject or character and allowing the viewer to interact with the scene more emotionally.

Note, I stated the treatment of the scene is a professional one. It is not adhoc, but based on seeing and comprehending cinema and reinterpreting it accordingly for the viewer, based on a number of interacting parameters.

And those parameters are as complex as they are diffusive. In my theory and practice of cine-videojournalism, this is what its USP is. Most television news practitioners and videojournalists teach, obviously, television news making. As this diagram illustrates, it has constraints.

In my various talks, I make the strong case where videojournalism was. It's a revisionist history, based on the pioneers. Often it's difficult to understand how to make cinema if you've spent you entire working life working news. 

It's a bit like Johari's window, or as it's been redubed Rumsfeld's: you don't know what you don't know.

The logic for this approach is simple. It predates television, and in a world awash with video, makes your video stand out. 

However, it is one of the most difficult areas to master. At my talk in Peugia I will deconstruct how in my 25 years I have reworked Vertov's theory, distilled for contemporary film.

Below, are examples e.g. trailers of work in China, Cairo and Chicago in which I treat the production cinematically, rather than televisually. 

EAT from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.






Video journalism's anti-aesthetic short from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.



David Dunkley Gyimah journalist, videojournalist, senior lecturer and artist in residence at the Southbank. His research studies language and image production and how it influences audiences. This year he was the chair of jurors at the RTS Awards for Innovative News.

British TV journalism Industry at its cutting edge - revelations from inside

... And news is the most dramatic drama, because it's real.

It doesn't quite resonate on the page,  but in a venue filled with the cream of British television journalism,  400 of them there's a a certain bite. 

A statement of intent about why TV's heroine keeps its practitioners going like Duracell batteries, and its audiences, the firm wish is, wanting more.

They applauded. Then again, preaching to the converted hardly shakes the china. But the speaker might be onto something. Fade to black and pull out Dziga Vertov, Russia's uber bad boy circa 1930 and yes journalism was drama par excellence.

In fact, journalism was the height of Cinema.

Somehow we've lost that search for drama on the way. Today things need shaking up -- a bit.  

I made this some years ago, which kind of works towards creating new ideas within news




Tales from the Awards

But shaking up things a bit on a grander scale is something the US stalwart network, NBC, dared to do, yet was so damn refreshing.

Months back now, it hired a British female dynamo in the shape of Deborah Turness. Turness, the architect of the news is drama speech, IS cutting edge.

Yesterday, she was given The Judges' Award,  by her peers for outstanding achievement in journalism.

Not bad at all she could say for the once 21 year old, rejected by the BBC, who then wrangled herself into ITN via its Paris Bureau many years ago.

If you haven't heard it said yet, but oh yes the Brits have come.

There in America, Turness is making her mark. Among her evaluations about news, Turness let on what pressure meant, that is to be hit by a hose - supposedly from managing the US network.

She said she  presses, among other things for the correspondents to find the "Queen on the loo" stories. *^%?? ... the unreachable.

Awards, and it is the season for them, have a habit of being like Christmas staff parties; everyone who is there is in the know; they're aware of each other, and nothing really emerges that might be a tad controversial.

Michael Crick, a reporter whom it's said strikes fear into politicians when the secretary announces: "Michael Crick is in reception", defied the general patter that award ceremonies were for glad handing each other, or increasing a reporter's brand worth.

"Thank you Channel 4" he said, for hiring me from the BBC and proving "there is life after death", Ouch! Crick 1, the BBC 0.

And there's more, but way informative. So imagine for the minute you were an outsider and  had the opportunity to attend the BAFTAs, OSCARS or in this case the RTS. The Royal Television Society Awards whose patrons is HRH the Prince of Wales.

Imagine that! The dusted black tie, the rethinking how do I get this infernal thing into a knot?  And then the journey, where the night could go either way. Particularly, if the smattering of people you think you might know are't there.

I did, you see, I used to work in television, but I have been out of front line reporting on television, though still doing net stuff. So I'm an outsider of sorts looking in. And the distance gives me a different perspective.

Firstly, a bit of mischief, so as you see I took the time to create a compendium of selfies.

Selfy 1. Jon Snow.  Getting down with the programme. Is he being ironic? I used to produce him.

Sian Williams was my cheekiest catch, but I'd bumped into her convening an event at the BBC five months ago, so I sort of mouthed "Westminster". Oh go on then! Selfy 2.

Selfie 3. I caught the BBC's wunder man Ian Pannel whose reports from Syria are seat-of-the-pants stuff.

Pannel and I share a sliding door moment. We both started our careers at Leicester twenty five years ago. I went though the door too early. He stayed. A different future unfolded.

We spoke about Syria and how the presence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militia is preventing foreign reporters from going into Syria to report.

Marwan, I thought would have something to say on this.





The event was   a chance to to find out who had won the category that I chaired, Innovation in Journalism. Followers of this blog and my work might know I am bit bonkers about tech and news.

The three course meal
p.s taking photos of meals is now an infringement of a chef's IP in some restaurants in the UK. 

Wild Mushroom and Leek Tart

Main course: Square Cut Seabass with Parsley and Lemon. Baby New Potatoes and Baby Leeks

Cherry and Almond Tart with Vanilla Ice Cream

After Dinner thoughts

So, I have found out if I look closely enough at the winners in this category over the years, it's possible to read trends. After all, it's the best of the best who gather and then get judged, so it's more thank likely, the popular choice might have some bearing on the sociology of journalism.

One of the notable winners some years back was Al Jazeera's The Stream. A show made by young people with all the tools that put mainstream media to shame, but are now are commonplace. The year after, with more money, they changed the programme beyond recognition.

This year's finalists were Channel 4's data baby. The Channel invented a fictional character, gave her a phone and then let her mine data to show how easy it was to gain access to your phone.

YouTube's Truth Loader is a way for the video engine to offer validation for its stories.

And then the third nominee. Well, look at this below 



 Hans Rosling, a charismatic statistician, seems to have raised the bar with his interactive graphics presentations. Watch out for a presentation by your beloved broadcaster near you soon.

But something else also struck me. When Bowen was giving his acceptance speech for Specialist Journalist of the Year, for a piece of reportage in particular.

Bowen had been injured by gun pellets, but kept on reporting. That was professional enough. But Bowen did some thing that only Bowen knows.

That in the heat of the story unfolding, Bowen could offer first hand eye witness reportage, with contextual assessment and an analysis.

Think about it!

According to Bowen, when he first landed this gig some twenty years ago he says he had to plead with his bosses to allow him to do this.

Why this is significant is the feature of my PhD thesis, which questions how we can change roles in journalism and be discursive, but still operate in the parameters of news.

And I seem to have hit journalism gold. Deborah Turness, who I interviewed for an hour before she left for NBC hints at many innovative ideas worth sharing soon.

David Dunkley Gyimah was a chair of  the jury panel for the RTS Awards for Innovative News. He is a senior lecturer and videojournalist/ filmmaker. He is completing his PhD which examines a future of news. It involved speaking to more than a hundred pros from around the world, including Deborah Turness. David will be speaking at the IJF in Perugia