The juggernaut of presentations: the SXSW experience in Austin Texas

I’m doing SXSW.

To the couple of media people around me in London, when I heard the news, I might as well have spoken Klingon.

That’s #SXSW people — the super bowl of pressies and social gatherings. I’m still getting flashbacks today watching live on TV Marcus Allen’s 74-yard touch down at Super Bowl XVIII.

Seriously! SXSW’s gravitas is so A-game, they can call on a @Potus to drop in.

My talk, having passed the public vote would coincide with the start of an academic itch. A big itch. A PhD. I’d been a self-camera shooting journalist for some 15 years, a journo for 20 and it was now so patently obvious as a practitioner that news as a construct and journalism as practised by TV Networks was the equivalent of Nipper the dog earwigging an antique gramophone.

You know, His Masters Voice, abbreviated as HMV, in which the Masters were TV suits inured and sated by spin and corporate agendas.

It wasn’t always the case. At the time of SXSW, I was reading Michael Thomas Conway’s, Ph.D. which by coincidence Conway is a prof at The University of Texas at Austin — yep home of SXSW.

His account of the history of CBS is truly fascinating. Those pioneers, in there 20s and 30s, such as 33-year-old Henry Cassirer really tried to do something revolutionary. Conway cites a Cassier report in Journalism Quarterly in 1949 “A Challenge to Imaginative Journalists.” That section reads.

It will not be true television unless it uses most of the facilities available at the television station, adapting each one to the best way of reporting the individual story. (Film, for instance, is best to report a parade, graphic work is more adequate to visualize a tax debate in Congress, and remote cameras are most 420 effective to convey the colorful scene of a convention. Maps can tell battle movements better than words, but late reports from an overseas conference are most suitably and speedily summarized by the commentator himself, speaking to his audience “on camera.) — Henry Cassirer Journalism Quarterly 392

They got McLuhan’s the medium and the message, so much so, that today whilst digiratis beat their chest about discovering data journalism, visual journalism and the likes, the CBS young turks had it covered way back.

Conway then says something that grabs me. One day at an editorial meeting, an executive showed up and the journos sensed something was up. The suit was dictating editorial coverage. American broadcasting business folk had twigged that News was a money maker, a big one. The ethos of a journalism holding the powerful to account within the political economy and framework of journalism was about to be laid to rest in favour of, you guessed, business interests. Raise a glass to Edward Bernays, the father of PR.

Cut to almost seventy years later and the the lack of diverse stories on television, or the networks’ refusal to show a plus size commercial on the spurious grounds of nudity, when executives believe they’ll lose contracts from clients who promote size zero beauty above an alternative, shows the power of the greenback in story telling. Alternatively, what about this, the head of CBS Les Moonves defending Donald Trump’s excessive news coverage.

It may not be good for America, but it is damn good for CBS … The money’s rolling in and this is fun. I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.

10 O’clock on a Saturday morning, I know where I’d like to be I tell attendant’s — in bed, so I’m grateful for those who’ve showed up. Over 45 minutes I map out a different form of newsgathering construct, which incorporates multimedia and an integrated form of videojournalism.

The talk revolves around the use of embed video and sharing, using SEO to reframe millennial journalism; alternative outlets e.g. micro sites to publicise work (four years earlier I’d won one of the US most coveted prizes for innovation in journalism,the Knight Batten); the Outernet which is not too dissimilar to the Internet of Things; and how videojournalism spawns new forms of reportage. These strategies and more were developed with the videojournalist, lone worker, in mind and those wanting their voice heard above the chemtrails.

By some accounts, the talk goes reasonably well. Here’s a sample of that:

Freelance writer Amanda Hirsch, former editorial director of PBS Interactive wrote she was concerned the style I was promoting left little room for finding the story and that…

when I posed this question to him, he got a tad defensive, assuring me that he always listened first, and that he emphasized to his students how listening is key.

Tony, a delegate blogged: ( I’m clearly gushing now !)

Excellent presentation A+. Great presenter. David shared tips and was humorous. This is what SXSW is about. Great job David!

And I even managed to interview a few people after the talk.

 The rest of SXSW was as an exhilarating experience of social banter, an exploration of ideas and ambition. I made new contacts. The comedy/ agent of wit trouble-making Baratunde Thurston (left) whom I met up with in London on his tour of his New York Times bestseller How To Be Black. He’s now at the Daily Show. Have to say thanks too to CC Chapman who supplied me with the majority of these photos.

So, yes that was seven years ago. SEVEN YEARS… a life time… but SXSW represents a kind of ground zero for sharing and since then, a number of things have happened that give rise to reflection.

1. Yes I could now put Dr at the front of my name, but I live in trepidation of that moment on board a plane when the pilot asks if there’s a doctor on board. Yes you in seat 21.
2. Video has experienced a boon.
3. Television, in spite of the social media onslaught is still the most popular medium through continual reinvention and still retains what UK TV expert Simon Albury calls ‘Groupthink’ — ideas being made by insiders.
4. We’re largely chasing the same tools and skills, with more or less the same narrative structures, making us less diverse and distinct. This calls for a revolution at a more fundamental point in our quest for media literacy — a philosophical one.

Such seeds for creativity lay in the stories of the CBS and what I found in my research, a similar more contemporary story on Innovation called The Thirty.

Also consider this statement from Marshall McLuhan

If men were able to be convinced that art is precise advanced knowledge of how to cope with the psychic and social consequences of the next technology, would they become artists? Or would they begin a careful translation of new art forms into social navigational charts? I am curious to know what would happen if art were suddenly seen for what it is, namely, exact information of how to arrange one’s psyche in order to anticipate the next blow from our own extended faculties.
 Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media)

What do you think?

We rarely talk about artists in media, referring instead to the age of the Tech, blogger, social media etc. but Artists and exemplary ones at that are the weather vanes of a vision of the future.

They defy listicles and simplistic framing. They find ways to connect the inner self with the external world and rarely are taken seriously within the present.

The level of experimenting, of looking for individualism, of innovating within innovation is set to repeat a cycle in history — the 1900s. What I spoke about at SXSW in Integrated Multimedia Videojournalism represented the iceberg of a more potent form, which can simply be understood as Cinema, journalism — a myriad of cinema and it’s one I look forward to multiple sharing

Thanks for dropping by

Photos by CC Chapman and Steve Garfield
@cc_chapman
@stevegarfield

 

The Thirty (untold movement): the Soderbergh, Von Triers and Lees of new cinema journalism.

THE FIVE RULES OF THE THIRTY

• There are no rules, just guidelines.
• Different cultures interpret stories differently: know your audience.
• Storytelling is an art and science — study it
• Respect the giants whose shoulders you’re standing on, and let others one day stand on yours.
• Sod everything else.

[roll on reality]

---

For the best part of 50 years in broadcast and hundreds of years in newsprint, the establishment pretty much had the field to itself. Businesses supplying hardware locked their clients into long term deals, so they could future proof their profits and the chief executive could afford that St Tropez yacht, without risking the mortgage payments.

When the sails came down, new astute, more nimble entrepreneurs surfaced. Who can blame them? Drone journalism, mobile journalism, citizen journalism, long journalism, solution journalism, data journalism, video journalism, laptop journalism, indifferent journalism, and the rest…

Some of these new niche genres were genuine byproducts of traditional journalism’s inertia. Others would give love-handles to characters from Mad Men proud, a sleight of PR hand reworking new business opportunities.

Take mobile (phone) journalism. Yes, it’s been transformative to social media, but in video production please don’t be fooled, it’s just another camera competing amongst a panoply of others. Some talent would sell off previous gear to go mobile purchasing an array of lenses and accessories. That makes little sense creatively, unless budget is the key reason.

Ultimately, it’s about using the most appropriate gear for the job. By the way, mobile journalism was the term to label 1960s Direct Cinema when cameras and synch sound gear could for the first time go mobile.

There’s more than enough material on digital’s impact on storytelling. InKeanu Reeve’s documentary Side by Side and equally exemplary Mark Cousin’s The Story of Film these visionaries provide a teleogical impact of digital: Reeve’s on the format over film and Cousins a lengthier expansive look at cinema’s development over a hundred years that ends with ones and zeros.

Digital in the 90s aligned with one of the more significant contemporary movements (Danish) in film called Dogme 95. Celebration directed by Thomas Vinteberg and DoP’d by Anthony Dod Mantle spearheaded Dogme’s intent. The film’s visual language, aided by smaller cameras, is more immediate; whip pans, super close-ups, and distinctive angular framings fill the screen.

But just as Dogme was baring its teeth in fictional film, alongside a revivalist indie market in the US, another revolutionary change was occurring in the world of journalism in the UK — a profound creative movement setting off teutonic ripples, but which little is known about.

Digital provided an impetus to a form of journalism known as videojournalism: journalists who authored their own stories; saw no need for editors in newsroom; became jack of all trades in video styles and master of all, from presenting, creating reality shows to making programmes online and could when pushed knock off four, 2 minute interview-reportage in a day.

But there was one feature that has been continually overlooked, which 20 years on is only now slowly being appreciated. Like the Dogme 95 movement making fictional cinema, this group of videojournalists, referred to asThe Thirty were creating factual cinema — cinema journalism.

The wider perception is that cinema journalism is linked to DSLR cameras circa 2008, but that’s another myth. DSLRs provided a sharper (cinematic) image, but the perceptual qualities of cinema that derive from structure, plot, composition, art, narrative qualities and philosophy was cracked by The Thirty movement in the 1990s. It so riled the establishment it was pilloried, derided and dismissed by industry, and only now are experts reflecting on its impact.

History provides a number of salutary lessons to learn from and in the next post I’ll explain how this movement and their working methods are a model for creativity. How cinema journalism envelopes an amazing breadth of styles illustrating the Soderbergh, Von Triers and Lees of new journalism, and why it will undoubtedly become a defining feature for non-fiction storytelling embracing all other forms.

How US politicians play the media with ‘dead cats’.

 In the run up to the UK General Election in 2015, with the Labour party gaining head steam, the chips looked like falling for its leader Ed Milliband — a doppler-type figure aiming to be somewhere between Bernie Sanders and Roger Ramjet — edging into Downing Street.

Labour’s advisors, following a series of political Harry Houdinis — 100 business leaders were rubbishing Milliband in the conservative-partisan Telegraph — were to play an ace card.

Anyone living abroad, the wealthy and tax evaders, were about to be carpeted. Milliband announced he was scrapping a loophole in the law that enabled “non-domiciled” UK residents to avoid paying any tax on foreign income.

Canny political calculations, his advisors noted, would give Labour at least three days of headlines, effectively controlling the news agenda and picking up more steam amongst the electorate.

The Conservative party knew it too and played one of their most dastardly campaign strategies. One of the conservative’s more respected politicians, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, presented in the media as a mild mannered person, did a Trump. Sorry mate the Brits got their first.

In PR terms it’s called a ‘Dead Cat’, a strategy coined by Australian strategist Lynton Crosby, who was hired to be the Conservative’s campaign director. Simply put, imagine you’re at a dinner with your family. You’re winning the argument about why Bobby, your brother should not be going out with friends in Mum’s car when he’s five times over the drinking limit. Then Bobby puts his hand under the table and the next thing places a dead cat on the table. What happens next?

Everybody stops talking about Bobby’s traits and screams, ‘There’s a dead cat on the table’. For the forseaable future it’s all about the dead moggy.

For Labour, Fallon crowed to the media that Milliband was unfit to be Prime Minister because he had stabbed his brother in the back in winning the party leadership. He couldn’t be trusted.

It was an outrageous comment axiomatic with Trumpisms. Labour knew it. Some advisors, it’s said, even quietly admired the chutzpah. The Conservative’s knew it. And the media knew it too. But the collegiate village-environment of mainstream media couldn’t resist the bait.

Milliband’s initiative had been pole-axed and the media led for a series of days with the Labour leader’s lack of integrity and Fallon’s bromide comments. For as long as Trump’s campaign has been running, the reality TV star who knows how the media function has been placing one dead cat on the table after another. And the media has proved inept to see through them.

Being out of the limelight has its draw backs, so Trump’s dead cats serve to re-orientate the media’s gaze on him, providing him with the oxygen to be nicey-nicey with his audience, play the media victim, shape-shift to his audience’s preferences, before teeing up the next cat.

Multi tasking makes you less efficient, but helps your memory

‘Why the modern world is bad for your brain’ published in the Guardian by neuroscientist Dr. Daniel J Levitan summarises how the world of tweeting/ emailing and watching tv at the same time is bad for your health. It causes stress and releases hormones that 'overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking'.

Perhaps not so much strict multi-tasking (could do with a definition), but the experiments conducted by the widely respected Bjork Human Learning and Forgetting Lab at UCLA explain how the process of learning that involves variation and difference aids long term memory retention.

In Veronica Yan’s presentation from the lab’s experiment from 1.52 mins in from this video the following comes as a surprise. Two sets of participants were tasked with recognising the styles of 12 different artists. One set studied one artist’s work, before they moved onto another. The other group studied the same artists but in a random fashion. Contrary to presumed belief, the second group ‘learned the styles a lot better’, says Yan.

Professor Bjork refers to the process of learning which involves deep engagement, like the random sampling of artists, as ‘desirable difficulties’. So while switching from a supposedly different task to task may have its problems according to Neuroscientist Dr Daniel J Levitan, switching foci on elements in a learning process helps your memory, says Professor Bjork’s lab.

 

Why as a tech-creative you need to get a grip with the 1920s

Wars loomed; politics was a mess and tech e.g. phones were blazing a trail such that entrepreneurs thought they’d never had it so good — almost anything was possible.

Audiences were being bombarded with new platforms. New styles of music with frenetic drum beats were wowing audiences. Literature too was metamorphising. Its fresh facade was non-linear personalised texts about its subjects represented from a multiple of angles ( the biog rather than the blog). Meanwhile, poetry e.g. Imagism was quite literally cutting-edge.

Film too was at it. New styles were emerging; some the audience understood, others seemed a little quirky that that they soon tired. An example of this is a man contemplating looks out of the frame. The director then cuts to an image representing what the man sees.

Does all this sound familiar? If obviously yes. Small wonder that in his bookFilm and Theory Academic Robert Stam says, in a paragraph towards the end that the new millennium is like the 1900s to the 1920s.

It’s the 1920s all over again — the jazz times when Rhapsody in Blues makes us feel we’re in the black, and the red.

The image at the top of the page is of the visionary Pathé brothers with their film device — the solo camera. Below is one of several new platforms from independent companies that gave the viewer a unique point of view — the YouTube of its era, the Kinetoscope

Pathé enveloped a series of companies working in the burgeoning film industry. Their dexterity and innovation meant they made fictional films such as the Horse that bolted (1907) - a film which was one of the first to play with parallel editing.

Pathé also created the newsreel. Strikingly, they called their newsreels as well as their fictional films ‘cinema’. Yes, the very same techniques used in fictional films were being adopted for news.

Today, a long line of scholars and perhaps you associate ‘cinema’ only with Hollywood’s 1910 ‘smash-and-grab’ definition. I was musing over all of this in a brief moment during a meeting at the Arts Council, when asked how I showed my voice.

You see, I think journalism in this new era has lost its way, or I should say a strand of journalism called videojournalism and we’d do well to look for ideas amongst cinema and Art. I have just submitted two draft chapters to a publisher about this. Mmmm I wonder what they’ll think?

And that’s the problem isn’t it? We’re tied down by rules, often good and necessary for their time that become conventions. But a convention’s shelf-life is tenuous. It can be propped up to continue to make money, but at some point the audience tires. It happened during the 1920s and continually repeats itself.

It’s happening now, and many of the symptoms for change today can be found in that creative behemoth of a period, when the telephone was coming on stream and the airwaves were beginning to be transformed.

It’s worth looking at the 1920s, and if you do, you’ll come across something else. Technology is assistive. It has fad qualities. It comes and goes. The message, of what you have to say and how you say it in different cultures is the primer. The mechanics as I’ve said before can be secondary.

And now can I have our factual cinema back please?

Click here for David’s work www.daviddunkleygyimah.com

My I-Docs session in March 2016. Diversity, creativity and creative fight clubs.

Just about the time the web was gingerly putting its first foot forward in the media, I joined a TV station. It was 199os (seems like yesterday). Pulp Fiction was f***ing with cinema-goers’ mind and Kurt Cobain joined, sadly, the 27 club. I’d just come back to the UK after two exhilirating, but equally mind-melding years in South Africa. Apartheid was dead, albeit officially in name.

At the station there were 30 of us who dared to believe we were the Avengers. We would and could shoot, produce, direct and edit films by ourselves. The media industry called us every crass they name they could summon. As 18–35 year-old we were derided back then as yoof TV. But those thirty, supported, sometimes led, by a team of creatives from management e.g. Nick Pollard to consultants like Michael Rosenblum, were amazing.

In that gene. In that group were the seeds of a bold $70m creative experiment, which is unlike anything you’ve possibly come across. Only when looking back critically and re-interviewing many of its talent e.g. Bafta winner Dimitri Doganis for part II of my PhD, did it become apparent.

I naively believed the group would mirror the new society; merging tech with a radical can-do ethic and a fearlessness towards re-aligning traditional burnt-out ways. This was the new society! But like an apollo craft re-entering earth in a steep trajectory, the groups hopes would be dashed, bouncing of the atmosphere and society into oblivion.

We were so close, even inched in a few changes. Historians may draw comparisons with the 195os when industrialists clawed back their capitalist initiatives from social engineering governments, or the late 60s when authorities literally muzzled anti-war movements.

Here’s what the Thirty had or reflected:

· Out of the thirty new journos, a quarter of the talent were from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Just under that number were women. Diversity, as a creative force was key.

· They decided what the stories, the agenda would be — for a while — thus broadening interests. How did they get it right and wrong?

· They transformed the idea that one person could do everything — empowering a nascent citizen journalism. But just because you could work on your own, didn’t mean you worked on their own. Cognitive dissonance was a positive trait.

· They were one of the first groups to do low cost reality TV. MTV was the first with this format.

· They upended part of the grammar of news making. More on this at my talk.

· They showed that to get great ideas, don’t muzzle them. In fact there were more than the fair share of creative fight clubs. Tension was an area that required managing.

· These are some of the things the Thirty achieved, which dovetails into recent exciting revelations in research. But you will not know of this story, or understand how relevant they are to today. You see they understood the tech revolution, but that this also required a new thinking discourse. I mean what would you have done with £50 million?

See you at i-Docs. Do come and say hello :)

Perfect pitch

The Future of Story form, television n’ all lies in the past.

Are we so gullible to think that every new phenomenon that has emerged in our digital existence has never seen the light of day before?

History, so eschewed by those who live in the now, provides many answers.

We need those answers if we are to not to repeat mistakes, or truly endeavour to push into new frontiers.

The premise for my talk back in 2005 — and before that — was that cinema offered a fresh model for journalism.

I thought that was radical. I look back on that noticing my own foolhardy swagger. But I was soon humbled when I discovered that there have been several attempts to make cinema journalism stick — but these failed for several reasons.

The many reasons however are receding. The implications are so wide that like the past, we could and would want to dismiss them. Not this time though.

In a series of videos — whose themes constituted the table of contents for my doctoral thesis, I show how the rise of cinema journalism is gaining momentum.

Here’s the second of six short videos — which I’m planning on releasing through a publisher or broadcaster.

Robert Drew, the father of Cinema Verite provides a platform to discuss cinema journalism in the 1960s.

PLEASE NOTE

I'm now blogging more frequently at https://medium.com/@viewmagazine/

What if Stephen Soberbergh did journalism? Apple talk by Knight Batten Winner David Dunkley Gyimah

What if Stephen Soberbergh did journalism?

If the evidence of his involvement in Citizen Four is anything to by, it would be memorable, perhaps entertaining, and above all cinematic.

With a 100 hours of video being uploaded to Youtube every minute, there’s good reason to do cinematic video — you stand out from the crowd.

Ask a focus group of young people, as I have done through academic research, about any piece of video/film they remember and invariably they’ll name a fictional film.

There’s something about cinema.

Journalists coil with opprobrium at the thought. At the least it’s naive — cinema is fiction and once we fictionalise journalism we’re in Alice in Wonderland territory.

At best, the two are immiscible. Good heavens is this a real journalist writing this gumf.

At Apple in a week and a bits time I’m looking to push this gumf out with a supertanker. The popular manifestation of cinematic journalism is Vice.com, and there’s a health warning attached.

Vice will joined by many others — lining up in new academies and the corridors of Youtube readying themselves for online dominance. It’s a warning to traditional broadcasters. [read How Vice became the voice of a generation].

Existing, somewhat antiquated, theories around journalism are feeling the squeeze as a pragmatism in digital that’s shaping new provisional theories soars.

The issue of cinematic has been a perennial one, eschewed by the news establishment in the past in defence of their industry. The web changed all that. Journalism can still berate this pretentious cousin, cinematic journalism, but it’s the audience, er, steward!

That doesn’t necessarily mean the audience is right, even if they’re dragging the advertisers with them, but academic research shows they’re onto something — particularly from a creative movement within videojournalism.

If you can make it down to Apple, I hope you won’t be disappointed. Some of the definates so far include short films on what NBCs President of News makes of cinematic videojournalism.

How Robert Drew created Cinematic journalism in the 1960s. And an interview with one of the UK’s fiest videojournalists Steve Punter — who sadly passed away last year.

BTW When film journalism was first conceived it was cinematic, then something happened ☺

David Dunkley Gyimah was one of the UK’s first official videojournalists. His worked for the BBC and Channel 4 News. He’s a recipient of several awards. His doctorate, a six year global study covers the impact of cinematic journalism. You can find out more about his talk here.

Selma's brief lesson

The air was laden. that rousing speech, and then a moment of silence until the room filled with spontaneous applause.

Some gift; some gift - that is to move people. To remind them of where humanity was, to capture memories - albeit cinematic ones - but enough to inspire.

Finally got around to seeing Selma. The controversy impairs the clarity of this piece of work. No flash backs, no convoluted script; this is cinema as documentary. It even borrows some of documentaries' tropes.

It reminded me of an obligation we have to ourselves; a conscientuous stand to share and remind and well, negotiate!

It brought back my own memories of South Africa, the last country on Earth to officially legalise racism and that was only two decades ago.

A little story came my way. It was the ability to document on the cusp of a new dawn; a new country - a new South Africa.  This through the eyes of four young South Africans.

Late last night I listened to the radio doc again. It brought years and joy to me. If you have a mo, do relive and cherish what we now have.

FIRST TIME VOTERS HERE