Cinema Journalism Event in Tunisia

Presenting in Tunisia on Cinema Journalism picture by Trella.org

The hypothesis goes in regions where there's been strife,  conflict and transitions, artists creatives and film makers typically create new schemas to express themselves and tell stories.

Italian Neorealism is a classic example and perhaps one of the most enduring that used the post war period to create a style of film which used the streets as its studios and non-actors and plots to capture moments of moral issues.

Enduring too because it was one of the few film styles that provided an intelligent popularised alternative to America's hegemony on film making.  Neorealism laid the ground work for Noir and films such as Double Indemnity (1944) - one of my favourites.

In Neorealism, the closing scene to Umberto D (1952) by Vittorio De Sica features the desperate lead character feeling so suicidal from a spate of bad fortune, that he figures once he finds his dog a home, he will end his life. He very nearly does with his dog who later shuns him, before a touching reconcilation.



It's a simple story but deeply allegorical and there are many others.

More recently from Egypt, their crowd sourcing film making 18 Days in Egypt provided one of the most notable schemas to film crowd sourcing and has made its producers house hold names on the innovative doc circuit.

My own feature Tahrir Square illustrated how graffiti and fine painters, as well as theatre actors, poets and singer songwriters were inspired to be expressive.

As an academic, as well as film maker/ videojournalist the opportunity to visit Tunisia to gain an insight into the creative fraternity, which is by no means not a homogeneous mass, was something that intrigued me.

A couple of weeks earlier at a closed meeting held under the Chatham House Rule at Chatham House which is the UK's leading think tank, I asked a question of a high powered delegation talking about regeneration in the region.

They'd not mentioned media, I said, but would they agree that film makers etc have a huge role.

The delegation agreed, but the problem they said was invariably a newer media or even film makers become so determined to show their credentials, they end up practising a kind of 'gotcha journalism' against the old order.

I understood the subtlety of the answer.

At today's cinema journalism event three of the country's media outlets  interviewed me about cinema journalism.

Cinema journalism can be explained ontologically in its metaphysical way; and epistemologically, as a way of creating and understanding its knowledge.

The reason why I posit these two ways of looking at cinema journalism is I talk about it being about richer story forms, marching beyond classic documentary mode and news in terms of impartiality and finding plot and visual grammar to create meaning.

Yet ontologically just because it eschews impartiality or looks to be expressive doesn't mean its practitioners are rabid propagandists or can't be honest.

As one of the founding fathers of cinema verite, Robert Drew told me it's a very difficult art to master because it calls into question your own ideology and what you stand for.

Transparency thus in cinema journalism is crucial, because at the point you overtly direct the viewer's attention, you nakedly unlike news' fig-leaf disguise are making a statement about you. That's why its metaphysical.

Tomorrow, the IWPR the principle broker and other stakeholders will be  meeting some of the creatives from contacts that came to the cinema journalism event.

Letter from Tunisia - the future of videojournalism

Ahmed - Videojournalist off on assignment

Being a videojournalist in the midst of Ramadan isn't some thing that weighs on the minds of many videojournalists, but the reality begs a rethink here in Tunisia, which adheres quite strictly to its fasting.

For one, you've not eaten since the morning, water won't pass your lips and the sun is scorching as you set out on your second assignment. You don't need to be a doctor to know your blood sugar levels are low.

That however is not a perennial issue. What is is how videojournalism is practised and the implications for a region that can look to the past for a blue print.

I am here on assignment collaborating on videojournalism and cinema journalism. They are two different animals that have arisen out of complacency to videojournalism. But that's another story.

For the meantime, we work to undo a series of conventional rules that are now stifling videojournalism film making (an oxymoron). For instance the use of the rule of thirds, no one can quite say why its used other than it's a rule. IT'S NOT!!!!!

When your lecturer tells you it is ask them to quote the source.

It is no more a rule than me saying when filming the subject should not look into the camera. The picture above breaks the rule of third. One of the great film makers ever Ozu rarely, if ever, obeyed some rule that said, place these figures into a third of the screen. It's about the balance of the picture, not the rule.

New Journalism
For the umpteenth time, I have showed the same video to a group of Tunisian videojournalists, Chinese students, PhD researcher and International Students and the results are the same.

Two videos - the same story, Which one do you like ?

The one video is traditionally news driven and the other more the videojournalists artistic feat which bears the hallmark of cinema at work and consistently the cinema journalism story style is chosen for being

• Preferable
• Treating the audience as intelligent
• Being visually rich 

The paradox with videojournalism is the issue that most impales its ability to defend itself, because everyone can do videojournalism it's so easy, there's little need to attempt to understand what we're doing.

Point and shoot, just capture the data. Television got away with it for a long time because it developed a semiotic that appeared to fall in line with its aim to be impartial and all the rest. Thus the next time you record an interview, you'll likely to frame a medium-wide shot, placed a third of the screen.

And when asked why you're probably quote a book or that someone said something, and he or she when asked will quote someone else until we reach an impasse and we realise some executive determined that was the correct thing to do.

Just as, and if you read  Mike Conway's book on the origins of American television news and Green's television news, you discover news execs were so terrified of losing audiences they devised news should be short- less than 2 minutes, it's stuck with professional broadcast news since

The medium wide shot for interviews was the correct way then because the medium-wide swiftly established its connotative style as being neutral, but just because it was then, doesn't make it correct now, but no one's asking.

As a videojournalist and a researcher, something more tangible and researched should underpin our ideas in this digital era. Otherwise it's the equivalence of having someone try art drawings for the first time because the tools are available and saying well done for drawing.

Day 2 Tomorrow - when I make the claim how Tunisia's history of cinema journalism could have been lifted from a successful movement in storytelling 80 years ago

Post script - Three days later working we held this event on a creative approach to videojournalism. For the full story and more on cinema journalism - viewmagazine.tv

The camera is no match for content and context

This picture is copyrighted and permission to use must be taken with its author, Ken Mallor

Discussions over camera purchases often take on the form on Zeno's paradoxes, primarily the famous Achilles and the Tortoise race.


You've heard it before but here's a précis.


Achilles gives the tortoise a head start of a 100m before commencing his run. After a further 100m, Achilles would have caught up to the point the tortoise started, but the tortoise would have moved on say 10m.


Achilles must now proceed to catch up the 10m, but by the time he does that, the tortoise would have moved 3m. The paradox continues so that in principle, given the infinite number of times we can undertake this process, Achilles never catches up with the Tortoise.


Of course we know differently, but as a mathematically plausible statement, we believe Achilles is on for a hiding.


Cameras occupy this same paradox, mimicking the Tortoise. Content stands little chance catching up with the camera - all you need is a DSLR with a 1.2f and you're away.


But the realists know it;s the content that matters. Philosophers Noel Carroll and David Bordwell qualify this with terms for film such as "expressive" or that content shapes  the meaning - of course.


'Expressive' talks to the content of the film - the emotions. It's the content that make you feel primary emotions.


This is not to say the camera does not play its role, but a dramatic scene caught on an iphone or pinhole camera is still dramatic, where as a stodgy event filmed with different model cameras relies on aesthetics.


Content matters, as well as context. At present we're living in a character-driven video idiom; nothing wrong with that either. We need to know much more about our neighbours.


Yet content eschewing context is, I believe, is as flawed as Achilles being told he doesn't stand a chance over taking the tortoise.


So we must give credit to the new economists, the digital mediaist, the new agenda makers who are fashioning a sort of televisual experience in which our urge for aesthetic over content is being addressed head on.


In various movements around the world, over a century or so of strife, hardship has yielded new movements for the informed creating, or attempting
to create new understandings of why we're in this mess.


And if you're reading this, this, among the many blogs that talk about content,  should be the legacy for future generations, because whatever happens, Achilles should always have been the victor - and that story alone is a legacy to us.

The Axis of New Journalism

The beauty of this lie past its denotative meaning: America is great no more!  That's merely the shock to get you interested. The signified, the implicit is way far interesting.

Of course it's difficult not to grind mentally to a halt and admire what any good playwright would do in challenging perceptions.

Shakespeare's plays contained implicit attacks on the religious structures in Verona, who ruled then as politicians do now.

Aaron Sorkin the creator and writer at large of HBO's the Newsroom has turned the mirror in this speech explicitly on the politicians, but implicitly on the media and its audiences.

But it's not America's media alone which is in the court of scrutiny. Sorkin has merely found a strong character to play with its semantic field: strong - weak, love -hate.

What's on display is a hegemonic system which became the sole export of a construct of reality called news, whose values since the 1950s, and now, finds itself crumbing under the most unfathomable weight of deprecation.

Except it isn't crumbling. It's adapted. It's values are as forceful as ever. It's a multi-billion business, this form of storytelling, which as imperfect as it is, ascribes to the notion that it can tell you anything you need to know to become an informed citizen.

And the traditional industry it supports will not give in that easy. The value of truth is one caught up in the number of people who recite the same thing, to the extent news begins to tell the audience what they need to hear.

Meanwhile Rome burns - a metaphorical statement for all what's wrong in the world.

It's a complex relationship - that much scholars and execs have debated and will continue to do so.

A student of mine from Ghana, a country whose media is barely a model of probity, you would think, compared to its surrogates, argued how strangely the UKs media acted.

For all the media's power he suggested, there was no empathy, no real cause to change anything, no soul. This might not have mattered when business men conceived of a way of informing those around them many years back.

It matters now and Sorkin provides the poetry to capture this in this clip below. The Editor just wants the facts.

Learn Award Winning Videojournalism & Cinema Journalism Workshop

CINEMA JOURNALISM and VIDEOJOURNALISM Workshop



The Retwitter Show titles - journalism 2046 from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

Photo-essays, auteur-driven narratives, ecology 3 & 4.

In the evolving field of video, these are some of the new ideas emerging which on the one hand capture my notion of videojournalism, which I lay out in this workshop. There are a number of ecological pieces that I will share and define with audiences.

Cine-journalism is not new, yet this current form, I believe based on experiential learning as one of the UK's first official videojournalists, pulls on a particular set of embodied style from changes which has the picked the seams of journalism.

For me this includes drawing on  experience, such as reporting from South Africa during the end of Apartheid, working with Nato, adventure pieces diving with the Turkish Navy, and various stories on international events over a twenty-five years plus career.

In this presentation, as a Senior University Lecturer and PhD researcher I describe this new terrain, with examples of work published on award winning website www.viewmagazine.tv - which I have previewed at Apple.

The workshop includes the following:

1. In auteur-driven narratives. Here I unveil work from my doctorate thesis, which includes training non videojournalists to become videojournalists  over  4 years work with journalists in Egypt collaborating with them to tell life ecology stories: the street vendors who sell food, the actor who wants to go to hollywood, and behind-the-scenes of the crafts businesses. These are stories made by new videojournalists, but there were empirical reasons they had not been told before.                                  
2. In photo essays, how the power of the image combined with scoring produces the kineasthetic. Here I review Obama 100 Days, commemorating President Obama's 100 days in office, made with a contemporary orchestra screened at the South Bank, and working with World Press Award photographers.
3. In the Ecology 3, the report combines reportage with educational value such as Nation Videojournalism in which two African countries Ghana and South Africa came together to report on one another using videojournalism and more recently this report from Beirut's Annahar Newspaper where I spent time training their journalists.
4. And in this Ecology 4 we see Tahrir Memento, four young people talk about what the events of January 2011 meant for them in personal terms in a style that marks out a territory between news and docs. 
5. Producing online auter-driven narratives - a history of practices collaborating with students and clients to understand semiotics and produce rich multimedia sites.

A large measure of my work involves philosophy and hermeneutics presented in an accessible way to students and clients that provide meaning about what we do and why, and how to get the best out of your work.

And I think these methods are successful, as this year  I was extremely flattered to be  awarded 'Outstanding Lecturer of the year' by the National Union of Students - the University of Westminster (UK)..

The presentations and field work will take place over a bespoke number of days and I'll be opening this up for external engagement in the near future.

Bio

David Dunkley Gyimah is an award winning videojournalist and Knight Batten winner for Innovation in Journalism from the design and publication of viewmagazine.tv. Apple calls him a One Man Hurricane and he is recognised in the UK as one of its pioneering videojournalists. In his career over 20 years, David has worked for the BBC e.g. Newsnight and Channel 4 News, as well as ABC News. 

He has spoken about his craft all around the world e.g. China, Bosnia, Denmark, Germany, South Africa, Egypt, Ghana, Chicago etc. and has presented at conferences such as, ONA, SXSW, Apple Stores and the World Association of Newspapapers. He helped set up and train the first videojournalism school for regional journalists in the UK, and has trained many students and journalist such as The Financial Times and Chicago-Sun Times. 

David has been a member of the UK's leading international think tank, Chatham House for 20 years and has an educational background in Applied Chemistry, Economics and Journalism. He is currently a PhD researcher, senior lecturer and an artist in residence at the Southbank. 

David is a judge for the UK's prestigious Innovation in Television Awards at the RTS., which awarded the Stream ( Al Jazeera's) its international award. 

Imagine the science of films UCD dublin - a videojournalism futuresm

Dr Alex Gambis had an idea, and some idea it was. Because three years later he's standing in front of an audience at the Lighthouse cinema in Dublin thanking them for making the Imagine Science Films Festival the success it is.

Not bad for a project that started during his PhD.Forget the bit where your eyes glaze over; its science after all, or that it has no relevancy. 

This was highly accessible and awe-inspiring with films, such as The Creator by Al and Al a prodigious award winning film making duo who write their own software programmes for special effects.

Their latest film is on one of the world's most influential scientists, Alan Turing, who created the computer, as we've come to know it, and died at the tender age of 32 from eating an apple that was poisoned. 

Steve Jobs, the audience learnt, admitted this was not the inspiration behind his logo.

Turing, having saved humanity was ostracised for being gay and forced to undergo Jungian analysis and take oestrogen. He grew breasts.

The ensuing panel discussion,was steered by Professor Lizbeth Goodman, who heads us SMARTlab, [my PhD programme] and is Chair of Creative Technology Innovation and Professor of Inclusive Design for Education at University College Design.

The debate was a stimulating discussion, in among others, science film making. Brian Greene, a professor in Maths who collaborated with Al and Al provided Hollywood anacdotes. 

He's been an advisor on many films such as Deja Vu and spoke about is encounter with Hollywood film makers such as Jerry Buckenheimer and Tony Scott.

After he told them the science, they still wanted to bend the rules. The entertainment business huh!

My own interest in science is broadly two fold. Firstly I graduated in Applied Chemistry and secondly, my postgrad radio documentary was on Genetics and the human genome project after myself and family became the first test case in the UK to trial Professor Alec Jeffries DNA genetic fingerprinting.

The Real New World

Back to the conference, in One Hundred Mornings, a dystopic world devoid of technology becomes the setting for four stranded friends trying to see out their predicament. 

This was bleak, and a powerful humanist film by Conor Horgan, (follow him on twitter) which in his words asked the question. "What if?"

What if there was no technology, because there was no electricity and communications, such as tweeter, face book and the rest became null and void? 

What then? This was a film that attempted that rare thing of not allowing you to park unequivocal unified emotions on one character. 

In effect, this eschewed the Hollywood model, for the ambiguity of cinema verite - the life you could so easily lead. Watching this in the same week Obama was given executive authority to hit the kill switch on all communications and the Internet, this film is a stark, literally reminder of a future.

If your acquaintance had the last morsel of food that could aid your survival, would you kill them for that food? 

This tied in with an ensuing panel on the closing night which featured empathy as a theme and the panel  included the social entrepreneur, who when asked by a psychiatrist in the audience what she did, replied that her success was measured on completing social projects.

Empathetic storytelling

For the story tellers, here's one question I sought an answer. Can you be not be empathetic and tell great stories?  Film maker Alex Gabbay's ambitious and well made film addressed a larger question. Critics called this type of cinematic documentary, the New Talkies.

Educationist love it, but broadcasters as Gabbay noted find them challenging. The audience somehow to the commissioner is still a luddite. Shame that! 

But given Obama, mentioned in the film raised the stakes, when he spoke about needing empathy and was vilified on what appears to be a misunderstanding. Obama was not talking about sympathy, but empathy, we're likely to hear more about this particularly with an election looming.

My query to the panel drew an interesting response from Gabbay in that news makers turn of empathy and as a former news producer/ reporter there's much in this.

Sadly before others could get in their stride, the chair, broadcaster barrister Cynthia ni Mhurchu clumsily steered the question away to empathy and the affect on her children  - the only Achilles otherwise.

Videojournalism, through my study, which should hopefully be released is all about empathy, but with a significant set of caveats, which I am looking forward to discussing in Tunisia and Cairo where I have been invited to lecture and train story tellers.

Journalists tend to be less empathetic compared with documentary makers, and the future suggests we need more empathy in telling stories, which is problematic for the News-Macdonald industry of shovel the news out, or not.

Two days ago, there were some of the biggest demonstrations in Spain and Mexico about austerity, but they went largely unreported.

This was indeed a thought provoking event which I don't doubt that next year wherever the science festival is hosted will be even better. Like I said not bad for a Phd thesis and science films look like there on the up. Time to dust off my Kenneth W. Raymond.

David Dunkley Gyimah graduated in Applied Chemistry, before pursuing Economics and then Journalism. He is a former BBC Journalist and is completing his PhD in storytelling. He is  presently a senior lecturer, and artist-in-residence at the Southbank Centre. You can find out more about his work, in videojournalism, and his designs including his website below here

Cinema journalism and web sites - a carnival of ideas and the subconscious

How does style and form matter in creativity

It isn't enough to say what you have, where you've studied, worked, or even the awards you might have won.  It might help, but there's something else... 

Learning to break into different forms of media, even innovative types of creativity involves learning about the greats in image and film making. As Gilles Deleuze, one of the great philosophers states, good film makers are good  philosophers who put theories into practice and create theories from practices.

Take DW Griffiths Birth of a Nation. It was supremely racist, and draws justifiably no end of polemics. 

That it has been included in the US library of Congress' national library, nominated by Jon Singleton, is worth noting.

Because in film making terms, you can't ignore it. Griffiths was one of the first to cross cut, a technique which he lifted from literature. And, almost everything we know about classic film making in grand vistas and narrative is in that film, made in 1915.

Styles of Video 
I specialise in a very specific style of video news making and image making, for which I count web making and commercials, via deploying various empirical theories. Apologies, that's not meant to be arrogant, it's a reworking of De Caprio's line in Inception which makes a point.

The subconscious De Caprio's character mentions is the space of the intangible. Consciously, you might think of doing one thing, subconsciously, the theory-side could sway you elsewhere. It leads onto the question, how do you know what you know?

presenting the news in 1994

This an hour lecture I delivered last week to a group of Chinese students, and used similar thought processes in videojournalism and the rest.

For the web, I asked why does a web site look like a web site and not a tea cup? Various responses ranged from because they do, that's obvious, to because that book/ person said so.

Try asking the question and see where you land. Yet in 1994, as I presented the news that was a legitimate question then as it is now. The news item was about this new thing called web sites.




Carnival of cinema journalism ideas

The conceptual approach towards the formation of theory involved testing the students on a number of cognitive approaches applied to film and web sites.

For instance this is one of the 90 slides, where the Chinese graduates judge which one they prefer and why.

The most interesting response came from a student whose English wasn't as good as his colleagues, but his expression was captivating. Most preferred (b) and his response is he was in the space with the boy and could feel him running. Theorists characterise this as phenomeology.

But the question remains, why he liked (B).  You might now quote the rule of thirds, which at best can be described as a mathematical variable, we appear to be hard wired to. But then something remarkable happened - the early signs of a concept that needs further testing.

When I showed them this next slide.

Many preferred (A) - a painting from the Ming Dynasty. Few preferred (c) a Caravaggio piece, but surprisingly many leaned towards (B) Picasso's Guernica.

Now, yes this could be based on their aesthetic -which one draws their interest - which is in itself part of the test.

I then countered with a physical exercise to test this last find. The green shoots of chaotic design persisted, even though there were signs of a balance.

What does this tell us?

If as Schmidt, Google's CEO says China will dominate the web in the next five years, then there could be a fundamental shift in design an application.

Then I got them to assess themselves using this programme (1 of 2 to look at learning styles of individuals)  which would help verify their level of visual skills.

And this is what it said about Cynthia Yuan, a 20 year old majoring in New Media Art and Design.

After half an hour employing a wisdom of crowds approach and using the questions in the lecture the teams produced a series of websites looking at the futures.

The image below represents one conceptual page - which sees the web as cinema a 3D  map of web pages, in which you can speak live to real people and the site projects into physical space.

I saw something similar in China last year.

This is the front page with its navigational rollodeck

And this is an example of an inner page. Again the site encompasses a cinema feel.

And finally showed them a short videojournalism piece I made produced two different ways to test
how they distinguished between different forms. This is what Cynthia Yuan had to say.

I think the first one is a piece of news and the other is cinema.
The news should be short time like the first one. The news should tell a complete story in concise language. And say the most important things in the beginning of the video. The cinema should be based on the documentary , and then join the artistic expression like the second video's clock. It has been many times to express that time is running out. There is a change in time order. And the second video also has many close-up that is the most different from the news.

For me this is all fascinating, because it's not taking anything for granted, but proving how theory can reinforce practices. You'll notice that Cynthia is referencing the manner in which she sees the images in her manner of prescribing different forms.

In the last five years I have conducted several of these empirical studies and the strand on video is currently being written up, and will be delivered as an executive videojournalism programme in Tunisia at the end of the month.

Next week I am in Dublin, if you're around UCD, let's do a meet up with talks and coffees.

How to produce award winning media - the Pop Idol Phenomena to copy

Image from BBC advertising their BBC Radio programme. Click to listen

The presidential war room, the hub, the television studio meeting all share one thing in common, they are prosceniums that bring together like minded people, of a particular calibre, and in that setting exists the potential to produce strategic ideas, creative presentations or award winning programmes.

As part programme maker and media theorists the following example provides evidence of a methodology in which the future of a successful format is not so much planned, but a work in progress that highlights how the methodology accidently comes together.

There is perhaps no bigger branded television franchise show than Pop Idol. Advertising within the show costs $700,000 for 30 seconds and there are some 50 shows a year an expert announced on the the BBC's radio Britain in a Box. The following teases key moments, combined with my own interpretation.

Unlike many programme ideas, Pop Idol did not go through the normal treatment-commissioning process. It was a loose idea based on Pop stars - an antecedent show which introduced the notion of a critic being honest with the public.

Until then, and largely still ongoing, television personalities tend to be all smiley-feely with non-professional participants because any derogatory comment firstly contravenes the fairness approach adopted by programme makers, but that permanent damage will befall those shamed in front of 7 million viewers.  Oh and watch out for the law suit as well.

Phil Donahue may have introduced the idea of confessional TV to Britain, before Oprah, now commodified on the UK's Jeremy Kyle show, but at least you know what you were in for.

Nina Myskow, the UK equivalent of the blunt and acerbic Joan Rivers changed that. So Pop Idol brought in the baddy, but when Pop Idol set out it wasn't Simon Cowell who had to be prodded  to become a judge by the ITV executive Claudio Rosencratz, but I am ahead of myself.

Creating the idea
Pop Idos on paper - nothing more - was being air lifted to the BBC, which would not have been difficult because it was nothing more than a piece of paper about the jurors being the public - and it had no title.

The first exciting bit -subterfuge - occurs when with five hours from a presentation to sell the idea to  BBC execs Rosencratz gets sniff of the meeting and clears her schedule for a two o'clock meeting.

And in they poured - a lot of Simons - she says, Cowell, Fuller and others.  The pitch was made. Rosencratz needed to raise her boss David Liddiment, who was stuck in meetings, so she committed to it anyway, 50 shows n' all - which would be a lot of money for an untried format.

The programme did not have a presenter, so Donny Osmond was targeted. Sadly, his management gave the TV bosses the merry run around prompting the thought now whether he's still with his management. So cheeky-chappy presenting team Ant and Dec were called into a meeting, with the limited role of just introducing the show, and saying bye bye folks.

Then the first of the organic innovations. As the contestants were whittled down to 10 for the live show, the innovative schema would now kick in. The judges, as agreed, would no longer play a part in the show. This came as a surprise to Rosencratz, who threatened to pull the show.

Her logic was the viewers would relish the chance not only to vote, but to put one over on the judges. It's the equivalent of the custard pie in your face lark. If you disagree with the judge, here's how you get your own back. So, the judges need to stay, even if they did not have judging rights.

Another innovation of the hoof, was Ant and Dec, whom invited to watch rehearsals and ready themselves for their big 30 second moments of topping and tailing the shows, started to roam among contestants. They had time on their side, and both boys being dramatist ( in the nice sense) empathised with contestants following their Cowell maulings.

The Film makers concepts
This pathos introduced the filmic equivalent of the emotional arc. If someone was singingly really badly, the presenters would register the same emotions anyone at home would mirror. Remember at this junction of TV, this would be on camera jocularity would have been considered inappropriate.

I know this well, a video I produced which was part of an ensemble that won an award shows me speaking to my interviewee, outside of the television interview performance. It is the equivalent of verite, as Ant and Dec would show.

The next magical bit is serendipity in as much it's the luck you couldn't wish for, because you can't even plan it into your programme because it is not an integral part. Ergo, this was a singing contest, but a tawny lad walked into the auditions with his sister and stuttered his way into telling his name.

My (pause)...my (pause).. name, is, is... (stutter) ( long pause) (stutter)... Gareth Gates. He didn't stand a chance, not in a month on sunday.

Yet, he sang like a lark. To film makers this is what's known as a semantic field. Good-evil, poor-rich, black-white, the heart of a good Hollywood film, when two polar fields come together we are reduced to uncontrollable wrecks.

Gareth, the hot favourite spurned the programme makers to another idea on the hoof- the back story. Aware people would want to know more about the contestants, they hastily constructed contextual pieces on them.

Gareth, Will Young, and a bit part player who wedged herself into the limelight and thus set up another semantic field was Katy Price, aka Jordan: the weedy teenager and the flaxen butsy vixen.

And then to perhaps the last obvious ingredient, a postmodernistic desire for people, and acceptance by industry to continue to debate, influence the show within the moment and out of hours: twitter.

Been here before
This wasn't the first time 360 degree involvement in a media shows had been mooted. In the 1990s the US box office hit Homicide Life on the Street allowed its fan base to watch a new made-for-the-internet show, whilst the Matrix created an anime franchise to capitalise on the 'noise' its mind bender.

Pop idol had an immediate communication platform, between ordinary fans echoing and heckling their two bit, on the basis of what they thought, but also motivated to accrue retweets to build their own individual fan-base.

What therefore defined the show was a combination of an understanding of cognitive behaviour in audiencing, and the ability to change direction according to feedback looping within the idea, but above all, and as I'll go onto to prove with my next post, you need people who know there field, experts from different disciplines coming together to co-develop.

In lectures I give this harks to the "wisdom of crowds",  in which the intelligibility of the collective group, if allowed to work with, and creatively against the grain can produce award winning anythings.

If only we did media like football

Stanford Bridge - watching Chelsea.

You've probably heard it before, the apocryphal story of the scorpion hitching a ride across a river on a frog after swearing the frog will come to no harm, because naturally the scorpion would die.

Then like clockwork, halfway across the river, the frog feels a sharp pain and cries out to the Scorpion, why did you do that, we're both going to die.

The scorpion's reply: "it's in my nature".

So sums up English football, and in no small measure a chunk of the way we tend to do things.

Your three year old niece learning how to feed her little Bratz could have told England fans, technically boys you don't stand a chance.

But we soldier on; win one game, two and by the third believe luck has nothing to do with it. It's in our nature. And it happens each time the team take to the pitch, to the chorus of "C'mon England" as die hard fans fork out a small fortune.

It ends with, "we weren't good enough on the day, but we'll make it next time". It's in our nature.

Pity the hapless million pound stars, whom on English soil regale fans with "biff, biff, balls" as sturdy athletes, with thighs the girth of a baby calf, charge the length of the field and single handedly, gladiatorially, win the ball.

Now that's proper football they'll tell you, as someone delivers a silky punch to his opponents mid riff. Did I hear you say Joey Barton? Google him. Now that's football and its in our nature.

But do pity the English national game, because frankly if the new manager had all the time in Churchill's kingdom to revise plans and a strategy, he simply could not.

Because percentage-wise a large majority of the English game play "biff, biff, balls". "C'mon my son run for it'.

English footballers wouldn't know how to hang on to the ball, let alone thread five connecting passes together, because they've never been taught that way. And playing on the biggest stage after a couple of weeks together will not change that.

Here's the crux. For every ball that went to Hart, the goal keeper, and a fine one at that, he "biff, biffed, the ball" high on yonder for a hapless forward to "do you "#2ging work and get the ball". It's in our nature.

And if you don't believe me, next Sunday roll a dice and turn up to any green patch with a goal and listen to the next generation - all of ten years old - goaded by their parents to: "kick it, go on kick it.. anywhere..."

Interestingly enough, not a single commentator made the point that Hart, for the love of Osbourne's redactable pork pies tax, stop kicking the bloody ball and throw it. Oh no, it's in our nature.

So let's look forward to the World Cup, to renewed hype to sell shirts, tickets, and newspapers. To a nation that sadly again will be, for goodness sake, found with its pants around its knees.

Oh we're good enough, it's just we've got a thing with frog legs actually and truthfully that really is in our nature

The Future Moving Image Makers - Videojournalism inside tips from Viewmagazine.tv

If you're familiar with this blog and  viewmag, then you'll know that since 2005 it's been sharing ideas on videojournalism.

In the last couple of months I have been writing a taxonomy about non-fiction making and wanted to share one theme with you, which gives you a flavour of the text.

From the many memos and contemporary documents I have been examining I came across a five page memo from one of my managers, who wrote this:

"Sometimes they will shoot on-the-day stories to back up a breaking news event. Sometimes ( and I used the example of  Leah Betts) all four might have to drop what they're doing and pitch in to get the stories for an on-the-day special".

Leah Betts was the tragic story of a young girl who took ecstacy and died in 1995. This paragraph that I have lifted from a 1995 Memo sent to us videojournalists is profound in many ways, in what it meant then almost 20 years ago and what it represents now. Nick Pollard, the originator of the memo, would become the head of news at sky a year later.


The videojournalists oeuvre 

Firstly, that the videojournalists worked on the day to turn around stories is common knowledge to most practitioners. What it doesn't reveal is that VJs would file in around three stories a day.

That aside, if you're able to do that now there's a sense of epiphany you develop approaching a story, in which rather than being complicit with what you know, you approach a story suspicious of what you don't know, and what you're being told.

But the idea of having four videojournalists work on a story is the gem and was used on the IRA bombing of London and other stories, but in a particularly co-ordinated way.

Now when the videojournalists were not working disparately on a bigger canvas story, they would be in close proximity within the theatre of the story and that meant understanding and coordinating what the acting profession calls "blocking".

This involves where you want an actor to stop, so you can place another camera to provide a different view point and a continuity of sequences.

One of three cameras I used. One is in shot. I'm shooting with the other...

Sounds simple enough, not getting in each other's shot path, but it was understanding what frame shot to pick up when you're colleague left the image, that was the interesting event.

The idea of different view points which surfaces between Edwin Porter and DW Griffiths in the early 1900s is one of film makings most eloquent and amazing developments and its held steady since, with more elaborate multi-shot angles devised, except in broadcasting which due to the costs meant one camera, one person.

In this frame from Chicago I have placed clandestine cameras around my run path.

So going back to the Memo, Nick Pollard has found a way for the videojournalists to act as ensemble directors picking up different view points for one production.

Yet what if you work for an outfit where you don't have enough videojournalists to simulate, here's the stylistic breakthrough

As a videojournalist you'd do well to understand multi-camera shooting, in which YOU operate a number of cameras. On the shoot I did for the Southbank and dance company I used four different cameras, placed strategically to minimise blocking. The picture above gives you an idea, as does these below working with Nato, and then my first Mac back in 2000 working with two cameras.

While the camera is the capturing device, what is significant is your understanding of spatial thinking. Where should I be, how does that orientate the viewer, what's the significance of the next shot?

Because, and this is the singular theme from all this: You're speaking through the art of spatial compositioning which placed on a screen is a film, within a building is architecture, and a fixed canvas is design.


What therefore do I conclude:

• That the idea of one camera, one person is defunct. It's a legacy of the 1900s. If you ask anyone why they only have one camera they will probably not be able to give you an adequate answer.
• 
  
• That you would do well to try and learn spatial camera narrative. A part of the text, which I won't go into here involves a philosophy of thinking, transported to filming, developed by Heidegger.
• 
  
• That some interesting concepts exist that have yet to translated into common currency, which I guess is what I am doing now.
• 
  
• And that I hope to at some point extend a masterclass on narrative.

Super docs, super films, now Super News - the future of news

new BBC building off Oxford Street

Sociologists would have us believe we're in the age of individualism, self identity, and the rise of bijou, in the smaller cottage networks.

One of those, the BBC is definitely not, the other is questionable, while the last spells the project's conclusion.

We've had the super structures, super films in Inception rallying against the Indie, the rise of the super docs which would leave you little change from $1,000,000 and now its super news.

You could argue we've always had super news in the big globals e.g. Reuters, Sky, ITN, ABC, NBC, CBS, the BBC etc.

But this is different. Call it Mega news, because the sight of the BBC's new headquarters inside, more than outside is exactly that - a statement of intent that screams: "Don't you know who we bloody are? We're the BBC".

BBC from the 5th Floor - light deco and reds

Surveying from the 5th floor, both underneath me and on top, where Radio 1 is, the site and deco is something out of the jump or google building - though I didn't see any table tennis boards.

Like its White City sibling, it's open plan, with studios dotted all across the floor. The main ones are in the basement being finished off I was told.

For BBC World Service figures, the musty smell of mahogany and coves for private debates will be as distant a memory as the name "overseas service". Thus far, it's believed generally people are settling in well, though desk space is a premium, so as one journalist put it, sharp elbows could be dangerous.

The news desk however is the closest thing to Star Treks coms, with an assortment of feeds and monitors

Monitoring news from the desk

Downstairs on the sub floor, the innovation that is the heart-and-artery news room is evident, though its still has some finishes. BBC Television News are prepping to be beamed in around September.

BBC News pod- heart and artery shape 

The sight of journalists reacting to a breaking story in this proscenium will be something worth seeing, which you can see, because it's also a public gallery which you can reach by literally taking fifteen steps off the street. And it won't just be journos being watched by your aunt peggy, because apparently there's a rostrum camera on wires that can whiz by journos, to give us the viewer, well a "journo-eye-view:.

BBC Journalists will have to watch what they read, as newspaper journos train their camera on them in an attempt to fill the gossip columns, with "our newspaper is clearly favoured by the BBC'.

At full pelt Oxford Street residents will see nothing like it. Seemingly, the architects had no interest in decentralisation, notwithstanding Salford's migration, so in the evenings home time could be quite a sight.

Ford would clearly be proud, but what's this thing about bucking the trend of sociologists? Well, Mass Communication was a 1920s concept under Lord Reith, its then Director General.

In the 1990s the philosophy was towards the individual. The very presence of the web, websites, citizen journalism and the rest added to the sense of small is good. We've seen that equally in record companies setting up sub labels.

News for a while too fell into its smaller division of labour or at least upheld the illusion with offices all around London. Now that philosophy is about to be kaiboshed. If cinema can do it and win audiences, why not news, you can imagine the strategists proclaiming.

So here's to Super News.  The hope of course is that this doesn't mean reverting only to super stories.

Thanks to James for showing me around :)

More pics soon

The University of Quiddity - Viewmagazine's university

You can't remember can you?

And when you do, you want to apply everything you've remembered.

How to be the best,  how to create the most arresting video, how to win friends. It's stupefying that there exist no part in the brain, neuroscientists could have named "how to".

Of course there isn't because cognitive thinking is more peripatetic.

It roams searching for a place to land after imbibing ideas on the way.  "How to" is a resurgent 21st century phenomenon. It is more direct, constrains the matrix of "packet" thinking and its existed in some form or shape since the Book of Ecclesiastes and before.

Then, it provided answers how to lead a rich God-fearing life.  Then as much as now, we digested this knowledge attaching a great deal to its literal denotative value. Turn the other cheek and we physically did, when others walked away.

Today, "how tos"are so pervasive,  we're in danger of heading for a cognitive cul de sac.

We forget like the scene above, structures bend, compositions change, condition differ. In the next second, the pattern of people around me will have altered and I will be moved from my spot.

David Training at the Chicago SunTimes in Chicago.

And that's the analogical point. What works where, and how can never prevail in perpetuity. There is no fixed "how to". The mesh of communications is too vast for packaged formulas.

It was exposed in Mass Communication theory, Users Gratification and Transmission models, albeit, they enjoyed moments in the sun until the 1960s, before the post structuralists took over and now in the 21st Century it's the era of Quiddity, and the Quidditians.

Quiddity

Quidditians want to know why rather than just "how". They're not sullied by the mass, but intrigued by the individual. Their thinking is phenomenological: "to the things they are", one of its architects intoned.

It is about the idea, becoming an author or as Schopenhauer would say, having something to say.

I am considering creating a university. It would combine ethnographic journalism if that's not tautology -articles researched in the field to build knowledge. 

It would consider competing philosophies in conjunction with the warning that everything we learn is conditional. That's the beauty of knowledge,  that the more you learn, the more you understand and the more you understand should undermine previous ideas, which leads to confusion and debates about meanings.

From here further discursive learning should help untangle your state of mind, but this stasis can only be temporary.

A scholar yesterday piously condemned journalism asking for a return to its roots, and abandoning of theory, when the irony was he was himself promoting a theory, a theory of the skeptics, whilst forgetting their is no grand theory any longer. There never was, but we were too concealed from knowledge to know.

There is no tablet of knowledge. Mosses destroyed the principle physically, if not connotatively.

David discusses ideas with Tinia in Lebanon

The university would recognise that it's not disciplines and the promotions of "how tos" that are the principle cause of angst, but that there's something in the art of critique, the bold idea, which drills deeper and deeper  - which by default discards those ten points - and cognitively and flexibly considers how to think like the the prosumer.

It would flatten the hierarchy of learning, where the lecturers train and curate and Quidditians wisdom-of-crowd study.

It would attach more emphasis in our discursive world to artistic practice as expression, and logic or rhetoric as the power to rationale an idea. Then it asks what do you believe in and why?

You can't remember again, can you?

Remember what I have been saying because you might have been expecting a "how to" - that's the crux of the problem.

Here are my ten points...

In his career, David has worked for ABC News, BBC World Service, WTN, Channel 1, Radio 4, Channel 4 News, BBC Newsnight, BBC Reportage and through his thesis is devising a taxonomy of storytelling. See more on Viewmagazine.tv