Any respect for video journalism? - Shooting by Numbers

Peter at Shootingbynmbers writes:

"There is one significant difference between the luminaries of the new wave and the evangelists of video journalism.

Godard, Rohmer, Chabrol etc. complained that the leading French moviemakers of the fifties had no respect for the art of moviemaking and accused them of “holding cinema in contempt”.

The most strident VJ evangelists espouse the new paradigm only because it is fast and cheap. They have no respect for the talents of the producers or the discernment of the audiences." Read more here...


And I responded
Hi Peter, ultimately therein lies the crux. Video journalism's strength in a more tech-savvy environment might also prescribe a weakness, depending on one's point of view.

It is the low hanging fruit. Pick up a camera, shoot, et voila.

Photographers may still happily embrace the tag, "Amateur Photographer", the same goes for by Super 8mm Bolex users.

But you're unlikely to find this anywhere in video journalism.

There is, and it's not an argument for me, no distinction between the grades of video journalism inter alia.

Perhaps partly because it's relatively new; relative with regard to the newspaper video journalism boom, and also peer review is thin on the ground.

Renoir, Spielberg would not call themselves auters. They were bloody good to anyone who knew their work, but it took that mag that would evolve into an influential read and spark a movment in itself, Cahiers du cinéma, to bestow such a label: auter.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Hence you've a basis to argue that videojournalism is in fact DVCam film making for news and more, which has always been my point here

But that's a mouthful and video journalist, like radio, magazine, newspaper journalist has more bite.

But if we entertain the idea VJ is digital film making then like film it has rules that require being pushed, just as Lars Von Trier's Dogme movement added to the new wave of low budget film makers emerging en masse on the scene from the 80s. [Here's one of my fav snapshot articles about that era].

But we're talking about video journalism, posts like yours and many others that talk about the process, form, style guide us to think further beyond its monetary advantages.

DIY TV, Cheap and Chearful TV, Robocop TV - these were some of the nicer adjectives we attracted when we went Vj solo in the 90s.. Get a load of those cameras!

We might have been partly to blame: yep I can do the job, (er badly someone just shouted LOL) of three some of us gleefully pronounced.

For me years, I'd like to have thought we should have moved on.

d

p.s Now here's a humdinger, Is videojournalism art?
p.p.s just going through Bergman's collection - Seventh Seal. Watched it when I was knee high to a grasshopper, but makes more sense now. What about posting a pool of your cine favs that could lend to auterism.

Round up

Great posts from Peter Ralph at Shootingbynumbers
" If your eyes enter from the left of the screen they will tend to settle more comfortably on the right.
So in most images placing the focus of attention on the right of the screen will produce a more harmonious composition."

From Digital Basin, Mike Jones
elaborates on space and cinema and the unquestionable matrixes that hold this form together
".....for it is these discourses that have served as the pillars for established cinematic theory over the past century ? mise-en-scene, montage, the role of the viewer and the role of the maker are all built from their accepted norms"

Cliff Etzel has made the leap from DV to HD out of neccessity
"...I made the jump to HDV after having lost out on two potential broadcast projects where the producers specifically asked me if I shot HD. Having to say no I didn’t shoot HD probably lost me those possible projects. So it was a necessary expendeture I had to make."

And the usual bag of goodies at Multimedia shooters.. Multimedia shooters