The photojournalists' Photojournalist-The Bang Bang Club

BangBang Club - a must see film

South Africa 1994. Elizabeth Ohene, the South African correspondent for the BBC World Service's Africa division is recounting a story to me in the BBC's bureau. She's just come back from covering Tokoza, a township in South Africa.

A BBC Producer had a gun pointed at his head and the assailant looked ready to pull the trigger. "What would she have told his mother?", she tells me of her friend and much loved journalist.

I presented a programme for BBC Radio in London called "Black Londoner" hence the play on the title from a harrowing but life-defining assignment in South Africa in 1993

Below, after 15 years, last year I returned to South Africa to train African Journalists at Rhodes University, working with Miami University and had a couple of hours to visit where I used to live and produced this videojournalism - meta report.



I knew of the aforementioned demo; it could make my next report and earn me some money, but I decided not to go instead. But I also remember that day for another reason. Ken Oosterbroek, one of the members of the famed Bang Bang Club was shot and killed.

I didn't know Ken personally, but I had friends who I would visit at the Star newspaper where he worked. My landlady, Lyndsey who also edited Living Magazines, would take phone calls late in the night for two hours at a time from one of her commissioned photojournalists.

His name was Kevin Carter. Kevin had just returned from a haunting assignment in Sudan. The picture is now legendary, but it was Lindsaye's retelling of Kevin's story and how he came to take the shot which kept both of us talking to the small hours of the night.

Some months later Kevin committed suicide. His picture had won him the greatest honour in photojournalism, but Lindsaye told me he found it difficult to square that with the plight of the young child in this picture.

When I became a videojournalist a couple of months later in 1994, this picture adorned my cubby hole. It was one of the few pictures that inspired me to apply to the UK to become a dedicated videojournalist.

Kevin Carter's award winning photo/Corbis Sygma.. The film Bang Bang Club retelling the true story of Kevin et al will soon be on general release

There are countless aphorisms about photojournalism. Soon The Bang Bang Club, long revered amongst photojournalism aficionados may well turn out to acquire wide common use.

The story of a band of brothers who attained rock star like status from covering  South Africa's trenchant apartheid-induced killings, is as inspiring as it is tragic.  Joao Silva, one of the four, incurred severe injuries in 2010  from a landmine in Kandahar.  Greg Marinovich blog can be found here  He co-authored with Greg the book, The Bang Bang Club

Alongside them another name a synonym for exceptional photojournalism can be found, James Natchway

In itself this film will bring much reflection and awe at a professional set who often dare to go, where those considered fearless would. Look at Danfung Dennis today, whom I had the pleasure of inviting to share his life for a PhD study and then there's Yannis Kontos who I have worked with on a number of projects.

Bang Bang needed to be told. For me as a freelance journalist reporting the townships the film will bring back  personal memories of reportage and my next phase into videojournalism.

More on viewmagazine.tv

Three other incredible films that inspired me into journalism

The Year of Living Dangerously


Salvador


Frankie's House


Click here for insight into major new findings on 

What is videojournalism on the web, in multimedia and offline - a major study and film - and why it matters

Top ten tips for video making and videojournalism

Our penchant for lists, for formulaes often reduces the extent to which we might seek to uncover fresh approaches.

Arguably you could question whether there is anything in the world of video/ film to unravel anew.  We simulate the work of others and adopt their signatures.

Name a visual narrator who built a career in isolation of the industry. Everyone borrows from someone. We crib books, comb blogs, analyse video.

We listen to presentations. Sometimes we marvel at the work that confronts us. Then we stop and think. How did they do it?

I'm reminded by a presentation I gave a while back in Berlin on videojournalism.

Good film makers know how to copy others without you noticing the tracing paper,  really good visualists know when to break free of their idols, without the need for tracing paper

The list works to an extent, but then fails because it's no longer enough. It's too prescriptive.

Sometimes we'll just give a nod to a style which transfixed us:  Turner Prize Winner Steve McQueen was influenced by Buster Keaton films and then Renaissance paintings to achieve the look in his critically acclaimed film on Bobby Sands.

I chose McQueen because he proves another point about cross-creativity: when in doubt go to the Masters of the genre and deconstruct.

For those learning the art of film making this can often be testing. The magic pill is extraordinarily alluring. But  I would caution. Look, learn and leave it.

Better still there is no pill. The swan syndrome disguises the hard graft many of the people we admire put in. 

Interrogate the form, ask questions: lots of questions and then leave the top ten tips to those who want to proficiency over originality.

Good stories have a habit once they've been stumbled upon of finding good story tellers who do it justice - eventually. Though I accept you're now counting the many that got away.

But each story has its own internal dynamic; a metronome, a dream-like quality where those top tips may help and also constrain.

Oh my top ten tips:

• Be passionate
• Seek knowledge - far and wide
• Feel involved with the work
• Find good characters
• uncover a story line that is strong; it wows you
• Find the narrative- remember stories untold are messy
• Use strong pictures
• Be reflexive - review, review, review
• Fail quickly, so you fail less often

We'll talk about the last one when we go for drinks.

WebVideojournalists defining a future trail

Capturing the zeitgeist

In 2002 or thereabouts Futurure Publishing behind one of the most successful creative magazine's Computer Arts launched a magazine around video. 

 It lasted about 6 issues before it folded. I was so taken  I rang and spoke to its editor who lamented  the economics of it were unsustainable.

There are other specialists mags around today e.g. VideoMaker, but online is where you can get really excited. For videojournalism there are several blogs and mags offering a wealth of info; I started to mark them up and realised I'd be here all day.

The latest and an emerging behemoth from within the UK capturing the zeitgeist is the videojournalismweb blog: Online Videojournalism blog put together by eight Masters students from City University.

Its range of profiles and studied material across the breadth of video is a welcome addition to the genre. I hope they managed t sustain it after their degree.

Last week I was interviewed by one of their contributors Will Teddy - for what turned out to be a two hour chat, though admittedly a good percentage of that was me on subject.  Mention video and I'm off.

Will I learnt has a good knowledge of French film's - part of his grad degree  -which affords him the added heuristics to deconstruct film language from a nation that redefined European film in the 60s.

And since film language imbricates videojournalism of sorts, that's good knowledge.

Will's question's covered how much the web has changed videojournalism, what it is and where it's going. My response broadly took up the philosophy of videojournalism and a constructivist/ intepretism approach to story telling.

That means, given the term videojournalism cannot be approached as a metanarrative,  that is a grand theory which covers everything (Really!)  its difficult to be understood via orthodoxies.

It is part of the reason your notion of videojournalism might be fundamentally different from others.

Videojournalism
On Mrdot.co.uk I wrote some time back:

"Videojournalism is an advance on television news production - a shift away from the predictable approach television has stuck to doggedly since its inception".

This definition is fairly easy to comprehend and as videojournalism matures, it'll require deeper definitions

Take storytelling, simple to some, but a messy practice to truly master. I mean to the point that it taps into the psyche. But when we do tell stories, they're invariably linear and uniperspectival.  The news you watch about Libya comes from a correspondent. And why not. The correspondent may consider all sides, if they can access those, and give a considered view. Two things are at issue here.

First you get a a view reduced to simplify the story; it's a craft, but the pre-editing of data could leave you seriously questioning the reporter if you know what they knew. Second, the idea of realism of the story takes a hit.

Realism today is sculptured with respect to dominant parties - at least on television. It's as if Coubert, the founding father of modern realism has been erased from history, though yes we are influenced by the filming of ordinary folk.

But take the story of the Libyan crisis, we see UN governments, Libya's political apparatus, Gaddafi, but little of how people e.g. Libya's are living, or the views of the French whose government has taken the lead

We accept these limitations because that's the way we do things; they are problematised indeed. Tradition and convention are powerful shapers of how we are fixed to systems that mean we blithely unknowingly refuse to question any other way of doing what it is we do.

The only time we tend to see other methods it's because technology e.g. Twitter,  and or new social values smack against the old order or that sometimes methods adopted for one system are transfered to another. Ford Motor Car's system of divisional work which Hollywood adopted with the formation of specialists, adopted by broadcast networks. A system transferred to another.

The 3min or whatever report adopted from television is so (linear et al), because, why that's the way it is - at least by western influences. When I was in Chongqing I had a great discussion with a Chinese scholar who spoke to me about multi perspective Eastern art. Many stories in one plane staring right at you.

In other words, in Chinese art it's not uncommon to have multiple perspectives, rather than one - which is the Cartesian model here - which fits with the idea of single perspectives in photography, art and video.

A prevailing question at the moment suggests videojournalism is actually bankrupt of ideas. That's not to say all the noticeable films you see online aren't by universal standards great, but that the notion that videojournalism, as a mode of news film teleology would end up reworking news practices hasn't really happened.

There are many questions still to be asked, and those answers lie in a multiplicity of disciplines e.g.
experiential learning from our own individual journeys, and of course the work of new researchers and writers.

Future of Journalism ~ when does journalism intervene ?

A little boy lies cowered in the snow, destitute, cold without visible means that might help him survive the day.

Along comes a man wearing a coat; tucked in his pocket a number of energy bars. He talks to the boy, even takes some pictures before moving on. We don’t know what happened to the boy.

This may seem improbable that anyone could be so callous to abandon a child in need, but on TV screens, this is an exigent default act.

On  BBC's radio Media Show which analyses media events, Television News officials were questioned over the number of reporters and presenters sent to Japan to cover what one TV reporter described apocalyptically as a visit from three of the four horsemen.

Executives defended their positions. Yet there's something else lurking as the big question.

It's a philosophical statement whose time requires a rethink.  To what extent should the man described above be morally responsible to help the child?

Contemporary philosophy
On a macro level, today scores of reporters tread the scared streets of Japan doing what they’ve been trained to do; find and communicate a story.

There are more than enough. The mood is itself all the more difficult to comprehend - a show of the Japanese temperament to a Western society of how orderliness, respect can still be exercised at a time of deep crisis.

But do the media have a moral obligation to do what they can to help a desperate people? No, if an aged and mummified tenant of journalism is anything to go by.

Back in the 1960s, ITN reporter Alan Hart reporting from Nigeria’s Biafra war filed a piece, which for his bosses exemplified ITN’s prowess, however hart was angry.

Their feedback while laden with praise exalted Hart not to show any emotion next time, that is not to cry. Hart says he’s eyes welled up during his piece to camera.

The 60s and the shaping of media would have made such distinctions between reportage ( its role)  and media participation in extenuating affairs. The lines were divisible and stark.

Impartiality, objectivity, truth, realism, fairness – these were held to be unequivocal in framing the profession against the scourge of propaganda.

You could argue rightly so for a media finding its feet then this was not to be breached. The media like a wild-life camera person observed life, abject of any participation.

But what about now in an era of the world village, inter connected societies, shared experiences - the prevalence causality of the butterfly theory?

Can we be so sure that common sense overrides at all costs tradition?  ITN's Tom Brady (he clinched the William and Kate royal interview) speaking to students recently shared his concerns over journalists and photographers determined to get a picture of an injured Prince Diana,  rather than attend to her wounds.

Questions of Journalism
The question needs to be revisited. To what point in human suffering should the media seek to do more than its intended role of reportage.

This is not to say those who provide a special window on events in the world down their tools-of-the-trade to become rescuers, but to consider that the power they possess in exposing events brings collective consciousness together- at particular times, specific instances.

Again, the obvious response to this Luddite and ill-conceived thought of mine is: "That's what we do, we are journalists. We remain impartial in executing our work".

But could we fault any of the world media broadcasting with visible on air links to donate funds, or provide an accommodation so journalists reports are re-packaged to assist acts of charity. Does there lie a mechanism that facilitates a call to action?

Again the natural response is that's not the job of journalism. However look hard and there are signs editors and journalists are already complicit - albeit in limits.

From Libya yesterday, BBC Correspondent Ian Pannel gave a platform to an interviewee on a mobile phone awaiting the fearful arrival of Gaddafi's forces in Benghazi :"If you could speak to the international community what would you say?"

In the changing dynamics of journalism within social networks is there a new responsibility that renders traditional journalism's position arcane?

A former Masters student of mine from Ghana was adamant this was so: the media should not just report on issues, he said, but seek a way to instigate change.

It was, I remember thinking, a naive thought at the time.  But coming from Ghana, his experience were different, that is different to me - and I have lived and worked for the media in Ghana.

Fifteen years ago, in a ground breaking videojournalism co-production, Ghana TV sent reporters to South Africa to share, report on issues, common for each state.

Fresh look at journalism
Consider this within traditional journalism philosophy; how the act of  ITN's  Michael Nicholson a veteran journalist touched by a young girl in Sarajevo's war resulting in him adopting her.

Such deeds are to be eschewed. Why? Simply because journalism provides a voice but not a face that may in the minds of those that hold its divinity undermine what it stands for.

In a new age, a new era, I suggest we look further, that to start the news extolling independence followed by an announcement that if viewers want to help in anyway they can a link - which hold in perpetuity on screen is one that can be done.

In the long term, the profession requires Baroness Warnock figures, a fresh look at journalism, in a completely, radically different age from whence it came.

NB This author is not a broadcast journalist. He spent a fair few years in the profession and is now an academic. Yah! what does he know!

Future Journalism - trainee journalists go beyond the blog

Designed Journalism- Image Valeria Testagrossa

It's the holy grail of the future of journalism.

The pub talk is it's less about another app, but a generation with different needs and social wants from their previous lot. What's more they're working to an evermore info-literate populace.

At a recent Westminster University PR event: "Have PR and spin undermined trust in politics?" former No. 10 communications man Lance Price made that point.

Today, the audience knows what's duff, spin and good media, he more or less said.

The pen might be mightier than a sharp nudge to the kidneys, but today if you're looking to a career in the factual-story telling business you'd do well to consider options that scale the blog.

Pathways which strictly defined whether you were print or broadcast have overlapped. Words morph into images - graphically. Does Sassurean's signifier and signified mean anything today?

It's no longer a contentious point; the future is screen based, but the disappearance of classical media such as Time Magazine points out might be exaggerated.

New Journalists

Yet on the one hand it's still a listing trade; BBC et al cutting back on jobs. Then on the other side as shown with a new phenomenological group of journalists e.g. Alex Wood and Adam Westbrook playing online makes for a longer, even richer play.

To that evolving troupe, new cohorts, new journalists armed with their CSS, xhtmls, SEO continue to emerge.

It seems an eternity now since Anthony Moor, board of directors of the influential Online News Association, spoke for a generation on the OJR: "Go to the Web, young journalist.

Now its go beyond the web, enveloping jobs online once reserved for the techie heads.

Here then is the  the work of Masters students 2011. Share your thoughts.

http://www.StreetsLondon.co.uk

StreetsLondon.co.uk

http://www.london-performers.co.uk/index.html

London-performers.co.uk

http://www.whereislondon.co.uk

Whereislondon.co.uk

Media Storm, Ilicco Elia, Death Marches - taming online for future journalism

Reuters Ilicco Elia drops by lectures to critique work and present

Read this: Masters web sites front pages- Go beyond the blog

One day in the Masters in Journalism Online module and student teams are now counting the seconds to go live.

Three teams of eight have been "death marching" to hit the publishing deadline after 6 weeks studying how to build and comprehend online communications. It's not over yet too.

The term "death march" has its contemporary roots in software development but came to prominence  in the late 1990s whilst working for a number of dotcoms. The verge of web 2.0 and funding to launch meant no one slept.

It's a death march because you go with little sleep or food over a fixed period to get the job done. Edward Youdon's Death March  is worth a read.

So far the present crop of Masters cohorts have taken in CSS, XHTML, Flash, Pshop and of their own volition Jquery and Java Script and more. That's the software bits, but there are development formalities that arise evaluated within  a real-time workflow.

The module is given the alternative name, "the rabbit hole" for a number of reasons related to Alice In Wonderland: night and day blur with an array of madhatter problems and solutions thrown the students' way.

The default is to test cohorts to unconsciously make mistakes and deconstruct afterwards thus making less mistakes thereon. The value of making mistakes is a symptom of creativity, and thus should be welcomed, particularly in the hypemedia landscape - where no semiotic is fixed.

From design, brief, team management, workflow, creativity, and server technical support - if its part of the real-world it goes under the microscope.

To say online is not for the meek is putting it mildly as the course is designed to not only test new skills, but behaviour and group dynamics  - often employing the wisdom of crowds.

The new journalist
This coupled with the documentary module, which uses one aspect of my videojournalism praxis provides a thorough grounding in creating a new modality of journalist.

If docs is about affectivity, then hypermedia, where we are now, is about delineating the nature and notions of how to deploy affectivity.  That is how and what do you do to alter the state of something to become more tangible.

Similarly, the move forward in online is about interrogating classical and contemporary spaces and their role in a post-post structural society.

Post structural here refers to dissociative position given to deconstructing language. The world we now inhabit can no longer be interpreted by an exclusive fixation on semiotics or psychoanalysis but more fluid visual methodologies.

For instances in News you're told you can't do a jump cut ( classical); but you can in post structural because the language now is meshed - a disruption accelerated by Youtube et al

Industry giants
So what better way to rattle the cage of journalism and communications further than to bring in two industry giants thus far and a third and fourth looming.

Firstly one of the Guardian newspaper's top 100 influential media people Ilicco Elia, who came in on a lecture and roughed up ( in a very nice way) the students and their work.

The way Ilicco works is so naturally unnatural. Within a minute he had the students at ease critiquing their work with comments such as: "I really like that", and "your information architecture is the pointing the wrong away from your work".

Ilicco's cameras

Ilicco's passion as one of the UK's leading mobile technologists, knitting content and audiences, is pushing mobile content. No surprise then when he emptied his bag. This is what fell out: 7 mobile phones, not counting his Ipad, pc etc.

His lecture on a Reuter's mobile capabilities and how audiences  benefit from real-time transmission of pics (during the World Cup, the system he helped develop meant he received a photo of an England goal within 15 seconds) underlines his philosophy of
distribution.

Incidentally if anyone from Canon, Sony et al are reading this, I agree with Ilicco's thinking that it's high time pro cameras were fitted with wireless relaying devices to push pictures to consumers.


MediaStorm

Student listening to Brian

Later in the afternoon the founder of one of the world's leading multimedia agency's MediaStorm's Brian Storm, skyped into lectures giving students around an hour of Q and A.  Questions ranged from his unique methodology, his background, how he started and how interns could join his outfit.

Brian was equally superb: what does it take to be the best? Passion, passion, passion, he answered. You don't do journalism to get rich was his payoff.

I want to pull out one story he told that illustrates a candidness and doggedness exemplifying a schema everyone should adopt. Conversely this story also highlights what goes on beneath his highly finished products - a rare insight behind the scenes.

Brian Storm, Mediastorm founder talked about the making of this story

The story relates to abortion of female sexes in areas of India. An intern with local knowledge and the appropriate sex ( something that may not figure in the editorial meeting in Western societies) was instrumental in securing interviews.

The production then wove Walter Astrada's (photographer) narrative and that of the story itself into a seamless production. It was in the post where things got interesting.  Brian said they had to rework the female-voiced narratives a couple of times, with user experience feedback before it truly gelled.

Brian mentioned they have a number of projects in the works, not least their publication, and various workshops where the MediaStorm brand has fast become a working methodology.

You can find an interview with Brian which I conducted in Miami, where we first met and a feature on Ilicco hosting a mobile phone gathering of experts at Reuter's London HQ here.

Meanwhile here are some some shots from the lecture and online newsroom caught by Masters student Valeria  - an accomplished photographer in her own right.


 To find out more about the sites being launched go here:

• http://www.london-performers.co.uk
• http://StreetsLondon.co.uk
  http://whereislondon.co.uk/

Read this: Masters web sites front pages- Go beyond the blog

To find out more about Masters in Journalism programmes at the University of Westminster go here.
To find out more about this author's work in new journalism go here to viewmagazine.tv
The views here are my own and do not reflect policy of the University of Westminster.

 

 

Getting Smarter - Knowledge Code-Breaking

In my BBC job board the interviewer asked a question about  the current RPI and Britain's budget deficit and what was likely to happen to it.

I was caught; I simply didn't know, but added I knew a way to find out babbling acronym after acronym: NIER, MPCM and so on.

Implicit in the question for any would-be journalist was not that I should know the answer; though there are some questions that you should.

I was once told by a BBC editor that during the height of Margaret Thatcher's reign as Prime Minister, 10 percent of the population were clueless. Yes really! But anyway going back to the economic question... 

It's all about building knowledge.

I was reminded of this today as I went about knowledge-brokering. Sounds fancy enough, but that oldest and most rewarding of methods saw me doing an in-depth interview with an ex-colleague.  It's part of a lengthy process which will build upon my existing knowledge in video and communications.

Very practical !

Give me knowledge

We're so blase to the notion of acquiring knowledge, that even putting it this way seems weird. You might seek many things e.g. a meal, tickets to the cinema, but knowledge??

About the only group which frames it this way are academics, but it shouldn't be the case. Meanwhile, we've all but become googlised.  That is unless something you want is in google, it doesn't exist.

Google has been the defacto repository of knowledge, and after they the British government close down all the UK's libraries ( What you didn't know?) Google's reign will almost be unqualified.

But wait a minute. Here's a couple of thoughts. Firstly google only indexes a fraction of the web, so if it's not in google, doesn't mean it doesn't exist and secondly the web itself is but a fraction of knowledge captured in books, which is why google's digitalisation of books is still ongoing.

This fallacy in knowledge online being a marker of ones knowledge is so widespread that even people, professionals and respected ones at that who should know better, fall for this trap.

I once had a respected visualist  challenge something I'd said about cinema and journalism, claiming he'd been saying it all before. The trouble is I mentioned this in magazines in the 90s and early 2000s; they're not online.

Also to make assumptions about what you know verses someone else is redolent of playschool games of my dad's car is bigger than yours.

Generation Knowledge 

The acquisition of knowledge still has defined routes for generations preferring the tertiary education pathway: lectures and tutorials which beget that incisive method of asking questions.

However even this has its flaws, as while as a lecturer I might claim I know a lot; an ambiguous term, the rigid frame work of a lecture can only be strengthened by asking questions.

And, and, the most overlooked underrated method trawling in the library. Note I said trawling because the default method for researching is often to target a book and at all costs find that information otherwise nothing else will do.

The converse is, as I discovered, simply to go and browse the shelves for anything that could be interesting, which is why the closure of libraries is such a calamity. It reduces the haphastance of making a find.

Second to that is the in-depth questions. To date, for the research I'm undertaking I've been mining a range of questions, that date back even before the research started itself. For the Press Association's programme that I ran, I have interviewed on tape hundreds of people.

And what does this all mean. Simply that the more you ask, the more you know, the more then confusing things become as you attempt to filter, then the more richer you become. In effect you become a repository for a range of views coupled with your own.

So back to the BBC interview, did I get the job?

No!

But it doesn't stop me from from believing knowing how to fish for knowledge has its merits than simply being handed the answer on a plate.
End

David subsequently got his first TV job in 1990 with the BBC's Newsnight

Twitterbuzz Data Visualisation takes top UK Award

CNN's Twitter Buzz

A first for social network apps, yesterday at one of the UK TV calender's most illustrious events, twitter beat the best of TV News.

Well not exactly twitter, but its engine combined with the programming might of CNN's 2010 world cup presentation.

Tis the season of awards and sandwiched on a table between Channel 4's Dep Ed Martin Fewell and Mark Stephen's (Julian Assange's laywer) I mulled over whether one of my strong selections two months earlier would materialise.

That is did was satisfying given the strong field.

The category, News Innovation, featured the best UK broadcasters ( BBC, Sky, Reuters, ITN etc.), so CNN working Twitter to take primacy truly was something.

As a juror for this year's Royal Television Society Awards ( RTS) and for the past three years, the playing field for innovation certainly has changed.

From Newsnight's 10 Days to War ( I interviewed its creator, Peter Barron, now a senior executive at Google) to today's concept from CNN, this was simple but ingenious.

Using a spatial matrix similar to Maramushi, here filters plumbed to twitter feeds would influence the size of the visual data. The more popular a subject e.g. England's disallowed goal, the bigger the matrix.

Twitterbuzz as CNN calls it married the echo effect of Social Networks back into the news chamber, allowing presenters to talk about the relevant subject on a live show.

This is what I wrote about it when I combed through the judges pack in December 2010.

Twitterbuzz

"For me this use of a tool currently part of the digital media zeitgeist has found a worthy home in the broadcast world. The manner in which it was used exhibiting a global conversation in real time has huge added value. Reminds me of Maramushi – a site that tracked google and presented the news spatially.

Ben Wyatt talking about the archive option providing historicism of the debate and the calendar option was a good touch.  This has statistical analysis for broadcasters in understanding their users via looking at trending, archive and following up with targeted programmes. A simple app expanded past its baseline use. Next to be used in Politics and culture?" 

CNN didn't exactly have it their own way. In contention was the BBC's Live Page which combined expert analysis, comments, video and user feedback during the Chilean Miners' rescue and ITN's Instant Polling which you would have seen during last year's UK election, with their live tracker giving instant feedback to viewers' reactions to the leadership contest.

Away from the awards, more recently a piquant use of Twitter mashup, which is playing a role in today's Irish election, though how much is questionable, is this popularity gauge in the Journal.

The work of Professor Barry Smyth and team from UCD, twitters imbrication with main stream media appears to have found a cosy bed.

end

David Dunkley Gyimah is a Knight Batten Innovation in News winner. He is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster and PhD candidate at the SMARTlab at UCD. He's been an RTS juror for the last three years. His videojournalism work with a new generation of Egyptian journalists from its state TV over the last three years can be seen on viewmagazine.tv

Videojournalism: Experience-based techniques for problem solving and learning Video

David presents his emerging philosophy on video and videojournalism at the SMARTlab

In this post David gives a brief account of his workings with video and ideas about an emerging philosophy using Videojournalism

                                          -----------

SMARTlab - a multi-disciplnary research lab and PhD programme has moved into one of the most respected research institutions in academia - University College Dublin.  

For the outfit's February on-campus week, the physical change in environment was the more obvious sign of change. Barely into the week and UCD's heritage as a research centre also became evident.

Some thirty cohorts that range from music and dance experts to NASA researchers and virtual world specialists and then me - a videojournalist- have made the transition from the University of East London to Dublin.

Now into my third year of a part-time doctorate programme, I delivered my latest research into video, videojournalism and communications.

The methodology - a favourite word for researchers describes and examines the route and rules taken to produce knowledge. In my case it draws on heuristics, experiential learning and my interpretation of the landscape using interviews and film I've been collating since 1994.

Heruristics in its simplest term refers to how a problem or solution is obtained by using experience-based techniques. The principle is the more you've worked in a given area, the more you're likely to find a solution. This works for tennis players, chefs to those in the media.

I call it the bicycle syndrome. Learning to ride a bike involves going through a process of trial and error - something that can be forgotten in training students. In acting or the creative arts, you provide the framework and allow students to make things up.

At some point on a bike, you're most likely fall off, but then you get back on. This scenario continues until the day when probably cycling down hill you learn to keep your balance.

Interpretations- there's no such thing as objectivity

My interpretation of events are rooted in this italicised statement below - one of my presentation slides. Here's what I said about my world of video at the Batten Awards, the national press club in 2005. Ideas are cultural as well as temporal so they change over time.

Viewmagazine in 2005

"My work as practice-based PhD will take everything on viewmagazine.tv, relevant and will be housed on a site called videojournalism.co.uk Including work with the SouthBank, Apple, experience as a broadcaster and videojournalist over 24 years with training in China, Cairo, Chicago. The training of 300 journalists over five years from the Press Association, and my lecturing work".

Video as a creative medium

There have been various critical transitions within video and or film as a medium for communications and these matter a lot if you're looking to posit new ideas.

The 90s saw the beginning of the DVCam revolution. At the time I was working in news e.g. Channel 4 News and for independent A/V - audio visual outfits and commercial outfits e.g. John Staton Productions - ex head of TV at Saatchis.

It was also the era for a burgeoning web professionals and creatives, where designers such as Razorfish showed the potential of the web and the Attik - the duo from Huddersfield, who have also since built a global agency.

The  Attik's Noise series: philosophies of design which I still refer to is a must to understand an emerging visual aesthetic. e.g. NoiseFour.

For the first time, these creatives made me aware that an individual or group could do everything. I mean everything: Design: encode: brand: film: news: sell.

This is a notion news has great difficulty resolving still, more so in the analogue world - pre-digital when the artifact of making news was distinguished by that great specialised cooperate labour: the Ford System.

News involves technical and creative solutions. However, there's a strict division of labour, which is a legacy of practicalities and unquestioning adoption of media forms from the 1930s. In the 1950s during TV news' conception, the equipment was big and unwieldy and the influence of the unions gave rise to a conveyor belt system.

To television, the very idea of a polymath was heresay, absurbed as that may sound. You did news and news alone. If you dared to anything you were labelled multi-skilled.

The closest I saw this at work in network broadcasting was in 1991 when Jerry Timmins - now head of the Africa service at the BBC World Service - was working at BBC Newsnight. It was my first TV research job and Timmins wooed everyone with his ability to produce, direct, and report on the BBC's flagship news analysis programme.

Video as a creative medium in the 80s

The 80s signalled the change ahead in video. Super VHS and hi-8 were creeping onto the market, but super 8mm film and 16mm had a strong presence.

New languages within a cacophony of media were being strengthened; new ideas spilled over from the 60s that had become a feature of the 70s were being challenged as new political systems e.g. Thatcherism, were shaping up. 


Video as a creative medium in 2000s
The winds of change that have radicalised many features today e.g. working habits, distribution, media forms have DNA's with strands that go way back.

Again this matters because it affects the quality of debates, and helps others to interrogate alternative sources of innovation.

Take Abel Glance - a polymath film maker, whose original Napoleon (1927) could easily have been the template for multiple award winning series 24's frame system. Catherine Spaeth's blog provides an insight into the effect of Glance's framed system referred to as trytich

Tryptich framing from 1927-2000

The significance of this as with a plethora of media issues is reconfiguring them to suit a new semiotic - media language  - and some of the most exciting media thinkers tell us for instance spatial forms will become the dominant ideology of film in the 21st century.

It's these collisions of the old and new that are exciting; they are interdisciplinary: design meets video, and seek to decompose old orders such as the division of labour.

What methods of research based on our past, backed by in depth reading facilitate is a comprehension of trends and how knowledge of a subject is produced.

The practice is often supported by an emerging theory; the theory made to fit to cystalise what we have as evidence. A crucial theme thus becomes how media as it is seen, or taught today is in need of a variable shake-ups.

Ultimately, that is the goal, that besides producing areas of interest, inspiration or debate, that these leads to new areas of teaching.

That's what I believe the SMARTlab is about, as much as any research, which I'll share some more over the lifespan of this blog.

SMARTlab in Dublin- where I am

I'm in Dublin.

The digital media group I'm part of where I'm taking my PhD has transfered to University College Dublin.

I'm midway into my research, which is producing fruits I would have never have come across were it not for this journey I embarked upon.

That's part of the joy really: being made privy to a number of theorists whose work was relevant then and is so much now e.g. Lacan, Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze, Foucault - the list goes on.

There was a time when I used to rail against verbosity; I still do. But I have since been humbled into understanding why words that might seemingly come across as pedantic are needed, like surgery to make incisive points.

Typically some of the great philosophers too preferred the noun of a word as grounding, than its verb equivalent e.g. " This text signifies" or that "the text provides a signification".

Many philosophers, including Shakespeare, when I learnt more of him, made up words. Yes Shakespeare - that learned soul; if a word could not be found, hey presto, he'd invent one.

Kant wanted to both posit and distinguish the word aesthetics, which frankly we've all used at some point - if you're in film. But then I was taken by how Barbara Kennedy described it as not necessarily a psychological phenomenon in the way one is affected, but a biological effect.

Journalism is full of words that are in effect blunt instruments; tabloid papers live of them: "scuppered", "police hunt man", "Gunman on loose"...

When ever someone talks about journalism and new innovations, it has me wondering why few mention language.

It's the one thing that binds us, and the thing, living by the way, which commits us to new experiences e.g. The IPad - and a writing style that's fit for speed reading. No three syllabi words please.

I've resisted that old chestnut of language, signs and the tiff between structuralist and post structuralist: one group that believed signs and expressions to define images were modelled around a structure, which one could learn.  Anyone who's watched a Hitchcock film could take a scene and deconstruct it.
The post lot had different views.

Seven years ago, marking The Economists essay, the strength of language was all that distinguished one competitor from another. The Economist simply asked: What is nature?  The samples were eclectic.  But those that could argue to a granular level certainly got my vote.

Language eh!

Sanctum-inspired Videojournalism adventure-Gallipoli

Jame's Cameron's 3D underwater extravaganza should be watched purely for the entertainment of a distaster movie where you could almost predict the outcome, if not the plot.

It's popcorn entertainment and thus need not be sniffy critiqued against some of the in-contention Oscar dramas. For me though it yielded a poignancy that extended past seat 5 row h of the cinema.

Some years back, I was rung up out of the blue by a team setting off to the demilitarised zones around Turkey - war grave waters hiding secrets from World War I.

David in Gallipoli

Excited? I couldn't contain myself. 10 days out to sea, with a professional dive crew and sonar to locate a number of ships. On board was one of the descendents of the commander in chief of that war,  Sir Ian Hamilton.

The risks were known, but on board the boat these were far removed. Until that is on the third day; my second dive with 20 mins left on my oxygen tank, I decided to go wandering.

Not a smart move, I was about to find out.

They carry various names, one of them being ribbon currents. A stream of water, unlike its adjacent waters running at furious speeds and before I knew it, I'd got caught full on.

It ripped me away from my buddy diver. By the time he noticed I was at least twenty metres away - helpless.

I finned like crazy, but all my efforts were in vain; the current was too strong. It was like one of the Olympic training pools where you're swimming at a stand still.

I remember thinking" oh ***t because I could see myself slamming onto the bow of this wrecked ship strewn with unexploded shells.  We'd been warned by the dive master before the descent to be careful; they could go off.

Then it happened; I hit the bow and fell onto a basket of them. Here's the shot below. The current was still forceful and I was running out of options.

To get out of trouble I had two routes, go further into the ship; by now I was at my limits of oxygen diving 50m, or I could release some oxygen into my tank and shoot up - risking the bends.

I went down; it seemed like eternity. Then my dive partner appeared. I tried to breath normally, finned some more and got out of immediate trouble.

However I was now faced with a second pressing problem. I motioned I needed to go up, looked at my oxygen level and noticed my hyperventilating put me down with roughly 7 minutes air, yet it would take me five minutes to get anywhere near my deco spot where I had to wait for about ten minutes for my blood to defizz.

At 15 metres, there was little option; I had to buddy breath. Fortunately it wasn't full mask and my partner was reasonably experienced.  I do recall however getting to the surface and grabbing my DV camera for a piece to camera - which is somewhere.

Bow of the wreeck - feeling my way back up

The piece I would eventually make for the BBC World Service aired without that controversy. Watching Sanctum brought it all back.

Last Christmas I joined a climbing club and caved nearby; now that is frightening, but I'll save that story till next time

You can find a trailer on viewmagazine.tv

The flaneurist Mediaist - Videojournalism and photojournalism

The flaneurist mediaist - PhotoVideojournalism in China. David roams the streets looking for material to film.

From Wikipedia
The term flâneur comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it.

Inspired by two separate but connected incidents today I set about an experiment of sorts.  The first catalyst was my PhD supervisor noting my latest submission.

Sometimes I wonder whether it's possible to abandon critical theory in unveiling the molecularity of a subject, and instead opt for a historical account,  as many have that reveals and connects events previously unnoticed.

The second was Adam Westbrook's dissection of The Sartorialist. Adam does a wonderful job in deconstructing, which led to a couple of things catching my attention.

Firstly the movement of the camera and subject which created a poetic distanciation. Secondly, the close ups - the affective shot; and lastly when Scott Schuman says he just does "it". "It" being the creative process, what does he mean?

It is a given, if that process could be revealed as a formulae, it would be prized.  It is the "it" that I am at pains to do justice to, as a process to decipher.

The Creative It
In essence the "it" is beyond common sense and reasoning, Your subjectivity extends beyond the norms of 1st degree sensations. It is not external but becomes internalised; you feel it. You become lost in the process as the viewer watching "it".

This is pure cinematic, as opposed to cinema. And sometimes the sensation is so grand, so cosmic, you're in awe.  This is not my extempore, but those convened from Metz, Kant, Deleuze.

For the likes of Schuman and anyone else who has spent long enough pondering or working their craft. "It" is their DNA. It cannot be transferred. It's you voice, the conscious becoming the unconscious.

Right, so back to the inspiration. In and up to the edge of the 20th century, the photojournalist, photographer ruled when it came to the profoundness of the image, as opposed to the cineist who excelled in the moving image.

The invention of the word Videojournalism, and its deconstruction, which we've  set about doing as a body working with David Hayward BBC journalism College, and Paul Egglestone from UCLAN, leaves open several experiments.

The first, could the moving image decompose the still image? Could one day on your IPad or device yet to be invented, the moving image become a dominant thing, usurping the still image?

Now at this moment in time, there are scores of photojournalists who might shout never. Nothing beats the still image. Its immanence; the fact it is still capturing that singular moment defies any other logic for a contender.

Paintings vs Photography
But history tells us otherwise. We only need to look at painting and the revelation of perspective and Brunelleschi's, work in the 15th century. So for at least five centuries from that point, nothing could challenge the dominance of the still image as executed by painters.

Curiously our swiftness to be dismissive is redolent of that age old saying from Plato that in effect our knowledge is only as good as that we are conscious about.

At one point everyone, intelligent men and women believed the world was flat. Elsewhere social theorist Clay Shirky reveals how change takes place over years and not months and weeks, which we fight each other about.

So change is practicable, and the framework that often defines that nestles in trend extrapolation, new philosophies and the unknown. Yes and there are the obvious quack ideas.

So back to the idea. Today, I set about as the PhotoVideojournalist out to capture events. A sort of realism, where people at work would just by being reveal a bit of themselves.

That in itself may have little consequence, other than how people react to different systems: video and Photos. A photographer takes a single image, so the subject is attentive for that moment; in video, there lies a different behaviour, and the series of images are rendered obstinate without sequences or filmic meaning. Oh dear!

Lucy - stall holder

Miles - Street Performer

Guy- Tax advisor

Next I plan to see, utilising Vertov's notion of the loop, which we used in some award winning work in the 1990s, to see if I can affect a classification near to the affect of the image. By coding it in Flash using Action Scripting 3 I can sustain the loop, so the image revolves slowly enough - a liquid image- before the user changes the scene.

The next step which I'm talking to Jude Kelly at the Southbank should complete the process. :) I hope to return to talk about that.

Egypt's protest down to good ol fashion 1st gen social media - Television

David training videojournalists in Cairo on a 3 year programme

As a journademic - an academic and professional onliner/ videojournalist I shouldn't be so hasty, but as I write this, hundreds of academic papers are about to be set in train.

The subject matter- prescribing Web 2.0 and social media as the agent for change in Egypt. It's time to be cautious.

For the last three years I have been in and out of Cairo;  last year also taking in Beirut training professional journalists in videojournalism and an understanding of online media.

The latter has spawned a citadel of an industry and while there's no denying the impact blogs, FB, Youtube and Twitter have had, yet often we fail to realise perception like belief is interpretive and selective. This is an Aristolean notion.

David speaking to the Deputy Dean of Communications at Cairo University about the impact of 

social media

The way we see the world is formulated through our own framework of perception. Empirical studies might tell us otherwise, but collecting that data is often difficult to come by.

But this set of stats did catch my attention. Its January figures revealing the Middle East becoming an engine for social media and twitter.

It requires rigorous examination before SM advocates attach cause and effect towards the recent demonstrations.


Television
The protests that emerged in Egypt, a very likely catalyst from Tunisia and the ousting of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years in power, I would suggest were the result of that old first generation of social media - Television.

What's my hypothesis.  Firstly and less we forget television is still a dominant media and social glue, certainly in particular territories around the world.

It's not uncommon to pass by a diner in Cairo and find swathes of people, mainly men, gathered around the television in the corner, discussing politics and football.

This shot here is of one my trainee videojournalists shooting in an eaterie which has a television and no doubt would have been on to show the Tunisia's events.

Videojourmnalists shooting in the streets

More pertinent, as this picture below illustrates, television is as common place as the homes they're attached to. This shot was taken from the 27th floor of Nile TV - state Television.

It's a restricted floor, but on my last training assignment we were given access. What amazed me as one of the journalists outlined, was the level of sat dishes in areas, including the deprived zones in down town Cairo.

Sat TV City in urban deprived areas of Cairo

Social Media Mk1
International Networks such as Al Jazeera and a host of others are the viewing staple, at least from my observations. This coupled with the mobile phone makes for a powerful social media.

And social it is, for it's around the campfire of the television and mobile phones (temporary immobile) where big society is discussed.  The Net I contend is the echo chamber, at least for the web savvy.

So my hunch from the twitter stats earlier is not that SMers were gearing up for a mass online campaign, but that that more and more users (young or savvy) are discovering Social Media ( a tipping point)  at a rate faster than in territories such as Europe.

That's not surprising as the latter territories reach saturation.

For young people I have come across at the American and Cairo university, yes social media has its currency, but it doesn't appear to possess the same dependencies with other groups as might be the case in advanced net democracies - where you can say what you want.

That's not to say Egypt doesn't have some of the most savvy social networkers around and mobile phone photography is not embedded, but, that if you were a social media trainer, you'd find attentive ears educating outside of the student classes.

David teaching social media to programme makers and graduate producers  at Nile TV

Curiously then in shutting down the net, the authorities had failed to realise TV had done most of the initial work. Postings to the web took the campaign past the geo-locations of Egypt into advanced user bases, where Net content is aggressively shared and played back on television as seen on Sky, CNN, Aljazeera and BBC  TV.

Google and Twitter's voice to text strategy at making the web a linchpin is an interesting case of social media reacting quickly to integrate events but in reality, again it's mainly the student/urban classes.

Here's an interesting question then. If you're a TV network exec and you know this, how do you  maintain the level of interest in television at a time when apple and google are looking to get in on sat platforms with net videos et al.

Because there's still strong evidence that television's narrative of informing, rather than YouTube's pick and mix is still a big draw, particularly for those who find wading through videos for something appropriate a bind.

Is there a future therefore for social media and videojournalism in what I might call fixed and opt in programming? One that can work just as well on the television set as it does online?

More on that in my next post.