Images and soon words from BBC Social Media gathering

Images from BBC Social Media gathering

 From left to right - Peter Horrocks BBC, Meg Pickard, Guardian, Kevin Marsh BBC

Documentally 

Alex Wood creates - this time with the BBC

David Hayward - a senior exec at the journalism college - also someone whom I working with on the videojournalism programme - great guy

Second from Left David, my colleague at the University of Westminster - brill guy

From the Washington Post - how they do Social Media

He needs no introduction online - the indefatigable Adam Westbrook

Guardian man Alan Rusbridger on how the Guardian pioneered live blogging

Dr Claire Waddle - the organiser - and host

Delegates back from tea-break. I'm talking in there somewhere

Sophie - social media and social connector. We luv Sophie

Delegate and host, a PhD researcher on Social Media

I'm talking to the BBC Global Media manager

New Global Journalism - The personal philosophy of You

I should not be writing this. In the time it takes to post this, I could have completed marking more papers.

But I'm writing - partly out of catharsis, partly because the flow of marking has been interrupted by what I have read.

We seek fame and fortune for a host of reasons. We live in a fame fraternity now. If you have a blog the corollary of that is courting fame.

Yet fame is tempered by vacuity. We know this from one of the world's most expressive perti-dish television franchised experiments in Big Brother. Attention is ordained for as long as a person is willing to give something; sometimes weirdly behavioural.

But then there's a different sort of fame - more from respect, offerings of wisdom, personal struggles overcoming difficulties of one sort or another.  It's the stuff of biographies, or strong characters in a film overcoming adversity. The fictional but normalised Hollywood formula.

The blog, by default became the repository for expressing an internalisation of thought, aside from other things. The camera in its most fertile years became the object to think with. See Truffaut, Godard Chabrol. The cumulative power of both is a study which is rich in reflection and meaning.

Hollow fame is debunked by personal content - having something to say. If you have nothing to say, say nothing. As a blogger or journalist you consign yourself to the foibles of the Big Brother - fame, but momentarily.

None more so than now, I feel we are wrapped in an era of personal philosophies. I come to this position from seeing student work over the years. Personal philosophy is not grandiose, neither is it unifocal.  It is the result of thinking, not a release from a sudden occurance. Not superficially, but thought of a kind that questions the very tenants that we so blithely believe are fact.

It comes from being outside of your comfort, though yes there are philosophies that are dogma, recycled through our own narrow beliefs. They have very little purpose for the global journalist of the future.

The personal philosophy that becomes well groomed comes from diversity of thought, contextualisation of ideas and a historicity of meaning. Being on an International course can do that. You may not agree with everyone, but you're exposed to different ideas, which leave a nascent footprint.

And then when your write about these, putting yourself within the circle, exposing your own shortcomings and illustrating how you resolved these, the result is a richly digestible insight - your personal philosophy.

It's what makes us grow and should be encouarged.

Filling in the broadcasting links

Today was one of those days.

In writing this up contemporaneously this serves to mark the ocassion, as well as acknowledge a record of that day, as I'll be coming back to this later.

One of the most fundamental things was talking to an ex-boss of 20 years ago Nick Pollard  whom when talking about the outfit we were a part of mentioned it helped him in a lot in his next job.  Pollard said it was the relentlessness of Channel One that prepared him for his next job at Sky News.

I'm afraid if you're reading this, it won't make much sense. That is until i deposited the full write up and contextualise it. But I can tell you there's a hidden gem in the interview and one that provides an important link in broadcasting in the UK.

In one section not recorded. Nick talked about the future of broadcasting. Where we possibly might be in 20 years or less. Firstly 3D television would subsume us. He said he's already seen some work at Sky and how some of the royal wedding was shot in 3D.

However beyond 3D what awaited was holographic television. Nick explained how this would work, something along the lines of surround sound using multiple speakers, but in this case they'd be projectors.

He joked how watching Bolt run would be a strange experience. He'd practicably be running past you in your living room. Were not far off. If CNN could do this in 2008, then whole communities will become available in 2020



I first came across this in 2006 when one of the Californian university's premiered a concert - a symphony orchestra projected on stage, which fooled everyone into believing they were real. There's a write-up somewhere on viewmagazine.tv which I'll dig it up

A rotten time awaits you job hunting - give up now, or......

 

In 1999 The Evening Standard lined up a group of us  for a photoshoot under tha banner London's Young Gifted and Black. It included the writer Zadie Smith with her breakthrough book, WhiteTeeth.

Did the photoshoot help? No not really, but the lesson was clear. Forget fame and popularity, get down to the brass tacks of slogging away for that job.

I can without humour or irony say I had the most awful time trying to find a job.

In fact so awful that in my career, which I admit looks rather plush now, came by the most unconventional routes.

Here's the context: I'm a chemistry grad, I'm black male and did not have a network or heritage of broadcasting. Worse by British standards, I had spent my youth growing up in Ghana so had no heuristic knowledge of the UK and spoke with, what is it.... a "funny accent" (Ghanaian/English/German).

The racial qualification will either make you balk, question what I'm on about, or sigh with a "here goes..". I'm self-deprecating enough to take that now. But in 1980s Britain was a different place.
So much so that the then Polytechnic of Central London had a course in one year, I think 1988 when it took on only ethnic minorities, to get them into the broadcast structure.

The point of all this, is evident to you, in ways of your background. We might perceive there to be the perfect template for working in the media, but in reality we all carry a conscious which gets louder and attacks us as we begin the job hunt and nothing materialises.

A week, a month, a year, even two years. Give up!

Or think like the actor, the un new mediast, because in the numbers game, just like that marathon, only those that are mentally strong survive. For all those who spent time at the net, playing tennis; at the crease learning cricket, or training for combat in special units; there have been a spate of articles on Navy Seals recently, it's not all about brains and brawl...

Like the media, they may help but then there are many people like you if you consider the bell curve.
No the point is it's about sheer "bloody staying power", the numbers game, wanting it badly, and how much you're willing to sacrifice.

How much are you willing to give?
Danfung Dennis, an award winning film maker is a story that touches me, for also what I and many others have done or did. Danfung spent what must have been an eternity embedded with a US outfit in Afghanistan. His film has won both critical acclaim and high profile awards. But six years ago, he was not a film maker. That he would self teach himself photography and become good at it, is one thing, but here now is the other quality.

Would you be prepared to stay embedded with an outfit in Afghanistan risking your life on a daily basis (whilst filming someone next to him got shot). Also knowing you did not have a straight commission, and even when you get back and you're showing your film, some senior people are dismissive.  WHAT IS YOUR AFGHANISTAN?

In 1992 mine was South Africa. I'd had two big breaks, working on national TV for the BBC's young persons programme Reportage ( see below) and Newsnight, yet couldn't find work again and so flew out to South Africa which was in the bloody grip of a transition and multiple murders in the townships.


BBC Reportage from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.


This post is not long enough for me to talk about risks, and I didn't see it that way, but I'd come to realise an important dictum: "No one owed me anything" Even my great lecturers at Falmouth were not responsible for making my career.

The person responsible for you, is YOU. And that's where the long game comes in. It will get tough, and many will fall; it will get tiring and many will opt for a different path; it will get to a point where you have no money, and the sales job will come to your rescue.  BUT.

But, if you firmly believe you have something to offer you and others, then do not give up.  You need not seek anyone's validation, if you want to strike out getting the big one. You should already be doing that now, and as you accumulate rejections letters bear this in mind, it is not just about your ability, but a myriad of factors ( see last post).

It got to a stage, when if I couldn't get that job I convinced myself it was their loss. Job seeking is a communion of sorts, where both parties need to fill they're in it for the right reasons. Our Masters students will remember one of our recent speakers who turned down a huge job, because it wasn't right for him. Good for him!

And know this too, they say in the media, the difficult job isn't the first one, which often happens because someone you know helps out, but the second where you're competing as you might have the first time when you didn't know anyone.

It's tough the second time too, because your conscious tells you, you deserve this. You know. .. " I have done this already..". Knowing this then how do you up your chances? If you've spent the best part of a year responding to work - that's saying something. If you had access to film gear and you never made a film, that's saying something. If you wanted to write for a newspaper but you couldn't be bothered to either set up or maintain a regular blog. THAT'S SAYING SOMETHING!

Question is what you should be saying first. There's a reason why largely people that work had are rewarded and when they are, we largely share in their success. Impossibility is nothing!

And one last thing... it will come to pass. You're only feeling this way now because you're in that way. Three years on hopefully you'll forget you ever felt anxious.

David Dunkley Gyimah, a senior lecturer and knowledge transfer supervisor is nuts about films, documentary, online and videojournalist, spending way too much time on it. He'll be a panelist at the Sheffield Doc festival. His film Tahrir Memento, will feature on his site Viewmagazine.tv soon.

Blogger removes post - a Rotten time awaits....

So this has got to be strange. Yesterday I posted on Rotten Time Awaits Masters students looking for jobs, unless they stay in there....

Today that post has been removed. NOT BY ME!

So where did it go?  If this has happened to you before please let me know.

Here's the evidence.

Ei Voila.. and then it reappeared again. Beats me!

However when I click that link in google I get this. The post has disappeared. Shame really I was in one of my fiery moods. But do tell if you know where it could have gone

Masters students - how to get that job

ex-Student site click here

It's one of the most frequent questions, of course, because whatever it is we're learning, the conclusion to that is finding a nicely paid, decent job, and yes YOU can influence the process.

So it's that part of the year again. Exams coming to a head and thoughts of what comes next looming large.

If you found this blog last September and have dropped by on occasion, then one of the posts looked at gearing up for the job. By that I meant the time to look for a job is, or should I say WAS in August last year for the next May, June, July.. which is about now.

If you had it would all make sense now, but understandably you've just joined a Masters programme, with a year to go and the last thing on your mind is the anxiety finding a job. It should, but it doesn't, and each year I talk to cohorts about this plan of action.

I have seen some students put it into practice and it's paying off. They spent the first few weeks engaging with potential employers in a long-tail process of conversations, which put pressure on neither party. Come June they've now developed a solid relationship over a couple of months. It worked for me as well.

Remember no hirer, editor has a job in their desk waiting for you, when you send in that spec email. The best you can hope for is serendipity - right place, right time, but even then, the game of chance comes in.

Otherwise if you're applying for a job now, then you and 20,000 other media students are part of the mass migration and less we've forgotten it's a rotten time to be job hunting. For any manager to make a judgement from an intake of 100 down to one, is almost a lottery.

Getting that job
This year one of the world's top broadcasters and hirers, knowing the work load that goes into prepping applications, interviews and selections, asked us to do main selecting for them. It's a difficult task, because we're not in the business of discriminating, so we widen our criteria to show the broadcaster where their work is.......online!

Can I say that again.. we lead them to their work ONLINE.

How to get that job? What I'm about to say is not the definitive. There are no grand theories, but this is one narrative that works, and if any of my students doing docs have done this then they have increased their chances ten fold.

Firstly having an online presence is not worth debating the whys and wherefores. If you haven't then its the next thing you want to do.

Secondly, having a professionally laid out online presence is crucial. Your reputation online is how you are judged in the flesh. Shouldn't be, but the same way you see those shoes, suit, art piece in a shop window and walk in to enquire and buy, is how YOU online works.

The question then becomes: blog, facebook, website or whatever. While all of these work, the website is your manageable, bespoke stylised YOU to a potential employer.

Blogs are great, but there is a reason blogs never usurped the website. The website is both the intro page and direction-giver to any thing else worth knowing about you, including your blog.

If you're intending to be a daily journo then a blog as a front-of-window will suffice. If you're intending to be a polymath, given your many skills, a website.... A WEBSITE.

In some cases blogs mimic websites, that's fine so long as you can control the assets you want everyone to see. In other words if you've written a great post three weeks ago and its fallen below the page fold,  you'll want to find a way to keep it in full view

The other reason why YOU so need a website is this. As a lecturer and on my travels I love bigging up student work, particularly those who have put in the hard grind and are perceived as deserving of that transactional break.

Last month I was with some execs at the world service, the week after that in Cairo and soon I'll be at Sheffield doc. Also like other professionals I tend to to have the odd unplanned conversation with editors who say.. David do you know anyone who does this?  And I instinctively go.... oh yeah here's this person's work.

Being online also means you've a a chance to attract attention once you've sorted your SEO out. My areas of interest include "multimedia journalism" and "videojournalism" and I have a number of conversations with people who want to share an idea or job.

If it's travel writing you're into, Podcasting, or Documentary, make the area your own by engaging with that ecosystem. Makeit your own and then conduct the 5 percent strategy.

[ 5 percent of speculative letters tend to work. It's a numbers game]

There are a number of talented souls, who have also consolidated their space by being online and I bet if you asked anyone of them, firstly there was no golden job, waiting for them; they made their own.

Secondly, it was hard work, but good work,  as they, slowly built up portfolios.

I can't think of a single person, perhaps apart from Nick Clegg, and yes a few more, who made it because the had a shoe-in.

If you want that job, engineer the process. What I talk about to students is geared to that process. Start now, and if you don't, you've only yourself to blame.

People that should inspire you, because as brilliant as they are, they've used the online space to carve out their careers.

• Denisa Morariu  A former westmin Masters grad. Speaks five languages and has an insatiable appetite to learn. Small wonder that when one of Romania's top journalists saw her work, she was immediately invited for an interview and then given a job. If you look at her site, she's presenting from outside downing street. Great Product placement, or as I've told students get the action shot. If you want to look like a journalist, show us a shot of you at work. This is what she wrote about her time going through the mill at the University of Westminster Under 30.

• Adam Westbrook - still under 30, blimey sounds like he's been around for ages, but you could spot the genius in him from his blog ( the only one during his time at City University) four years ago.

• David Lee - In the first few months of his Masters programme, (2006)  his blogs started getting into the Press Gazette. Also under 30.

• Alex Wood. Like the aforementioned another genius, who knows how to work the online space and has designed his own career path. He came to speak to students and the feedback from those that were there was.. "I can see now why you talk about him" Also under 30.

• Murielle Gonzalez  And finally Murielle, one of our Master students. So long as she continues o get this work under the noses of professionals she'll continue to create good work. She made this as part of her final project and has made such projects for others. Also under 30.

There's no reason why you can't be like anyone of the aforementioned.

The art of saying something with nothing - Videojournalism's cinema

Picture it if you will. I'm in my study, at least 30 books are strewn across the floor opened on their reference pages. Perceptual sensory !  PS is a £@^!!&.

Then I reference one of a kerzillion videos. This one is a favorite. The opening sequence to True Blood - Vampirish going ons in a fictional Louisiana town.

If you've played it. Chances are you're play it back again. It's a kalediscope of images unrelated, yet their sequencing creates a series of impressions. discursively unkempt, even er yurk!

Even with the track down that adds that southern comfort, there's a deep allure, for in many ways it reinforces what you might have thought, and if not creates a set of impressions that are bewitching; a fox decomposing in time lapse, a series of flutter-cuts, twitch cuts, non sequential, deeply saturated colours unnatural in real life.

The taboo (sex) diametric to the religion, purity and debauchery. it's a classic fable trick, but its composition barely need not shout it.

Deleuze, a geezer of a philosopher intercalated images like these worked on the subconscious. When you're paying no technical attention watching them ( only media petrol heads like me might) , they're triggering thoughts, emotions, reinforcing stereotypes, and the rest.

They're non-linear and rely on affecting you. You could have assembled it any myriad ways but done really well, it erodes time film time. You know that feeling you've had when you watch a good film and someone tells you it was 3 hours and your go.. "really, it was like 5 mins". "Er really!"

That's why you might play it again. But the truth if you tried to explain it to someone. It's just a bunch of images; it's kind of nothing, but its saying something.

Learning the semiotics of video, not in an academic way as there are millions of film makers who are naturals, gives you a window in creating artifacts.  Speaking to BBC TV and World Service execs I shared some of those ideas.

Now these books on the floor....



The Wire - same thing. The images are not as abstract except in their individual composition.

The victorian Laptop - Ode to the type writer

The type writer's last rights - a device of the analogue age. A laptop which did not use electricity and had no luminance screen.  A device that required 15lb/in of power to work. Thud!

And with it, the curt swipe of the paper, with the unfinished sentence.
The waste-bin in the corner strewn with scrumpled papers that didn't make it in.
The illusion of being Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the plastic B-ball mount - Lakers rule!
The stuck "w" which you always had to pull up.
The "A" whose label had all but disappeared. Which key again?
The ribbon that annoyingly became a twister in the spool.
An aesthetic impulse where an idea lingered that much longer before it was pounded on paper.
Films that were defined by it as prop and part actor: All the President's Men, The Shining and a host of Noir.
The thunderous sfx of its keys guaranteed to have the neighbours banging on your wall at 3 a.m in the morning as you fought writers' block.
And the literally "medium cool' effect it had on friends of the aspiring screen writer.
Happy retirement

48 hours in Cairo - Art, Journalism & Reflections Tahrir Square

Click to Enlarge - a POV of Tahrir and some landmarks

48 hours later in Cairo and I'm back in London marking masters papers and prepping my own phenomenology of personal cinema. More on that later.

On occasions things can get a little bit hectic this end. Last week was one such time. A client had asked if I could present in Cairo some new ideas surrounding communications and video.

Three days earlier I had presented something to executives at the BBC. The response was very warm. Thank you to all for your feedback and email ( below)

In Cairo, we flew out Monday at 5pm to present at 11 the next morning and then catch the 5pm plane back to London, except the client very kindly put my flight back by a day.

Thanks to the assistance of former vjs and trainees, now firm friends, we set out to make a reflective piece about around legacy art reflecting Jan 25th and Tahrir Square. I have put a 1 minute trailer on viewmagazine.tv

Friends Salma and Ahmed helped me speak to some extraordinary people that include:

• A medical doctor who was exhibiting his extraordinary Dream- realism pieces
• Sarrah, (@sarrahsworld) a remarkable social networker and activist followed by among others Bianca Jagger
• And a group of artists marking a government building with Jan 25th slogans, just by Tahrir square.

In conversation with Salma as art snakes on in the background

And yes, the police looked on. I was shooting film and unlike the last time in December where I had a plain clothes policeman all over me, now nothing.

Reflections
My plan for the piece, shot on a 5D is to project it onto a whitewalls wall after I super 8mm it and run it off a reel, hopefully to house somewhere at the Southbank Centre. It's called "Reflections" and I just was so deeply fascinated with what I heard.

They ranged from one reflector ( I won't give names till I have finished the piece) who says her parents now consult her for her opinion.

An artist who had no idea her strongest calling would be to exhibit and share in Tahrir and one who watching things unfold in the US packed his bags to come over to ensure what he was witnessing was real.

Some gigs coming up though nothing confirmed. I'm back in Dublin in July. I might be at the Sheffield Docs and then looking at something in Ghana.

Photography mourns

Where to start!

I had in mind to share events over the last two days shooting a reflective piece in Tahrir Square with friend Salma, a local TV Journalist and Ahmed, a videojournalist. Last time I was in Cairo, we got stopped by plain clothes police. Not this time.

Or even explaining some more thoughts about discombobulating videojournalism.

But that's all irrelevant in light of the news of two photojos killed Brit Tim Hetherington, and American Chris Hondros, in Misrata. Two other photojos, Guy Martin and Michael Christopher Brown, escaped serious injury.

I knew none of the aforementioned, but Tim is someone who's work I and thousand others deeply admired. Having worked in hotspots myself e.g. South Africa, Ghana and known personally other photojos such as Yannis Kontos, you build a healthy respect people like Tim.

He spent many years working in West Africa documenting conflict. I mean, that's a huge feat. Having experienced a couple of coups myself in Ghana I had revere respect for him.

It's a reminder, as if we ever forget that there are some people who seek out the truth; they're not reckless and value life. They keep us in touch with this conflicted world from the comforts of our suburban homes.

In 2008 Hetherington wrote a piece that I tore out from the British Journal of Photography in which he mounted a robust defence of the image in visual journalism.

I'm reading it again By any means necessary

Photography et al mourns.

A Philosophy of Videojournalism

If somethings not done yet it’s waiting to be done.

If the idea you have isn’t recognised, because it’s not been done before, you might be onto something.

If you seek professional mischief making over popularity, you represent something.

If the task at hand represents an embodied experience, in which you wrestle with subjectivity and objectivity, aesthetics (kantian) versus aesthetic (corporeal), you represent something.

If your representation, is questioned and you’re prepared to listen, you represent something.

If you move with your camera as a haptic device and your words envelop poeticism, you’re saying something.

But often the question is who’s listening?

Something’s happening. We seek doors to enter in believing adventure is on the other side. And you are helping to shape that key for others.

Your audience is committed, ambivalent or not interested. You cannot bask in the glory of finalities. Because there are none.

Each task begets another and another. The only thing fulfilling is to be unfulfilled. But that’s what you love — the chase!

If your glass is never empty, but you know how, and choose whether you want it filled, you’re onto something.

If the road less travelled, is the road you’ve taken, then often you’ll find the solo traveller awaiting you. Here you’ll share ideas that pass by the mass consensual dogma.

To you there are no masses. There is no mass media. The media delimits the message. Your message is unbridled. Meta. But your path is your own.

If you believe it so much, and the air is dark, and the naysayers make their point. Listen, but excuse yourself, because you’re onto something.

Shhh (quietly) I believe you represent something. BIG!

Developing a heurestic for videojournalism
David Dunkley Gyimah
PhD SMARTlab, University College Dublin
Artist in Residence at London's SouthBank Centre
Senior Lecturer, University of Westminster
Royal Television Society Juror, 2011-12 Innovation in Media
www.viewmagazine.tv
10th - April - 2011

Danfung Dennis' Media Revolution for Film makers and Videojournalists

My Freedom Or Death - Condition ONE Beta from Danfung Dennis on Vimeo.


Award winning Photojournalist Patrick Chauvel in Libya road test's Award winning filmmaker/photojo Danfung's Condition ONE app out mid 2011

He's done it!

The IPad, a portable screen on the cusp of being a haptic device and a 3D viewing technology which yields  a panoramic remmersion vision - touch the screen and you roll the field of view around.

The result is something that fuses game culture in news' paradigm. Danfung Dennis, a photojournalist and now celebrated documentary making with his apocalyptic "Hell and Back Again", has turned the axis of film making quite literally through a revolutionary phase shift.

John T Caldwell, an eminent media scholar coined the phrase "second shift aesthetic" to define an interconnected relationship between offline and online media. If he would allow me to, this constitutes a "phase-shift aesthetic"; 3rd, 4th...

Similarly my thoughts go to "Yellow Bird" a filming revolution, which provides 360 vision.

Revolution in film making
In the early last century French film maker Abel Gance, did something revolutionary in the use of camera mobility. He wanted to make "actors out of the audience", so he found a revolutionary way then to use a boxed camera that you needed to crank to work.

It was the Debrie Parvo, an unwieldy beast that in scenes of his seminal film Napolean, explained by Film Historian Kevin Brownlow, inflects a "being there"perception.

Depending on which generation you are we've come to marvel at immersion/remmersion and the POV. It's what binds the Gaming Industry. It is the revisioning of that gold- at-the-end-of-the-rainbow "reality".

We see it in Avante Garde films, Westerns, Hollywood flicks like, The Lady in the Lake(1947) and more recently in video  Dan Chung's Mongolian Racer (2010). One of my favourites is Point of View a short film by Doug Smith

Being there is part of the quality that the great French philosopher Roland Barthes explained so comprehensively in his Rhetoric of the Image.

Newer Media (Video Journalism) Break throughs
A hundred years on, the scope of media technological advances are to numerous to note, but breakthroughs in miniaturisation, Canon's filmic mode, 3D viewing and the zeitgeist of the tablet in the Ipad are key to what Danfung has now achieved.

Pulling it all together, one prefigures though was no easy task. Often it's a big itch that comes from working in a field long enough to see its flaws and weaknesses.  Just ask Garret Brown, a cinematographer who invented the Brown-Cam, that would be renamed the Steadicam.


The article A New Way to Photograph War on Time Magazine we can be assured will be one of a plethora of pieces. There we learn that celebrated Photojournalist Patrick Chauvel in Libya is road testing Danfung's Condition One, claiming:

"It's not easy to use, you have to watch not to get your shoes in the frame of your shadow or your face... But the result is worth it".

The film maker himself quote here from  Film maker magazine sums up everything:

"This disconnect between the realities on the ground and the perception at home shaped the course of the film ( To Hell and Back). By using advanced technology, I hoped to create a powerful experience that would shake people from their indifference to war"

Last year I had the pleasure of interviewing Dangfung in a detailed conversation for research I'm conducting as part of a study and for the SouthBank Centre and for a revisit to Apple Store presentation below ( Youtube Link here)

 He mooted the idea, but what's emerged is truly deserving. Having reworked war-doc making, he's now fashioned an app which will have ramifications far beyond Wars film making.

This June I'll be appearing at the Sheffield Doc festival in a panel as follows, where I'll be contributing to a discussion on cinema journalism. I'll also be previewing my latest IMVJ project Tahrir Memento

Moderator: Charlotte Cook

Participants: Tom Happold, Danfung Dennis, David Dunkley Gyimah, Inigo Gilmore

I

End++

Former BBC and Channel 4 News journalist David Dunkley Gyimah is the recipient of a number of awards in innovative journalism. His worked in the journalism since 1987 and is presently a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster, PhD Candidate at SMARTlab, University College Dublin and Artist in Residence at London's cultural hub, The Southbank Centre.

New Wave War Movie docu-cinemmaker

The Hurt Locker

One is a film, which was lauded at the Oscars winning its director the highest fictional film accolade. The others are documentaries by film makers, two of whom are photojournalists.

Reality is, or has been a key feature of documentary film making. How do you capture unmediated that which would have happened without unintentional influence.

Yet our literacy towards reality plays out in a strong theme we've grown up on: Cinema. Ever seince DW Griffith fashioned an understanding of how to capture re-enacted scenes of war on camera.

No more. Yet watching these new doc-uramas I'm struck not just by the visceral hacceity of the films, but the thought of the mortality of the film makers. Given a canon 5d who, how many would dare to enter a conflict zone knowing this could be it?

It's an unspoken issue. But it's a real one. THese film makers do something admirable because they risk their own lives.

And there have been countless examples when things did not emerge as they would wish.

Many years ago, living in Ghana, a coup enveloped the country. Rawlings took power in a bloody over throw of the regime. I was there, remember it well as friends and I got caught up in the cross fire as cadets.

Years later it fuelled a desire to record conflict. In 1993 in South Africa I took a night drive - just one day only - into what was then the murder capital of the world. Many things happened, but the signing of a document absolving the Peace Corps of any responsibiliy, brought it home.

These film makers live through that thought for lengthy periods. Sobering thoughts.

Armadillo

The latest award winning film which shows the viscerality of war

Restrepo 

Photojournnalist Tim Hetherington's award winning documentary

Hell and Back Again

Photojournalist Danfung Dennis' award winning documentary





In

Lost and found in translation

Sunday morning. 930.


My task this morning is to review pages from my thesis. Chapter 1.

Blimey it's 30,000 words and only needs 10, 000 at most.  So I'm taking a large blade to the passages.

In so doing, I'm having to bridge sentences to link rather harsh edits. This makes me reflect some more and sometimes contradict what I already have.

In effect, the writing process is taking me through a series of "Inceptions"- the film. Reflection, through reflection, through reflection. Sometimes I don't know what state I'm in. As one door opens, that path leads to ever more fascinating and problematic areas which require new connections.

Sometimes these exist, sometimes they require new engineering; cue the library. In this case the first chapter has all it wants, the journey has become a metaphysical one. How do you know what you know?

And how can you teach that in a manner which instills critical thinking on the party receiving it.

In effect then this, what could be described as a rather tedious practice is all about self evaluation through enquiry in a chosen field. There's no eureka moment here. Just because it's being stated the first time and in print doesn't mean it's not he first time one has thought or recited it.

But something did make me sit bolt upright. Our penchant for the image, the moving image e.g image versus text, moving against print has been recycled over many centuries. We, myself too, might revel in the exactitude of the moving image, but for how long before the beautiful word makes a come back?

But more importantly, that is, that grand narratives are perilous. They reveal truths and mask flaws - often through a deficiency in knowledge. Enlightenment- industrial - electronic - Internet.

Our birth place in any one of these supplies us with want we want before some brilliant sage reveal patterns, flows that can be ascertained and corrected by arthroscopic surgery. Here comes Everyone, We Media, etc.

And on that note I'll return to my text. Now where am I again?
  

The credo of Cinematic space and silence for video

Two very different videos; one a true event, the other fiction. but the cinematicness overlap.

Kubrick was the director par excellence and this sculpted this scene in camera (spatiality), sound, scene ( luminosity) subject combine to reach into that place where demons lurk - the sub conscious.

David Couzins, the train passenger who took this video from London Undergrounds 7/7 terrorist attack, couldn't have known, or perhaps he did, but what emerges from his camera is Kubriesque. 

I apologise of I have offended any Kubrik fans and I in no way seek to diminish the events of 911 by comparing it to a film.

But the point, whether by default or design is how the mesmeric effect of Couzin's video, the context, solemnity, are housed in the world of cinema ( spatial immersion).

Without denigrating the professional, if you were to emerge from a scene marked by tragedy, how forceful would be the need to speak over and to the camera. I figure I might be sorely driven to enunciate and capture the ambience. The two indeed might have worked, but......

Perhaps a mark of respect or the sheer ocassion in itself yielded what you see, but if anything this video and its psychosis points to something we could all pay attention to; the power of silence.

It is journalism, that can't be taught because it negates what we need to learn about providing information. Couzin's non-professional training, or not has produced something we return to in capturing the moment and not just physically.  And silence has a currency in other more recognisable areas.

A nod to videojournalismweb for sparking this post

Meta data video and videojournalism cult of talent

Yannis Kontos - World Press Photographer and Greece Icon

Been having a whale of a time with some practical and theory work; just when I thought it time I'd like to go back on the road and share ideas, work with groups, a couple of projects have cropped up.

One of the precursors was reliving some work from 1991-94 to illustrate to a group terminology thought to be from a web 2.0 age which was just as in vogue in 1992 e.g. Metadata and camera movement c.f DSLR shooting

Image stream one below from the BBC's flagship programme: REPORTAGE  shows how metadata was used pre-internet sans the reporters voice. That is it was used on the music arc.  More importantly too this was the era of MTV current affairs, a video journalism (directors often shot on hi8 or drop in shots) that  would appeal to Netizens.

This was one of the programmes I cut my teeth on after 4 years before focusing on that theatre of the mind - radio.

Image stream one - the BBC's 1992 national flagship programme which pioneered its own form of videojournalism in so far as directors shot drop-in shots for this network programme

In photography, I went into my recent archives and pulled out a two hour face-to-face interview I had with Danfung Dennis - who is the ONE at the moment, with his Dante - award winning movie To Hell and Back.

Danfung like World Press Photographer Yannis Kontos  remind us of the image and non-conformity towards artistic practice. I have been using a technique I call reflexive-flaneurism- mapping, and what's obvious is in spite of all the codes, loosening of semiotics, genius or at least talent, something ( I don't know, call it what you will e.g. Dasein) something is difficult to grasp.

Besides the physicalness of being in that place and time, the essence of good visual making; there is the continuing invested self-resources, and then the Dasein.

This isn't new, but in the leveling of creativity, where the lack of books, knowledge, opportunities was once the norm, we can comfort ourselves that there is this other thing - a bit transcendental.

Where one group sees a formula for method and exhibit that modernist formalist bent; it's all in the form, others see each new task as an artistic odyssey replete with the torpid, sleepless, brain-thumping thoughts it induces, or not.

That's not to suggest training and pedagogy have no value, otherwise what's the point.

A student today hit the wall. He looked fairly relieved when I said the internal fight he was having with himself was part of the route to discovery. History is littered with tortured souls. We've come to realise though that there is genuine talent, that finds its way irrespective.

Kazuo Ishiguro was talking about his time at University of East Anglia's creative writing course. For a whole year there was no module, but the ocassional meet in the pub and talks with his lecturer Malcolm Bradbury about writing. Bradbury would later say, those who wanted to write, wrote.

I'm hoping to convene our next meeting at the BFI with the David Hayward from the BBC and Paul Egglestone from UCLAN, where we can exchange more data