If the good people in broadcasting were not so dismissal and protective with video and TV skills we would have realised, just as amateur photographers and film makers that this video thing is not rocket science.
Yes, it involves a number of rules, some made up to thwart vague interest, but it is just like riding a bike.
The revolution we see or will realise is how 5 years on, every kid who learns to write with be taught visual language to communicate in video.
And if they don't, they'll learn it themselves.
But here's my plea, don't stop at video, look to design. I have argued many times in previous blogs that the direction of video is of a cinema and design aesthetic.
Lev Manovic said something in his popular book, which I circled in 1998. That soon spatial video will take its place - a reworked version of the zoetrope and that linear narrative may be given a run for its money.
That's happening, and with video hyperlinking, a radical gamechanger awaits.
I'm looking to a new design of my site to reflect the direction my own path has taken.
Over the years its been deeply rewarding.
Training hundreds of newspaper journalists - from the Financial Times, Press Association, Daily Telegraph
Working with groups in Cairo, South Africa, Norway, the US and China.
And now artistic work with the Southbank Centre.
There's a lot to videojournalism than meets the eye, and design I believe will feature heavily as a skill set to bolster existing related knowledge.
What's the difference between the two images below? That's the question I put to 10 students from Moscow State University, studying journalism.
If you want to find out scroll down.
fig 1 Chinese International Masters student Yong Wang working on his team's website www.offbeatlondon.co.uk
fig 2 Yong Wang working on his team's website www.offbeatlondon.co.uk
The basis of this morning's lectures centred on two main strands, which I shared with the group with a brief history of the web, and the results from our own international multimedia student journalists.
That is:
The way journalism tends to be taught is at stark odds with the way I believe we should, particularly with multimedia journalism
And that whilst left brain, right brain debates seem arcane, there's something to explore in the way journalists still propagate linearity and sequencing.
Take these set of illustations, which one would you choose.
fig iii fig iv fig v
Few of you would pick the first one. In the laws of visualisation there is a reason.
Then there's this image below (fig vi and vii) from a film by Rob Chiu, what's wrong or right with it?
fig vi fig vii
In fact fig vii is the doctored one, I made. The actual image from the film is fig vi, but conceivably it is a shot that breaks the rule of space - the subject should be looking into space in the rule of thirds. But why does the author use it and so successfully.
The image is dissonant, but then so is the video - about youth angst. As a result it works, and debunks the rule. Similarly in training programmes, I show how you can cross the line and pique the interest of your film and in adopting techniques used by advertising directors.
One of the other exercises I undertook this morning involves various group dynamics, that involve sum zero - everyone wins, but you have to figure out your losses in compromising - and permutation exercises, which serves two purposes.
Physically it gets students thinking about physical objects, rather than abstracts in design. Its tactile and involves everyday encountered solutions.
And leads to dictums such as this one below, from Gestalt
So to my point at the top and the answer to the two pics fig i and fig ii
The emphasis for the written word in journalism comes in the wake of the enlightenment period, which with 2020 you'd figure was only natural, but interestingly, as detailed by Leonard Shlain, there was a time when the image reigned, and that would suggest we exercised creative and artistic thinking.
And, when we look at where we are now in our highly visual world of the Time Squares, magazines and a maturing web, we're back in image mode. Yet this time uniquely it's an image world in bed with the written.
The question is how adept are we at training to rethink in the image mode? Put simply how can we deploy some of the techniques in art to help push multimedia to its own level, rather than being son/daughter of written journalism.
So, finally according to the students fig ii limited and focused the amount of data you needed to look at. What's interesting about this interpretation is that in the 1920-50s deep focus was all the rage. Not any more. This illustrates a couple of things.
The image world is a dynamic medium changing according to cultural and creative evolutions, and something fabulous is going on now.
That multimedia storytelling has more legs on it, but it needs to break free from its surrogate constrained rules.
This is one of several strands with multiple examples David provides in a future book.
England's woman team often demonstrate how the men's squad should perform
To be an English fan of its national football squad at the moment, is the nearest thing to self-harm.
Nay being in a mad institution of the 11th century is more like it. But, and this is a big but, there are indelible life stories to be learned. Indeed a positive spin on humiliating news.
1. Thinking above ones station. England weren't just bad, but the belief was their poor performance was an aberration.
We've come to think like greedy bankers that it's our right to be better than everyone else, without a degree of humility, and inward examination of how we solve our problem.
More often than not money is thrown at it, and that wrongly we think is our panacea.
2. Putting faith in institutions. We the people are run by institutions, footballing and sport are just a few.
Men in suits who decide how you the fan responds. They're unaccountable, elected by the few, interested in power.
The media's wake up call to the digital revolution is much needed in the world of sports. If the fans boycotted in protest for a day to show "we-the-fan-power", the balance of power could be shifted.
We saw glimpses of it in after Rooney's outburst and the FA forcing him to apologise to fans.
3. The individual above the self. England, where overwhelmingly criticised for not playing as a team.
In moments revealed on replays Lampard and Terry can be seen walking to a situation that demanded urgency. But why blame the team?
Successive political governments have fostered the notion of individualism. You are good, which is why I need you, rather than you're hungry to help the team.
The former ethos is bankrupt and any root and branch change to England and our own psyche has to reward collective wisdom.
Call Germany a young side, but like the USA they play for each other. Our squad will be back to reaping the spoils of their labour in two months time, and we'll welcome their efforts with exuberance
4. Creativity and the technician Our ability to be creative is fuelled by attributes that court risque and failure, and whether its our national squad or workplace we refuse to engage in this.
Our media won't accept losses from our national team or our politicians endeavors to try new things.
To that end successive governments would only be brave enough to bring us "good news", while the small print deviously hid how they were robbing our back pockets.
We then sacrifice creativity for technical.
Everyone notes the Premiere league is one of the best in the world, some bravely call it the best, but is that in terms of creativity or technical?
For creativity give me Serie A - Italian league or Brazilian League. Yes we need to technically adept but it means nothing if you can't creatively apply that knowledge.
5. Truth and Honesty Until we're honest about our own flaws, we'll never be able to find a meaningful solution.
6. Flexibility and a willingness to change Cappello England's manager doggedly stuck to a system of play without a willingness to change.
Pride, perhaps arrogance, perhaps even genius, but we see this time and time again in our own institutions, particularly the media.
And as the digital dawn has shown to the media, those who deny change, will atrophy
"I understand the Independent (newspaper) will stop publishing its Thursday education pages. Their last appearance will be on July 1.
Education - real education, that is, not training in the skills required for work - is in greater danger than it's been in my lifetime. Education journalists, who a decade ago would have been sounding the alarm, don't have access to their platforms any more".
It had me thinking, particularly in this solitude time attempting to capture my thoughts and experience in a book, combined with teaching and training exercises over the last twenty odd years. And then in two weeks we're in Chongqing, China.
First things first. A revolution in traditional journalism or storytelling, no one perhaps can dispute and there have been countless attempts, many successful, to illustrate the future.
With the Ipad and related techware a more radical future appears to be opening around video+text books. Further evidence comes from ex-bbc colleagues of mine bidding for a multimillion pound contract for video delivery into the classroom.
And the blogosphere e.g. Lynda.com, Multimedia shooter has shown itself a great resource for learning. So, I asked myself what's the point of me publishing. What am I bringing to the table?
Education is about learning from our past And the answer struck me from previous posts where I have spoken about my background.
The precis is something like this: 1987 (BBC Radio); 1990 (BBC TV Reportage); 1992 (BBC World Service/ ABC News/ SA TV/ Radio 4); 1994 (Channel One TV); 1996 ( WTN) 1997 (London Tonight/ producing in Africa);1997 (Channel 4 News/ BBC Breakfast/advertising Soho company) 2001 (politics show); 2001 dot com companies.
Bizarrely this peripatetic sojourn around broadcasting has in my eyes been my failure - in part because of the manner in which broadcasting was skewed culturally and technologically. You just were not allowed to be multiskilled in broadcasting. This was the era of monoliths.
However the knock on effect, whether it was BBC Newnight or Channel One and the Net in 1994 has been the different methodologies myself and many others have been privy to.
And in many ways it's been these different different insights and workflows, also working alongside some highly talented people, that has shaped me, and is the basis of a book in which I can reveal methods and tips.
Viewmagazine.tv was conceived by this mashup in 2005.
Journalism Training Then there's been the training. Outside of creating stories, it's an area I deeply enjoy and have been fortunate to be involved in training since my early career (87), then South Africa, and more recently working with the Press Association and various outfits around the world e.g. Cairo TV.
Training I have learned has to be bespoke, because you're dealing with a range of experiences and personalities. There's no one size fits all.
Lecturing has different challenges balancing theory and practicals around a middle ground whereby students must reap the rewards of their own research - pedagogy.
We're in the final project phase of supervision at the moment with the potential for some amazing student work to emerge. And when it does it will be there work, sweat and toil.
The brief: take a single story issue and building a story. Chapter 8 by the way in the book.
Freytag's basic triangle as seen in Stephen Meadow's interactive, sits at the core of good solid story tellings, with an obvious plot featured in David's book. It can also be modified within multimedia.
It's not just the changes enveloping educational journalism we're all aware of but the experiments, and successful outcomes that many of us are looking for.
Those answers, I often believe do not lie in the profession, as many of Harvard Business Review articles in business strategy have shown.
Southbank Centre's Artistic Director Jude kelly, last January launched Collision - a deeply rich invigorating programme for mid carer artists. Any Journalism educator reading this would be minded to have a close look at it.
My good friend Patrice Schneider and I shared thoughts on a similar idea, and the concept is still up for grabs. Bring together creative journalists of different disciplines and create the surroundings for a healthy exchange of ideas.
Not as a conference, but something more tangible. Mr Westbrook, we will get the creative fight club up an running.
But perhaps after its had an outing in Chongqing, China. Next month four profs, me and my head of department head out to one of its leading universities.
So back to the beginning, where our education seems to be waning, (there are still great pockets of excellence by the way) the Chinese are upping the stakes. China's projected growth is a whopping 11.9% and the news today that China may allow its Yuan to appreciate, just shows the commanding position it has found itself in.
The mood appears to be China understands the value of investment, and quietly behind the scenes. There's a double whammy here.
Firstly predictions from an international conf. I attended that by 2015 the number of foreign students from China to Australia, the US and UK will fall significantly, will take crucial foreign earnings from theses territories.
It will also squarely place China, with its penchant for educational innovation, at the forefront. Innovation, web, China... don't scoff!
Our mission next month is to share ideas in lecturing and mentoring students, alongside training exercises which are designed so students can network ideas. I don't doubt also that we'll pick up vital methods, which I believe will work here.
And that in itself I hope will prove worthwhile inclusion in tomb I'm hoping will blur the borders between many of the storytelling disciplines.
David working at BBC local radio circa 1988 as a freelancer
The transition from undergrad to Masters programmes, or for that matter trainee journalists to the long-in-tooth, can be a difficult one. My own experience offers a story I look to for answers.
In 1987 nearing my graduation, I had joined the BBC as a freelancer. I was getting on well, but then the dynamics in the newsroom changed with the arrival of a new member of staff - also a student.
Things started to go wrong and because of a combination of my impetuousness and hurt at being sidelined, I shut up shop. I stored all that was wrong for an interview for the one staff job coming up.
At the interview things were going swimmingly, but then I was asked: "So what do you think about your team members and editor?"
I criticised them in a manner which I felt fit, offering no self-critique in its place or deference to understanding the process.
The interviewer from Human Resources asked me two questions:
If you knew what was going wrong, why did you not intervene in some way and draw attention to this by speaking to your editor or colleagues? Why did you suffer in silence?
And if I hire you how can I trust if things go wrong, rather than seeking a collective resolution, you won't look to blame others again?
There and then I knew I'd lost the job. Today I have a theory, which stems from my experience as a student undergrad and the way we are taught and in deeper studies such as a PhD, when you set your own study prog.
Changing journalism As journalists or would-be-journalists we are blessed with an asset that should, I say should, aid our inter-relations with others; the use of words and methods of communications.
But we are individuals who exercise levels of me-ism that at times corrode our relationships when it shouldn't be so.
I'm certain I wouldn't hire me, if I knew when things were going south, I could not find a means to enquire and help in some way bring attention to how we could look for a solution.
The training of journalists is one that often overlooks life's teachings. But that's not unusual.
In parallel scenes in the aviation industry, it took a wholesale change in attitude to eradicate a huge problem.
The cockpit of the 70s would brook no challenge or advice from the first officer to the pilot. The pilot was the single arbiter whose authority could not be challenged, resulting in a number of crashes that could have been avoided.
So the airline industry fostered a new relationship between its flying staff.
When the web advocated sharing ideas with Linux charging with the flag, it was so anathema that trad media either poo pooed it or tried to kill it.
On the web we don't mind, or perhaps pretend we're selfless. And we've learned to create a nomenclature of how to address problems e.g. don't feed the troll, but in person we still clutch on to antiquated, yet, yes humanistic ideals.
Learning from our mistakes
Davis speaking about creative, technical and semiotics of creativity at Apple Store.
It's possible, and now I'm a little wiser, that we all need to go through this me-ism path, because only after that can we evaluate our own standings and learn about ourselves.
Mine cost me a job, but I believe it made me a better person. It took many things including Stephen Covey's lesson on interdependency - which I read by the way in a book.
For those that know me, I hope I strive to be fair and where things are seen to be off target from my own ideals, I find the means and ways of talking about it.
Many times I have discovered it's unintentional, that I am as much the solution as the scene I look to. It takes two people to have a conversation.
But if 21st journalism is to build on its antecedents, the underlying "real life" attitudes within social networks e.g. respect for oneself and others needs looking at and translated into the lecture rooms and journalism shop floors.
Can we teach it?
We can create artificial environments to test these: group work dynamics, shared problem solving, the wisdom of crowds approach, but ultimately the answers lie within ourselves.
And that may be a matter of you mastering your programme, as much as anything else.
You'll like this, a lot. It marries so many elements but in a minimalistic way. In many ways it might not have worked, but it's the cinescope, dutch tilt motifs, narratology and the visual perception. Superb! I'm now a big fan of California is a place.
There is little that it genius, or for that matter new. Each substrate we happen upon has its antecedent, somewhere, sometime.
Ignorance is usually are excuse for failing to find it. Not purposeful, for knowledge can never be absolute.
Each generations proposes new solutions, attempting by default to also discard the past. We have moved on. But the past provides answers for why we exercise or seek to try new things. Without the past, the old, we cannot have the new.
It's a catch 22, because we would rather the old remained hidden, yet at the same time, the solutions are rooted in various trials that have succeeded or failed of old.
The question for developing that which we deemed new, innovatory, then is a simple one. What can we add to the giants before us? What is our contribution to the form having burrowed deep into the archives of our choice?
Ignorance no longer becomes a default excuse, but a failure on our part. There is nothing that is new, if we prepared to drill deeper than often resources allow. What though can we contribute?
Creating cinema-sites along the lines of the Apple Trailer page uses the integrated videojournalism approach.
It's been a busy couple of weeks and won't relent, so I have been absent from these pages, but I did want to share with you a project I have been doing for the last couple of days, in-between book chapters and the rest.
Site starts with a short promo featuring Shlomo, one of the world's most acclaimed beatboxerspercussionist. who was working with Colin Currie - an acclaimed
In Jan early this year, as part of my residency at the Southbank Centre I participated in a programme called Collisions. Well, I'm now looking to create the legacy of that event, and some event it was.
The strategy falls along the lines of what I call an "impact site" or Outernet. It's when you take a single subject and engineer its reportage through video and online.
South African Poet Lebogang Mashile performs for the audience.
Thanks to the wonderful pics of Dominic Brewser, the job was a joy. Here's the ongoing results. I have treated the photos to enhance their aesthetic and am adding appropriate video where I feel firstly I have and secondly where it will be appropriate.
Thanks to Adam Westbrook whom I invited to join as a videojournalist. Some more of his directional work, which I'm editing will be up soon.
Food and cooking was an integral part of the programme. We all took turns in the kitchen aided by the Company of Cooks and SE1 United. I cooked on the first day, Jollof Rice, spicy plantain with an avocado mix and spicy chicken. I have never cooked for 50 people. Was I nervous? Not until my sister range me up to say she couldn't come to help. The video of my Jamie Oliver moment, er no, will be posted soon.
This methodology is one I also lecture in as final project modules for Masters students. In the end it's all ones and zeros. Flash, which I have been working with for more than a decade, provides the platform.
The bombastically talented Dave Clark
I'll be deconstructing this and others e.g. how to produce rostrum camera production slides in a forth coming book, in which I have been promised one of the most sought after film directors as an interview. Fingers crossed. To peruse the Collision site go to http://www.viewmagazine.tv/collision/collisions2010.html
Penny Woolcock the director of 1 Day - a grime hip-hop feature length film which she street cast and had the rappers breaking into song as with a musical was one of several artists, who I had the pleasure of meeting.
Multiple award winning poet, writer and recently MBE Lemn Sissay on the final showcase of Collisions
“The more we experiment, initially the more we are likely to fail. The more we fail, the less we are likely to fail again. Then the more confident we become. The more confident we become, the better the experiments we conduct and the more successful we become. Videojournalism’s exactly like that"
Cairo state television is taking the plunge into videojournalism and are looking at videojournalism not neccesarily as a cost-saving device per se, nor exclusively a more hands-on-deck approach, but a combination of this and the emerging aesthetic.
Eminent award wining journalist and Nieman scholar Prof Yuen Ying Chan, now director of Journalism studies at Hong Kong University asked a pressing question couple of days ago during our session on videojournalism the future. "Wasn't I talking about cinema verite?", she asked.
The differences are as wide between the two forms, I answered as they can be the same. Videojournalism is the feisty bastard child which seeks to be more than the sum of its parts.
That view is shaping up from prelim ethnographic studies that has me somewhat surprised.
One of the UK's most respected film makers and author of "the story of film", called it impressionism. Granted its use was in an artistic praxis at the time and there followed a debate about videojournalism's schizophrenia.
Videojournalism has its problems, but in the manner Cairo TV want to adopt it, it gives a respectful berth to Cinema Verite, adopting more "accelerated verite" under the ambit also of that precious statement of the 50s "4th person singular".
I hope to make a feature about what happens. See you on the other side.
Footnote Through the eyes of a Child Director/producer David Dunkley Gyimah, 1993 The Line Producers, South Africa.
Two days ago at this conf in Bratislava, a chap approached me and said "Through the eyes of a child". I winced and then sheepishly said "yeeessss", naively thinking he'd seen the programme.
As it happens Tidiane, an award winning journalist in in Senegal, was the french translator/narrator on this features I made in 1993 whilst living in South Africa.
We'd never met before and here 17 years later were reminiscing about the prog and South Africa for the first time. Happy times !
What videojournalism can do for you - an integrated approach illustrated with this diagram below.
Firstly videojournalism sits at the heart of what I do in media. It is an integrated approach which allows me to pull off or push together cognate media, explained much better in this Apple article.
I call it the IM6 Approach.If you search IM6 on viewmagazine.tv, you'll find a range of articles.
The phrase was coined by Ted Turner... "Use every part of the pig, including the Squeal". In video as the illustration shows, I can and often pull put or put together a number of assets.
Website - viewmagazine.tv ( winner at the Knight Batten Awards 2005) was built around a videojournalismpraxis. The original submission in 2005 can be found here and I did think of flat screens from Minority Report in making it, so there are similarities with IPad's presentations today The presentation of film and text means if you take a page like this one below the video comes first with text wrapped around the video - film. This example below shows videojournalism training at the Financial Time. The article and film can be found here.
The FT has now a bouquet of programmes it has created using the videojournalism paradigm
Sites like MultimediaShooter.com show how Videojournalism is also integral to Multimedia storytelling. Here's how videojournalism made this multimedia game theory documentary: The Family
Promos - The YannisKontosPhotopromo I showed was influenced by the overlap of videojournalism and photojournalism. You can see that here (pixels without borders). The background to the video is we had about 1000 pics to sort through in three hours and then score the piece which he presented on a big screen to the World Press Photo Awards ( Ist prize)
I mentioned during my talk, students I lecture at my university and the three different sites. Alas time constraints I could only point to the one.
Pics and Design
Here's a snap shot of a video I made - an interview with the CIA. Using Final Cut Pro, I can also pull of a pic whose quality online on an HD camera rivals still cameras
Audio - which I can pull of the video timeline
On the Final Cut Pro pic (above), you'll notice the timeline is a block - (1 brown, 2 purple). The purple element is the audio component which I can export to form an Ipod or audio track for any number of projects, including this one here from South Africa ( see below)
blog- This blog; its specialist topic is videojournalism. Though apologies because of commitments I have not been blogging as much as I should. But the point is there's a content pathway derived from Videojournalism.
Multimediastbloggers like Adam Westbrook have made invaluablecontributions in this space
The slide below gives my POV of the the many things you can do within the video ecosystem making films, but that was more than brilliantly shown and executed
Thomas Loudons' fabulous VJmovement - the BBC of the future
Irina Samokhina, publisher of Krestyanin, Russia demonstrated how in the short space of two years she is transforming her company into a digital platform using videojournalism
PremeshChandran CEO of Malaysiakini.com is blazing a trail with videojournalists working with citizen journalists and finding an out on TV screens as well
And then Thomas Bella's of SME.sk who showed how branding and the use of entertainment programming can bring in audiences.
I'll fix the links on the above and post some more soon and speak about the second slide later. BTW this and much more is being published in a book by Peachpit called Revolutionary Video
Opened talk with over view of the below: 1. Showed two films. One from 1994; the other from 2005. I wanted to demonstrate that between 1994 and 2005 there has been a visual language change for those that started in 1994.
No surprise. If you learned a new language. say English, Russian or Manadarin, 15 years ago, by now you would understand the language enough to use its local dialect.
An example of two camera - film approaches from different eras
Channel One wanyed its reporters to be multiskilled, so many got to use the web very early. The new total reporter would shoot video and build sites. These skills are only difficult when they are foreign to us.
Future will be more Outernet: personalised and landscaped Videojournalism is a combination of skills and does not mean exclusively news making. It's a total package and one that encapsulates a quikc turnaorund understanding of cinematographic film news making
New World Order - article for Sony Magazine by David in 2001. The Order is only now materialising.
I'm in transit to Slovakia, before Cairo, to share ideas with 150 of the top media and digital media execs from around the world where I'll be presenting, listening, and chairing a session on New TV.
And in this new tv setting the production methodology is one of videojournalism.
In the last couple of years I have been researching an aspect of videojournalism, which I call the Outernet, as part of a PhD.
I wanted to do this, a sometimes tortured exercise, to understand better, drill deeper into the tissue of videojournalism and its cognate areas e.g cinejournalism.
And to complement some of the practical techniques in training and videojournalism I have been doing for the past 16 years.
The research is proving highly interesting and some of those will feature in a book I'm writing for Peachpit.
The coming years will prove the most fertile period for this art form, because that's what it is, something manifestly more than it seems, ushering a fundamental era in authorship and trust.
It's not a restrictive language and its deconstruction will force the hand of new technologists to up their game and theorists to revisit and formulate debates of subjectivity and objectivity, which we've wrestled with uncomfortably for far too so long. The realignment is well due.
DVCam revolution Get ready for a slew of new DVcameras with features that hitherto have not been present on current cameras.
Commensurate with this, will be new understandings and rationales within the filmic (subconsciousness) space.
Thus far we've taken the visual grammar for granted at the behest of the radio narrative. Every video moment requires a voice track.
To practitioners this is a period of great creativity, but what does it mean for execs and business managers ?
That truly in the main videojournalism will have nothing to do with costs, because the mean cost threshold would be fixed, normalised.
So it boils down to one of the most contentious, but exhilarating areas of film and art mode:aesthetic.
Aesthetics is not about beauty, but that which we create and make sense of; it affects our sensibilities in ways that envelope unique characteristics.
In the future, global New TV will play to these in far more sophisticated ways parallelling the decades of creativity that have underpinned other creative arts e.g. music and film.
And in many cases, it will be about a modern day versions of old formats ( that's what the research is showing) and housing films in environments which can be viewed as stand-alone or within their own architectural aesthetic.
How to woo an audience and keep them in a world flushed with video will keep us awake like no other time.
The explosion in videojournalism and equipment is one of the most exciting features 0f the last five years.
Some of you may know my work in using small DV cams and even though this has allowed for a range of video projects, there is still something to be said about using pro cameras.
I appreciate this may be out of reach on your pocket, but I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about my background and how as a videojournalist using pro cameras has been significant in my understanding of cinematography in broadcasting and filmmaking.
The top shot is from 2002 when I was hired by World Heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis to shoot his fight: Lennox Lewis Vs. Tyson, one of the most anticipated fights of the decade.
Here I am at base camp in the Poconno Mountains, before setting off to Memphis at the Pryamid Arena to to cover the fight.
This was a really nice camera. It's been a while so I may be wrong but I believe it's the Sony HVR-S270U which which is around $5000. It's quite light but with a good centre of gravity and interchangeable lens which you could play around with e.g. Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar Zoom Lens, 12x f = 4.4-52.8mm, f = 32-384mm at 16:9 mode, f = 39.5-47.4mm (4:3 mode)
Now what's significant about the use of a camera like this is that journalists learning video journalism would rarely work with a pro camera, which had a larger range of ND filters and other accessories to improve the picture quality.
Many journalists were more likely to start their careers with DV cams.
This is one of my favourite cameras - the Digi beta 970P It's top of the range and cost then about £50,000. I uses this on several shoots but all always hired them.
Here I am shooting a feature for Channel 4 News in South Africa in 1999.
These are some of its features:
amazing high quality pic with a compression ratio of around 2.1
Good weighted centre of gravity
It shot 625/25P progressive mode and 625/50i interlaced mode
Good sound at 20 bit resolution
You'll notice it has a Matte box at the front of the lens which allowed me to use different filters.
I think that is a hugely important point, because I am altering the look of what I'm recording at source. If you've ever graded your films you'll know what I mean.
Using different filters allowed me to imprint a colour-code to the image I perceived.
In one of the shots that I'm hoping to find and post I've altered between deep red filters and harsh colours in trouble spots in the townships - all through filters.
Here, you can just about see the camera on my left.
This shot really illustrates the structure of the camera.
And finally another shot as a videojournalist using a Panasonic in Paris - the aftermath of the Death of Princess Di, 1997 reporting from France, Champs Elysee.
I remeber this shoot well. I got some pretty strange stairs doing a stand-up by myself in the middle of a busy shopping lane.
Now why is this in some way interesting? It's interesting because of the difference between DV cams, pro cams and the new brill kid on the block the Canon 5D II.
I think something really interesting is happening here in the videojournalists firmament, in who comes from a journalism background and those that come from a picture background.
It' not so clear cut because there will be always be overlaps but I think you'll find that a lot of photographers looking to video are opting for the Canon, while pro journalists are gravitating towards the camcorders.
I don't use a Canon 5D Mk II just yet, as so far my body muscle memory still likes the phantom hold for the Camcorder. It's a matter of ergonomics: the way its held, its feel and the assets I get from the camera.
One of the my training partners at the Press Association who has one says it's more geared towards the doc because of difficulties in pulling focus.
That's an issue whose pros have been sold to outweigh the cons. You try filming on the fly with a 50mm lens at 1.2 - great shallow depths but difficult to control on the fly, unless you push your f-stop higher and shoot deep-focus, but even then.
Hollywood had an answer for these, the focus puller.
A couple of years back a Sony exec was adamant that the small cameras would never feature interchangeable lens. I'll post that vid as well when I locate it.
Well, my guess though is that there's a real fight erupting behind the scenes and it will only be a matter of time before the small DVcams make way for lens changes.
Otherwise video cameras may well lose the intiative in much the same way Hoover did to the Dyson.
And that will be exciting. At the moment I work with an adaptor on my JVC GY100 with a prime lens, which gives me OK enough quality, (though better than the vx1000) but no where near the same picture size as the pro cameras I used.
That said if you are a videojournalist, I'm pretty much camera agnostic. But if you can, I do recommend getting your hands on a pro camera and getting the feel and sense of what it does, which will let you appreciate more where you are with the small accessible gear.
"This is to confirm that I have known David Dunkley Gyimah for 10 years as a journalist of exceptional talent and innovation and I would have no hesitation in recommending him. .....He regular pitches ideas, several of which have developed into interesting and watchable news stories. David is not only a creative talent but is a team player who puts his shoulder to the wheel when required". Guy Kerr, Managing Editor Channel 4 News, 2002 More of reference here
Seems I had something in television. I'll call it over exuberance. However refluxing an earlier post last year on pitching, with everybody a video maker, the art of pitching will increasingly play a vital role in earning a living.
Pitching to who? Well, given the number of platforms aggregating video in an agency-brokerage format, it could be any number of outlets, not necessarily traditional broadcasters.
So here goes. I'm basing this post on my experience in broadcasting from when I first joined the BBC in 1997 , 1987 but more specifically at Channel 4 News and BBC WS where I regularly freelanced.
Firstly it has to be said pitching an idea can't be divorced from the you.
At a visit to the stock market in the late 80s, when considering a career in the city, we were asked to trade imaginary stocks. We almost all failed: "too cautious" was the Managing Directors advice. There's a reason we go for East End boys, he said to our bewilderment.
The Pitch is the message, how you tell it determines whether you'll get the sale or not.
Hollywood vernacular has refined this process: Taken: it's Bourne-like. This short hand instills the appropriate message.
For the doc/feature maker, pitching to commissioners, it can be a long arduous round of meetings and is often not separated from whether you're:
part of the club
have a history of programme making.
Otherwise in the pitching exercise we undertake it follows protocols and outcomes you're likely to encounter in commissioning circles.
A rough idea of pitching 1. If you've sent in a one pager about your idea. Stick to that idea, adding a little bit more detail, but DO NOT deviate from your initial idea.
2. If you've submitted an idea; refine it, refine it and refine again. ( practice your elevator pitch. If after 10 seconds your commissioner is lost, you're climbing a slippery mountain. Cut out the waffle
3. Your commissioner wants a story that is populist, but with its own unique subjects/angle, say updated for modern times. Think audience and where it will show in broadcast channel terms.
4. In all likelihood the idea you're pitching will have been done before in some way. PLEASE research the net. Don't think you're the first person doing something on drug addiction.
5. Get to the point: who your central character or characters are; why its interesting; where the conflict is (though don't use the word conflict) and how it might get resolved.
6. Convince the person why you can make it. If you've never done espionage in your life. DO NOT pitch about tracking criminal gangs. Firstly you don't have the contacts. Secondly for your safety we'd never allow.
7. Dress for it. Look the part.
8. Have all your papers prepped. One for you and how many others for commissioners. DO NOT say, "Oh I thought I sent you one already". Commissioners trade lots of papers, and may have lost yours. So coming in with a new batch gets them of the hook and shows you're prepared.
9. Leave time for questions and have some idea what they will be.
Pitcher: I'm looking at prostitution........ Commissioner: so where will you find these prostitutes
10. Know the ecosystem of the idea e.g. Prostitution - social.. The society against prostitution. ..and some of the obvious research. Have you looked up the national stats office on this?
And finally, testing on a critical friend: Pitch to a friend under near conditions and ask for harsh feedback.
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From an earlier post in 1999
There's a scene in Black Hawk Down where a nerdy Ewan Macgregor's character explains to a bewildered superior about how the taste of coffee is all in the grind. He's not wrong!
But it had me thinking at the art of story telling Videojournalism, or otherwise and that it's all in the pitch.
As the number of videojournalists explodes, they'll come a time when just as a features editor may commission a writer, it's likely they'll set out their stall for videojournalists to offer stories.
Channel 4's news film fund already does that, not discriminating against full crews or Videojournalists, in so far as the story is right.
And you don't get to the story, without the pitch.
Last week I had the task of listening and reviewing 24 of our Masters students. A post is not the forum to discuss how they fared, but they will know the emphasis we place on this.
Pitching is an art form, and differs across genres, but the basic principle is the same.
In roughly 10 seconds you're going to tell a story that's going to light your listener's fire. In 10 seconds you're going to paint a vivid picture of what could be. In 10 seconds you're going to create an illusion powerful enough for your listener to buy more time from you.
In fact such is the art of pitching, that I have considered it a chapter in a forthcoming book for a US publisher which is gradually taking shape.
There are two yardsticks that measure the value of a pitch. What is it? And why should I care?
In other words, if you're planning on going for an interview for a media job, chances are you've listened to your potential employer's output and found something to offer that suits their style.
Furthermore, it's got to be a story, which in all likelihood your listener has either not heard before, or you have a unique way of saying it.
Remember it's a pitch, not an exposition of your ability to hold and dispense of a great deal of facts.
And all great stories involve a person or persons you have or will get access to rather than a big themed issue.
And if you're really up to speed you'll spend endless hours sometimes rehearsing it. TV is all about creative ideas and those that know how to speak in that mimetic fashion of experienced pitchers have a career ahead of them.
Summer has officially arrived in the UK. There are birds chattering away as if they'd just awoken.
A makeshift team of footballers bludgeon each other on the pitch that underlooks where I live.
And then as only the Brits would do the sun worshippers are out in force.
Me, I'm stuck in my office devising a book chapter, new research and questionnaires I need to send out, and thinking about any number of presentations I need to produce in the next couple of weeks.
But the real revelation this Saturday is my new toy. In fact it's nothing of the sort.
For the post you are reading is being written without me touching a type pad. After weeks of searching, I have finally come by the device that will make my workload easier.
It's called dictate a voice-to-text system in which as I roam around my room speaking on a wireless mike it translates what you're reading.
Saving Time
To say this has cut down on the enormous amount of time it would have taken me to write, sullen by the lack of motivation hopping from one thing to another is an understatement.
In fact I'm beginning to think why anyone should want to type copious notes documents or e-mails ever again.
Occasionally the programme gets a wrong it wrong. And I have to issue a command for it to delete the word.
But most of the time it's a mixture of surreal meets wonderment as I watch the words unfold on the screen. Text-to-speech program have come a long way.
The big difference is you have to learn how to speak in the written form, as well as in intelligible sentences, rather than streams of consciousness.
Relearning how to Speak.
In many ways I'm relying on the previous skill as an on-screen reporter when I only had a couple of minutes to devise a stand-up or piece to camera.
Apart from that I found what helps is to surround myself with things that prompt me to write in a particular way.
That said, I still have to go back on this, proof, re think like a writer, and insert paragraph breaks and collect correct the odd spelling.
But that's nothing compared to my aching fingers after a marathon write.
It's taken me as long to write this as I have spoken it and as I look outside its as if time has stood still; the footballers are still there, as are sun seekers and the birds are still giving it wellie.
To a videojournalist, the title of this post sounds absurd; videojournalism has gone past stirring, it is a full force in the armament of journalism, but I'd say it still is a neologism.
You can test this theory by walking out onto the street and asking the next three people what they think of videojournalists? Then ask the same question about television journalists.
One group needs little explanation.
So it was that yesterday, one of the UK's most foreword thinking journalism think tanks, The Front Line Club planted a huge step in the sand for videojournalism - an era is awaiting to stir.
The Front Line for my US friends, in many ways, reminds me of the time I was sitting in the National Press Club in Washington DC equally in awe of its surroundings.
David reporting from the Batten Awards, National Press Club, Washington DC. Here for report
Many attributes may separate Front Line and the the deeply revered National Press Club: time in business, patronage of presidents or prime ministers that have graced the club, even prestige some might say, alarmed anyone dare compare anything to the US' august institution.
But to those that know the brand "Front Line " and it's not the comparisons per se I seek to draw attention to but the intent, this truly is something to deeply admire.
Praverna and Vaughan Smith (founder), backed by a pro media/events team, have built a club with a unstinting steadfastness to independent journalism.
Among its many strengths, one of them is its ability to walk the dichotomous thick grey line between traditional and contemporary journalism with aplomb.
Yesterday it demonstrated that drawing a crowd of 50 or so from a 100 people (almost the event's room limit) who'd expressed an interest to to engage in the new new thing videojournalism.
The Front Line Club's videojournalism era
There's a lot I could talk about from the night, not least the films that were shown and short talks. For that attendees should doff their hat to organiser Patrick Smith
Producer and director Daniel Bogado previewed a documentary on neighbourhood police and gangs in South Africa, made with David Matthews, commissioned by Current TV (UK).
It was an extraordinary clip of a drug dealer justifying why, having emerged from prison with no job provided for him by the government, he had very right to to sell drugs on the street.
For original cinematography, freelance film-maker Cameron Robertson, who regularly contributes to Guardian.co.uk showed how mounting a camera on a nightclub bouncer gives a strong unmediated point- of-view filming. More please.
Vaughan provided the opening, accompanied with a short talk about his time spent in Afghanistan, and how having slipped his minder, he came away with a number of films that bring you, the viewer, Cappaesque closer to the action.
With each round that whizzed by, I could hear myself swearing. Vaughan, no stranger to that course of journalism, few dare to tread, was now telling us in his own words and voice, what it was like on the front line.
This was unheard off. I know that well because as a freelance producer/videojournalist at Channel 4 News, my film I made from South Africa was reedited using Stephen Smith ( now at Newsnight) as the narrator
The message for us attending and you, a videojournalist, was in spite of our differences and own motives, the Front Line Club could and would serve as an agency to push the ideals of independent, freelance videojournalism.
It's an act we should welcome and enact upon with passionate embracing arms.
Videojournalism - a different film
David elected to a show a film from his site viewmagazine.tv that addresses evolving areas that mashup interdisciplines, yet still constitute videojournalism.
I showed a short film as well. Thank you to the many people who said they liked it and excuse my ruse for showing, joking about my fraudulent motives: the opportunity to research the work of other videojournalists as part of my PhD.
But the key moment for me, and I'll cherish it was when a gentleman in the audience after the showing said "he didn't understand it (the short)".
I further explained to him later, from an earlier qualification that the film's context played as part of an event at the Southbank made for a cinema screen. I'm not sure he was anymore convinced but I was thankful for the question.
Undoubtedly not everyone will agree with what you, we, do, but the challenge is to attempt to help people understand. Not always, as it's your prerogative, and some people are beyond negotiating. I'm not saying this was the point here.
But we are entering a bottleneck phase.
Think about it. 15 years ago, a few people said the web would one day change the way we do business. I know that much as this rare video from 1995 illustrates, which I intro.
10 years ago, a burgeoning web log said as much. The professional journalists harrumphed.
5 years ago, video and social networks made a bold claim.
Videojournalism is but one in this long list which awaits its day.
End David Dunkley Gyimah has been a journalist since 1986 working for the BBC (Newsnight), Channel 4 News and ABC News ( South Africa) and is now an academic
