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

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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.

What Dorothea Lange's Photojournalism could teach videojournalism

Migrant Mother- Dorothea Lange - from Wikipedia Creative Commons

To any photojournalist worth their salt this iconic image should be part of their long term memory.

To any visualists (videojournalist, multimediast) this photo has never been more relevant, with regards to an era of digitlization which is drawn to immanence - the now.

To anyone watching Egypt unfurl; angst and angry crowds in the streets, this photo is telling us something profound, which goes beyond the non-nutritious commentary provided by international broadcasters from the region.

I watched a network television reports from Cairo thinking, how caught off guard, fly-in journalism had become the de facto informant. Where once it may have worked, dropping-in reportage can only but provide information based on one's immediate perception, yielding pros and cons.
 

The documentarists
"Migrant Mother" - the story of California's migrant pea-pickers during the austere, depressed period of the US in the 30s, showed how its author Dorothea Lange would capture that of news value yet also provide context to the news at large, The Great Depression.

There were others, who loosely or as part of the RA, the Resettlement Administration, documented across the US what may have been known, but not seen.

They included Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White and Roy E Stryker who was charged with heading up the RA and coined the aphorism:

“documentary is an approach, not a technic, an affirmation, not a negation".

They pioneered the photo essay, and gave depth to the evolving form of documentary-photojournalism.

From the work of these figures came the likes of March of Time, US Newsreel par excellence; it was like no other newsreel in its documentary approach, as such calling itself a new form of journalism, and  then there was Pare Lorentz, The Plough that Broke the Plains (film clip)


Seeking new methodologies

What is videojournalism? A gathering of videojournalism professionals at the BFI photo by attendee Don Omope

Two days ago, a group of like minded film makers, onliners, creatives et al  gathered at the British Film Institute ( BFI). Parralleling meetings over the years; in the 1950s the gathering sought answers to Free Cinema; what is it and how does it work.

Well, this group's common cause was videojournalism.  The questions the group asked in many ways  put Lange's photos into perspective.

Mark, a BBC videojournalism trainers asked: "What's different now? What has videojournalism added to the body politik of news and content that hasn't been done already. [1more on that event in another post].

In Cairo, over the next few days, and for the past few, we've had TV Networks reacting to events, attempting to explain them; generalisations,  and the ocassional hyperbole.

What we need is Dororthea with her digital film camera, whom behind the headlines would give us context; not for what she solely thinks ( after all she's choosing the shots) but what she can make us think by within context.

The notion of if it bleeds it leads is still a strong draw in news; after all it invariably involves an event which pulls on the curiosity of our voyerustic-rubber necking nature.

The event has bystanders asking each other, what happened, with each shrugging until we stumble upon that person, untrained in observations ( aren't we all?) who saw something and attempts to interpret it.


Going beyond the obvious 

In subsequent broadcasts, the comments will fly again, we might even be afforded a background piece, strung together or is that shaped to provide knowledge of the now, but even that in sociological terms is flawed.

In a day and era where cameras are cheaper, we should and could be doing more to inform; and no doubt somewhere on YouTube lay those videos: on the web is the blog and Flikr, but what really of videojournalism?

Temporal time perhaps is the Achilles, but it isn't solely the cause. 

For the pro-reporter there is much to be hopeful about, if we can surpass our instinct to fall on the tried and tested methods e.g. give em dramatic shots of streets burning, that'll bring in the audience. Yes, but it's half the story.

In the last three years I have had the opportunity of working with a new generation of videojournalists in Cairo. I was last there in December 2010 and was able to see the fruits of the videojournalists' endeavors. For the first time they were sourcing new stories - naturalism or realism stories.

• The vendor selling kebabs
• The woman eking a living selling cheese
• The souvenir makers who fuel the tourism industry
• The struggling actor wanting to emigrate

These stories gave context to understand complexities.

I likened it to my first visit to South Africa, where through the fighting spirit of one amazing BBC producer I was allowed to make the radio documentary, First Time Voters.

It involved documenting four young black South Africans about to vote in their first election who over 40 minutes educated me and hopefully other listeners about their country.

Context doesn't have to be a matter of obsfucation, at least that's why reporters are paid to do their job, but neither can it rest on the default reacting to unfolding events in which 2 minutes will suffice.

It requires going beyond the news. That's what Dororthea did, that's what videojournalism can do ( Michael Rosenblum tells his strory about his work from Gaza in the 80s and how he helped inform one of the major US TV Networks).

But to the question Mark from the BBC poses, that too needs sorting: What can videojournalism do in programming context, content and aesthetics that hasn't been done yet?

The group hopefully will meet again soon to figure out.

A brief history of Videojournalism - redux

A brief visual history of videojournalism from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

We meet on Thursday. We're trying something new. Practitioners and academics, theorists and the practiced based, the realists and neo-realists.

This vision language can be learnt, but it involves a range of cross-disciplines, which many of us have begged, stolen or borrowed from previous jobs.  In itself videojournalism is difficult to qualify, but then depends what your definition is.

I drew a circle for my Masters students. Inside I placed docs, motion graphics, videoslides, video art and then rather ostentatiously drew a videojournalism wrapper around it. To justify this I then set about arguing a definition for "journalism".

So to a visual journey of Videojournalism, here's to the BBC's reportage, working with newspapers in places such as Beirut, Channel One TV, Channel 4, BBC World Service Radio and to the many times we've all tried something and it hasn't worked.

Videojournalism United - an anglocentric POV

And so for a good while these men: artists, politicians etc who shared a common passion of painting, would keep each other company at a local diner opened all hours called the Andler Keller.

It might have stayed inconspicuous, as with the many other bars  in Paris, except that it soon came to be known as the Temple of Realism, where some pretty nifty ideas were cooked up in between the truffles of course. Of course.

We have much to be thankful to the group, for without them the idea of capturing ordinary people (realism) on camera may have been delayed or perhaps not have happened at all.

Granted it's the 1850s and the movie camera has not yet been invented, but there's a strong argument to propose as Bazin does that cinema had already arrived and artists, cine-philes were looking for new subjects, fresh material and techniques.

Today this scene plays out in many an area e.g. local school, church and yes the local diner where groups of like-minded people meet and thrash out ideas and next week we'll do the same. Temple of Realism this is not, but we have an idea nonetheless.

Working with the David Hayward from the BBC Journalism college and Paul Egglestone from UCLAN, we're curating a gathering of some of the UK's leading videojournaists at the BFI. Some pretty impressive talent have agreed to attend from international film makers such as Claudio Von Planta to well know videojournalists who make films for Channel 4 and BBC.

The first session seeks to define the form, not as simplistic iteration of the status quo, but what it means, its potential and where it's going. IPad watch out. 

I'm hoping we'll use an artistic practice called Creative fight club to capture and record the outpu which will become a piece of art in itself.  More on that soon.

But this evening I also popped over to the Apple store in London. Apple have been really supportive in the past and speaking to their theatre manager I may be back there to give a fuller account of what we're up to.

I'll keep you posted.

Deconstructing RTS Prelude blog

Continuing the conversation, Mike kindly left a short message on the last post about The RTS - best of the best prelude blog.

MikE: Really struggling to understand any of this. Perhaps I'm thick. 

I have wrote this below in response.


Hi Mike

Sorry bout that; I'm forever struggling through Lacan, Husserl and the rest and though you're using ( my assumption) the term "thick" self-referentially, I'm guessing there are subjects you're passionate about that no doubt I could easily struggle to follow.

If I hear another deconstruction of Inception as psychoanalyss, I'll lose it.

But I hope this below helps

Cinema is said to be built on how you're affected by what you see, feel, hear. News is about delivering information ( a talking head would do).

Cinema is about fiction. News is about fact, or the expression factvity.

Cinema needs drama (dramaturgical), fictional drama; News needs drama ( factual) to interest us.

Cinema craves something being real for you to suspend belief, even though its isn't; news/docs need their subject to be real, even though frankly in constructing the events, its the author who's producing for you their events as real.

e.g. When broadcasters tell us a helicopter straffed insurgents, we see the video and believe it to be real. Then Wikileaks reveals tape with onboard dialogue and says this is real Chopper staffing journos .... (this is just one of many examples)

What's happening is we're building firmer bridges between fact and fiction modes. BBC Radio 4 Presenter Ed Stourton said of the Gulf war, the danger was cameramen/producers looking to shoot scenes such as the chopper against the sun, like Apocalypse Now made the film look like cinema.

I think he meant the journalism was being trivalised. What's really happening today is the cine-mode has come full force. Question is can we the audience distinguish the two. Certainly, photography has achieved this distinction.

As a journalist first before becoming an academic, I used to rile against words such as "Verisimilitude" or say "Hacceity", but I have come round to seeing how specific arguments around content require a use of word or construct that is highly appropriate.

Oddly enough I now find myself using Ashanti words ( my parents' mother tongue) to express something. Nothing new there, we Brits have done that with the french language or German: "Ouvre" or "Zeitgeist".

The thing I guess is to write for the audience, or is it. I'll go through days when its free-form, then as someone put it Pseud-corner.

If you've got some time on your hands grab
Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives and Practices
Thomas Austin. Includes an interesting chapter from Bill Niichols on realism.

It's a fab book for making film makers re-think that we've taken taken for granted. Then something on Realism e.g. Art- the definitive visual guide.

RTS Award Prelude- juror for best of the best in journalism

RTS Judging package arrives with DVD

Nestled between CS5 and code hints and introductions to polysemic documentary making,  I can see on my diary, RTS awards.

[Read here for response to Mike looking for further explaination  of RTS Award Prelude]

This will be the third year running I have been invited to sit with a panel of experts to adjudicate which UK TV or newspaper takes the Innovation award for Journalism.

Two years ago, it was for me unequivocal: 10 Days to War by BBC Newsnight - an impressive dramatisation of the lead up to the Iraq war involving what looked in the end- a hand in glove fit between documentary mode and drama (fiction).

The programme didn't have it its own way. A rigorous vote ensured from a shortlist, which itself proceeded arguments for and against contenders.

Sitting down to Judge the awards. In shot Toby Castle ( ITN), Nigel Baker (Chair) APTN,  Iain Dale, Deborah Gorbutt (APTN), Martin Turner (BBC)

What got me thinking was how the concept flagged up the notions of embedded videojournalism. That wasn't the casting vote, for by itself 10 Days was an imaginative piece that tackled a subject which wrestles the collective conscious.

It was a sort of Green Zone - Dir. Paul Greengrass, but more newspaper journalism than novel-cinema.

Its relevance can't be over emphasised enough. What really happened and why the world (a US-axis with Europe et al) went to war is still as contentious then as it is now. The programme should be made available for all secondary schools to study.

I pondered though, what if programme makers got videojournalists into these pivotal events?  In  cases, some of the scenes were predictable according to the press. Almost any follower of the build up would have known from the media that Colonel Tim Collins would be delivering a rousing speech.



"You tread lightly there. You'll have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people  than the Iraqis. You'll be embarrassed by the hospitality they offer you even though they have nothing. Do not treat them as refugees in their own country".

The above from the loquacious Shakespearean actor, more recently the director of Thor, Kenneth Branagh, underscores the paradoxes of war.

Two years later, I caught up with the figure behind the series. Peter Barron, an old acquaintance from my Newsnight days in 1991, who also hired me to work on Channel 4 News from 1997-2001 and is now a senior executive at Google. Peter reflected on the programme.

"It was bold", I said, "What of fact-fiction storytelling?"

It came with huge risks and must be treated with due care, he cautioned.

Last year that latent thought materialised in the shape of photojournalist and self-taught cineist  Danfung Dennis  Battle of Hearts and Mind. ( Please note there's swearing and some scenes could be considered not appropriate for youngsters)




Here was a film that had the affectiveness of cinema wrapped around factivity. Zeitegiest! I interviewed Danfung - an incredibly humble and self-effacing person at the Southbank Centre - as part of a programme for my artist in residency.

Danfung had thrown film form's vividness into a dramaturgical cauldron wrestling verisimilitude . 

By that I mean the notion now of what's real in cine-mode, resurecting debates around neo-realism, and dramatic constructs of  Honore' de Balzac or more recently epic realism of Brecht.

[Added notes next day to clarify: the cinema mode is not just the screen look e.g. Shallow depth of field, but founded on several principles refined since cinema began. Video as a format has struggled with this, read David Bordwell]

Show the two videos side by side to the screen generation in secondary schools and they'll be hard pressed to consider Danfung's piece as verity outrightly. Is that cinema? it looks real one youngster told me during an exchange with a group talking about modern day filming. 

On the night of the awards, I couldn't make it to black tie do, for I was many miles away in Miami at Wemedia, where thanks to the huge support of Dale and Andrew, its founders I was being treated untold generous hospitality - shortlisted in their game changer award.

A year later and a submission would raise the bar, courting a wee bit of controversy from us jurors. but that's for another story.

.. continues next week
End

David Dunkley Gyimah is midway into PhD study on hyermedia film and is a juror member for RTS 2011 Innovation in News Journalism Awards. He lectures at the University of Westminster and publishes Viewmaagazine.tv where he showcases processes and techniques of the digitalisation of film form e.g. Interviewing with former CIA chief.


 

The medium is the message and instrument

It's that infallible aphorism from Marshal McLuhan.

Marshall interpreted the future at a time when the second wave was yet to come; the first was the 60s, where the likes of Allan Kay, Vannavar Bush, Alan Turing, where either establishing themselves or had done so.

Theirs was the processing revolution; the onset of miniturisation - diodes and valves becoming antiquated, combustion engines enough to fly a man to the moon

It was a fertile period for the development of TV too; hence his saying. It came at a time of pending transition from film to ENG, accompanied by a change in social philosophy.  

The riots of Paris 68 crystalised self-expression, individualism. Euro Cinema was mounting a fight back.

The 1960s was truly big sociological lab.

Today, the epistomology is along the lines of digitalisation, interactivity, hyper-management. The medium may still be the message but it has acquired new purpose. It has become the instrument.

TV's medium shapes an aesthetic and semiotic which to that extent fixes what we say and hear. The Net does otherwise- a rebounding echo; symetrical, multiple pronged.

Is it any wonder we're unsure of its thingyness - or to give it its academic term hacceity has no fixed form. Everyone's a producer and consuler. If TV and video was the medium with corresponding message, in the digital realm of video, it's become the medium that is expressive, malleable, hyperised.

You can take a video of a dog; it's barking, happy - the message is clear and unambigious, but with the subteltly of art, a faster camera, a wide lens, a melancholic sound track, the message changes. The video has become an instrument to extract different emotions.

Curiously, its the reason why video, news, cannot be neutral, that realism is always questionanble, because of the subjective involvement of the author.

I wonder today what McLuhan would have made of it all.

Intentionality - videojournalism alt-directness

If thoughts are the pathway to impulses: you think and so you do, why don't we give "thoughts" a hierarchy in news filming?

We do in literary journalism: Minister what did you think? Yet so far we fail to give it enough precedence in non-fictional filming.

Our thoughts; the subconscious are unsecured, unguarded and if anything giving it prominence in filmic narratology may open us up to not just thought, but intent, which is convictable.

Man: Yes I was going to murder him ( film shows how)

In the plastic arts, such pathways are encouraged; they're the stuff of flashbacks, entertainment par excellence as in Minority Report or Dream Sequences: Jacobs Ladder and last year's mind bender Inception.  Mental content directed was the basis of Intentionality by Husserl.


Memories from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
This video references the past, but not just as literal recordings of events ie news, but an essay, reflexive thoughts, that could be the basis of non-fictional interaction.

In non-fictional, the canon of "cause and effect" and evidentiary purpose leaves "thought" still a figment.

Evidence, what you see and hear from an event only acquires the status of fact if it can be tested, both outside the discursive arguments by people of repute. As Bill Nichols puts it: "Facts become evidence when they are taken up in discourse; and that discourse gains the force to compel belief through its capacity to refer evidence to a domain itself"

Policeman: Tell me who saw you thinking this?

Doesn't quite work, does it and only in films do subjects interact with each other in the same plane.  What makes Nolan's Inception all the more fascinating is the shared consciousness - call it social networking dreaming.  Coming to a screen near you. Stick that up your bonny clyde!!

This is all dandy so far, but can it, does it have a legitimacy in non fictional filming? As an emerging currency for videohyperlinking and spatial videojournalism, why yes! The DVD extra now becomes part of the body politik.

This is the emergence of spatial cinema post "24", as captured elegantly by Inception, repurposed not just within the screen but the narrative. See the cube on viewmagazine.tv

Though limiting at the moment; it was an expression, more than the finished product, it relays screen based frame watching, with a leaning to vid- hyperlinking ( see article that features David's thoughts in The Economist)  and hyper narratives.

And in a world of varying truths, re: wikileaks, what we thought was true and now realise what is and isn't require a bit more than reflexive paragraphs.

We might not give it much exposure now, as we're still locked into a mimetic language of films of record - point and shoot, but as we become more video narrative literate, we'll begin to borrow more from fictional-film.

The power of thought materialised really means " you mustn't be afraid of thinking a little bigger, darling".

Media innovation in the UK

For the last three years I have been a juror in the UK's highest awards for television journalism, the RTS.  

As I get ready to provide my critique and nominations for the innovation award, I will be looking to reflect on how the last three years square up between what TV has been up to and how outthere compares.

I think it'll make for an interesting exercise talking about some of the issues that I feel I can talk about which frames how and what constitutes innovatory TV work.

Fab. Robot pop video on Canon 5D

This is a video involving Ryan Jackson as DOP, shot on the Canon 5D Mark-I

I met Ryan about three years ago when I was giving videojournalism seminars in the US ( Chicago etc). He'd signed up and produced in a couple of days a nice vid, though that's nothing in comparison to what he's doing now.

Enjoy this and then ping over to his website where he breaks down the whole process - story board and all

The Cathedral and Visualist, and Videojournalist

For a moment discard all labels: video maker, videojournalist, VJ, Solo VJ, Videographer and the rest and imagine as you would the following.

You're faced with a scene: an event such as a man running down the street being pursued by another man, wearing a uniform. You watch, observe, unpicking the scene, taking in scraps of information, though that's not how it seems to you.

To you, you're witnessing a major scene and as either a journalist or blogger possess the skills to relay that in text. It reads well, it's real; you're a natural. A man is being purused by a policeman. Why?

Unbeknown to you, you're doing something remarkable aided by your senses, your sensory perception to be precise: eyes, ears, smell, even the breeze of air are being interpellated and interpreted by you.

Unconsciously you're going about a task, not that unfamiliar, for which you possess the ability to make some sense of.

A new scene
Imagine now the scene was a riot. If you're unfamiliar with such surroundings, you may feel intimidated, unsure. You're capacity to witness is heightened, though you may be fixated on particular scenes. The man yelling at the police etc.

You're subconsciously imbibing the scene again, based on differences in the texture, complexity, difference in what would be the norm of the scene. The hundreds of people looking on are not so as interesting as that man yelling at the police.

Then you remember you have a camera in your bag. You take it out and commence to shoot. There's a problem because the settings of the camera aren't giving you an account of what you see unaided.

By now you're spending considerable time on the camera. The world's still turning and for seconds and minutes your attention has been procured elsewhere.

Then the camera works, You begin to record. What you saw with your eyes is being recorded by an instrument; an instrument which intelligently makes a record of what you see, but cannot interpret the events for you.

The camera has yet to become your haptic device - an extension of your arm; the equivalent of the game console for the gamer.

When you play the recordings to a friend, he or she will be relying on connecting the dots in a manner they see fit.

What you didn't see.
But remember when you were filming, the woman standing three metres away crying. To your left 100m a phalanx of youth are storming a building. All around you something is happening; some more engaging than others.

Very little of that is recorded on your device. The youth who shoved the policeman man to the ground did it with a force that had the policeman laying postrate.

You got that on camera, but some how the venom of the shove is less than it appeared in real life. The dazzling of the lights and fuse of colours diffused.

What then if at the point of impact you were in a position to capture that event with the camera compensating for its lack of intelligibility.

In other words laying lower that the two figures you capture the arm foregrounded, huge on the screen and then the shove.  What then you might think would that look like if it were a macro lens magnifying that push?

The account I have just given plays off a logic for consciousness provided by Husserl which I have adapted for my own ends.


A new unconscious understanding

What the eye sees

Imagine for one moment that your ability to interpret events live, not hindered by a camera, but aided by it. That the ecosystem of the event, not just the panoramic, but the detective's gaze a perceptive figure who reads crime scenes,  was your visual palette.

That your skill at recording unfurled a narrative of questions and answers, but always with enquiry.
That so unconscious are you of events that you captured scenes that in playback surprise you.

The camera has become your eyes. Impulses lead you to film the event, but also frame along the axis of N.E.S.W. ( North. East. South. West. South - NEWS) and then the i-component.

The cathedral that embraces a true account of that event is an unobtainable one, but you, skilled unconsciously at bridging and welding the literary, with sound and video-sight, yield an account of the scene which is emotive.

Unlike the mere physical or mechanical recording of this scene you have delivered an interpretation true to your principles of wanting to tell the truth.

The result is your film: a collocation of reality in life and on your website.

This thing you do is but a strand of your malleability, because the timing and texture of a riot is diadactically different from comedy or the country side - other areas of interest.

Think for a moment if you had a name for this. Videojournalism might do, but its tainted; it appears limiting to others when you try to explain this church to them.

Then you remember from readings of plato that our comprehension and beliefs because they are in perpetual change, at least in liberal societies, that conclusions are not finite.

Every new enquiry which is legitimate opens up discussions to tweak or radically change our positions.

For the moment then videojournalism will do. You are a videojournalist.

And you can tell us why. This is the growing church of the visual- narrative story teller.

NB Remember your answers to questions are not based on experience alone, but by causal links that are stregthened by rigorous defence. However the more widespread your experience, the more sharing and participation you've been involved in, the more your perceptions and beliefs are changeable. Nothing as they say is finite - even death is contested, religions tell us 

Here for what makes a good reporter
Many students have now graduated, some have found jobs, others will join an unofficial club reeling of letters and CVs.

Having been on both sides both in the media; I still have all my BBC rejection letters and then got into a position to recommend others for broadcasters and newspapers. Now, I'd like to share some of my thoughts. More here.

David Dunkley Gyimah is completing a PhD combining experential learning as a practising videojournalist over 16 years and broadcast professional from 1987. You can more about his work and commissions from viewmagazine.tv

2011 winners & losers - Mashable.com

End of year, popular tech blog Mashable.com's ceo Pete Cashmore rounds up winners and losers
Up - Facebook, IPad, Market apps e.g. Flipboard and tumblr, google
Down - Diaspora, Chrome, Rockmelt
?? Playbook - for Blackberry