The Osmond's revival missed opportunity

Ah well, so the Osmonds are on Jonathan Ross next week. And there I could have interviewed them last week, but was caught up marking. Where's my priority eh? LOL

Stand ups/Piece to Camera - VJ /Vlogger Reporting style overkill

Look mum no camera operator, David reports from the Champ Elysee, France as a video journalist

Can I migrate this stuff over to word press? Do I have the time?

Just one of those odd thoughts lingering as I put the final touches to my slide presentation to WAN, which they need in advance for printing.

If you manage a video journalism set up, this might just interest you.

I have dug out a memo from our managing director back then, Nick Pollard, who would later head up the news at sky news, and he made a huge radical change to our work flow which brought the creativity back to what we do.

But that's for another post.

Last week I had the chance to view some of the work coming out a national publication - part of research - and one of those hoary elements of reportage cropped up and just wouldn't go away.

Their reporter doing a piece on Casinos had done about 20 stand up/ piece to camera takes and still couldn't get it right.

I'm not certain which one's more painful, trying to execute a stand up with a crew, where your failures are on show, or as a video journalists, where everyone rubber necks and some hang around long enough to put you off.

This brings back memories of the image at the top.

I was reporting from France, a report for which I was selling to Channel 4 whom I freelance for.

It's about 1998, but I recall standing in the middle of the Champs Elysee doing a whole series of stand ups; not the same ones I'll add.

I'd had some good training whilst working at BBC Reportage years earlier.

The editor had coached me how I should approach the camera: tunnel vision, look straight down the lens.

David reporting for ITV's London Tonight

Tips for vloggers/video journalists and young reporters


Reportage - Music Festivals - ITV's London Tonihjt from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

As a reporter you also picked up other tips; none more useful than "keep it simple".

If you're going to do a piece to camera

tip #1 Keep it short not more than three thoughts, unless you consider yourself an actor doing lines.

tip #2 If you are going long and want large sections on camera then consider what actors and psychologists call active experiencing to get through or get yourself a cheap autocue.

tip #3 If you are doing short one use the beginning of each sentence as a marker to start you off.

tip #4 Keep it conversational - simple words - the spoken word rather than written one.

tip #5 Report for your audience rather than other reporters. Reporters tend to spend inordinate amounts of time often trying to be impressive for their showreels, which should earn them their next job.

Indeed many Vjs etc don't do stand ups at all. Hey it's a dirty game and there's nothing worse says Scott Rensberger than doing s atand up after sweating through a report.

Oddly enough many that don't do stand ups remark that's sooo television forgetting that when you remove the postering, side on stance and the steely smirk, a stand up/piece to camera serves many functions.

It brands you, says you were there and can often be used as a bridge when there's a dearth of video to fill in, as in court reports.

In the ever increasingly busy broadband world of narrow casting, the stand up/ vlog/ piece to camera will never be as invaluable as now.

Of course back in the days, using beta cameras we had to perfect the task of focusing on say a piece of chewing gum on the floor and then estimating our height before pressing record and standing in front of the camera - on your own.

Videojournalism stills from Camp VJ

Promo gallery - still images from the A1 Sony from Chicago Camp Videojournalism
music by Nancy Ginindza and Paolo Lucci

Duncan Whiteman Returns

The last time we spoke I cut a trailer which i'm yet to deliver to him with a site I built. But things are hotting up for Duncan.

Duncan who?

i wager you'll not be saying that in about two years time, if development, research and funding gets underway.

Thr clue is this: a system that makes all other programme making redundant. I'm on an NDA here and that's all I can say.

When robots run the news

Did it worry the CEO of Publishing Zeal that robots now controlled the news? Did it worry the millions of hooked up webbers that their lives we're being controlled by algorithims? Did the last major news company to throw in the towel reflect on the glorious days of old?

"Hey bill we ran that ****ing hegemony for a damn good while"
"Yeah we did Jim. Yes we did".

Various government's have now instituted laws requiring we pay for hyper-noise pollution, as the air screeches of high pitch auto bots sampling data at trillions per seconds to filter, disseminate and posit "the news" onto nano-receptors you can get sown implanted into your cochlea.

Computer screens are flat radiating light without any discernible way of functioning by today's standards.

So what happened in 2011 - a big fight that's what. One controllng system ( media of old) had finally relented to a new controlling system ( everyone else who passed info). Blogging passed off into the web 2.0 lexicon replaced by something else.

When something becomes so natural, so commonplace it ceases to have a zeitgeist name that, actually sounded so clumsy and wierd on reflection that it's any wonder the sex industry didn't invent it.

So the media of old wanted to get even, because the new contollers by spit and polish had effected a coup de tat - thrown them of their perches.

But the fact is how do we trust one new system from anothe?. Just because you whizz into the upper echelons of Technorati and Xanaysia does not neccesarily mean what's being passed around is any more news worthy than today.

Britney spears still draws huge hits even when there's mass destruction elsewhere.

No, intelligent bots, a re-incarnated max headroom; a combination of wierd maths-science by affiliations and associations. Some super bloggers who discovered they had power had no guilt abusing that.

'Pay me and I'll tell your news".

Others became the 6th estate, twittering and chironing so fast, a move on from twittering, that they became demi-gods.

But the new robots had a plan, intelligent software oscilloscoped news' patternining and determined via its make up and content a quality threshold. Favoured string bits would reassemble into other videos via deep links. The mediocre became the best of the best.

It's the equivalent of an agency package e.g APTN, sent to a broadcaster in which 3/4 of the content is derived from various sources. Now robots automatically run the show and the people controlling the robots - siblings from the newsmakers of old.

They, the old guard lost generation 2010, but were not going to go quietly, so a summit, a secret gathering in 2009 yielded "sarah". Their charges took stock. Video and text with it's own wierd alogorithm morphed to cater for your tastes.

Everyone wanted it because it gave you the exact fix you wanted. It was like putting pop corn in the microwave and seeing a steak when it pinged.

When robots run the news, a consequence of the media of old wanting the limelight again, everything costs.

Net neutrality is a pipe dream. Soon as you go webside, the clocks ticking; soon as you leap to another network with no prior agreement cuz yer wanted to see Kylie's world of wonder, your credit's being eaten away.

When robots run the news eh! Better put alco-pops down.

Video with journalism, more so now.

What does it take to implement a regular video feed in a newspaper with little or no background in videojournalism, askeed The editors web log ?

The bullet points below, which I'm due to expand upon/modify. If your're going to be at the World Editors Association gathering in Sweden I'll see you then.

A forum has been launched for the gathering, but I'd look forward to meeting just as well.

Preparation

managers and staff must discuss and agree on how they want to use video in their paper. VJ requires neither a complete overturn of internal organization nor a complex (and costly) IT infrastructure.

Don’t venture into VJ if you’re simply aiming to cut costs and because video has been defined as a priority. Doing the opposite will result in a cheap product that turns users away.

Invest in equipment to build an “updated inventory,” as opposed to typical newspaper assets, which are relatively old. These investments don’t have to be extensive. In some cases a video camera and editing software are just what it takes.

Below are Dunkley’s recommendations for equipment, although he insists that any lightweight HD camera, PC and film editing software will do for beginners. Flash Media software is more esthetic than Windows Media Player or Quicktime, but all have the same basic functionality.

More here

The Osmond's revival

Indelibly imprinted on my mind, "I'll be your long head lover from Liverpool"; the track from a bonny Donny Osmond.

Years on I might well have met my unlikely idols.

( Hey it's cool to go retro so, ease up!)

But alas I'm up to my kneck with other bits and pieces, assessment's and Phds and the likes, so I sadly had to decline.

But think about the footage and what I could have done with it. The financial company where the Os are backing a charity, gave carte blanche.

"Revival", now that's a word which we're hearing less and less of - almost unheard of in the newspaper industry.

As I prepare for WAN, and complete my keynote [ that's keynote - apple] on training needs, expanding on themes from Camp Videojournalism I rang a senior industry figure, whose eyes and ears pick up the slightest tremors in the industry's demeanor.


News on paper
Well, there's a 5 percent down turn and it's also looking pretty grim he said. What may be a viable solution is to offshore some of the capital intensive and running work costs.

"Journalist based in the UK, seeks designer and layout in Malaysia" could be the headline. What's apparent he added rather matter-of-fact is that in 10 years time at this rate, the world of newspapers will look anything but.

Though, yes, I still love the smell of papers in the morning, and I still love to instruct students I'm supervising and the rest to layout their creative ideas on A3s, the notion of your news on paper may become an anachronism.

Meanwhile it looks like newspapers have had their fill with video journalism. That is video with journalism as according to my contact many are now revising their online operations in search of something more than traditional video.

There is a world of difference between video journalism and videojournalism, not just semantically but how one is designed for the time-attention poor netizen in mind and the other which er may just about satisfy your craving for information.

The Ning Journalist
Back to newspapers, print may be feeling the pinch but the the Net continues to exert its primacy as a medium for news.

Fancy that. I so remember the chatter from news people that that would never happen. It has and continues, but as I'm likely to mention at WAN the response, let alone level of proactivity from some media companies still looks pretty thin.

If you never considered yourself a Ning Journo or network journalism sounds like train connection written up by a scribe, then you might be in a spot of bother.

"What's the best route for snaring a job?" one Masters grad asked me.

I have no idea, but you do yourself no favours by not getting your head wrapped around mash-ups, word press and building a community".

Crazy times huh. Crazy horses - the latter one of the Osmond's hits. Shame I couldn't get to meet em, cuz I might just have mentioned there's a great site lurking some where beneath there current one.

Turning the corner- the wired journlalist

The "once it was all so simple" talk is redundant really.

For from the seeds of Camp VJs philosophy [ and we just about scratched the surface] is the notion of the ultra wired journalists.

How to mash up, filter, disseminate to, and aggregate shared interests and well as encouraging new participants; it sounds a heady mix, but it's that simple.

I've been thinking through this for eons and it part explains why my career is a series of jumps from one domain to another.

When I aquired my first powerbook in 99, I cut a piece tin which Channel 4's Jon Snow [ I was freelancing there at the time] remarked... "and that's broadcast quality. Wow?

Yep

Over at the Beep, the then head of foreign news showed interest after a meeting, but echoed a much chimed comment" "What exactly do you do?"

Radio, TV, the Net, building web sites, magazines, making commercials and promos, Compression technology, Flash, Director, media policy - all of which I might add now have congealed into my Phd studies.

And there were many many others, whom like me, would get confused looks.

And now?

Still confused looks, that anyone should know more than the prerequesite: what ever that is.

It's changing, changing, get over it, said Jeff Jarvis in an interview I had with him.

So to the media I ask what are you going to do, he concluded.

There are no limits now to what we may learn and what we need to learn. The market, a tumbling one, is fluid. Yes video will ride the crest, but it's also about the new judgement of news, info flows. The skill now is in being one of them.

Not a news hound, but someone concerned about news as a consumer, with an understanding how to let it go, until like the kite runner you artfully reel it in.

What is news?

It's about the workflow of a new discourse in news. We haven't yet scratched the surface I feel.

Take this device for instance - a bluetooth transmitter recorder that allows me to leave a message and for that message to find recipient blue tooths within a radius; hoping about before it finds its source. Now what if I talked about a random selection of news items, what if I talked about this here and a number of us had meta key words. That message would find its way onto my device - from the US and the likes [ yes welcome to the thought police]

The whole world will be noisily exchanging data by the second that anyone could use - one big telephone exchange, but I can key into dense words thus filtering what I want to hear between said or not recipients.

News is in itself a conversation. It's just some bright spark deems one conversation more laudable than the other, depending on constituents, time, money, primacy, value etc.

And what of the old world. Will it realy be that soon? Will this very laptop become redundant for something else.

What will the future of studies at a university be like?

A former chancellor and government advisor gives an amazing insight.

In the next few weeks I'm going to be collaborating with Sandy, a financial wizz in the city, whose ideas mirror my own. One of the first pieces should be an insight into the high risk of money management in a manner which we hope opens uo further debate about the way things were done

future tv camp vj

A friend from one of the US' big networks ( Nope can't mention them) dropped me a line. Things are pretty dire he says with no clear strategy for this digital future.

Having content is great, but if your constituents don't find it "cool". I'm playing on Mcluhan's Hot-Cool notion, then you're a gonner.

Here's some observations which I'll process into a empirical data about brand awareness, programming and the likes.

Here's the odd bullet point

It's nay impossible to control the digital mushroom cloud. There are just too many players with different programming variants. In the 70s and 80s with a finite number of media and primacy of emerging programme/ news statisticians you could give baby boomers what they wanted. The market, whatever that is, is a series of tails.

American idol, Gladiators, Oliver - the big reality progs are the money and audience deliverers, but they're few and far between. The dilemma also is do we flood the channel and risk a backlash or play it safe? Alternatively should we buy one of the shelf, but how do we know it's going to be a hit? The net provides some answers here in Second Shift aeshetics.

Every department needs a futures lab. What's happening now is good, what's happening tomorrow is worthwhile investing in, and what's happening in the future is the stuff of model simulation and the Delphi proceedure amongst others.

Programmes can no longer rest on their laurels as unitary packages. Those triple plays you once discarded combine to keep an audience in your loop.

At Camp VJ we showed how we could push into the realms of high end creative programme and news making. That coupled with creative data minning gives us the ability to respond fast to Hot programmes.

Video journalism -Come into the light

This is version one of a promo created for Camp VJ. About to do some colouring and some post effects for later version

Find more videos like this on Camp Video Journalism

Lets play video journalism tag

Last few weeks have been some heavy lifting. Hence the lack of a regular postings, which I should be able to pick up soon.

That said I'll be migrating from blog soon to word press as there is I now perceive a greater degree of flexibility and robustness that will help me describe the myriad things crossing my path.

Meanwhile lots and lots of Masters student's thesis/ work to mark and my PhD on Innovation in Journalism is providing some very steep but exhilarating discoveries.

At an event called Camp Video journalism with the ebullient Robb Montgomery I was able to share a few of those with the attendants.

Essentially it involved me demonstrating, using empirical evidence, the art of story telling as it exists now through contemporary and new television and less so because I really didn't want to go too theoritical examining the renaissance masters work.

Why?

Because all the modern day guidelines you hear at journalism colleges and tv studios developed from visual essayists over the years and then broken artists.

Rules such as the 180 degree, crossing the line, and the rule of 2/3s are NOT rules; they're guidelines to help us often get the best from a piece of work.

But if you believe television/cinema/music is a creative medium, then right now you've probably identified a dozen or so people who's work you so admire and the reason often is because they're discarded some of the 'rules" we hold sacrosanct.


Meeting Angela Grant

Angela Grant at News Videographer and one of the engaging, let alone talented video journalists I have come across will be the subject of a 5 minute Q and A.

She inspiring for this new evolving profession, and the new generation having graduated from Uni some two years ago. She reminds me of a colleague Rachel Elllison, now an MBE - a rare title handed down from the Queen for services to people etc - and I wold not be surprised if Angela pretty soon attracted such high praise from public servants higher up in the US.
[NB sorry you can't get and MBE if you're not British]

There are a couple of films we're making and then I'll park a shedload of articles etc on viewmagazine and Camp Videojournalism.co.uk as well as Mrdot.co.uk so please drop by.

One of the areas I'm really keen on talking about is Sports Videojournalism, and from some of my morning runs I'll be talking about some of the creative areas of sports productions using videojournalism.

That's it. Hopefully see you soon. I'm back to cut the promo.