Tag Archives: David Dunkley Gyimah

#followjourn – @viewmagazine David Dunkley Gyimah/videojournalist

Who? David Dunkley Gyimah

Where? Knight Batten and international award-winning videojournalist. He also produces online magazine viewmagazine.tv.

Twitter? @viewmagazine

David will be speaking about online video journalism at news:rewired – media in motion, Journalism.co.uk’s conference on the latest trends in digital journalism.

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips, we are recommending journalists to follow online too. Recommended journalists can be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to Rachel at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

Videojournalist David Dunkley Gyimah named Southbank artist in residence

Videojournalist and Westminster University lecturer David Dunkley Gyimah has been made an artist in residence at London’s Southbank Centre.

During his 2009-10 residency, Dunkley Gyimah will work on a new form of artistic film, mixing documentary style with a new response to the film format – he’s already begun working on projects for his residency on his site viewmagazine.tv.

“As a deep reservoir of knowledge, arts and cultures it would be my wish to find new discourses for creating arts reportage, but also to work alongside other artists and, through the style of solo videojournalism I have practised for the last 16 years, continue to develop styles and manners in which we can exploit new and digital media forms to both tell stories and create our own visual and literary footprints,” said Dunkley Gyimah in a statement.

Related reading on Journalism.co.uk: Comment from Dunkley Gyimah – ‘Videojournalism is not a one-size-fits-all medium’

Adam Westbrook: 6×6 video for freelance journalists

This is the second in a series of six blog posts by Adam Westbrook, each with six tips for the next generation of freelance multimedia journalists, republished here with permission.

Follow the series at this link or visit Adam’s blog.

Video
Video has by far and away become the most popular medium for the multimedia journalist – to the extent it almost seems many won’t consider it a truly multimedia project unless it’s got a bit of video in it. The thing is, video is a tricky medium and must be treated differently in the world of online journalism.

1) Video doesn’t need to be expensive
Don’t be fooled into thinking you can’t do video just because you haven’t got any cash. Sure, if you want to go right to the top range, say a Sony EX3, Final Cut Pro and After Effects, yes, it’s going to set you back about £3,000 ($5,000). But high quality can be achieved on lower budgets.

Check out my article on how I put together an entire film making kit for £500 ($800).

2) Shoot for the edit
If there’s one piece of advice for multimedia journalists making films – it comes from Harris Watts, in a book he published 20 years ago. In ‘Directing on Camera’ he describes exactly what shooting footage is:

“Shooting is collecting pictures and sound for editing (…) so when you shoot, shoot for editing. Take your shots in a way that keeps your options open.”

Filming with the final piece firmly in mind will keep your shooting focused and short. So when you start filming, start looking for close ups and sequences. The latter is the hardest: an action which tells your story, told over two or more shots.

Sequences are vital to storytelling and must be thought through.

A simple sequence: shot 1, soldiers feet walking from behind
A simple sequence: shot 1, soldiers feet walking from behind
Then to a wide shot of the same action...
Then to a wide shot of the same action…
...and then to a wide reverse showing more detail
…and then to a wide reverse showing more detail

3) Master depth of field
In online video, close-ups matter. The most effective way to hold close-ups – especially of a person – is to master depth of field. Put simply the depth of field how much of your shot in front of and behind your subject is kept in focus. It is controlled by the aperture on your camera – so you’ll need a camera with a manual iris setting.

Your aim – especially with close-ups – is to have your subject in clear focus, and everything behind them blurred: Alexandra Garcia does it very well in her Washington Post In-Scene series. (HT: Innovative Interactivity)

Screenshot: Innovative InteractivityScreenshot: Innovative Interactivity

Here’s a quick guide to getting to grips with depth of field:

  1. you need a good distance between the camera and subject
  2. a good distance between the subject and the background
  3. and a low f-stop on your iris – around f2.8, depending on how much light there is in your scene. A short focal length does this too.
  4. You may need to zoom in on your subject from a distance

4) Never wallpaper
If there was ever an example of the phrase ‘easier said than done’ this would be it. It’s a simple tip on first read: make sure every shot in your film is there for a reason. But with pressures of time or bad planning you can often find yourself ‘wallpapering’ shots just to fill a gap.

In his excellent book The Television News Handbook Vin Ray says following this rule will help you out no end:

“One simple rule will dramatically improve your television packaging: never use a shot – any shot – as wallpaper’. Never just write across pictures as though they weren’t there, leaving the viewer wondering what they’re looking at. Never ever.”

5) Look for the detail and the telling shot
Broadcast journalists are taught to look for the ‘telling shot’, and more often than not make it the first image. If your story is about a fire at a school, the first thing the audience need to see is the school on fire. If it’s about a woman with cancer, we must see her in shot immediately.

But the telling shot extends further: you can enhance your storytelling by looking for little details which really bring your story to life.

Vin Ray says looking for the little details are what set great camera operators apart from the rest:

“Small details make a big difference. Nervous hands; pictures on a mantelpiece; someone whispering into an ear; a hand clutching a toy; details of a life.”

I’m midway through shooting a short documentary about a former prisoner turned lawyer. One of the first things I noticed when I met him was a copy of the Shawshank Redemption on his coffee table – a great little vignette to help understand the character.

6) Break the rules
The worst thing a multimedia journalist can do when producing video for the web is to replicate television – unless that’s your commission of course. TV is full of rules and formulas, all designed to hide edits, look good to the eye, and sometimes deceive. Fact is, online video journalism provides the chance to escape all that.

Sure it must look good, but be prepared to experiment – you’ll be amazed what people will put up with online:

  • Cutaways are often used to cover over edits in interviews; why not be honest and use a simple flash-dissolve instead. Your audience deserves to know where you’ve edited, right?
  • TV packages can’t operate without being leaden with voice over, but your online films don’t need to be.
  • Piece to cameras don’t need to be woodenly delivered with the camera on a tripod.

The final word…
Here’s VJ pioneer David Dunkley-Gyimah speaking at this year’s SxSW event in the US:

When it comes to the net, there is no code yet as I believe that is set in stone (…) we’ve all been taking TV’s language and applying that and it hasn’t quite worked. Video journalism needs a more cinematic, heightened visual base.”

‘Babel-like cacophony drowning out perception’ but new media still developing, says Paxman

So, as reported on the main site, and in John Mair’s tribute to the fearsome journalist, Jeremy Paxman collected the inaugural Charles Wheeler Award last night. His Newsnight colleagues had put together a little tribute, which as David Dunkley Gyimah pointed out on Twitter, is a ‘This Is Your Life’ style must-watch. Journalism.co.uk will try and obtain an embeddable link asap.

In the meantime, enjoy the clip at the end of this post: when Paxman dipped his toes into YouTube waters for Newsnight (which, incidentally, BBC director-general Mark Thompson later confessed to never having seen till that evening: “I had no idea  – I’d missed that”).

So Journalism.co.uk asked Paxman: you’re a little sceptical about social and new media, then?

“It’s a joke [his YouTube video – see below]! One of the functions of journalism, seems to me, [is that] it sifts and analyses – and it’s great to have a lot of raw material, but someone still has to sift it to make sense of it,” he said.

There are occasions, for certain stories, he said, ‘when one spends a lot of time looking at blogs… comments… it’s just time wasted.’

“We haven’t yet developed a mechanism for synthesising what comes out  – we’re currently at a stage where someone goes to a rally and writes down the comments of everybody there. That’s no way to report an event – it doesn’t tell you very much,” Paxman said.

“We still need journalists forming perception and analysis of what’s happening – that’s getting drowned out by this Babel-like cacophony. But we’re at a very early stage of development with it. I think there are new things going to happen.”

And, does he still advise wannabe hacks to go and do something more sensible and worthwhile, like become a brain surgeon?

“You do it [give advice] with a certain knowledge that those who are determined won’t be put off anyway. But, I think, overall, the prospects in this trade are not good,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

“Wages are being cut – [there are] apparently respectable newspapers which actually survive on work experience people – and not paid. This is no good! When you’re 21 you don’t think about it. You’ve got to think about it: the longevity of it, [being able to] afford to put a roof over your head and feed your kids etc.

“It’s always been a young person’s trade I think, but it’s even more that now.

“I personally believe in it of course – I think it’s a really worthwhile activity. But it is, I think, the case that there are more immediately socially worthwhile things that you could do with your life. I just think these are strange circumstances.”

Paxman trying out YouTube:

Infuze: Training freelancers in cross-platform journalism

On Friday I was lucky enough to sneak inside the University of Central Lancashire’s (UCLAN) Sandbox – a space dedicated to ‘digital media R&D’.

I was there as part of the final day of Infuze – a joint training scheme from UCLAN and the BBC to retrain freelancers in multimedia journalism.

It was the first time the six-week course had been run (Journalism.co.uk reported on its launch back in January) and while course leader Paul Egglestone said there were some improvements to be made, he was pleased how far all participants had come in a short time.

Presentations from Ilicco Elia, head of mobile for Reuters, and videojournalist David Dunkley Gyimah gave all of us some food for thought, but mainly it was a great opportunity to chat with a group of freelancers facing the challenges of cross-platform journalism head on and hear about their experiences.

Only fair then to give them (and some of their newly founded websites ) a shout out (in no particular order):

Nazia Mogra – freelance broadcast journalist, now looking at the possibilities of newspaper video too.

Sean Smith – former print freelancer who turned his hand to broadcast journalism during the course. Smith said he’d learned that the ‘new skill is adopting a mindset of not being intimidated by tech that’s meant to be intuitive’.

Rumeana Jahangir – who is looking to develop a specialism on grassroots, community news and investigative work.

Emma Blackburn – freelancer broadcast journalist turned videojournalist during her course placement at Times Online.

Erisa Lluca
– who having now set up her own website is determined to keep it going beyond Infuze.

Christina McDermott – or @misscay as shes known to her followers on Twitter, who discussed how she’s using social media as a freelancer (more from Christina on this later).

Videojournalism conference cancelled, awards deadline extended

The deadline for entry to the 4th International Video Journalism Awards has been extended to December 1, according to a blog post by one of the judges, David Dunkley Gyimah.

Viewers will be able to vote for their favourite films online until January 18 2009.

Unfortunately, the conference that was due to accompany the awards has been cancelled and will no longer take place in Mainz on November 28-9.

Viewmagazine hosts ‘vlog butterfly’ for BBC head interview

Viewmagazine.tv, the online magazine of videojournalism, has staged what it describes as an international ‘vlog butterfly’ with Peter Horrocks, head of the BBC’s new multimedia newsroom.

To supplement an interview with Horrocks, videojournalist and editor of the magazine David Dunkley Gyimah asked for video questions to be contributed from interested parties across the world.

Questions were submitted from as far a field as Australia and South Africa, and can be viewed individually, followed by Horrocks’ responses.