The New Breed of Documentary Photographers

The New Breed of Documentary Photographers Read more

Viewmagazine.tv

David Dunkley Gyimah created Viewmagazine.tv to demonstrate the integration of new Video techniques in factual story telling e.g. VideoJournalism and online multimedia media design- referred to as IM6 VJ. If you haven’t been introduced to his work and site, you’re in for a pleasure. He’s one of my new visual heroes.
This guy can turn anything into a stunning piece of visual journalism. The site is actually overwhelming, there is so much there. Be patient, the site has always taken a while to load for me, is it just me? Lots of inspiration here,
enjoy,
-r

We Tell Stories: The 21 Steps

We Tell Stories: The 21 Steps by Charles Cumming. I love the idea behind this, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. It’s not revolutionary, but I like it. What a great way to visually tell a story, for some reason it reminded me of my favorite series of books as a kid, the Choose You Own Adventure Series. Now if you add some images and video and maybe some user ‘choice’ of story line or plot, then I think your gold.

enjoy,
-r

Going Digital — Without Going Broke

The Idea Factory and WebU posted a great article on Going Digital — Without Going Broke.

You don’t need dedicated A/V technicians, a $5,000 High Definition video camera and a $10,000 editing suite to do multi-media on the web. Advances in video and audio technology mean not only is high quality audio and video well within the reach of most budgets, the skill sets needed are well within the reach of any interested person.

Across the pond Video Training

Video for newspaper journalists2.0
A training course by the European Journalism Centre.

The five-day course will be held at the head office of the EJC in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The course fee is €1,200, with a 10 percent discount for each employee from the same media outlet. The course is offered in English, Dutch and German. It begins midday Monday and ends midday Friday. The EJC will supply all equipment, two lunches and a dinner.

AEVUM = Watch Out VII

AEVUM is a new photo collective. Read more

A Sad End to a Great Paper

Although Richard posted a link to a mutlimedia slideshow about the Alburqueque Tribune’s last day, I figured I would provide a more comprehensive series of links having to do with the end of one of the finest newspapers in America.

First, an absolute, must see/read slideshow from the current and past photo staff of the Tribune. Some amazing photographers and editors have made their way through the paper, and many of them share very interesting and insightful thoughts in the presentation. Second there are a couple of interesting videos about the paper’s last day and another on long-time Tribune subscribers.

For anyone unfamiliar with the story of how the end of the paper came about here are several stories:

• The Trib’s news story
• A great column about what the end of the paper means to journalism
• An Editor and Publisher story with some details about the past, present and future of the situation

Good luck to all the great journalists from the Trib
Chris

Multimedia bag-of-tricks

Don’t miss these multimedia storytelling options from Juan Thomassie
bag-of-tricks

a “multimedia master” to the rescue

Anyone striving to improve their multimedia storytelling, which I assume is most of you, should definitely be reading Mastering Multimedia, a new blog from Spokane super stud Colin Mulvany. To get a quick sample of the valuable knowledge Colin is dropping in his new blog I would highly recommend this post.

Happy Sunday -

Chris Jordan

Advanced Multimedia Workshop by MediaStorm

A golden opportunity to harness the power of some of the best multimedia story tellers around. Hurry, I’m already filling out my application! More info, HERE

The MediaStorm Advanced Multimedia Reporting Workshop in New York City is an intensive, hands-on educational experience in advanced multimedia storytelling.

Over the course of a week, participants will work in three-person teams, reporting and editing in collaboration with a seasoned multimedia professional to produce a multimedia project for distribution across multiple platforms.

Each team will produce a professional-quality, ready-for-publication, multimedia story.

Also, enjoy these videos produced by Rocket Boom about MediaStorm I found on YouTube:

Director of Photography & NPR Video Jobs

This could be your chance to shine! (Hey, I like to give the ladies something to look at also. I'm an equal opportunity kind of guy.) #WEB 1749 - Producer ll, Video , Bryant Park Project Generates video story ideas for the Bryant Park Project website, from original individual stories to recurring features; shoots and edits video; identifies video from external sources that we can obtain, publish, feature, and/or discuss on air or online; helps develop and cultivate a video strategy for Bryant Park; maintains a close relationship with NPR Digital Media and helps maintain standards and overall video strategy for NPR; makes and manages video assignments to freelancers; cultivates and manages relationships with outside sources of video material. For more info: http://www.npr.org/about/jobs/positions.html#onair Job opening: Director of Photography at The Record (Bergen County, NJ) and Herald News (West Paterson, NJ) The Director of Photography will be responsible for the overall production of photography for The Record and Herald News. As part of that duty, the director, working with senior leadership at The Record and Herald News, will share the responsibility of creating section fronts and interior pages that have a high visual impact. The director will also share the responsibility, along with The Record's AME for the Internet and Herald News' senior leadership, for the creation of material for the NorthJersey.com and MyHeraldNews.com Web sites. For more info: If you're interested in the Photo Director's position, immediately send a résumé, samples of your best work and a cover letter on why you want the job to: Frank Burgos, Managing Editor, The Record, 150 River St., Hackensack, NJ 07601. Phone: (201) 646-4452; Email: Burgos@northjersey.com

Inspiration break!

Ok, step away from the blog. We are gonna get away from the ‘journalism’ train for a sec. As you might know from reading this blog for any length of time, I like to find most of my inspiration for my journalism, outside of journalism. So, here are some recent finds that have made me go, hmmm. And for you ‘old school’ journalists, I’ll start with one that IS journalism.

An intimate look at a place where time is measured not by the movements of the sun but by the rumbling of the el train. Philadelphia, Front St./Kensington Ave.

An ongoing video project by David S Kessler
Shadow World is a project I am currently working on. Set under the el tracks in north Philadelphia, it is an exploration of this unique, fascinating and often intimidating space that (at least for this year) I call home.
-David S Kessler

Here’s the blog site and the Blip.tv site
I fell in love with the raw, yet sensitive approach to these small documentary wonders. They’re straight forward and revealing both about the subject themselves and the sensitivity of the filmmaker. It’s all about characters!

Speaking of characters,

I missed this gem in theaters, but holy crap this is the best doc I’ve seen in years. Not just because, I was a kid with a fist full of quarters in the arcades, but because of the these two characters. There is so MUCH to learn here. Here’s my list of things I learned:

It’s about finding good characters
It’s not always about getting the details like lighting and using a tripod right, as much as it’s about the subjects themselves
Let things unfold (I got this from the DVD commentary) so much of this story just happened.
There is always an ‘underbelly’ FIND IT.

Rent it, buy it, just see it.

Also, another quick doc mention for a small film called The Agronomist

This film rocks because it’s a great history lesson about Haiti, and because almost all the interview footage is back-focused, but it doesn’t matter because the central character is riveting. Another ‘hint’ about finding the right subject.

Finally, I read this book about 5 years ago, and it’s always ’stayed’ with me for many reasons. Now that I’ve been given the professional opportunity to make web videos, not just still images for the printed page, this book has found itself back on my nightstand.

Before you “go off” on me, saying, “How is this journalism related? This book is about Hollywood film making.” I say to you, wait! Take a deep breath. This book is really about being a rebel, an innovator and not taking no for an answer. This dude didn’t have the best equipment or even enough money to do what he wanted, but he made a movie. Sounds like journalism to me! We need more rebels and innovators in journalism right now. We don’t have the right or best video/audio equipment, we don’t have money or even training, but we must produce something everyday. There are some great lessons to be learned from this book and even from these YouTube videos 10-Minute Film School with Robert RodriguezYou can learn video shooting and editing tricks to use in your videos. You know, doing more with less, the new battle cry of journalism. Anyway, enjoy or not,
-r

Very useful new audio tool

When you select an audio file in the Mac Finder, Snapper immediately appears right beneath the current window, showing you the wave form. n the Snapper wave form you can select a part of the sound file and:
• drag it out, to create a new file.
• upload it to your Pro Tools cursor.
• turn the selection into an mp3 file.
• split stereo files into separate .L and .R files or vise versa
• convert to mp4 and attach it to an email in one go.
• export to AIFF, WAV, BWF, mp3, or m4a.

This cool and cheap audio editor is becoming my new fav. If you’re on a Mac and have $80 bucks to drop, this should be your next purchase. It’s helped me get several pieces online, FAST.

enjoy,
-r

Angry Journalists Unite!

Why are you angry today?

Tell us what’s making you upset at your journalism job.
Anonymity guaranteed. One rule: no real names.

I thought this was a funny site. How I could pass up an opportunity to run an angry baby picture. Now, instead of actually doing something creative, like tell a good story, we can waste our time venting, not like we don’t already spend all day at the office doing it anyway, now we have a website. Why the hell are we (journalists) so lazy and scared? We should all just stop bitching and DO something, oh wait this sounds very angry doesn’t it? I better head on over to AngryJournalist.com and vent. See you there!
-r

Photojournalism as Art? You be the judge!

I recently read an article “Photojournalists Are Getting Artsier — But Is That What Audiences Want?” It got me thinking. It’s one of the most well written articles on the subject and it raises lots of good points. It also got me to surf to the MagnumInMotion website and see what’s new. [NOTE: If anyone over there is reading how about a little RSS for the essay page] We all agree that Magnum is the pinnacle of photojournalism. Period. So it warms my heart to see such beautiful and artistic presentations of their photojournalism. My favorite recent offering is:

Silicon Forest by Christopher Anderson.

And to offer my two cents about this article “Photojournalists Are Getting Artsier — But Is That What Audiences Want?” In my 15 years at the Mercury News, I’ve received a handful of letters from readers about my work as it has appeared in the newspaper and now on the web. The only thing these letters had in common was their appreciation of what they called an “artistic” approach to photojournalism. So, from my small corner of the world, the answer to this question is, yes.

I strongly believe photojournalism is in good hands. Seek the truth, be true to yourself and respect your subjects. Just tell me a story damn it! A good one. Forget about the technology and the gear. Remember your approach to journalism is yours, it’s who you are and what makes you a good journalist. Don’t listen to me or anybody else about the way things should be. Story and Truth are all that matter, the rest are small and subordinate details.

-r

I LOVE YOU!

Let me be the first to wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day! This is a fun and straight forward approach to video by ksimpson on Current_tv.

Hey, It’s not to late to ‘run’ with this concept yourself.

Imitation is the best form of flattery

enjoy,
and thanks for all the ‘love’ and support for the site,
-r

Everything I know I learned from the web!

DIY Multimedia School – Learn from Websites with Filmmaking Tutorials
Follow this outrageous link to everything you need to know about film and video and three point lighting, if you must.

One of my favorite podcasts, it’s a must.

New Episode Every Week!

The Shirtless Apprentice is a weekly Internet web series about digital video production starring the very clever video apprentice himself, Matt and his blond mute friend. Each episode provides useful information about the production of digital video for online viewing and distribution. Very informative and much fun for the whole family!

enjoy,
-r

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