I recently wrote about David Dunkley Gyimah. He is without doubt one of the greatest pioneers in video journalism. He has been instrumental in bridging the gap between video journalism and cinema and VJ is all the better for it.
He has been on the web since 1995 and his website is testament to his knowledge and know-how of mixing video journalism with the internet.
As an artist in residence at Southbank Centre, he offers great insight into the practice and philosophy of video journalism.
I interviewed him a week or two ago. It was a fascinating chat, which lasted over two hours. I have clipped out some of the best bits but there is so much more that I could have included.
I started by asking him what how much of an impact he thought the internet has had in terms of redefining video journalism?
How important is it for video journalists to be web savvy? Should they be able to do more than just blog?
Several years ago you were quoted as saying “people say videojournalism is like TV online, but videojournalism is experimental and risky. I say it’s like being a photojournalist with a video camera.” How much have the aesthetics of videojournalism changed over the last few years?
And finally, here are David’s thoughts on the future of video journalism and experimentation.
Please add your comments. I am hoping to go to one of David’s forums at the Southbank Centre soon, so I will of course be reporting back from it as and when.
Last week in the first part of this mini series, I described how the internet has offered video journalists more freedom to experiment (see below).
In this second part I have picked out five of my favourite video journalism web channels. Each one has transformed the use of video in online journalism in its own right.
David Dunkley-Gyimah is one of the original pioneers in videojournalism. Since 1994, he has been bridging the gap between cinema and video journalism. He is one of the most innovative and informative video journalists around. His website contains all sorts of films, articles and images for video journalists to feast on.
Headed by the renowned print journalist Maggie O’Kane, Guardian Films has produced many excellent investigative films and won several awards. Most of the films are produced exclusively for the website, with the explicit aim of extending international and domestic investigative journalism using film and video.
As you’d expect from a Vimeo site (which is renowned for its professionalism and aesthetically pleasing nature), every film is beautifully shot and a joy to watch. This is online video storytelling at its best and there are nearly 600 films to choose from.
The online TV channel of Vice Magazine, is innovative in both its site’s magazine-style and the subjects that it tackles. In its own words, VBS carries “a mix of domestic and international news, pop and underground culture coverage, and the best music in the world.”
This site is very different to the others featured on this list, but no less important. As the name suggests, this YouTube project deals mainly in citizen video journalism. The channel was set up as a platform for anyone to upload any news or politics-related videos.
Recommend:
There are so many videos uploaded to this channel that it’s better to pick some out for yourself. Also, take a look at the Citizen Tube blog, which has some interesting posts every now and then.
One of the great advantages of online video journalism is that it allows you to break away from the constraints of television journalism.
The internet provides a space for greater creativity, experimentation and variety.
Perhaps most significantly, online video journalism is not restricted by the reporter-led TV formula. (A formula that is well explained in Charlie Brooker’s now infamous How to Report the News.)
But experimentation with form, as Westbrook points out, should not detract from quality. There are several key rules surrounding form that can be broken, but certain fundamental rules must be adhered to.
Here are five sites that show exactly how online video journalism allows for a more artistic form of visual storytelling than its television counterpart.
This year’s winner of the RTS Camera Operator of the Year Award. As you’d expect, his videos contain some exceptional camerawork. He works for AP and is based in Bangkok.
Recommend:
Rising Waters – Pakistan Floods 2010 (see website)
In the second part of this series, I shall look at some of the most well known online video journalism channels and will give an overview of their style and content.
Happy Birthday Twitter! It’s five years to the day since the site was born into the cyber world.
Despite having over 200 million users (compared to 400 million for Facebook), many people are still sceptical about the use, relevance and importance of Twitter.
I openly admit that I was a critic until a few months ago but now I find it a very useful journalistic tool.
So, in celebration of our 160-character friend’s fifth birthday, here are five ways in which Twitter can enhance a video journalist’s work…
1. Posting your own videos
Twitvid/Tweetmojo/Twitvideo. There are plenty of sites to choose from for sharing video via Twitter. It’s a quick and easy way to integrate a video into your tweet.
2. Storyfinding
This has perhaps been the most useful one for me so far. Obviously, this is not specific to video journalism, but it certainly offers a direct route to stories that haven’t been tapped into by the print media. Here’s a report that I filmed, having found the story though a twitter feed…
3. Directing web traffic to your site or channel.
Whether it be a personal website, a Vimeo channel or a Youtube account, Twitter is the ultimate tool when it comes to signposting people to your work. I recently set up my own website, put it out on a tweet and immediately got feedback and comments on the videos that I have made.
4. Creating a community.
In a recent interview that I did with David Dunkley-Gyimah, he told me that one of the great advantages of online video journalism is that it offers the chance to build a community around the stories that you produce. Rather than covering a story and then dropping and moving on to the next topic as tends to happen in the traditional broadcasting mould, the internet offers a platform for people to carry on discussing and contributing to a story/theme, long after it has been ‘aired’. And Twitter, is just one of many tools that you can use to harness this community, through the use of hashtags, etc.
There are numerous examples of this. Channel 4 has been doing this recently with great success. Take, for instance, tonight’s Dispatches. The programme was called ‘Train Journeys from Hell’. Whilst it was on air, they flashed up the hashtag ‘TrainPain’ and that got thousands of people involved. The programme aired at 8pm and by 9pm it was the top trending hashtag in the UK.
5. Live streaming
You can use sites such as Twitcam to link to live streams.
This is particularly good if you want to broadcast from a phone, webcam or something portable. If you’re shooting some great actuality or just want to put out an interview live and you want people to see it, this is the best way to get it seen at that very moment. The immediacy of Twitter is unparalleled.
Still not convinced? Then take a look at these Twitter stats from Business Zone…
A year ago, people sent 50 million tweets a day. The average now is 140 million and on March 11, 2011, the tally was 177 million!
572,000 new accounts were created on March 12, 2011; 460,000 new accounts were created daily, on average, in the past month!
Mobile users increased 182% in the past year!
8people worked at Twitter in January 2008. Today it’s 400!
There’s no doubt that newspapers are producing an ever-increasing amount of online videos for their readers. So I decided to take a look at what they make their videos about.
I’ve spent the last week (4 – 11 March) following the output of four internationally renowned papers to see exactly what they’ve been covering.
In order to make this a more manageable and effective task, I have only been looking at the videos filed under ‘World’ or ‘International’ news. That said, this has involved me watching close to a hundred online video reports.
Rather than analysing each video or common theme in boring detail, I thought it would be more interesting to display each paper’s output using a new tool that I learnt this week – that of word clouding.
To do this, I took the descriptions and tags from every video for each website over the last week. I then put this into a word cloud creater – I used both Wordle and Many Eyes. Let me know what you think.
The news this week was dominated by Libya, but as the results for the Guardian demonstrate, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan came to dominate the agenda by the end of the week.
The unrest in the Middle East over the last month is perhaps the best example to date of the internet’s power in organising and fuelling mass protest movements.
The most recent and most fervent of the protests has been in Egypt. So where did it all begin? And what role has online video played in shaping the protests?
A call to protest in Cairo
25th January marked the first day of marches, riots and rallies. But this was only made possible through the use of social networking sites in the run-up to the 25th. Several days before, online groups had formed, united in their goal to get people on to the street to protest.
Youth groups, such as the April 6 Youth Movement, have been credited with starting the protests. The vlog by Asma Mahfouz (below), filmed on 18th January, was one of the first to surface. Her message was spread virally throughout social networking sites, calling for the first day of protest to take place on 25th January – a national police holiday.
Mubarak’s clampdown
Once the protest movement had hit the streets, internet activity in Egypt increased exponentially as people in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez documented the protests. They used the internet to plan further protest and to upload pictures and videos to document what was going on in the streets.
The Egyptian government eventually recognised the powerful role that the internet was playing in facilitating the protests. And they did try and put a stop to it. As the graph below shows, they succeeded in virtually shutting down the internet across Egypt on 28th January. But by then, it was too late. The wave of protest had already swept across the country’s largest cities and there was nothing that could be done to stem the flow.
Graph showing Egypt internet use 27/28 January 2010 (Courtesy of Arbor Networks)
“Today every protester is a journalist”
Mubarak’s attempts to quell the unrest and diminish the role of the Egyptian citizen journalists failed. Sherine Barakat, an experienced Egyptian journalist, proudly claimed on 28th January: “Today every protester is a journalist.”
Video has been one of the most powerful mediums of all for the Egyptian protester journalists. Despite the effective closure of the internet by the Mubarak regime, videos were still finding their way onto Facebook and Western media sites.
Mobile phone footage enabled protesters to capture the moments that professional camera crews had missed. The extent of the unrest was clear for all to see, but the most powerful videos were those that exposed the brutality of the Egyptian police.
Support for Mubarak’s regime was further eroded when the death of Mohamed Attef was captured on video. The 17 year-old was shot dead by police during a stand off with protesters. The footage was taken by a member of the public, who passed it to a local journalist, who subsequently passed it on to AP. From there, it found its way on to Facebook groups, boosting support for the protesters’ cause both in Egypt and abroad.
The role of international broadcasters
International broadcasters have played their part, too, in spreading the message of the protesters via online video. AP (as mentioned above) and other agencies have been posting a constant stream of user generated videos on their websites. The Guardian’s live update service has provided excellent snapshots of the mood in Cairo and other cities. Last night after Mubarak’s much-anticipated address to the Egyptian people, videos were quickly uploaded to the Guardian’s live feed showing the reaction amongst protesters gathered in Tahrin Square (see below).
Al Jazeera’s 24-hour coverage, although mainly viewed on television, is also streamed online. The English Al Jazeera channel was so popular that Livestation, a website that streams Al Jazeera, crashed because so many people were trying to access it.
Today, as the protests enter their ninth day, it has been reported that internet access has been restored to most of Egypt. The Egyptian government has clearly realised that shutting down the internet was too little, too late. Whatever happens to Mubarak and the protest movement, it is clear that online video journalism has played a fundamental role in this mass protest movement.
Having heard and read much about it, this afternoon I finally got the chance to see Rob Lemkin’s ‘Enemies of the People’ at The Ritzy, Brixton. It was well worth the wait. Combining a deeply personal story with what is, at times, exquisite camerawork, ‘Enemies of the People’ is absolutely gripping.
The film follows Thet Sambath, a Cambodian journalist, as he goes on a very personal journey to understand some of the dark secrets of the Khmer Rouge. Sambath gains access to several Khmer Rouge figures, most notably Nouan Che (Brother Number Two) – one of the ideological leaders of the regime. Together with Pol Pot (Brother Number One), Che was responsible for the deaths of two million Cambodians.
Based in Phnom Penh, Sambeth works as a reporter for an English daily newspaper. But for ten years, every weekend, armed only with a video camera, he visited several of the men responsible for the monstrous genocide. His aim is two-fold: to document history for future generations and to fulfil a personal quest to find out why and how this killing spree took place.
His own family was virtually wiped out as a result of the killings. He lost a brother and both of his parents.
One of the most powerful moments of the film is when he accompanies two of the regime’s foot soldiers to the now swampy killing fields, where thirty years before these men had slit people’s throats and tossed them into ditches. Seeing these muddy swamps, it seems hard to imagine that so many people’s live were ruthlessly cut short, their bodies just dumped in shallow graves. Quiet and reflective, these two admit their sense of shame and express their remorse.
The dark, raw brutality of the killings is recalled in another interview with these men that was conducted under torchlight at night. Lemkin expertly creates a dark and haunting atmosphere as these men confess to drinking the juice from some of their victim’s gall bladders.
While the confessions of this pair are gruesome and horrifying – at one point one of them even demonstrates how he used to slit his victims’ throats – the most riveting part of the film is the father-son relationship that Sambeth forms with Nouan Che. Che, now aged 82, is currently awaiting trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal.
Even though Che ran a regime that was responsible for the deaths of Sambeth’s family members – a fact that Sambeth holds from Che until just before he is taken away to the War Crimes Tribunal – Sambeth is not motivated by revenge. In fact, their relationship becomes so close that when Che is finally taken away by helicopter to face charges of war crimes, Sambeth is clearly quiet sad.
Despite this, the fact remains: the Khmer Rouge regime slaughtered two million of its own people. Lemkin does not let us forget. The silent black and white archive footage of rows of human remains, bones and decapitated bodies serves as a reminder. The absence of music provides space to reflect on this, investing the film with an even greater impact.
A new year, a new blog. I will be using this blog to analyse a variety of documentaries, as well as looking at the role of video in online journalism. Any contributions and/or suggestions would be hugely appreciated…
World documentary 