Virtually at the ONA conference
Posted on October 15, 2007
Speaking of conferences, since I already spent my travel allowance this year, I’m quite disappointed I won’t be able to attend the Online News Association conference in Toronto, which starts Thursday.
But once again, I’m so happy I can still keep up on what attendees are talking about and learning. Twenty-one students will be covering the event by blogging, video taping and writing news stories and features.
Also, on the ONA conference’s opening night, CBC news will host “The Future of the Future of News,” a panel discussion that will be streamed live at 6 p.m. Can’t save the date? They’ll archive it for later viewing, too.
Want to talk about the future? Post your thoughts on CBC’s forums.
SND impressions and some Flash(y) lessons
Posted on October 15, 2007
Richard Koci Hernandez has put together a video of his trip to the SND Boston. I didn’t get the opportunity to go, so once again, I’m so grateful that the conference and attendees are blogging about lessons learned.
Definitely take a look at Hernandez’s video for tips on nice shots and how to tell a story:
Creative and engaging and leaves me wanting more … perhaps this is a video “splash page“? ;) I jest … it seems to have perfectly fulfilled its point — to give a taste and a fun review for attendees and even those who weren’t there. He promises to publish “more multimedia goodness,” so check back at his site during the week.
For more meat, check out the SND update blog.
Not a whole lot here about online, but I’m impressed by the topics they chose to present. Videos and .pdfs are/will be available for more details.
Of the online/multimedia offerings, I particularly like the post about Adrian Holovaty’s presentation, Making Data Web Savvy.
And there’s a series of posts from the New Media session that taught participants Flash and some ActionScript:
Post I: Greetings from the New Media course shares a newbie’s perspective:
Biggest impression thus far: Stop fearing Flash. We’ve put it off after hearing tales of its complicated nature. Hey, even Quark seemed daunting at one time.
Of course, getting an intro in a classroom environment certainly helps. You’d want a pretty killer tutorial program to learn this stuff on your own. This is the fourth New Media course of the year, and based on our experience and those of friends who have gone through other courses, it’s a worthy investment. Convince your organization to cough up the cash for a session when the tour is near by.
Post II: Flash projects take longer to produce than a novice would expect:
As managers, we need some basic knowledge of what can be done; from there we can assign out projects and set realistic deadlines. So, while we may never be scripting experts, at least we can set folks up to succeed at certain projects.
Post III: They “climb deeper into the wormhole that is Action Script coding in Flash”:
Well, that “this isn’t so hard” feeling from the first half of the New Media session has been replaced with a “What the Deuce?!” vibe.
Post IV: “Your word of the day: Concatenation”
Dive in. Figure out a way to break off time to spend with Flash, either for yourself or your staff. The classroom environment was fantastic; opening up Flash all by yourself could get overwhelming quick.
I also like this piece of advice:
Also, talk turned to how much time a project involving coding should take. Simple:
1/2 your time should be planning, storyboarding, gathering information, etc.
1/2 your time should be actual Flash production - scripting and programing
1/2 your time will be spent debugging your code, especially as you just get startedHuh? That’s more time than is available.
“These projects will always take you more time than you thought they would.”
This cat can fetch (or when multimedia training catches on)
Posted on September 7, 2007
A few weeks ago I wrote about how teaching your newsroom to create Web content may feel like training a cat to play fetch. Another way to get your newsroom excited about multimedia: Let a convert preach its benefits.
Steve Echeverria, Jr., a features reporter at the Herald-Tribune, gets it. He sees how multimedia can build upon his storytelling and better serve the reader.
And he’s sharing his knowledge with colleagues. A couple of weeks ago, he attended the NABJ 2007 annual convention and was a panelist in the session “Podcasting Your Way to 1A: Enhancing Print News with Podcasts.”
The session’ summary:
As newspaper circulation continues to fall nationwide and the news hole shrinks, newspapers are faced with an issue: how do they compete with the immediacy of television news while continuing to offer the depth of print journalism? The answer lies in audio and video technology.
Steve has been proactive in his multimedia storytelling and was among the first to record audio and video podcasts for HeraldTribune.com. And despite a lack of time and resources, he was the first to edit on his own, rolling up his sleeves and learning Audacity and iMovie. And he consistently sees these storytelling tools as part of his journalist’s toolkit.
I briefly spoke with him this week about how his presentation went, and how attendees responded. When he showed them samples of what we and other papers have done, their jaws dropped, he said. And they couldn’t wait to try it out themselves.
Love it. A multimedia producer can’t ask for much more than that.
You can watch a summary of Steve’s presentation here:
‘If I don’t update my skills, I’m going to be obsolete’
Posted on September 5, 2007
Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Jennifer Lin has been in the business for 25 years. In this video, she talks about her experience learning and producing video for her paper.
About two to three years ago, her managing editor mentioned that when young people applied for jobs, they talked about their video skills.
“It occurred to me that if I don’t update my skills, I’m going to be obsolete,” she said. So she spent a semester at University of Pennsylvania and learned how to shoot and edit video with Final Cut Pro.
Training is important, she stresses, but she finds the lack of classes offered and time available to be an obstacle. Regardless, you shouldn’t let that deter you because if you want to remain competitive in the marketplace as a journalist, she says, you should know how to use a video camera.
And her advice to students is the same: “If you want to be a journalist, if you want to be a newspaper reporter, you need to know not only how to write stories, but tell stories visually … this is the future.”
MNPW: How to teach a cat to fetch (or training your newsroom)
Posted on August 22, 2007
On the second day of the Multimedia News Producers Workshop, Photojournalist Mike De Sisti of postcrescent.com and Multimedia Producer Jenni Pinkley of startribune.com talked about how to take all this knowledge back to our newsrooms.
Pinkley put together a YouTube video (above; you have to click on it, I can’t embed it, unfortunately) describing how we get everyone as excited about multimedia as we are. It’s as simple as:
>> Measure and gauge interest
>> Create a buzz; show them they can have fun
>> Be patient (they’re scared).
Just watch the video. It’s much more fun.
Which reinforces to me that learning has to be as fun and exciting as all these new applications with which we’re now working.
Reporters, photographers, copyeditors and assignment editors are used to a certain workflow, and they know what’s expected of them. And now we’re asking them to redefine how they tell stories. Oh, and at the same time, they need to figure out how to operate this machinery and navigate these software applications and content management systems they’ve never seen before. Yeah, and do everything they’ve already been doing on the job, too. Thanks so much.
I don’t mean to stereotype here because there are exceptions in hopefully every newsroom. But I do feel the majority of people find change to be stressful, even when it’s good change. Add on top of the stress of changing workflows and expectations that people are just plain worried about keeping their jobs. This is a tough time to be asking them to move outside of their comfort zone.
So it’s important to remind them that this is fun. And it’s for them. These audio and video clips, interactive graphics, slideshows and more enhance their stories. It makes their writing more accessible to readers, which, I imagine, can only make them shine as multimedia stars when the company is looking for ways to downsize.
Pinkley described how she teaches her newsroom, which is a part of the paper’s overall training program for their staff. Classes are for about 6-10 people in two sessions of approximately three-hour blocks, during which they gather and edit audio.
She also worked on SeeSaw, a compilation of life samplings told through multimedia, with reporters and photographers in her newsroom. The benefit of this evergreen content is that as it adds to the community development of the site, it gives the newsroom a chance to learn and play with multimedia projects and storytelling.
Mike De Sisti teaches reporters video at his paper. In this example video shown below (click on the image to go to the page to watch it), which he played during the session, he worked with Post-Crescent reporter Kate McGinty to produce a video project.
What a great way to educate a.) the public on what reporters are doing with video, and b.) reporters on what they can do in telling a story through video. And as a bonus, she got a chance to show off what she learned.
The mechanics are a critical part of learning multimedia, but it’s also essential to understand what kind of multimedia to use when. For his paper, De Sisti has put together a multimedia production star system that rates the overall necessary skill level of each project.
I’ve heard of other papers using tiered systems for multimedia projects, and I think these are important to share with reporters and photographers and particularly assignment editors so they can understand the different levels of projects. I particularly like the production time guides given.
>> One star: Raw video, recorded for no more than 45 seconds. The final product has no editing or titles. Production time: 1-2 hours, which includes shooting, ingestion, formatting and posting.
>> Two star: Very rough cut video. Two to four cuts in a short video with limited titles. Production time: 2-4 hours, which includes shooting, ingestion, formatting and posting.
>> Three star: Project is shot, edited and posted the same day. Includes 1-3 brief interviews (A roll) with other shots (B roll). Titles are used as intro and to introduce people. Production time: 4-6 hours, which includes shooting, ingestion, formatting and posting.
>> Four star: Often supplements in-depth enterprise stories. Video may contain several interviews and voiceovers or on-camera reporter interviews. Production time: May take several days to complete, which includes shooting, ingestion, formatting and posting.
MNPW: The master speaks
Posted on August 22, 2007
Ken Speake, a “master storyteller” who worked in TV for more than 37 years and KARE-11 in Minnesota for 28 years, talked to the Multimedia News Producers Workshop group about, well, storytelling.
And he showed us some samples of his work, too, which reminded me of a CBS News Sunday Morning tone/style. They’re informative and fact-based, but personal and pull out the emotional side of the story. He is retired now, and he still talks about his first story at KARE, which won a silver medal at the New York Film Festival.
OK, so what can this TV reporter tell us online newspapers about video? After all, *we’re* supposed to be doing things different and better than TV, right? Not so fast. These guys and gals have been working in their craft for years. And it’s wise of us to learn from their experiences.
And, after talking to him, we may have more in common with TV than we think — or, rather, we SHOULD have more in common with TV than we think.
For instance, he explained that his workflow process was highly collaborative. He was responsible for telling the story. He’d shoot the video and write the script, and then he’d hand it off to the editor to put it together. That person would do “the second half of the storytelling,” he explained.
Hmm. Sounds a lot like what newsrooms are forced to do because of time/resource constraints — reporters and photographers recording the video and then handing it off to an online editor back in the newsroom.
To make this process successful, he said, TRUSTing your coworkers is CRITICAL. And he admitted he didn’t even sit with the editor and most often would never see the piece until it aired. It’s their job to do the editing, he said.
I think this may be hard for a newsroom to accept that is so used to having control of a project throughout its entire creation.
OK, so how do you tell a good story?
>> Become relaxed with yourself and spend time with the people you’re interviewing. “It’s an attitude thing,” Speake said.
If people show up with an arrogant viewpoint as a TV reporter, you’ll find resistance. But if you show up and say you want to help them tell their story, they’ll be more likely to help you.
Humble yourself. Be modest. Make yourself vulnerable. Make yourself human. Ask for help from them.
>> Be curious. Learn something from the story and challenge yourself to present it in a new way.
>> Report with your ears. Notice your surroundings because something better could be going on that no one else is noticing.
>> Gather sound. Find the “evocative” sound.
>> Listen hard so you can really hear what the person is saying and can ask the right follow-up questions.
>> Think ahead of time. An example of this is the release of the swans in a video he showed (unfortunately, I can’t find it online). He took waders with him so he got close shots of the swans from the front as they swam into the water. None of the other photographers thought of this, and they were stuck on land, shooting the backs of the birds.
>> Don’t be afraid to break the rules.
And speaking of breaking the rules … we ended the session with an discussion about how online newspapers are different from TV because we “never” use narration (that’s what the attendees said). So what advice can Speake give us in telling those type of stories?
That’s a tough assignment, he said. If you don’t use your own voice, the challenge is to get all of your story on tape. Listening carefully and stringing the cuts together becomes even more important.
But are there times when the reporter’s voice can or should be incorporated? The Web interview is being formed to be a “the subject tells the story,” but are we limiting ourselves by doing this? Maybe we should break the rules once in a while?
Angela Grant brought up this same concern in a recent post “Use a FREAKIN voiceover already.”
My first video story
Posted on August 18, 2007
After a micro-mini Final Cut Pro tutorial this morning, attendees in the video track at the Multimedia News Producers Workshop captured video and got to work on editing. We had five hours to pull it all together. Five hours!?!? Surely it was only two. The time passed by so quickly.
Julie Jones and Mike De Sisti were on hand to answer all of our questions from “wait, how do I start??” to “how do I export this?” and many, many more in between.
And also to remind us that we needn’t get too stressed out about the final product because we’re going to fail beautifully on our first attempt. That’s how it goes when you’re learning. It relieved a lot of pressure for me, at least, and I think our class did a great job for 1 1/2 days of video instruction. You can see the full lineup on the MNPW YouTube channel (TK soon).
Here’s what I came up with from my trip to The Wienery, a hot dog/burger joint in Minneapolis:
Lessons learned (of many):
>> I need more nat sounds and video. I had a lot of b-roll but very little I could use for transitions. But I really liked the guy playing the piano while he waited for his order (could you hear the burp at the end?). Mike recommended I use that to move the piece along. Voila. It saved me, I think.
>> As I suspected, I, in fact, got no sequencing whatsoever. So I’ll need to practice that next time.
>> I must GET CLOSE to the person I’m taping. I missed a lot of good cooking/food prep shots because I was too timid to get right up to the stove. This is going to take some practice to feel comfortable interacting with them with a camera in my hands. Julie explained it to me that it’s like having a conversation with the person. You have to interact with them to be able to get the shots you need to tell the story. And if I don’t feel comfortable doing that, they’re certainly not going to feel comfortable, either.
>> If I could edit again, I’d put an outside or establishing shot near the beginning that shows where we’re at so I don’t have to set it up in the text.
>> Shake much? I need to use a tripod. They didn’t supply us with any, but the camera’s just too heavy to hold steady.
>> I’d use a wireless mic on the owner/cook because the background noise is too loud; he was wired to Barbara’s (my video buddy on this assignment) camera, not mine. We didn’t have time to try to share clips.
Getting off the theoretical cloud
Posted on August 17, 2007
Today Nora Paul and Julie Jones kicked us out of our oh-so-comfy video classroom nest at the Multimedia News Producers Workshop, and we hit the streets of Minneapolis with our loaner Canon XH A1 cameras and in search of a video story after picking a neighborhood spot from a list of assignment options.
My video buddy (Barbara) and I headed over to The Wienery for some practice.
Poor Barbara got to hear me whine and cry and “cluck” all morning about how nervous I was to go out. Really. I was so WAY outside of my comfort zone.
And I’m not sure why because I certainly don’t have any qualms about sticking a big microphone in someone’s face to gather audio.
It must have been a mental block for me. Or maybe because I SO hate to be on camera, I feel uncomfortable trying to capture someone else on film, too?
Regardless, I was both looking forward to and dreading my assignment. But I traveled all the way from Florida to Minneapolis to do this, so I HAD to do it.
Before I went out, Joe Weiss (also at the workshop to teach an audio slideshow track) reminded me that this is all about storytelling. Good journalism. And, of course, he’s right. It’s what I enjoy doing, and video is my new tool with which I can tell it.
And you know what?? It was a lot of fun.
When we first arrived, I got my feet wet by shooting the outside of the restaurant for a bit. Shot some b-roll of the area and the people hanging around outside. And when I got bored of that, I marched right in the restaurant, introduced myself, told the cook/owner, two women patrons sitting at the table, and a biker dude that walked in later that I’m learning and could I practice on them?
I tried out some wide-medium-tight shots, looked for opportunities of sequencing (although that was quite difficult; I’m not sure if I got that), tried to always enter frame, tried to keep my fingers off the zoom, got to play with a wireless mic, tested my interviewing skills, and overcame a fear I’ve had for really absolutely no reason.
I’m tired; since we didn’t use tripods, my arm hurt from holding the camera (note to self: go to the gym!); and I have no idea if what I shot can be edited into any form of video (we do that tomorrow morning).
But I had fun. And I learned so much in just one afternoon.
MNPW: How good video works
Posted on August 17, 2007
Julie Jones, award-winning television journalist and doctoral student at the University of Minnesota, talked about what makes good video in her “Visual Grammar” discussion Thursday at the Multimedia News Producers Workshop in Minneapolis.
Here are some notes I took from her presentation:
We publish moving images because it makes the reader feel something, pulls the reader into your story, is enjoyable and helps the reader remember a situation.
OK, so how do we do this?
We need to mimic how the eye/brain works. Basically, the human eye looks at the world for information. Our eye may scan the world, but our brain looks for information. So when we do this in video editing, we need to break down the scenes for the viewer and act as the eye/brain does.
This is why pans and zooms are BAD. They aren’t how the eye works. In real life, while watching two people talk, we don’t pan the scene from one person to the next. Our eye jumps back and forth. And we don’t suddenly run across the room to get a closer work (a zoom). Only use them in special situations when you have a clear reason for doing so — ie, when you know you’re breaking the rules and why.
Here are five tips for shooting good video:
1. Think in shots — wide, medium, tight, super tight
This gives the viewer a variety of scenes and a variety of intimacy within those scenes. Wide can be an establishing shot, medium gives more detail, tight brings the viewer into the subject’s personal space, and super tight allows for detail/accents shots.
2. Shoot and move
In a video, we’re trying show little sentences that convey information; we call these sequences (two or more shots of the same action — but they shouldn’t be from the same place).
You shoot sequences with:
>> Cooperation: understanding what will happen when (talk to your subject to learn about the story and to make landmarks in your mind of where you want to be when)
>> Repetition: looking for overlapping action
>> Anticipation: knowing what is coming next
3. An action creates a reaction
When you shoot something that has an action (ie, the flip of a switch), make sure you get the reaction (the TV turns on).
4. Cutaways.
The little details that cut away from the action, within the context of the same action. They will help you get around
5. Enter frame, enter frame, enter frame
OK, I have to admit this took me too long to grasp (to the frustration of my classmates, I’m sure) and may take a while to perfect. But if I understand it correctly now, you always want the person you’re interviewing to enter the frame and not to exit.
So if someone’s walking toward you (imagine a politician walking down a sidewalk shaking hands), shoot while they’re walking, then stop and run ahead so you can pick them up again entering the frame. You’re going to lose the viewer when you let someone exit the frame and then enter back in again. And it’ll just help you get more material to work with if you’re always in front of the person.
And here’s some technical tips I picked up in the classroom before going out and finding out for myself (so nice of Julie to share these ahead of time):
>> Give yourself some editing cushion. Record 30 seconds to 1 minute of blank tape at the beginning and end. This will help a lot when you capture and start to edit. Why, exactly is TK when we go through it ourselves Saturday.
>> Don’t cut your shot short. You’re going to think you got enough, but you most likely won’t. So count to 10 seconds in your head for each shot.
>> Avoid a break in time code. In cheap cameras, if you power down, the time code will stop, there will be noise, and the time code will power back up; when you bring something in and batch capture, you could possibly overwrite your content.
>> Don’t replay your video in your camera in the field It’s tempting to peek at what you shot to see if you got it. But doing so will restart your time at 0:00 (which will mess with your time code). Plus, you’ll run a chance of accidentally recording over your original tape. It’s just easier to wait until you get back at your computer.
>> Headphones. You wear them for your audio recorder. You have to wear them for video. Just get over feeling like you look like a dork. No one really cares.
>> Screen direction. Keep what you’re shooting in the same direction — the noses know. For example, when you’re shooting a conversation between two people, they should stay in the same place in space (aka, axis line, 180 degree rule). Don’t shoot on one side of the axis line and then cut to the other side so that they’re now facing in opposite directions. You’re going to confuse your viewer.
>> More tips from Jones.
Here are a couple of takeaways from our discussions during the lesson:
>> Natural sound pieces are the toughest thing to tell. And newspaper Web sites seem to be taking ownership of this form. I’ve heard several times: “We HAVE to have the person we’re interviewing tell the story.” But do we ALWAYS have to do a nat sound piece? Are we locking ourselves into only one form of online storytelling?
>> Starting as a photographer in video storytelling isn’t necessarily an advantage. Writing teaches you structure, and the video demands a structure to begin with.
MNPW: Why multimedia?
Posted on August 17, 2007
Nora Paul, director of the Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota, kicked off the Multimedia News Producers Workshop by talking about why exactly we publish multimedia.
Here are some of my notes from her presentation:
“Multimedia storytelling is another way to build understanding between neighbors at a time when we often notice our differences more than our similarities — Sunnyvale, CA City Council minutes“
So why do we create multimedia?
Well, there’s a few reasons why we’re doing it right now:
>> More people than ever have access to broadband
>> YouTube has made video sharing possible
>> Sites such as Blinkx are going YouTube in their video sharing
>> Evidence shows that the audience wants it, so therefore, rich media has become part of the business model.
But that doesn’t mean we haven’t had or aren’t still encountering hurdles:
>> Newspapers loathe to support R&D. Only in the late ’90s was attention paid to how we can recraft our product
>> DotCom bust also burst the excitement around multimedia
>> Because newspapers operate as an assembly line, it’s been difficult to create a multimedia production environment (a better model is the TV newsroom — all positions work on the newscast — get better explainer on this!)
>> Newsroom culture is so difficult to change. Studies show that the newsroom is like the military and healthcare. All are like triage operations and very difficult to introduce change.
>> The lack of training in news skills (this is a benefit of multimedia — more training and more money is being spent now)
What is multimedia?
This is difficult to answer because it’s hard to define. The range of multimedia terms is so indistinct. For example:
>>TV has defined pieces, ie., b-roll, nat sounds, feed, voice over
>>Print has defined pieces, ie., headline, column, byline, cutline
>> Online, not so much. One may call it interactive, another non-linear, another multimedia. These aren’t commonly defined terms.
The elements of digital storymaking, a project by the Institute for New Media, tries to define multimedia by creating a taxonomy, analyzing projects and measuring the effects digital stories have on users. You can view a .pdf with more information here.
Definitions are so important
Newsrooms are finally paying attention to multimedia — but if we don’t have a clear, shared definition of multimedia, we won’t know when we’ve hit on an answer: Is it to drive traffic, inform our communities, do kick-ass interactives to win contests? What is the point of the game?
Not until we’re clear on this definition will we know who/how many we need, what are the rules, how will we know when/if we’ve won?
Here’s how Paul categorizes what’s being done now with multimedia:
>> How is it displayed? Are all the pieces thrown on the page? (Paul calls this ghetto-ized)
>> Multiple-media vs. multimedia Paul defines mutliple-media as story-level ghetto-ization — ie, sptimes.com’s Wetlands special report, whereas multimedia has parts woven together where if you take one piece out, it unravels — ie, washingtonpost.com’s The Women of Kabul
>> The display is the thing (ie, Kansas.com’s On Gossamer Wings)
Paul closed her presentation telling us about how a photographer with still, video, audio skills takes his still and video camera with him out in the field. He defines his position outside the profession as a photographer; inside the profession as a multimedia news producer.
That gave me goosebumps. For years I’ve defended my job as an online producer/editor as being a journalist, too. Now they are defining their jobs with my title. Love it.
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