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.
Photojournalism turns HD
Posted on August 5, 2007
An interesting magazine crossed my desk this week: The premier (May/June 2007) issue of “HDVideoPro,” a magazine about high-definition technology.
In it are equipment spotlights and reviews (small HD cameras, tripods and lighting) and features about Web video, the difference between interlaced and progressive scanning, an explainer on recording formats and an interview with David Leeson of the Dallas Morning News on how he uses a video camera to capture BOTH moving and still images. (Note: Richard Koci Hernandez does this at his paper, the Mercury News, too; and in doing a Web search, I found that Hernandez also wrote about this magazine a few months ago and highlighted this story by Leeson on Sports Shooter.)
Leeson, winner of an Edward R. Murrow Award, a National Headliners Award and a regional Emmy for best television documentary, is a leader in video storytelling. He has been shooting video for the newspaper since 2000, developing a new methodology that is rooted in how still photographers work.
“Let’s throw out the idea of what we think video is and let’s begin to think about what it is when it’s in the hands of a photojournalist,” says Leeson. “Think of the vast amount of resources available to us at that point. We don’t have to retrain people in what they think.”
Change can be difficult and scary for some. Are photographers ready to leave their still cameras at the office?
Says Leeson: “Remember when we went from black-and-white to color? I remember thinking, what am I going to do with color? I never had to deal with color before. I thought about it and realized that color was simply an additional layer of information. Black-and-white is the basic information, then here comes color, which gives us more information; now we know that’s a green sweater a person is wearing rather than a blue sweater.
“I began to look at the video camera as providing two additional layers of information: motion and sound. And that’s all it was, a camera that, in addition to everything else, can give us motion and sound.”
Leeson’s son also works at the Dallas Morning News, and he developed a process that will allow the paper to take frame grabs from the HD cameras that can run five or six columns. Here’s how, as described in the HDVideoPro article:
1. Find the frame to capture in your video editing software.
2. Increase the size of the edit window, filling up the monitor.
3. Take a screen grab of the enlarged window.
4. Open Photoshop, paste your screen grab and flatten and crop the image.
5. Enlarge the image to 30 inches wide and 600 ppi.
6. Resize the image to a normal size at 203 ppi.
7. Process photo as you would a still in Photoshop.
But Leeson maintains moving from still to video cameras will not signal the end of traditional print photography.
“Still photographs will be with us forever — video doesn’t replace the still photograph — but the demand upon still photographers, especially at newspapers, is to produce video and still at the same time. we must keep in mind that if you don’t approach video with the eyes of a still photojournalist, looking for and recording those decisive moments, how are you going to pull a frame from that video that’s going to have that moment in it to provide a great still photograph?”
Good and bad news for online video
Posted on July 25, 2007
Let’s start with the good news first.
Web users say online video is great, says a Pew Internet & American Life Project study. “Online video now reaches a mainstream audience; 57% of online adults have used the internet to watch or download video, and 19% do so on a typical day.”
Now for the bad news.
>> Young adults aren’t watching video from news sites.
>> And all the niche citizen journalism newspaper Web sites out there, listen up: Viewers prefer to watch professional video rather than amateur (user-generated) content. (NOTE: This one straddles the line; it’s definitely “good news” for newspaper photographers!)
Here are some of their findings:
>> “News video is the most popular category for everyone except young adults.”
According to their survey, 49% of video viewers age 18-29 watch their videos on YouTube; 6% of them watch on news sites. Egads! That’s a huge difference.
>> “Most online video viewers prefer professionally-produced video over content ‘produced by amateurs.’ “
“Overall, 62% of online video viewers say that their favorite videos are those that are professionally produced, while 19% of online video viewers express a preference for amateur content. Another 11% say they enjoy both professionally-produced video and amateur online video equally.”
Ah, well. All is not lost. Here’s some more good news to sandwich the bad:
>> Viewers may appreciate GOOD advertising.
One in eight Internet users watch or download commercials online, the survey says.
“Young adults are twice as likely as users age 50 and older to say they watch or download commercial videos online; 22% of those 18-29, 13% of users ages 30-49, 7% of users age 50-64 and 8% of those ages 65 and older say they consume commercial video content online.”
>> “Most video viewers watch at home, but one in four report at-work viewing.”
This finding, I think, further supports newspaper Web site strategies to play up video in the evening hours:
“Video viewers who are ages 30-49, those who have a college degree, and those living in households earning $75,000 or more are among the most likely to watch video at work; roughly one-third of each group views online video at their workplace. However, those who have a broadband connection at work beat out all of these other demographic groups; 37% of online video viewers who have a high-speed connection at work watch video there.”
If you don’t want to play, move out of the way
Posted on July 18, 2007
Watch out reporters and photographers, future journalists set to join newsrooms full time in the next couple of years (if they stick around) are producing some nice online stories.
I’m particularly impressed with this piece by Roanoke.com’s Tim Gruber from Ohio University (his first for the paper).
Check it out:
Note: Keep in mind that Tim created his very first piece for a video class in May — of this year. (Should be inspiration to us all!)
You can watch it here.
He blogged about it and shares a few lessons learned:
No matter how steady you think you can hold the camera. You can’t.
Headphones are the key to good audio, but don’t forget to do a visual check of the audio levels on your camera.
The more you shoot the more you have to edit. If at all possible know what you’re going after coming into a story. That’s not to say go in with the story already written because the beauty of life is that it’s unscripted.
Don’t let the camera shoot for you. Turn off auto everything and do the thinking for the camera. It’ll guarantee you the results you’re after.
You can never have enough detail shots.
Depending on the pacing of your video (ie: alot of fast cuts) you better make sure you wide variety of material to work with.
A good soundtrack can help reinforce what you want your audience to feel. Care must be taken though not to abuse that power.
Video views to triple by 2012
Posted on July 11, 2007
A new study from ABI research says the number of people watching video content over the Internet is expected to triple to nearly 1 billion in the next five years, reports Red Herring.
The leaders in this market: Asia, where about 400 million people are forecast to view their favorite clips, shows and movies via the Web by 2012. They will make up 43 percent of viewers, says the study; North Americans are predicted to actually decline in viewership from 29 percent today to 22 percent in 2012.
Baghdad Tour
Posted on July 9, 2007
“Baghdad Tour,” part of Washingtonpost.com’s “America at War” series, shows readers what it’s like to patrol the streets of Baghdad via five video vignettes (the longest is 3:19) and a video introduction.
I love that this is map-based so I better understand where these locations are and in relation to each other. Each of the videos is quite interesting to watch (you can resize them to be bigger, too), and I appreciate being able to see each of these snippets of their lives — some shot/edited in an intimate way, such as the home-movie quality of Camp Victory.
One nitpick: All the text at the beginning of the video is mostly repeated underneath it when on the smaller size setting. Too many words. I’d rather see the text to the bottom/side of the video only.
Credits: Reporting by Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post; video editing by Jonathan Forsythe and Chet Rhodes, washingtonpost.com; design and production by Nelson Hsu, washingtonpost.com.
Quality, not quantity, & good positioning
Posted on July 6, 2007
Pete Clifton, the head of BBC News Interactive, announced that he wants to see two major changes with their online video: 1.) It should complement stories, rather than repeat streamed TV or an accompanying text story, and 2.) it should be embedded.
“Instead of putting up hundreds of pieces of video every week, is just to be more focused. We want to give [video] a higher profile so we can get to the point where we can embed them,” he said. “Once we are doing that, I don’t think we can afford to disappoint the audience. That’s not to say that stuff is badly made, it may just not necessarily complement the text that we have written and it may not just suit the platform that it’s on.”
So why are they so hot to embed their video?
In a trial run of it, they saw up to 40 percent of people watching, compared to 2 percent in a standalone player.
Wow. That’s a lot.
Navigating the D.C. Mixing Bowl
Posted on June 25, 2007
I lived and worked in Washington, D.C., for 8 years and am all-too familiar with the nightmare traffic congestion that happens on the Beltway (I-495) — particularly where it meets I-395 (a major East Coast north-south artery that passes through the city). They call this tangle of roads the “Mixing Bowl.”
The Washington Post today wrote a story about the confusion and frustration drivers still experience, even though the reconstruction of the road pattern is complete:
“After eight years and $676 million, all of the swirling ramps and bridges are open at the Springfield interchange, and traffic is flowing freely through one of the busiest crossroads on the East Coast, where interstates 95 and 395 hit the Capital Beltway.
But there is growing concern that navigating the new Mixing Bowl’s 50 ramps and 24 lanes is confusing and could be creating different safety problems.”
Add-ons to this story include a 2-D graphic and a video that takes you on a ride through.
Both are a disappointment. Here’s why:
1.) The audio is horrible, and the video doesn’t work either — they’re putting me in the driver’s seat, but I can’t read most of the street signs.
2.) A 2-D graphic? Sigh. If you’re going to do this, at least give me a link back to the story.
3.) Why not combine the two? The video starts with a map, but it fails to fully illustrate where the narrator is while he’s describing the traffic. I have driven those roads, so I can visualize where he’s at as he describes the route, but I think someone who’s never been there might get confused. (And come on, this is made for those who haven’t driven the roads. The Mixing Bowl has been under construction for 8 years — Washingtonians know how crazy the maze is.)
Greatness = taking risks
Posted on June 20, 2007
Michael Rosenblum is working with New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger about architecture around the world for a new series for Discovery. (Wow. What a gig!)
In doing this project, he’s learning about what makes great architecture — and that to create it means designers have to take risks.
Which has led him to question why TV news broadcasts don’t.
“Here we have something that is far less difficult to assemble than a building. It is far more plastic. It is not cast in stone or steel or concrete. Yet when we design and ‘architect’ television news, we are fearful of being ‘too creative’. We assiduously repeat designs and patterns that have ‘worked’ for us for a generation now. The studio, the anchors, the throw, the weather and sports.
“It is boring.
“The risks in building a Bilbao are enormous. The risks in redesigning a television newscast, really radically redesigning it, are minimal. Yet we don’t go there. The most we are willing to risk is replacing Dan with Katie. Not much of a change, really. More like repainting the front door than anything else.”
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