Freelance VJ sites

The blessing and bane of being a VJ is getting paid to do what you love. If you’re lucky, you have a staff job with an understanding news director or editor who knows that you will give your all if s/he treats you right. That means a living wage and a reasonable amount of time to do stories you love mixed in with the day-to-day assignments.

But that’s not the reality for most current and aspiring VJs. Love is one thing. Earning an income is another.

I’ve been checking out some sites that purport to channel VJ videos into potential cash flows. Although most cater to breaking news, there is room for other types of stories too. Read carefully and check each out yourself before leaping on board.

First up is cont3nt.com. Founded by former National Geographic employee Anton Gelman, cont3nt.com is the new kid on the block. Like most of the sites below, its emphasis is on breaking news…getting your just-shot breakers up on the site and out marketed to a global market. He has a variety of contracts from short-term limited to total buyout. Nice part is that if you have current clients he won’t horn in on them…but he does open up new market potential. All business is transacted directly by the freelancer and the client…cont3nt.com does not get involved in anything beyond providing the platform and collecting a small fee per transaction. They do require (as most do) that you sign an ethics statement. cont3nt.com also has a ratings system for their VJs…the more experience you have and the more and higher quality stories you provide, the higher your ranking.

eLance seems to be a meeting place on steroids for those seeking temporary workers and freelancers of all ilks, not just videographers. Potential employers post a job then view the matched freelancers. They have to deposit the full amount of the quote from the freelancer plus the commission to eLance…freelancer paid either when the job is done or when milestones are reached. Not just a VJ site though you may find the occasional gig there.

empahs.is is a crowdfunding platform for visual journalists. You have to provide the usual: a short proposal of two or three sentences, one page proposal outlining the scope/relevance of said project, your personal (short) bio, links to your work and a video pitch. Offhand this looks more like a still visual storyteller site…but check it out and let us know what you find out.

reportersunited is not just for the word folks…it’s actually targeting VJs. Like cont3nt.com it seeks breaking stories, but also wants good factual features. And I’ve worked with their team just enough to know they will seek clients if you have a good idea…and they act as an intermediary between VJ and client to ensure the story fits the need. What else you need to know: independent video news agency, adherence to journalism standards of facts/conduct/ethics, global distribution (all of these sites provide that).

storyhunter was founded by VJs and although you can provide story ideas, they also provide assignments you can sign up for. They do screen, so no newbies here. Their emphasis is serious work and breakers for working VJs.

transterramedia is another global site that accepts pitches from VJs and matches them up with clients. They do breaking news but accept hard-hitting general news and features. They do screen before allowing VJs on board and do work closely with their contributors (this from experience).

Vourno is fresh off the press…came out less than two weeks ago. It is a crowdsourcing platform aimed at “Vournos” or video journos. They solicit “pubs” to provide support and funding for projects you propose. The VJ owns the rights to their work…what Vourno does is provide exposure for VJs and their story ideas to a public willing to pay to see a story through. This is not an income stream where you are paid to work…your story is funded for what it will cost to produce and then you are free to market it to clients once it has appeared on the Vourno site for a specified amount of time.

Realize that I’ve vastly condensed the information and approach each of the above sites is taking…but the bottom line is they are potential money-makers if you have the skills, ideas, and commitment to follow through and provide what you promised.

In addition to these there are job/gig websites, including staffmeup, productionhub, mandy, mediamatch, journalismjobs. You can find others by doing a web search with the type of job you’re interested in and “job board.” These offer short and long-term gigs and even full-time jobs. Pay ranges from (what else) free to union scale.

So as bleak as the full-time staff market may be…if you are enterprising and industrious you may be able to make your passion a paying profession.

Skateboarding in the sky…

Do a favor get a surprise in the end.

So I helped an old friend out by shooting a few stories on his wilder youth flying P38s in WWII. For some reason he felt he owed me and today was payback. I got to go up in an airplane!

Now I’ve been up in everything from cargo planes to Hueys to blimps to you name it. Even a hot air balloon. Once spent 26 hours flying home from an overseas assignment and never could convince accounting that I should get OT cause it was all in the same day. They just couldn’t buy a day longer than the standard 24…but I’m meandering again.

I was out at Stockton Metro Airport early today waiting by a back lot security gate when in zoomed a jeep bearing pilot Tom Belisle. And not just a pilot. We were about to go up in his home-built experiment aircraft – an RV-4.

When we took off I felt like I was riding a skateboard. This tight little lady is SMALL. Looking out the cockpit window I was wondering if the wings could actually take us aloft…but with a very powerful 200hp engine we were up up up in minutes. (And I just checked the specs out and yes, each wing is less than 10 feet long.)

Talk about getting to know your pilot intimately. Tom and I were cabin mates in a space barely big enough to stretch out in. He had his space and I tried to stay in mine. Of course I shot some video but that darned cockpit was so small I couldn’t even use my babycam – my HMC150. Had to resort to using a little point and shoot POV Swann.

We took a meander over the San Francisco Bay and the worked our way up over San Quentin and on to Petaluma for lunch at their small airport. There I saw several other home-built aircraft. The obvious question: What’s it like going up for the first time in something you built yourself? The answer: It’s a real “hello Jesus” moment. I can only imagine the faith you have to have in your knowledge and skill to do something like that.

Then it was back to Stockton. A two hour land drive was maybe half an hour, doing land speeds between 178 to 185mph.

And yes we shimmied and shook and talked a lot about this and that. And spent time just enjoying the view.

So I got my day in the air and got to meet a true gentleman who flies with such love that he constantly volunteers to take up newbies like me as well as Wounded Warriors and teens in a local junior pilot’s program. It was an honor to be his guest.

Lesson Plans Available!

OK…so this is totally shameless self-promotion.

Larry Nance and I have completed the first edition of the Teacher’s Supplement to The Basics of Videojournalism.

This 90 page coil bound book will soon be available at the Journalism Education Association Bookstore.

Contents include more than thirty lesson plans for teachers to instruct budding VJs, as well as suggestions for setting up and teaching a class, forms (Syllabus, Equipment Liability Waiver, templates for scripts) and sample rubrics.

But don’t wait too long. This is limited (at this time) to the 25 books that are being hand delivering to the NSPA/JEA conference in San Francisco tomorrow morning. So pick up your copy there or hop online to order.

Timeless advice…

…it never changes.  The process of creating a visual story that is.  Larry Nance and I are merrily working on our tome, The Basics of Videojournalism when what should appear online but some helpful hints for visual shooters.

Trouble is – they’re more than ninety-five years out of date.

Or are they?

Thanks to Amanda Emily, here is a list of hints written by Pathe’ News editor Paul Hugon in 1916 – during the birth of the movement of newsreel shooters. Let’s see how those tips stack up.

Right off there’s this advice. Still applicable today.

The object of motion pictures is to show motion. Only things in which there is motion are worthy of the cameraman’s attention.

Then there’s the highly technical advice on exposure using a hand cranked camera.

For each turn of the handle, eight pictures are exposed. The handle is turned twice in one second. Therefore 16 pictures are exposed in one second.

Translated to today’s terminology, most cameras set on auto expose approximately 30 pictures per second. And you don’t have to keep turning the crank to keep exposing new pictures.

And some advice we’re giving in the book. Use a tripod (dammit).

It is essential, to preserve the illusion which is the basis of the film business, that the pictures should be absolutely steady.

We’re in agreement on tilts and pans too! It is better by far to visualize and shoot what you see in several strong shots rather than taking the lazy route and panning or spraying the scene.

There should never be a panoram, either vertical or horizontal, unless it is absolutely essential to obtain a photographic effect, and in any case the panoram should be, not from the main subject to others, but from others to the main subject, where theattention will finally rest. It is very much better to take two scenes than one panorammed scene. Panoraming is the lazy man’s remedy.

There’s a lot more there and most of it pretty darn good. Shoot pretty subjects, striking effects of light and shade. A hefty dose of technical advice on iris and shutter. Ummmm…you can skip the sections on protecting the negative and shipping (by slow boat to China in those days).

And the conclusion is his Golden Rule…

Make as good a picture for others as you would like others to make for you.
Nothing but the very best is good enough. Think, and think hard, how you can make the best picture. Put it all down in writing; plan your scenes…
There is plenty of room at the top of your profession, but you will not get there by standing about or just grinding away. Brain work is ultimately the only way to big money. And the money is there waiting for you.

(well maybe those last few lines don’t apply anymore…)
For full text, go to the original article on Amanda Emily’s site.

b-roll hack

Cameragod down under came up with a novel concept to booster the rep of one of my favorite sites – b-roll. (b-roll is the go-to site for broadcast news cameramen to discuss gear, gossip and more.)

Here is his tip – and a great one it is. I would never have thought of this.

And here is my tip – and oldie but goodie. Especially if you’re fairly new to the biz.

I look forward to more of these and hope to learn from an amazing group of peers.

Looking for stories…

…is the name of a site I was directed to this week.  While the concept may not be original (one story a week) the execution is amazing.  Joan Planas and Ana Salva’ have a vision of producing a story a week focusing on people. Plain people who have stories to tell that educate and inform the audience about their community and country.

I like that they spend the time to get to know their subjects over a day or week and the entire story is told in the subject’s own words (with subtitles as necessary).  

But what I like even more is their artistry…their use of motion and exposure and music to make each story unique and real.

So check it out at HERE and let me know what you think.

There be Dragons!

Love this crawling quote on my husband’s computer: “It’s not that we say dragons are real…but we say they can be beaten…”

Dragons being, of course, totally (ahem) imaginary creatures that lurk in fairy tales and in the backs of our minds.

Well in the back of my mind lately there’s been a desire to cut out the seemingly endless hours I spend transcribing interviews. I’d looked into voice recognition software in the past and had an inkling there were some possibilities out there. What did me in was a marathon week of listening to and transcribing a panel discussion of high school debaters and interviews with five coaches. Oh – and presentations by the students too.

Word. For. Word.

Regular folks like to talk. Speech and debate folks take it seriously and my fingers and brain were seriously addled by the time I was through. Limpid fingers…mush for brains.

So I finally began my search in earnest and dragons kept resurfacing as a solution.

Dragons Naturally Speaking. Managed to finagle some coupons and points and got it for nearly half off and began my adventure last night. And was frankly pretty impressed. The program is set up for one voice and you have to go through a learning curve with the software. So I spent about ten minutes setting up my profile, which included reading sentences and learning how to insert capital letters and punctuation, how to start a new line and more and then I transcribed two short interviews in slightly more time than it took to view them. Wow.

The method to get this done could be considered multi-tasking to the extreme. Dragon was open to transcribe into MS Word. I had a screen with an interview playing back. I just had to make sure that Word was the active screen and I would repeat word for word whatever the interview subject was saying. Even transcribed some nats.

The only thing better of course would be to plug-in all audio directly for transcription…but this sure beats the old way of listen and type quickly and then back up and start listening and typing again. For my purposes I don’t need impeccable accuracy…so rough drafts are workable for scripting purposes.

And now I’m ready for that next big project – a series of interviews and nats for DSES…and trust me, it is gonna go together oh so much faster than anticipated.

Marrying old and new…

…technologies that is.

So in my gear bags I have stuff that is more than a decade old that can be married with my new toys. We’re talking June-December weddings here folks. Analog and digital. Fresh out of the box and faded with time.

My mainstay tripod/now too heavy for everyday use (purchased in 2002) is firmly fixed to the short jib I got a year ago. Old heavy tripod is a perfect base for a jib. Can hold the twenty pound weights and give a stable platform for shooting.

Ditto the XLR cables and Electrovoice mike. Old technology…heck dating back to the seventies (not mine but the concept). It can be married to any out-of-the-box camera.

I guess what I’m getting at is that while new is nice and in some cases better, some old stuff just won’t die.

I have a Canon ZR10…picked it up on ebay a few years ago. I have fond memories of my first digital camera…same camera…that I got right after bailing from news in 2002. Just couldn’t live without a camera in hand and it was affordable at the time (on a rookie teacher’s stipend).

That little baby still works and I pull it out occasionally just for old times sake. It has an amazing zoom, audio inputs…and while the quality is most definitely NOT high def, it puts out an acceptable image.

My gear bags are a combination of new and old, fresh-faced and creaky-old. I keep what works and find ways to marry it with what is current to make images that matter.

So if you’re out there in dreamtime wanting the best and newest, realize that it’s only gear. What really counts is your vision…what comes out of using the gear. Videojournalism is NOT about having all of the toys. It is about telling the story.

What’s old is new…

…again. Retro can be all the rage…and if you haven’t skidded over the 30 year mark, then either sit back and enjoy the ride or skedaddle. If you’re looking back at fifty, enjoy the memories.

It’s happened again.

There’s a whole generation now who have not lived without something I could never have conceived of at their age.

I was the generation that thought transistor radios, cars and TV were just, well, ordinary. (My folks saw them as a foothold to the future.) But then man landed on the moon and we all saw stars and beyond. The universe was ours.

Next thing you know we have a generation who ho-hums space exploration. In fact, they see it as something their parents and grandparents did. None of that stuff for them…they’d rather send out the robots.

Today co-author and friend Larry Nance sent me a link to something from our past…from the early days of visual storytelling.

Back in the day we shot on something called film. Kind of a bendable plastic coated on one side with a thin veneer of silver hallaide embedded in a gel. (I’m hoping here that the lesson of silver tarnishing in reaction to sunlight hasn’t been forgotten.) The film came in various sizes to fit different cameras (think SD or compact flash cards). Sizes ranged from 8mm to 16mm to 35mm and upwards. While the upper ranges belonged to the pros (and were prohibitively expensive), the smallest sizes (8mm and super-8 primarily) were affordable enough for home movie-makers.

Unlike today’s memory cards which just sit there and absorb data, film was mechanically pushed and pulled through the camera. On a still camera it was frame by frame…one shot per frame, then push the crank to advance. In “movie” or “film” cameras it clattered through at 24 frames per second. To make things even more fun, if you had a camera that could shoot audio (aka single system sound), then the audio was recorded 28 frames BEFORE the visuals.

How do I know all this? Years of shooting news with a single system sound 16mm camera. Years of threading said film into said camera. Years of editing A, B, C roll (and beyond!).

So what is this vision from the past that is sparking this posting?

Why the Digital Bolex of course.

In days of yore Bolex made some pretty nifty gear…small handheld numbers with a handle on the bottom for ease of use. And the new DB (Digital Bolex) has the retro look of its grandpappy. But with new guts and interchangeable lenses from what I can see.

So no more threading film…no more messy chemicals…just pop in the CF card and you’re out shooting in the style of yesteryear. It even has a 16mm mode (I gotta get me one of those!).

Those who make the rules…

…determine who is equal.

Strange how similar discussions take place with very different people in far ranging venues.

So women are finally allowed to be “equal” in the military and over on the NPPA facebook page there’s a lengthy thread about equality. Some who think there never can really be equality and some who say it is a step forward.

After going around and around in some of the sparring I came to an epiphany: Those who make the rules determine who is equal. Those who have no input into the rules can never be equal.

So if I’m part of a bunch of guys wearing wigs in the 1700s and we decide that “all men are equal” it’s really just our way of saying guys like us. It takes two hundred years to look around and slllllooooooowwwwwllllyyy change the rules because, well not everyone’s happy with them. But in changing the rules I’m giving up my control, my power. The guys like me aren’t always happy about it. And even though it’s a rule…the law…I can kinda ignore it until I’m caught. Then they slap my hands a few times and I know it will take forever to really make that law effective.

Why the fuss here?

Let’s time hop back to the early 1970s. Freshly minted diploma and eager to work, I got told way too often that I wasn’t getting interviewed BECAUSE I WAS FEMALE and nothing could force a company to even look at me.

Well I didn’t want to force anyone to do anything…I just wanted a job. And I know (now) at that time there were millions of other women, blacks, Asians, you name it all in the same predicament.

Thank you FCC for that ruling in the summer of 74 for mandating that anyone using the airways in this country HAD to consider all comers. What happened is there was a scramble to hire anything female or not part of the mainstream white male culture that controlled broadcasting in those times. (Not saying that was a good thing…because in those early years there were some pretty bad hiring decisions made in haste, but over time those who couldn’t hack it were history.)

The door was open and I went in.

Six months after getting my first job I went to an NPPA workshop taught by Ernie Crisp. Who told the assembled newbies that women would never be able to work as broadcast cameramen because the gear was too heavy for them. That was the mainstream thinking of the day.

Hmmmm….guess I wasn’t good at listening, cause I stayed under cameras for the next 25+ years.

Those who make the rules determine who is equal.

Think about it.