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Kathy Newell has been keeping up with the saga of the two wayward whales near Sacramento, California on our blog thinknews. Her love of environmental stories compells her to follow this story. We’re both realizing we need some heavier “guns”…longer lenses to pull our audience in closer to the story. Working outside of traditional news organizations is a challenge…until we are a recognized news agency, we struggle along the sidelines. But sometimes that is where the story is…out where the people are.
Look for more postings from all three of us this summer.
Was reading over some of my old posts and realized I’m gonna hafta do another post on news slang defintions. I just wanted to clear one term up today…and many of you can guess what it means. Backpeddling is walking backwards. You can do it alone or with support, but it takes a special style to do it safely.
Right now you’re thinking, she’s got to be kidding. Telling me how to walk? Well shooting video is a whole lot different than shooting stills, as you are by now aware. With stills you can sneak a look, move over, reposition. With video you have to keep rolling…and rolling smoothly. If you can hold the camera on wide angle, positioned steadily on your shoulder you can backpeddle and keep both eyes off the eyepiece for short bursts…but you have to keep coming back to check your shot. A lot of folks, when they backpeddle, just flat food it. Lift leg, place foot down in flat position. Or they nearly do it properly, with the toes hitting just before the rest of the foot.
Think about it – you can’t see where you’re going…you may have some peripheral vision, take quick looks back. You may even know the route. But walking backwards has its hazards. You could step on an object or a pothole or even some stairs or a ramp.
If you backpeddle properly, you do an exaggerated toe-heel movement. The toe allows you to feel for and make contact with something solid. The downcoming foot peels down and can react to objects and open air (oops). If you don’t do it this way, you can step off a stair and go flat on your back or rumpus-behindus.
How to backpeddle with support: have your reporter or assistant firmly hold your belt or pants at the middle of your waist/back and place their other hand grasping your left (or non-shooting) shoulder. Relax – you have to trust them completely at this point. Start backpeddling (toe-heel, toe-heel) and let them guide you. They should use your shoulder as a steering wheel and your pants to hold you up/support you and pull with. So as you backpeddle, if they want you to go left, they should firmly twist your shoulder to the right and gently pull on your pants to the left. Holding the shoulder also allows them to support your back if you start to go down and holding the pants lets them haul you up if you stumble.
I’ve used both methods…especially great for perp walks or politico walking interviews in hallways.
The foreign language teachers at my school decided to give extra credit assignments (in French and Spanish) if students would shoot a one minute commercial or a ten minute movie. Their requirement: the script had to be in the language the students were learning.
Technology is a wonderful thing – but (much as I love and admire these teachers) they know nothing – NOTHING – about what is involved in making a simple commercial, let alone a ten minute movie. Normally I’d ignore this and let it go…but the kids are lining up outside my classroom clamouring for help. They need cameras, they need to learn to edit. They bring in problems and expect solutions.
So here’s what the kids have taught me.
1. If I say “help” with big helpless eyes, you will help me (true).
2. If I am polite and willing to listen and learn, you will help me (also true).
3. If I bring in a still camera that shoots mpeg files you will somehow find a way to edit them, even though I forgot the cable that connects to the computer and your computers can’t recognize mpeg4 (ouch – kind of true…see PowerPoint lesson below).
4. Mrs. Green LOVES a challenge (unfortunately VERY true).
The latter forced me to learn something. Our older eMacs won’t recognize some of the new file forms (yeah – our geeks need to do some upgrading), so when one team of kids brought in a flash drive with mpeg files, I had to do some quick thinking. We imported to iMovie, but there was no audio. Tried using QuickTime Pro to convert to .avi files, but still no audio in either iMovie or Final Cut Express. Looked bleak…but then I remembered something. You can “edit” in PowerPoint!
For those of you who despair of learning editing because you have an older computer or can’t afford fancy programs…you can do simple cuts in PowerPoint. You will have to shoot exactly what you want because you can’t cut the clips down the way you can in a nonlinear editing program.
Here’s how.
First, create a file folder and title it. Then create your PP presentation and save it to the file folder. Next, move all of your music files and video clips into the folder. You can also move your still photos and art to the folder if you want – but if you insert stills/art, for some reason they are integrated into the fabric of the program, but video and music are not. PowerPoint seems to create a reference to the movie/music files. So if you create a PP with movies/music and then transfer the PP to another computer or flash drive or CD, they will detach from the PP. You actually need to transfer them in a file so they will remained linked.
So you have your folder set up (hey, that’s media management). Now you can get to work. Realize that I am working with a MacBook with MicroSoft Office X – your version of Office or PowerPoint may be different and you may have to adapt features.
Create a bunch of blank slides (or if you want titles, choose another template). Go to Insert, Movies and Sounds, Movie From File and choose your first clip. Then insert your second into the next slide, and so on until they are all in there.
If you want to have music playing in the background, go to Insert, Movies and Sound, Sound From File and choose the music you put into your folder. The icon for audio will appear on the slide – move it to an inconspicuous area of the slide.
If you want the music to play for more than one slide, click on the slide you want the music to begin on and then go to Slide Show, Animations, Custom. In the upper left window click on the icon for your music and then go to options. Click “Continue Slide Show” and “After ____ Slides.” The latter allows you to choose how many slides the music will play under. You can also choose to loop the music. (Note: please remember to use only royalty-free music; that is music you have a legal right to use.)
Click on your first slide and go to Slide Show, Animations, Transition and choose which effect you want to use between slides (leave as is if you want plain cuts).
You can add a darker background design to make the overall effect more cohesive if you want.
Now…time to set up the timing. Go to Slide Show, Rehearse Timings and click on your space bar or return button every time you want to change slides and save.
Now when you go to “View SlideShow” the presentation will play automatically. And you have now done simple editing using Powerpoint by creating slides and playing them for specified periods of time.
The new file formats are a challenge with older computers and sometimes I can’t make it work. I do have a suggestion besides PowerPoint (which can be too expensive for many students): download Avid Free DV and the accompanying tutorial. This is a fairly rigorous free program by the top nonlinear company around. It comes in PC and Mac flavors.
I’ve been a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Press Photographers Association (henceforth referred to as BAPPA) since 1978. I’ve served on the board, entered their annual contest, judged the contest, and made lifelong friends. They are my people. But there are problems. I was a television news photog for twenty-eight years and have always been a supporter of unions and professional organizations. But now I am saddened by a seeming stagnation of broadcast members in BAPPA. The print side is healthy and growing. There are monthly get-togethers and an annual Digital Workshop. For the past four years BAPPA has hosted a Digital Video Workshop…meant to give college students an overview of the profession and help new photographers entering the field learn some basics and network with folks at the top of the food chain. The first year we had 20 students and ten plus broadcast news photogs. Then there was a shift…and suddenly the workshop was filled with print people trying to learn video. No problems with that – but we were no longer giving any support to our television brethren.
I feel that there is a disconnect with our broadcast members (and potential members). Paul Sakuma, BAPPA president, wants me to send out a survey asking broadcast photographers (both members and nonmembers) what we can do for them. This is just a beginning – they may not know what they want or what BAPPA can do to support them.
I got into this a bit in past posts Whither broadcast news… and TV shooters posting on the web explains my concerns a bit more in detail.
Personally I think it may be because of perception – by the employer, the employee, and the public – about the role of the visual journalist as part of the news operation.
This may be because (opinion again) they work with a reporter who is seen (first) as a TV star and (second) as a reporter. The amount of equipment traditionally carried by TV photogs turns them into living breathing pack mules. They set up live shots and run microwave trucks. So there they are: the perception is subservient, technician, pack mule.
This lack of identiy has made television photographers an almost invisible class. While they are what sets television news apart from print and radio, they are not given recognition as individuals…
I’d like to hear from both sides – print and TV. Why don’t broadcast photogs join/participate in professional organizations? Are they too busy? Do they not care? Do they feel the organizations don’t support them or have anything to offer? I realize that TV stations have large staffs, but there may be more photogs on more newspapers. However, in the Bay area we aren’t tapping into nearly the numbers that are out there.
Email me or leave a comment. I need to have this survey together in the next few weeks and could use some suggestions.
I’ve been having a discusion with Mark Hancock of the Beaumont Enterprise about which low-end camcorder to purchase. His goal is to do what I did – get a low-end camera and teach himself how to shoot and edit video (OK, so i was a mite different – I needed to learn nonlinear). He’s made his decision and hopefully will be in the store today and home playing tonight. But he reminded me of what happened when I got my very first digital camcorder. I put it through its paces. Was used to broadcast cameras and wanted to see what this teensey little camera could do. So here goes.
Open the box and smell the new. Pull out the camera – it’s never gonna be this pristine again. Put the lens cap on right away, and your skylight filter if you opted for one (hope you did). Now start turning it over and around and get to know the exterior. Find all those little nooks and crannies and plastic and metal covers that hide the goodies and open each one up. (Oh – and if you can’t find them, do what I did after a week of owning my first camcorder: look in the manual. I couldn’t find the pesky firewire port….on the ZR at the time hidden under a cover just beneath the lens and mike.) It doesn’t hurt to have the manual open to the diagram so you can see what you’re looking for.
Hopefully the battery has a charge – so attach it. Turn on camera to camera/shoot mode and look through the viewfinder and adjust the diopter to your eyesight. Go into the menu and set up your time and date.
Now for the tape – the tape carriage is one of the most delicate parts of your camcorder (and the mechanical part you’ll have the most contact with). Once you’ve discarded the tape wrapper, open the tape carriage. Check your manual on this if you aren’t sure, and gentley insert the tape. The carriage will have a tiny label that says “Push.” This is where you push and no where else. You can twist your carriage out of alignment by pushing in the wrong area. Once you’ve pushed, the carriage will begin to pull the tape into the camera…let it go all the way in and then close the tape door.
Time to really start playing. I did some seemingly stupid stuff. Walked around the house, inside and outside, shooting in all kinds of light. Wanted to see how good the auto-white was. Put the camera on a tripod and shoot a wide, medium, and close up. Then put an object within inches of the lens to get a feel for how close I could go with macro. Check out the zoom and get a feel for how fast it goes.
Now turn the camera on yourself. Have it on the tripod and do an audio test. Stand two feet away and state, “I’m two feet away,” then step back and repeat at four, six, eight and ten feet. When you play this back you’ll get an idea of how well your mike captures sound.
Get into the menu. I honestly hate those tiny little dials and menus…but they do give you some control and you should know how to work them. Find your manual control for exposure and focus and test them. Go into the manual white balance and balance on a white object in sunlight and then turn and look at an area lit by tungston. Big difference. If you want a real red sunset…you can white balance on the cool side of a car (bluish white) to enhance the warmer colors.
Your camera has two modes: camera and playback. Go into playback and figure out how to play, fast forward and rewind.
This may take a few days or weeks, but really get to know your gear. You shouldn’t have to think before shooting, especially if you’re on a breaker. Oh – one last hint. Before I roll on a story I shoot off ten seconds of bars (or I cap the lens and shoot ten seconds of black). When I go to look at tape, this tells me I’ve either changed location or stories. It also helps when you playback some tape…you don’t lose your time code by rolling past the last recorded segment and you aren’t in danger of erasing the last few seconds of your last shot.
My last post reminded me of the proper way to cut an audio track – better known as narration. If you just pick up your script and read (or worse yet, try to ad lib) you’re most likely gonna have problems. So here’s how and why to do it properly.
First, read the damn thing. Even the pros do that – they give it a read to get comfortable with it. They mark it up – underlining words they want to punch. They even change the language so it’s more personal – more their words. And they take ownership of the words; of the script.
Next, label your tracks. The first one is track one, the second track two, and so on.
Now you’re ready to read.
Hint re reading into a mike – never talk directly into the mike. Read over it/past it. Put it beneath your lips and talk to your script. If you read right into the mike you’ll pop your “Ps.” Reading over the mike minimizes this. In fact, you may have to practice pulling your punch with “Ps,” cause they do have a tendancy to pop. (And what I mean by this, is the sudden burst of air as you push the letter out creates a popping sound that is distracting to the audience.)
Read as follows:
“Track one, take one, in three…two…one…” Now read your narration segment. If you mess up, begin again with “Track one, take two, in three…two…one…” As you go, mark the good takes on your script. If you’ve ever edited narration and had trouble finding the beginning, this should solve the problem.
If you mess up mid-track and like what you’ve done so far, pick it up, as follows:
“Track one, take two…pickup, in three…two…one…”
Pros have a reason for everything. When I did field recording of tracks, I’d hold my hand up in front with the track and take number. If it was a wash, I’d do a thumbs down. This way when I was trying to find tracks I’d rewind until I saw a thumbs down and then take the next track. (Yeah, I’m a visual learner.)
By the way, while you’re reading, don’t talk from your head. Use your diaphram. Use the voice you use when you want to be heard. Don’t yell….but push the words out. You don’t want to be authoritative or compelling, but you do want to be believeable.
For VideoJournalism, this is Cyndy Green reporting.
Was over on Angela Grant’s News Videographer website this morning reading a post about writing to video. She made some very valid points about building sequences. One comment caught my eye:
It feels like unrelated b-roll shots are being slapped on just to go with the audio tracks. It’s good to an extent, because you do want to be able to show what you’re talking about. However, this audio is controlling the placement of the video so literally that it creates a disjointed visual story. The visuals in themselves are powerful storytellers that can and should exist on the same level as the audio story. It’s okay for the audio to run without the video literally showing everything that the words are saying…
The strength of video is the ability to tell a story on several levels. First, the content – the information you are writing/narrating and what your subjects say. Next the audio – this is different than the content…this is the natural sound, the emotion in the interviews…the real world intruding on your story. While your content may be objective, your audio is subjective. Third are the visuals. The worst stories I’ve seen were perfect audio/video matches. A real example from the late 1970s – story about a poverty-stricken area of Africa. “See the boy in the red shirt (show him) with the flies all over his face (show flies). He is starving (show ribs).” That’s not word for word, but what I remember of a very bad story with audio/video perfectly matched. The beauty of video is you can reach your audience on a conscious level and subconscious level at the same time – tell them something and then show them something to reinforce or even contradict what you are saying.
On to my next point: dump editing. I’ve edited the top/breaking story for a show and set up for a live shot in less than fifteen minutes (thanks to a very supportive live truck engineer).
Example – during the Sund-Carrington missing tourists story near Yosemite in the early 2000’s about an hour before showtime we heard a car had been found along the highway…my reporter and I rushed over the hill from where our satellite truck was positioned and down the highway…got some shots and quickie interview and headed for the truck. The reporter was new to the market and hadn’t worked with experienced photogs and told me she’d just go live – there wouldn’t be time to pull it off. I had her write a track-interview-track-interview quickie package on the road. Immediately after pulling up she cut the audio into the camera…I tossed my sticks up, threw the camera on top and let the engineer to hook it up while I hopped into the truck. I slammed the narration and interviews together and then did the “dump edit.” I’d purposely shot long (:15-:30) shots knowing I’d be in a rush and all I did was set my in/out and covered with one shot. It didn’t matter that the editing wasn’t my best – what mattered was getting information on air. When time is short, know the shortcuts.
In another case during a very intense storm period in San Francisco I was shooting for KTVU with reporter John Fowler. We knew from the moment we got the assignment we’d be in trouble and resorted to standup city. Our goal was to show as much as possible of the storm and how it affected folks and get it live at the top of the show. So we hit several locations and at each location he’d have a short segment of track and I’d either pan to him on location or just shoot the location while he narrated. The most memorable was getting to the Golden Gate Bridge tailgating an ambulance through traffic and then just shooting a telephoto shot of the closed bridge (historic – had only been closed once before in its history due to weather) buckling eight to ten feet up and down. We battled our way back to the live truck…I edited (I think) five or six of the segments together and the audience got the full package treatment without a lot of fancy editing. Just sound and picture.
Editing hint for standups and narration track. It’s a pain to find the beginning of tracks if you’re in a rush, so when you record always begin with “Track one, take (1, 2, whatever), in three two one…” If you preceed each track with this and you make a note of which were the good takes you can find them easily…the countdown of “three, two, one…” right before you begin a track lets you know to set your in point. Often, in a rush I’d just rewind to the last take of each segment.
Read Howard Owens’ blog today. The small town served by one of his newspapers was demolished by a tornado and he managed to get a website up with the story. Amazing. He links to local blogs and UGC video posted on youtube in the first story on the site (written by him). This may be the future of breaking news and this may be a model for it. The newspaper is still the filter, but the citizen journalist is providing a lot of the material.
A few years back I used to host an annual DV Day at my house. Computers everywhere…cameras, mikes, lights. It was an open-ended opportunity for like-minded folks to bring their goodies and share. Nothing formal…just ask questions and answer them. Try someone’s computer out with all their goodies, have a shootout with cameras, learn lighting tricks or just kick back and observe.
Had another one today…shorter and with only a few folks, but once again exciting and fun. Several of my old compatriots came (with requisite edible goodies). First we played show and tell – had cameras ranging from my little cheapie ZR60 to a high-end Hi-Defer worth thousands. Shot off about ten seconds of tape on each of five cameras and then popped it into my desktop w/Final Cut Express. And then the fun began. Seven people all with questions (me too) going back and forth. None of us had tried the “Replace” or “Fit to Fill” options, so we gave it a try and found out the difference (sorry if you know already…this was a “duh” moment for all of us). Replace drops the new video in and Fit to Fill takes your defined clip with in and out points and slows it down or speeds it up to fit the hole.
I learned some nifty little tricks from them (setting autosave time) and they learned some basics of media management from me (keep complex projects in files in your window). Try it – invite some video friends over and have them bring cameras/computers (whatever). Just sit and talk. Even the most experienced can learn from the least experienced if they listen. Plus, it’s a ton of fun.
We’ve decided to make this a traveling show…next one in Elk Grove (about thirty minutes north of me) sometime this summer. Then we might head for the foothills – who knows. You’re never too old to learn something new. (And thanks to buddy Larry Nance, I will be downloading Avid Free DV in PC and Mac formats along with the tutorials…which I will hand out on CDs to my students so they can have fun at home with video. If I give them .avi clips on a CD along with the program, even a Firewire free computer can but used for editing if it’s up to speed otherwise.)
It’s offical: the end is nearly here for low-end camcorders and even mid-range with mike inputs. The only ones I could find were a Samsung (under $300 – the SCD6550), Panasonic HDCSC1 ($1100), and JVC GZMG555 ($800). There may be more out there. If so, let me know.
The Samsung is a true low-end camera that records to mini-dv tapes.
The Panasonic is a hi-def camera which records to memory cards. For another $300 you can get the more professional looking AGDVC7, which records to mini-dv tapes.
The JVC is a hard disk drive camera which can record up to seven hours of good quality video in mpeg2.
Looks like my summer vacation is going to be spent visiting my local camera store, trying to figure out what direction my school will take re purchases in the future. Much as I like (and am comfortable with) mini-dv format, the times they are a changing and I need to keep up. Despite the proliferation of DVD camcorders, I know I won’t go that way. Hard drives are an interesting option…but need to check for compatibility with the Macs my school uses. Memory cards seem to be where the industry is going – plug in, shoot, pull out, plug into computer and edit. Not too different than tape really. The cost of the cards and amount they can store will be the issue…as well as the Mac compatibility issue.
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