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Photographer Brian Feulner walks up the streambed where snowmelt from Folger Park runs into Highlands Lake, flowing down the Sierra as the Mokelumne River. (Matt Brown/News-Sentinel)
There are times when, as a teacher, you just want to hoot and hollar and yell. I had one of those moments this morning when I hopped onto the website of my local newspaper, the Lodi News Sentinel, and saw this story on a trek following the headwaters of a local river. Writer Matt Brown helped me out a month ago with a trial run of my video training…in four hours we went through the basics of shooting and editing and it looks like it took – and under some pretty adverse conditions. A 35 mile hike through the wilderness. Now if you’re watching the video, you may be thinking – oh no big deal. The initial shots are shakey and there’s too much camera movement. But remember – Matt is a newbie and this is a major step for both him and the Sentinel. A real multimedia effort. There’s Matt’s usual excellent writing in the print story. Photographer Brian Feulner did a great job with the still slide show (and may have shot some of the video too). And then there’s the video, allowing the viewer to experience an adventure they most likely will never be able to take part in otherwise. As soon as I catch up with Matt I’ll get the details.
Rock on!
The AC went out in my classroom (TV studio) yesterday. Temperatures were heading for the high 90’s and I knew teaching would be impossible by the end of the day. The first English class went okay. Second class was listless…we were reading “The Possibility of Evil” and half the heads were down on desks. Fortunately I’d made arrangements to move them to the library to work on essays about half way through the period. Broadcasting definitely had to move – to a vacant classroom where my lesson plan consisted of push the play button on my computer to play a DVD.
Kids – even high school students – love a change of pace. My rambuncious crew settled in noisily, only glancing at the movie as it began. Then, strangely, they got quieter and quieter until there were only a few whispers in the back of the room. EVERYONE was watching the video intently. And this wasn’t their choice of fare – it was one of my current favorites: Second Hand Lion. There was enough shooting and action to get their attention…and then the plot and characters captivated them. I stopped the video a few minutes before the bell rang at a critical point in the plot – a cliffhanger. They resumed watching today with a sub (I had to run my daughter in for a doctor’s appointment). But I know they will watch to the end, enjoy the movie, and perhaps learn something.
The lesson? Too often we have a comfort zone…we fall into a rut and think this is the way life should be. My kids’ rut is too much junk music, movies, and games. My solution is to pull them out of the rut that life has surrounded them with and let them see other possibilities – not just in movies, but in music and how creative they can get with video. My two most creative teams are the one with seniors who are focused and a group of rowdies who’ve discovered how much fun it is to use music and sound FX to create visual and audio discord. My three advanced students are working with a local police department on a National Night Out video. The student who helped shoot the video did a ride-along with a bomb squad member…he was treated as a pro and will remember this for the rest of his life…a defining moment…a step into another world.
Sometimes we think we are predestined to a certain type of life…the life our parents lived and the life we know. Photography and then broadcast news lifted me out of one of those boxed in lives…I’ve seen and done more than I could ever have imagined as a high school student. Video, like literature, exposes the audience to other lives and other possibilities…it opens up the world as something real and reachable rather than a distant fantasy. My hope is not that my students all become career videographers or videojournalists…but that they learn they can learn anything and do anything and be anything they want to.
Made the mistake of walking into my local big box super electronics store with my credit cards today and walked out with a portable hard drive (160GB vs. my five year old LaCie 40GB) and a tiny (to me) digital still camera. The former cause you can never have enough portable storage and the latter to run through its paces in anticipation of some presentations I may be doing.
The Exilim is a solid metal camera – no plastic exterior here. It fits comfortably into a pocket and the controls are basic, but easy to understand. My purpose, of course, was to check the audio and video quality. After playing with it to find out how close I could get and still stay in focus as well as how tight and wide the lens would zoom, I handheld the camera and did the basic shots and downloaded to my laptop for editing. The camera is recognized by iPhoto, so I had to turn that off every time before importing to iMovie. Video quality seems reasonably clean for a point and shoot, but – as usual – the audio did not live up to my standards. In a quiet room you can do an interview if you are close enough…but you’ll need a tripod to hold it steady. However the audio sounds distant…not nearly as clean as a miked interview. There’s only a 3X optical zoom – barely enough to get you from here to there. There are controls for exposure and white balance. With a 2GB SD card I can get up to half an hour of video. For a little under twice the price of the PureDigital, you get a much better camera. It feels hefty and the sound, while not great, is vastly better than PD. I guess if I didn’t have anything else, I could work with this for simple stories. Here’s the basic shots from this camera.
The next day: by the way, while this camera is good for basic point and shoot stories or to teach yourself the basics…if you’re serious about being a VJ you’ll need a more serious lens and a mike input. So for a learner/basics camera – yes. If your heart and soul are locked on visuals, use it as a springboard. It is one of the better compromises between good still camera/good video camera at this end of the price spectrum. And while there are Exilims with 10x lenses and up to 10GB still size, none has a mike input.
Addendum: I seem to be having serious problems with compression. The video from the Exilim was way better than what I’m seeing online.
Multimedia Shooter had such a rave about this production I had to hop over and view it – and he is right. THIS is what multimedia is all about – the perfect merging of the reporter’s voice and the photographer’s eye. I felt drawn back to the black and white days of photography and beat poetry.
Some hints on good zooming.
First – know what you are aiming at. Have a purpose.
Second – prezoom. What that means is zoom in on your subject. This will do two things – it will help you set up your focus and allow you to practice the move. Unless it was a breaker I nearly always prezoomed. Newsies use totally manual focus, so it was a must.
Finally – and I learned this from Mahlon Picht somewhere along the way. While my zooms back then weren’t purposeless, they somehow lacked that professional feel. His trick was to start the zoom slowly, pick up speed, then slow down at the end. It’s a real trick – and requires much practice. Or do a creep zoom…very very slow. You can edit in the middle of a really slow zoom.
Once you’re good enough, try to follow motion and zoom. Many reporter standups are a combination of a zoom and pan or a zoom and pan with slight tilt. Usually the photog and reporter practice a bit before committing to tape…but once you’re used to it, you can pull it off the first time.
What is bloggin? Reading, reflecting, and responding. So if you’re out there and you’re reading and relecting (thinking)…why don’t you respond? You’re picking my brains…sucking out the essence of the blog…so let me know if you want more, what you want, how you want it. I like to write what I know and what I am comfortable with…but my comfort zone is pretty big. If you’re new to this…join in. Ask questions. Go ahead and disagree. Have an opinion. Don’t be someone in the background – make yourself known. I may agree or disagree…but it ain’t personal. You may jog me/make me rethink a position (or not)…but make your voice heard so we all know what your think. End of lecture.
Once upon a time what might possibly have been the world’s shortest news crew was sent to cover a series of earthquakes near Oroville (CA). There were fears an earthen dam might liquify and collapse and innundate the town below. While running around town, searching for interviews, they ran into someone even shorter – and meaner – with a real attitude. Such was my first meeting with the legendary Willie Kee. Joann Lee was my reporter – and she stood five one. Me, I’m still at five two – but Willy by golly was shorter than me. By a good eighth of an inch. I would have pointed that out to him, but he scared me. He wore trademark black – pants, boots, shirt and leather vest. Black sunglasses. Foo Manchu beard. And his signature black leather hat. Never smiled in public. And from what I could see, everyone deferred to him. At that time I thought it was out of pure fear.
A few years later I ended up in the San Francisco Bay area…freelancing. I ran into Willie again and again. I did some work for his station – KTVU in Oakland. And I found out that the frightening front hid a gentle, sensitive man with a great talent. He tolerated me, badgered me…knew I would die to stay in news..and somehow became my mentor. Thus the comment in the last post about breaking every bone in my hands if I zoom during a crutial moment of an interview. He was right (of course, as he often reminded me) – it detracted from the moment. I was a newbie not only in news, but also a new member of SFBAPPA. By now I was on staff at KQED and when they cancelled the news show and laid off the staff, I began to attend meetings more. There were some great contacts there. Not that it did me any good – I was five months pregnant in an era when pregnancy meant go home, have the baby, stay home.
For some reason KTVU began hiring me…shoots here and there and a lot of vacation relief editing. I’ve always blamed (thank you) Willie for putting in a word for me. I was a pariah – no one else would touch me because of my “sensitive” condition.
After Carol joined the world, I continued working at KTVU as an editor, but getting out in the field more and more. And one night…while sitting back enjoying cup of wine at a BAPPA meeting, I saw some folks picking on Willie…some young Turks decided to bait him, knowing he had a temper. What they didn’t realize is how bad his temper really was. Oh – and they didn’t know he was a (never a former) Marine. As soon as I saw him moving towards them I made my move and got between him and probable mayhem. The aire was hot and thick…but both sides backed off. I went back to drink my wine in the back of the room. Next thing I know I’m the BAPPA vice president. His way of thanking me…and I became his gopher. Willie ruled BAPPA with his usual style – blustery, confident, but willing to listen…and always ready to share a laugh.
And talent…I can’t think of many photograhers who’ve won twelve Emmies…nine for photography. He pushed himself and his reporters and set an example for several generations of northern California news camerafolk. He was one of the first Asian television cameramen in the state. And he always called it like it was. Whenever I find myself in a bind, I ask myself how Willie would have handled it. Of course, if he knew this, he’d tell me to do it my way, but be damn sure to do it right.
These are sometimes the most effective tools in the VJ’s shooting toolbox and should be the least used too. But all too often beginners can’t hold still and just let the action happen. They just HAVE to tweek things a bit – usually a bit too much. So if we’re able to make these moves, when should we and why shouldn’t we?
Each of these moves has a purpose in the language of video. First – and get through through your skull. Memorize this. A zoom is not a zoom 99.9% of the time. It is an infinite variety of fixed lenses. It allows you to perfectly frame your shot without moving. It allows you to compress and throw backgrounds out of focus…or go wide and have front to back focus. And that’s what I used my zoom for….the rare times I deviated were if I had a breaker or some action I couldn’t wait for and I’d do a flash zoom (get there as quickly as I could) and then stabilize and get my shot. Of course I edited that zoom out.
When did I use a zoom intentionally? For a specific effect. To gradually draw the viewer into a story by moving slowly closer to a subject or object. To close out a story by slowly zooming out. To shock the audience with sudden moves, edited before the zoom ended (rarely).
Pans and tilts. Side to side or up and down. The latter I almost never used for some reason. It just didn’t feel right…but if you have to, tilts are meant to exaggerate heighth or to show something that is too tall to fit in the 3:4 TV screen ratio.
Pans were probably my most common camera move. Most commonly I would use what is called a “motivated” pan…to follow something. If you watch the Wyoming Cattle Drive video below you will see some camera moves – but most of the shots are stable with no movement. I counted 37 shots in the story. Because this is a moving story…animals and people…it probably has more camera moves than most stories I’ve shot. Two tilts (the interview with the boy on the horse and cattle in the water). Three zooms – one nearly not there. The most noticable is the slow zoom out at the end. Eight (ouch) pans…mostly motivated and following action like cowboys on horses. And one dastardly shot when the cattle dog took off after an errant calf…yet even that worked. Gave a feel of reality to the story – stuff is happening here folks.
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So the lesson is – don’t use pans, tilts, zooms because they’re there. Use them when you have to – when it makes sense. As Willie Kee gently told me once (after I’d zoomed in on the face of a blind interview subject who was struggling to tell his story) – do that again and I’ll break every finger in your hands.
Coupla days later…ya know, I forgot to mention why not to zoom, pan, tilt. It’s for your audience’s sake. You want them to focus on the story and not get the heaves from watching bad video. Too much movement makes folks seasick (or whatever the visual equivalent is)…I know I get seasick if I lose sight of land and if I watch bad video. The truth? The Blair Witch Project nearly had me on the floor. It was that bad.
Viewfinder Blues got under my skin tonight. I graded all of my kiddies English papers and decided to relax by cruising through some of my favorite blogs. And now I’m crabby. Lenslinger posted an example of either staging or not staging an interview and then asked a few of those unanswerable questions…
The core of the argument is: What some cameramanthropologists consider harmless room rearranging, others call shameless ’staging’ – a taboo practice among those committed to shooting the truth. But then again, what is truth? Is it a homeless shelter director swathed in perfect three point-lighting? Is it a stroke victim hobbling alongside some nodding reporter in a backyard rose garden? Is it a swim team coach hamming it up with a wireless microphone attached to the whistle around his neck? I ask these questions because it is easier than answering them.
Gee, thanks Lens. What this revolves around is a posting from B-roll.net. A photog shot an interview with a lawyer and placed a couple of law books in the foreground to frame the shot. Is this staging? Is asking the subject to sit in a certain seat for better lighting/composing staging? The arguements circle around and end up biting themselves on the behind…you can argue either side.
But current ahd future VJs beware…this is one of the issues you need to think about and discuss with your peers. Beyond the breakers, most news tilts over into a semi-fantasy, semi-real world. You try to be honest, objective, maintain your standards…unless you shoot ONLY what is actually happening, you could be accused of staging. So think this through…decide what you can live with…and forge ahead, ready to defend your every shot.
I love the dry, unstated humor of the British. Why hit someone over the head with a punchline when you can try to sneak it past them. Andy Dickinson has a hilarious example on his blog today…an example of how to do impact editing. From what I can gather by viewing the video, this means how to edit to get the slant/impact you want. How to “lie” with video. Not something newsies would do – but a good example of what to avoid. Enjoy. Oh, and as Andy warns:
…there is a bit of bad language in this and a mention of Richard Madley…
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