You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December, 2007.
TV Spy takes note of how TV stations battle for their audience. This from an interview with former anchorman Larry Kane as he talks with the Philadelphia Daily Examiner. Too often, he states, stations battle to be first in the market. They are missing the point, he continues.
The hidden news war in Philadelphia is not talked about — the battle to break news on the internet. With the internet doing so well, and the cable newsies getting bigger and bigger, people don’t need to watch local news like they did before. Breaking news on the internet IS the future.
My favorite line: “In reality the TV news wars should be a battle to be relevant.” Way to go baby…
It’s time again for the annual Student Television Network Conference…once again in Anaheim (CA). For those of you attending this year I’m putting on a couple of new workshops – convergence of media on the Internet and and hands-on lighting workshop. Yeah, in the past I’ve done lighting but have been rushed at the end as folks tried to get hands on in the few remaining minutes before we had to give the room up for the next session.
Painting with light
Learn the basics and more about using light to create great looking interviews and b-roll shots. You’ll learn when to use an on-camera light and how to use one, two, or three lights for the best effect.
Demonstration and hands-on, so bring your gear if you have questions and be prepared to learn or be lit up (presenter will look for “volunteers” to sit in the hot seat). I’ll try to keep the “lecture” to a minimum and hands-on to the max.
Web video
It’s not just broadcast news producing news video. Newspapers and citizens are now posting to the Internet. Your job options are both broadening and shrinking. What skills do YOU need to join the convergence movement? Will the TV model become the standard or are there other models that are more appealing? It’s a wild new world and you, as tomorrow’s video journalists, are the future.
So that is that…and if you’re a student or educator who is planning to attend, let me know what you would like included in these sessions. I’m adaptable. These sessions (and others) are sponsored by RTNDF.
My bad…I’ve known about this for some time and just realized the deadline is fast approaching. Concentra gives an annual award for the best videojournalist. This is an international award. The VJ must have researched, shot, and edited the story themselves, although they may have someone else do narration. So if you think you’ve done something that merits entering or you want to nominate someone, go to Concentra.
The closing date for the award is January 7th.
Teaching lighting is tricky. The first impuse of many newbies (ouch – and I remember all of the errors of my life) is to pump in the light. Not enough light? Pull out the 1K and flood the place! Wow. It took me years to learn the subleties of light and shadow. And half of good lighting is the absence of light – what you can’t see…shadows add depth and mystery.
So – the question tonight is, how do you teach good lighting? Well you don’t need a light kit in the beginning (good news to those of you on a tight budget). All you need is imagination. First – you don’t see light – what you see light reflected. Without light and something for it to bounce off of, you are in the dark. Gather your students around and turn off the lights (and those of you teaching high school be careful). Ask students if they can see anything – the answer should be a resounding no! Bring out a penlight or flashlight and aim it at their eyes – this is one of the few times they knowingly will see light directly – the light coming from the source. Now aim the light at a pre-chosen object or person. A balloon works fine. Walk around the object while shining the light on it…students should see the object fully lit and then with side lighting and then backlit. Have them discuss which type of lighting they found most intriguing. Point out that they weren’t really seeing light, but that the object/subject was reflecting light and what they saw was the reflection…or that they were seeing the source diffused through the balloon or a combination or diffused/reflected.
I had a favorite exercise when I taught photography for 4H members. We’d have one night meeting and everyon would bring flashlights and tripods for their cameras. We’d practice writing with light – doing a time exposure and write letters or create designs. Outline bodies. Not sure if today’s digital still cameras can handle this – but it really drove home what light is.
On to step two. Once student “get” that light is relected, you get them outside in bright sunlight (preferably). First – divide your class into two and have them stand opposite each other and facing a partner. One group should be facing into the sun and the other group should have the sun coming over their backs. Have them look at each other’s partner and comment on how each side looks (side with sun in face has bright light, may squint…side with sun at back should have even light on face and halo in hair). Now have them trade sides and observe the difference.
Next teach them the hand trick. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes unless you have them snap some shots so they can reflect on the lesson later.
Now for some variations. Want them to understand how light falls off as you move (or you move your subject) away from the light source? Set up a candle (ok or a small light) in a very dark room. Allow students to take photos of an object a foot away from the light…and gradually move the light a foot away at a time. It gets dark pretty quickly.
Reflected light. Give each student a two by two sheet of cardboard and have a roll of heavy duty aluminum foil on hand. Have them crumble/crinkle the foil and then straighten and flatten it…and then glue to the cardboard. Voila! A simple reflector. Used to get rid of dark shadows on faces or to make people pop out of a dark background.
One light. You can do amazing things with a simple stand light. Start w/250w. Have your camera on and hooked up to a monitor. Sit a subject on a chair about five to ten feet away. Place the light beside the camera so it approximates an on-camera light. Ugly. Now slowly move the light up until it is several feet higher than the camera. As the light raises, it will create a shadow under the chin of your subject. Make sure your students see that/you may have to repeat a few times. Now move the camera to either the right or left about three to five feet. A shadow should develop on the cheek opposite the light…adding depth. Next fill in the light with your reflector…not harshly but softly. The light is your key or main light…the reflector is your fill light.
As i’m in Reno visiting my daughter at this time (along with my sister-in-law from Oz, Mil), I will complete this posting this afternoon. Enjoy your families and look forward to a year of peace and joy. Later…
Much later. Mil is now the proud owner of a MacBook Pro. Plus some extras….
Well, on to more about lighting. We’ve been over one light. One light moved up and over. One light with a reflector. The best of all worlds is one light with an umbrella. My theory of lighting is not to have everyone exclaim over my marvelous ability to light but rather to be able to view and enjoy a story without considering the individual elements. The best light is open shade…even light. One close way to replicate open shade is with a stand light and an umbrella. When working in news I used this eighty percent of the time…sometimes with a kicker for back or hair light. Move it up and over so there is a hint of shadow on one cheek and under the chin and your video looks professional.
Two lights? Umbrella one in front and use barndoors to clip the back and head of the subject to help them pop out of the background. Sometimes I used the single light/umbrella for front and pulled the second light back so it filled in the background behind the subject (think library shelves full of books or something visual) and the fringe of light spilling over the edge clipped the head/shoulders of the subject. Mixed daylight or fighting daylight? Add blue gels or dichroics (blue filters) over the lights.
Get into three lights and have enough time and you’re in heaven. Add gels, barndoors and other goodies and you can create mood and mystery. Some other time I’ll get into backlighting effects and such, but for now take it easy and take it slow. It’s that time of year and a good time to mellow out and learn something new…
Tell ya what…Larry Nance and I ran some lighting tests a while back as part of our VJ workbook (still in progress). I’ll dig a bit of that out and post it this weekend if I can find it.
Lenslinger has a retro review of video technology and a look at what is fast replacing broadcast shooters. He’s at the top of the incoming wave…not that many of the broadcast brethren even acknowledge their looming doom. Take a look and enjoy a good read as only Lenslinger can spin it.
But a funny thing happened on the way to becoming a hologram. Technology caught up. Suddenly college kids could crank out kinescopes on their iMacs, cell phones started sprouting eyes and clunky concepts like the information superhighway gave way to the far sleeker Blogspot-Google-YouTube paradigm. Virtually overnight my breed became dinosaurs. Velociraptors in matching logowear perhaps, but dinosaurs nonetheless. Trouble is, we’re not stumbling off to die. In my medium market alone, there are scads of multitasking action figures, many who can shoot, plot and edit better than I. Past evolution aside, it’s a treacherous landscape for my beleaguered species. Never at the top of the broadcast food-chain, we now stand a good chance of being replaced by bad actors with a fetish for emerging gadgetry. That, I suppose, is the way of things – but I can’t help but wonder what the next generation of news shooters will look like and wether or not a fossilized photog like myself will still be allowed to roam the Earth.
Yeah…they’ll let us roam so they can do stories on what it used to be like. Remember, not only do we eat our young…if they’re fast enough to get away, they come back and devour us.
For the next week I’m in the middle of finals frenzy. My two English 9CP classes have been having (I hope) fun with what academia calls “Functional Workplace Documents.” Only educators could come up with a name like that for practical everyday paperwork like resumes, job applications, how to analyze newspaper ads, etc. Since this is the last chapter in class each term, I try to make it fun. The class is split into companies. Each company has to come up with a product they produce, a name, a logo, and a slogan. They choose a CEO and secretary and in their company learn how to write memos, block business letters, resumes, process descriptions, and a commercial. If there is time (and there is this year) we tape the commercials (and yeah, I had to sneak video in there somehow). We even have one class where the CEOs get to terminate someone (all in good fun). My broadcasting class is winding down too…beginning Monday students start their finals…create a DVD menu using iDVD, shoot and create a label to print on the DVD, burn and print. It’s an A or F effort – and I won’t let them burn or print until the DVD works (not that hard with iDVD, but I have had kids just add buttons to the templates that don’t link).
So here I’ve been teaching them…and they’ve passed some lessons back to me. These past few weeks have been very difficult for me…someone has been getting into my office stealing gear. And no, the lesson is NOT do not trust my kids. With the exception of the poor lost soul who’s made off with cameras, they’re a wonderful bunch. They are coming together and forming a family in each period. Students who I thought didn’t care, do. My broadcast kids consider the room theirs and anyone who messes with the gear (or me apparently) had better look out. Two guys saw one of the stolen cameras and went to the administration to report it and who had it. One of them during our study of ethics said he would never “rat” on another student…but this was different. I have a lead on who took some of the other gear too. In the poetry unit we completed two weeks ago I kept egging the kids to use “their own voices” in writing and one of my thugs wrote some extremely powerful love poems in street talk. He’s found his “voice” and English is his favorite class. My freshmen girls in broadcasting have realized the upperclassmen aren’t there for them to flirt with and they’re now serious about raising their grades…and they know to choose partners based on ability and not other factors (go Girlz!). My quiet, noisy, aggressive, shy, hyperactive, slow students are each unique and want to be seen as individuals, not part of some class. They share their stories and want to be recognized for each victory and each fall and every effort made…and I’m thinking of flunking every single one of them so I can keep them (but that would be SO wrong). The families we formed over the past four and a half months will dissolve at the end of this coming week. There will be tears and hugs…but they’re leaving me with hope for the future because they care.
As if we don’t have enough going on in our lives…today news that the Arctic ice is melting so rapidly that it could disappear by 2040. News for farthinkers. I did a quick Google search and found an interactive flood map put together by a Cartographer named Alex Tingle. It’s a Google mashup…and you can zoom in to any part of the world and vary predictions of sea rise from zero to fourteen meters. What you once thought was firm ground may become either seafront property or prime marine acreage. Nice map. Great information. The trick with news is to take the information and predictions and live your life accordingly. I’d like to say I’m building a levee around my property…but really don’t feel that facetious. Frankly it is scary.
Here’s some video Kathy Newell shot during the blog panel on Saturday. We’ll try to get sfbappabloggers up in some form at another date. The board needs to discuss and approve it to make it official.
At the request of SFBAPPA President Paul Sakuma I have deleted the sfbappabloggers blog.
Welcome once again to the SFBAPPA Digital/Multimedia workshop….right now I’m gonna show the folks here how to post. And how to add photos. Nothing heavy.
First – know where your photos are. Know what you want to say. Be organized. End of story. By the way, we made our own blog at this workshop: http://sfbappabloggers.wordpress.com. If you were at the workshop, please feel free to ask questions, post comments and join in the blogging community.
Enough of this … and a grand time was had by all. Wow. It’s much much later and I’m still marveling at the workshop. Adm Golub (sorry – Adm, son of the renowned AL GOLUB formerly of the Modesto Bee) was the whiz kid. He not only knows how to blog – he understands how the code works. Daniel Sato gave us insight into how blogs help students find jobs. Clifford Oto drew questions about how his employer views his blog (done through the corporate site) and how much freedom he has to write about what he wants. Alison Yin showed some marvelous posts. And somehow, between the five of us, we tap danced and kept the audience entertained and may even have helped launch a few new blogs.
If you want to check out blogs by Clifford, Adm, Alison, or Daniel – I’ve added them to my blogroll at the left.
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