You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2010.
In anticipation of the New Year, my other two wordpress sites have been updated.
Check out The Basics of Videojournalism, an overview of a textbook on visual storytelling I am currently working on.
Also, beginning in June I’ll be out and available for hire as a freelance videojournalist – the site for that is think-news.
If you look to the left in the sidebar, you’ll see I’ve added both sites to the blogroll.
…and the last one on a regular basis. In one week I’m back behind the teacher’s desk, whipping my minions into shape. This time as a long-term sub for an about-to-be-mom teacher. In photography – the art of freezing time.
So what’s in store for this week?
How bout something near and dear to home? Jobs.
I have students who graduated this past June who are still looking for a job. Heck, I have a few who graduated in 2009 in the same boat. And it’s not for not trying and it’s not for lack of the qualities that employers are looking for.
It’s for lack of jobs.
A universal problem.
Story idea: what is the average wait time for teens (or pick any age group) in your area to get a job?
Track a few teens. Keep an eye on them as they write their resumes (required in English 9 in my area) and send them out. Listen in as they ask teachers to be their references – and find out why said teachers agree. (I tell my students I will act as a reference for ALL of them…but I will tell the truth. It is up to THEM to decide if they want to use me as a reference.)
Make a list of places your trackable teens send their applications. Tag along for job interviews. Talk with (potential) employers about what they are looking for in an employee and why your teens do or don’t make the grade. You may be surprised to learn the teen is wonderfully qualified…but there are just too many choices out there for employers.
Oh…don’t forget up front to get permission from your subjects and their parents (if under 18).
Chow.
Don’t know why there are flashes of color. Kinda nifty, but not part of my plan or editing. Must be the youtube gremlins at work.
The intent was to show the pre-eclipse (through moody tree branches) and then several stage of eclipse…all speeded up 1600 to 3400 times normal.
Enjoy.
Deep down within each of us is a twisted, tormented soul…wanting to break free and freely express itself.
My husband has no trouble with that. (Check out the header photo above.) While others are cheerfully decorating their homes with love and light, we get to look out our windows at the rumps of a dozen inflatables. All in the name of Christmas.
Ahhhh…Christmas. The hum of tiny pumps pushing air into colorful sacks. Rescue missions late at night to unclog air intakes and re-right drunken deer and penguins. Alas…some efforts are in vain. Santa is merrily tilting, listing, leaning…headed for his final year. We don’t have the heart to take him down before his big day.
Mr. Nutcracker has been in a terminal funk for days…we suspect his motor shorted. Out of respect, he too, will decorate the lawn as a limpid puddle of color.
However the penguin family…Frosty, Mr. Polar Bear, Winnie the Pooh, and Rudoph still brave the winter winds and rain, happily attracting something even stranger. Folks who stop their cars in their tracks to gaze at this improbable display. Would you believe taking several slow drive-bys? Yeah. It is kinda unworldly.
Merry Christmas and Season’s Greetings. Cherish friends and family. Look forward to a wondrous New Year.
It is official.
Newspapers have surpassed broadcast in numbers viewing online video. PLUS they are uploading more video.
Just read this Washington Post story, thanks to a link from KipCamp, part of the Kiplinger Programs.
Now there’s an interesting story idea.
Sitting is bad…
A study earlier this year in the American Journal of Epidemiology showed that among 123,000 adults followed over 14 years, those who sat more than six hours a day were at least 18 percent more likely to die than those who sat less than three hours a day.
So what are we doing with our children? Our students sit at desks for a good portion of their school day. Unless they are lucky enough to have a P.E. class, they are behind the desk for just about six hours daily in high school.
And this is all part of tradition and law. The legal aspect includes requirements by most states for a minimum number of minutes, hours, days in school. In California that magic number is 175 days (down from 180, thanks to budget woes).
Just under half a year of six hours daily seat time. And here’s tradition – way too many teachers teach the old fashioned way, with students sitting, listening, thinking (we hope), writing, on computers. Not active.
Story idea: check out your local laws and schools. What are the required times for attendance and how many teachers use that time to be the expert on the dais as opposed to allowing students to move around, be active and interact? Are there any teachers who teach using kinetics – dance, movement, whatever it takes to help students get out of their seats? Movement actually helps with learning, as this site advocates.
Is academia actually contributing to society’s obesity and health woes?
Oh – and I loved the (mostly) boys at school who took every opportunity to grab a handball and hammer the gym walls. Plus (of course) my bboyz who expend more energy in one weekly club meeting that most students do in a month.
Mickey Pfleger
We all have these stashed away in the hinterlands of our minds…people we met on stories. Folks who for some reason embedded their very essence into our cells for some reason unknown to us or them.
Mickey Pfleger was one such with me. I only met him a few times, although I probably ran into him many times over the years without realizing it. That’s how it is with newsies. Casual eye contact is enough to make us more than acquaintances…but to become friends, it takes only a few words.
Mickey is gone now.
I’ve known for the past week…but it didn’t hit home until I visited his facebook page today and read the many, many comments.
You see, Mickey was a news photographer – the kind who freezes time. His specialty: sports. And that’s how I came our relationship became more than a passing nod in the field. He became the focus of a story I worked on in 2000.
Mikey was working the 49ers field, snapping away and grabbing the game action, when he was pummeled by tight end Tony Gonzalez. Yeah, that sideline action can be pretty brutal…one of the hazards of the biz.
Pfleger was knocked unconscious – and that’s when the miracle began. Were it not for this somewhat minor accident, Mickey would probably never have been sent to the hospital and gotten a CT scan of his brain. And he might have discovered – too late – that he had a brain tumor.
Irony. When you expect one outcome and something else occurs.
That collision on the field and hospital visit spared his life. In his own words:
“…I really believe that things happen for a reason.
I was supposed to be knocked out by Tony Gonzalez at the football game. I was supposed to go into a seizure while I was unconscious, so that Dr. Klint of the 49ers would tell the paramedics to tell the emergency room doctors to do a CT brain scan on me. I was supposed to be taken to San Francisco General Hospital and land in the hands of Dr. Martin Holland, an incredibly talented neurosurgeon.”
After an operation to remove the tumor, Mickey went on with his life, until an aggressive cancer did what a 49ers player couldn’t – taking him out of the game last Friday.
But within each of our minds…those who knew him will always remember that sweet smile and equally sweet demeanor. A gracious man who accepted his fate and moved on. Who shared his insight and photos freely and was even grateful to yet another news crew stumbling into his life for a brief time to extract his essence. And some of it stuck.
On Mikey’s facebook page, he leaves us his philosophy:
“Almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. Only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.”
-Patricia Graynamore
(look at bottom of post for updates)
This past Monday Stockton Record photographer Clifford Oto created a field of dreams of sorts in a sorry part of town.
The location: Stockton Family Shelter. A lot of folks who could have lost hope live there, struggling day to day and hoping for the best for themselves and their families.
On Monday, December 6, a little more hope seeped in with the sunshine outside as dozens of volunteers answered Clifford’s call for help, setting up four mini-portrait studios and dozens of hair and make-up stations.
The event: Help-Portrait.
Their mission: To give back to the community…to serve those in need. To provide professional individual and family portraits to folks who may never have been able to have a formal sitting and memory.
So how is this about managing media? Well – three of my (former) students and I went down to observe and help out. Our assignment was to document the event and turn a video. The students (Gabe, Tim, and Tou) shot about half an hour of tape and quite a few stills. I shot another 50 minutes or so – but wasn’t able to shot many stills because (ahem) certain students were gripping the camera too tightly.
Now here it is – six days later – and I’ve got to get the video edited. There are several hundred clips, shot from when preparations began through the day until gear was broken down and put away hours later.
Step number one in media management. Create bins (Final Cut Express), which are kind of like file folders, for the main categories of your project. In this case, I created the following bins.
Then I looked at each clip quickly and placed it into the appropriate bin. It really helps to have these categories when you’re searching for a specific clip. If you have the time, you can even label each clip.
BYW, the Oto SH Video is the main project – the sequence I will be editing.
I generally begin a project by listening to interviews and taking notes. Notes will include which clip and time in clip for significant sound bites. Otherwise I may just jot something down to use in my narration.
But if possible, I’m going to try to avoid any narration with this video and do it all with interviews and natural sound.
So stand by…I’ll be posting and updating as I edit.
12/19/10
So I let this go for a while…it is, after all, a busy time of year. When last I posted, I had just sorted all of the clips into four main bins or categories.
Today I came back and revisited them…cruised through the preparation clips, looking and listening. Especially the latter, because I want to recreate the chaos of the event…the many sounds, hustle, bustle, and apparent disorganization…
So I grabbed some SOTs (sound on tapes) and arranged them…nice. Wanted info in there too but really didn’t want my voice interfering with the story, so chose to use titling.
And so it goes…NATS, NATS, NATS, interview. Repeat.
The interview with Clifford is my mainstay…my theme, which will weave throughout the story. I’m about one minute in right now (and two hours of editing) and the pace is picking up. I’m remembering sound and pulling it in…the interview of Jennifer Howe segues right in after Clifford talking about giving back. She takes that and contributes and then we’re off again…into the shelter for more portraits and interviews with residents.
More in a bit…
…and here it is a bit later. The edit is complete and the story is below.
TRT: 2:31
Edit time: about six hours.
Am I happy – yes and no. In my years of shooting I’ve had only a handful of stories I could walk away from, truly happy I had done everything I could to make them good. So this does show the event…and kind of captures the spirit. I could have done a better job shooting the clients and gotten more shots of the photographers shooting. But that would have been at the sacrifice of my students getting their time with the gear.
So…yes, happy.
You’re never too old to learn…and I picked up a new term this week, thanks to a request for a critique on b-roll. I’m not gonna post the comments made – you can look them up yourself.
Courtesy Okinawa Soba through Creative Commons
But the new term is “controlled shoot.” Or as the cameraman says, aka “staging.”
Wow.
And as if that weren’t bad enough…it was followed a few days later by a posting titled “Fun staging.”
The CS/controlled shoot video was something I would imagine a lot of camerafolk get trapped into in some way or another. Short on time…there is NOTHING happening visual, and somehow a visual story has to be turned.
So in this case, the photog asked the subject (a marathon runner) to take a run around for the camera. I’m not sure how much CS “controlled” that shoot – if he just shot the guy running or directed each shot. But – as CS admits – it is staging. Which is frowned upon in news because it is not what is actually happening. It is redone/rehashed/done only for the camera.
Now in the case of “Fun staging” the entire video was staged. And I don’t mean asking for something to be repeated for the camera. This was staged as in have people acting out an entire scenario for the camera…shot by shot. As if it were a movie. Not just a step beyond a controlled shoot – but an entire leap into a fantasy world that was created JUST FOR THIS STORY.
Ummmm….can I have a platter of the “good ole days” please?
Addendum: For you students out there – staging is considered unethical because it does not show what really occurred. Every news photog’s dream is to shoot actualities. What really is happening. Here are some examples of staging that are oh so wrong.
Case #1 (this happened way back in the early 70′s) Photog misses an immigration event where a man is arrested by INS. He asks for it to be repeated. So the man is released by INS…runs back to his family, who cries in joy at what they see as his permanent release. INS walks over (camera IS rolling), grabs and handcuffs him and takes him away, to the unhappy cries of the confused family. Great video. A total lie due to staging.
Case #2 (hmmm…think this one is late 70′s) Reporter does controversial interview. Later – AFTER the subject is gone, he tells the cameraman he wants to reshoot a few questions. Loaded questions which were not quite what he asked the subject. In this case the cameraman told the news director and the reporter was fired. Good call by both the photog and ND.
Case #3 Reporter wants to insert a track/question into a story. The question is NOT what he asked the subject. Photog refuses. Reporter argues that subject would agree to this change and calls her. She agrees it is okay, but photog still refuses to do the edit. News director is called in, gets story and SUPPORTS the reporter. Photog offers to quit. Bad call by ND.
The unfortunate truth is that there is a certain amount of staging tolerated in news. Every time you sit someone down, set up lights, hang a mike on them – you are staging. The lights and mike and camera are NOT part of the everyday life of most folks. When a still photog wants to get in super-close to a subject, they tell them to ignore the camera. Guess what? Staging. (Could YOU ignore a camera just inches from YOUR face?) And so it goes. The aim is to avoid obvious staging. This includes everything from the subtle requests to “to it again for the camera” or “wait while I move the camera” to the over the edge completely fabricated and exclusively for our news only shots.
Ethics are not laws written in stone. They are (hopefully) morals seared into the heart of every newsperson, guiding them through a treacherous world of daily deadlines and pressures. And on the days you lose a little, you try to make up by straightening your backbone a bit more for the next day.
I should know. Been there/done that.
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