Don’t start with flash
That was the first thing that I was told when I attended the Wed Design Boot Camp conducted by the Society for News Design in Chicago last weekend.
For one, Google’s search engines can’t read the data within Flash scripts, rendering fancy flash sites difficult to find. Where possible, the instructors from the 
New York Times and NPR say, start with HTML and Flash elements should only be incorporated later. Many news websites were also starting to add flash for the sake of adding them – don’t we all hate those tiny text in a minute box will a hard-to-use scroll bar. Also, the tendency that Flash sites are arbitrarily designed mean users have to “re-learn” how to navigate the site.
That said, I’ve seen some of the most amazing uses of Flash on the New York Times site. The recount of the Virginia Tech Shootings is a perfect example. So it seems that Flash works well with as a form of animated info graphics – maps, timelines, graphs and charts.
Other notable mentions include one done by Reuters and the LA Times. I for one am not fond of gimmicky flash games – with the exception of those that actually convey a message, like this. (On a side note, the texting game had its subhead coded in HTML, making it more “searchable”. The V-Tech Flash had its title and subhead embedded in the Flash graphic, making it slightly harder to find – I had to go through the story page instead of clicking to it from Google.)
Writing the package
If there’s one thing that I feel that never fails to help in producing a video package is pre-planning and pre-writing. Having visited Lander’s farm so many times I had become familiar with what was going on – and what was going to happen. This allowed to me to target the kind of shots I wanted. I’m aware that I’m not going to always have this kind of opportunity to be familiar with the sequence of events especially when working at a real TV/video news outlet. While I did not do any actual pre-writing, I did think it through the script in my head. I was struck with this quote in the reading “Writing the package”:
“Prewriting is an easy way to laziness,” said WCVB’s Martha Bradless. “Skill in reporting comes from the ability to organize your story once you’ve arrived and had time to digest what is happening.”
Once I gathered all my shots, I knew I needed to sit down and write the script. I came to realize how that made assembling the piece together so much easier. It was a matter of fixing the pieces together. It saved a ton of time as well. If there’s one thing I still struggle with is over-writing. I had to shorten many of the soundbites and eventually remove an entire segment for the final video. I guess only through experience will I know how much writing to do for a certain duration.
All’s not ‘fare’
The BBC probably has some of the best news videos – both visually and journalistically – even when the topic is as mundane as a bus and train fare increase. Still there’s always room for critique.
I’ve been thinking about framing interview subjects recently and I’ve been able to learn quite a bit just by looking at how the BBC frames the subject on a 16:9 screen – the rules of the thirds become a lot more clearer on a 16:9 screen. I do feel that some of its framing does break the rules though. When framing officials, the camera is placed at eye level. However, when interview commuters, a good number of shots do look like the audience is “looking down” on the subject.
Also, I wished there was more of a logical sequence in the shots – People at the platform, looking at the signs, boarding the train, sleeping on the train, then getting off the train. I also thought it would be better if the reporter told the story through a particular ride either he or a commuter took and compared the difference.
The story felt like it could have been a print report instead, since it was mostly informational. In fact the text story on the BBC site was mostly similar and it also went into more details and talked about the finger pointing that went on over the fare hike.
NG. Can we do a second take?
One of the things that struck me while reading about the visual grammar of motion picture photography is how a videographer should pre-plan his shots and anticipate a potential sequence. What this demands of him or her then is that shots should always contain action in it and they should follow a logical sequence – one that mimicks how our eyes see. This helps to harness the power of motion picture, or video. Also, having a series of long shots and close ups along with a logical sequence also ensures that the audience are able to follow the “event” or action as if they were there themselves – one of the objectives of journalism.
Having being trained as a still photographer, I would have thought that it would be easy for me to transit to shooting video. I found that not to be so. As a still photographer, it is possible to still capture great moments without having to shoot them in a particular sequence. But because video works in a continuous flow, not following the flow of events might mean that the sequence is interrupted, and hence the effect is not achieved.
A matched-sequence shot would work if an action is repetitive – as seen in the video above. If it’s not, is it right journalistically to then get the subject to repeat the action for the camera? Wouldn’t that be staging an event instead? While the reading proposes snap zooming as a solution, I’m still left wondering if it’s ethically right to ask or invoke a subject to repeat an event.
Profiling an escape artist
Columbia Missourian
If there’s one medium that I’m still unfamiliar with, it’s radio. I’ve never listened much to it growing up, but after going through several NPR and BBC audio reports, I must say that it’s a magical medium. One particular aspect that I like most about radio is how there is so much description of a person or the surroundings, and enough to hear, and still, there is a ton room for imagination. The profile piece on Mario Manzini is one such example.
There were a couple of things I wished the reporter had done though.
(1) I wished there was less of the reporter and more of Manzini. For such an interesting character who had amazing quotes, I did wish I heard from him more. I think that would have painted a more intimate portrait of him and I would have felt a stronger connection with Manzini. As mentioned in class, an audio/video piece should really have less of the reporter.
(2) There was hardly any natural sound in the piece. It was probably difficult for the local reporter to be at the performance venues but I thought that could have been overcome by overlaying certain sections of the piece with a song that Manzini uses for his acts. Another possible way was to get Manzini to watch some of the footage of the stunts that he performed, get the sound from the video, and also his reaction to some of the show he did.
Summing it up, it was a fantastic interview – that felt like it would fit better in a newspaper.
Engaging death
Week five readings
Pictures of the year Multimedia winners
It was quite interesting that the top two winning stories of the multimedia category of the 66th POY dealt with such morbid subjects. I wonder if that was reflective of the mood of that year – that as the economy down spiraled, there was doom and gloom.
Nonetheless, of the two stories, I thought “Crafting beauty from death” was stunning and graphic, yet interestingly light-hearted, which gave the story great irony, juxtaposition and depth.
What was perhaps most striking about the two pieces was that unlike “Final Journey”, the MSNBC.com piece did not include the reporter’s voice. This, I thought, helped paint a more intimate portrait of the owner of the funeral home. It brought focus to the subject and made me feel much more connected with him.
Having done so, the report ran the risk of turning into an opportunity for the funeral home owner to hard sell his business – which towards the end the report gave him some space to, and in a most humorous manner. But this was largely avoided by getting the subject to talk about the issue at hand instead and allowed him to express his personal insights about death. What a story!
Hunting with a phone
Week two readings
“The Great Picture Hunt” – David LaBelle
Street pictures – David Snider
My grandmother undergoing physiotheraphy on 13 Dec., 2007 after suffering a stroke on the right side of her brain. This photo was shot using a 2 mega-pixel Nokia phone. By Derrick Ho
Camera phones: They’re generally regarded with disdain in the world of photojournalism. They are tools for play and the occasional snap shots.
Will this ever change?
Needless to say that camera phones today aren’t still comparable to any digital SLRs in the market. But as technology progresses, it may soon be a reality. Some phones already boast of a lens that’s similar to a 28mm wide-angle one, others can shoot up to 8-megapixels in quality.
As technology closes in, what might eventually help bridge the gap is the skill of the user. The same basic concepts as listed in this week’s readings that make a photo great will not change. It will still take a curious reporter, who has an eye for photography, to make good pictures. The rules of framing, composition and exposure don’t change.
As the technology gap narrows, what will change will be the tools of the trade. And if users of camera phones are taught the “hunter skills”, the camera phone could well move beyond as a tool for cam-whores and citizen journalists.
Who knows, maybe one day, the winning photo for Pictures of the Year could be shot using a phone.
Round the corner. Perpetually.
Photo by Remiaru
Week one readings
“Backpack Journalism is here to Stay” – Jane Stevens
“Backpack Journalism is a Mush of Mediocrity” – Martha Stone
It’s easy to get lured into the ideals of backpack journalism and the idea of the backpack reporter. Yet, the current economic reality, in my opinion, seems to work against these ideals. While Stone presents some compelling figures on the consumption of online video and audio, that hardly translates into profits. Furthermore, at most newspapers, print ads remain the core bread and butter.
So it seems there is hardly any true incentive for the management of news organizations – especially print ones – to push for and invest in a team of backpack journalists, or even multimedia ones. “Does having a fancy flash site help bring in more advertisements?” I recall being asked by an editor once. Maybe, but only marginally. In economic speak, there is decreasing returns to scale. Furthermore, there is often also the fear that the website becomes so well done that it starts to cannibalize the print product.
The result is perhaps a supply side problem: Many young reporters eager to be multimedia or backpack journalists, spurred on by the ideals set out by Stevens, but there is little demand for it – or so it seems. Unless there’s a clearer economic incentive for multimedia on news sites, the backpack journalist will remain perpetually round the corner.
About me
Derrick Ho graduated from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in 2008 with a major in journalism. Piqued by the evolving online media landscape, he joined the digital unit of Singapore’s national broadsheet – straitstimes.com – as a journalist and content producer where he anchored the paper’s online coverage of several breaking news events including the Mumbai terror attacks and the 2009 US Presidential elections. He also twittered and blogged for the site. Derrick previously interned at the Associated Press’ (AP) Singapore bureau. Born and raised in the South-east Asian city-state, the 26-year-old enjoys playing the keyboards and volunteering with The Boys’ Brigade
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