Category Archives: video

Making your stills camera look more like a video camera

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I’m holed up in the Middlesbrough Central Travelodge and getting some kind of insight in to what living in halls must be like. To say the room is basic is,well, to give it more credit then it deserves. But hey, at least I have great stuff like this to look at.

Oooh look a mic on a stills cam

Oooh look a mic on a stills cam

From a practical stand point it would be a bit like constantly shooting as if you are behind Tina Turners head. But I bet you never thought you’d see the day that a still’s camera had a mic on it.

The picture is from a very informative article over at B&H on getting the best sound from your Canon 5D

Hat tip to the Mediastorm blog for the link

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The ethics of direction in video

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Videographers flocked to catch a glimpse of a running story
Videographers flocked to catch a glimpse of a running story – picture from http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentish/67087395/

Tracy Boyer has an interesting post about the ethics of staging and directing contributors when shooting video. She sets out her stall in the intro

Allowing videographers to stage scenes, situations and/or actions is NOT journalism. We are here to document what we see, not recreate what we missed. If you missed the poignant kiss, that is your fault. How is it that journalism ethics can vary so greatly from print to broadcast?

I agree. It isn’t journalism. But I would go one step further. It has nothing to do with journalism. It has everything to do with the form, but nothing to do with journalism.

Or it could be about  that tired old argument trying to define the difference in the way ‘ethical’ videographers work compared to the “TV personality and videographer” who “bombard the scene and tell the subject what they want them to say”.  But we got past that TV is bad thing a while back didn’t we?

The journalism is in telling the story not the skill of being around long enough for the story to drift past your lens.

The ‘no retakes’ ethical position must also, logically,  require that you would never edit, that you never use lights and you never ask any questions. You may as well set up a hide and stalk your contributors like a wildlife documentary maker.

Every time a shot is framed or a cut made their is an editorial hand at play. In any time based media you cannot claim the purity of the scene when you play with the relationship of the scenes with each other over time.  When you cut out camera movements or slip wildtrack over an edit, in my view,  you have broken the same ethical code. Shoot a cut-away and edit that in… you get the idea.

What we have always focused on is the meaning and in that sense there is no difference here between print and online. We play with copy, editing quotes or using reported speech to tell the story. Asking someone to walk through a door again because we missed the shot is no different.

Of course we  use lights, we pick lenses, we edit to tell the story. We ask questions and guide. That’s what the form requires.

That we always present a fair, accurate and balanced view of the story is what journalism demands.

UPDATE: Angela Grant has responded to my view

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Point and shoot will dominate but you still need a quality strategy: New Year convictions

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The third of my recent new year convictions was Point-and-shoot, mojo video is the predominant form for newspaper video but organisations will still need to develop a quality video strategy

Not sure what point-and shoot is here’s my not so serious definition

Looking back over the year I’ve realised that I haven’t blogged about video very much.  Given that I started the year predicting newspaper video would die in 2008, you would be forgiven for thinking that I believe that had come true and there was nothing to write about.

The truth is that video is stronger than ever just not in newspapers. It’s fallen off the agenda and I think that’s for a number of reasons:

  • The development of social media and community strategies

The development of social media has stolen videos star. Where video was once the defining mode of a forward thinking digital newspaper, now it’s social media and community. Investing in facebook apps, twitter, linked in forums etc is seen as an investment closer to the core business of a newspaper – linking with communities.

This focus on the dialogue is interesting for me. On the one hand I think it’s massively positive and, looking back over the year, that’s something that’s engaged me a lot. But I’m wary that some organisations have replaced one apparently effective technology with another. Just because you are doing it, doesn’t mean you are using it.

  • The Immediacy of twitter

I’m using twitter as an example here of the return to the concept of immediacy in newsrooms. The take-up of cover it live, for example, shows how the idea of first is still an important factor. Video, especially the quality approach just doesn’t fit that style any more.

  • The development of content management systems

I’ve spent a good deal of time (and you, bless you, have read a good deal of the drivel I’ve written) moaning about the way that video was effectively channeled by content management systems. We where always going to get video that was ‘too much like TV’ because it was in its own little part of the website, with no context, so it had to be packaged and TV like.

Now a most orgs have woken up to the fact that video should be embedded in the story. It should be another content element on the page that tells the part of the story it does best. The video of the crashed car, next to the story of Ronaldo’s accident for example.

Add a map showing the loacation of the crash and you have a near perfect example of mojo journalism

Add a map showing the loacation of the crash and you have a near perfect example of mojo journalism

  • The economic downturn

Video is time consuming and expensive. It takes a lot of people to do it (even badly) and in this climate some types of video are not cost effective anymore.

Fit for purpose

Put all those things together and the only viable strategy for getting video in your newsroom now is point-and-shoot. It’s responsive, cheap and easy to implement and the kind of video produced – short clip content, illustrative video and vignettes of action – is best suited to the embedded style we see on news sites.

That doesn’t mean I’m ditching the idea that a quality video strategy has lost.  It isn’t a betamax Vs. VHS type thing. Those that invested in the training and development of that strategy will always get good results from it.  Those who just bought lots of kit and left the newsroom to it will have already put the camera in a cupboard.

But to ignore the quality strategy all together will be a mistake. When Laura at Journalism.co.uk asked me for new years prediction via  twitter here’s what I said:

jpeg-image-502x66-pixelsI said much the same thing in my predictions last year and I still believe it.

It will not be long before video finds itself back in the commercial sector. Video ads, advertorial content, wedding vids, video house guides, video production, whatever you like, would be fair game for an ad department looking to expand it’s repertoire. The investment in the distribution technology has been made. What the ad departments need to do is start behaving like broadcast ad sales.

Newspapers as commercial broadcasters

Here in the UK I think we will see some very interesting changes to the broadcasting landscape after a general election (maybe sooner if the credit crunch really bites) with local media really starting to define itself as something more than the weak, territorial battleground it is at the moment. A commercial production capacity will be a head-start in building the capacity to commercially exploit that.

A point-and-shoot strategy won’t help develop that. The skills will be geared more to the newsroom not to the more structured video that a commercial strategy will need. One will suit the newsroom, the other the commercial imperitive. A division that will warm the hearts of many a journalist who’s been asked to knock out a quick video of the local furniture shop.

So have I finnaly come down on the side of p&s? No. I was never for or against either strategy. But the truth is we now have a convention. A way of making and using video on non-broadcast news websites and I’d be a fool to advocate doing anything different.

But to lose the capacity to “high-quality” video is, I think a mistake. How orgs make it fit will be the best indicator of how they are approaching the next year or so.  If you do video and you have no quality stratgey then you are not thinking about the future. All you have done is adopted the P&S strategy because it’s cheap and that’s no strategy at all.

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‘Councils should not build TV services with public money’ – Press Gazette

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Bob says 'come and have a go if you think you're good enough'

In my own life I’ve seen it a thousand times, where there was the old rock’n'roll establishment beating up the punks, which I was part of, or it was the Aid establishment beating up Band Aid and Live Aid. But the reality is that there was room for the Rolling Stones and the Clash; there was room for Save the Children and Live Aid and so too there’s room for Kent Messenger and Kent TV and they sort of supply completely different services; I get my daily paper every day, but I’m also online every day

So says Bob Geldof. One of the founders of uberindie TenAlps and the company running Kent TV, Kent County Councils broadband TV service. But he wasn’t just plucking the Kent Messenger out of the air.

There’s been an ongoing debate about Kent TV, the latest round of which has seen Kent Messenger Group chairman Geraldine Allinson use the Westminster Media Forum debate in London to stress that ‘Councils should not build TV services with public money’.

Of course of course Bob is bullish about the reasons for the Kent Messengers dislike of the project. In his exclusive interview with Kent TV(who else):

This spurious beating up of Kent TV, on the notion that it’s political is rubbish. It’s a commercial attack. So, do it honourably and compete with us. We’ll win because we’re better, and regardless of who initiated this in Kent, they showed foresight. so competing on the commercial level, I love it, I love the challenge and if we lose, we lose ‘cos we’re not good enough, but competing, playing footsie with your political pals, ah that’s naff and it’s not what business should do.

But KMG are not the only ones up in arms. The Press Gazette reports similar worries for ITV Local director of programming and content Lindsay Charlto

“When council taxpayers wake up to the fact that half a million pounds is being spent on a television service on their behalf, they may have something to say about it,” he said.

“If you replicated that across the country I think there would be a public outcry.

“My own view is they shouldn’t be building television networks with public money.”

Outcry at public money being spent on a public service? Really. Well, I suppose it depends on whether you take the public service view or the commercial view.

I think Paid Content pegged the motivation of the council when they reported on the Kent Messenger groups efforts, through FOI requests, to work out just how much this was costing:

In a way, this issue is a mirror of opposition to BBC Local video plans. Is it logical that a local authority launches a web video news operation? Yes – in these days of local news cutbacks, every local government should want to guarantee a line of communication with voters. The side-effect – that much-loved spectacle of competition between the council and its local newspaper.

I think the Kent Messenger are right to question where public money is being spent – -that’s the job of a journalist after all. But when Geraldine Allinson suggests that “Some would argue that is a very unlevel playing field.” You have to have some sympathy with Geldof.

For me the real problem here, and where I think it differs from the BBC question,  is that the regional media cannot compete here. It really is a catch 22.

They can’t get on board with the council as that will simply leave both open to accusations of bias. But they cannot compete with a product backed by that much money because they have no infrastructure to do it.

Rather than throw stones, it may be better to question the process but let it develop (and perhaps fail) on its own. In the mean time they should concentrate on sharpening and matureing that questioning voice in a multiplatform environment. Maybe then they would have something to compete with.

Newspapers belong in bins not bookshelves

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The disposable medium

The disposable medium - Picture by Pete Ashton via Flickr

I was on the train back from London last week and found myself sat behind a guy with a huge pile of newspapers. For the duration of the trip from London to Manchester he systematically went through the papers tearing out article and leaving a shredded mess behind him when he got off. By a quick reckoning he had left behind about 6 pounds worth of newspaper.

I was pondering this as I read a nice post over at Jo Geary’s blog where she ponders the ‘value’ of print. In, what she calls, Quick, incoherent thought #4: the power of print (I like the number thing, makes it sound like a series of artworks)she questions the value of print in world where digital is cheaper. Does digital mean that people value print less?

Well, the people who queued outside The Washington Post for their special edition on Obama’s victory would tell you there was a value to print and it has been argued that this is proof that newspaper is still the format of choice for important events. “People didn’t print out the news on their computers”, goes the argument.

In fact Jo argues that in some cases the content is so valuable that it could go in a hard back book.

I have some sympathy with that view (despite my link bait title), the transient nature of the web is often its least appealing characteristics. But I think there is one key factor that makes newspapers, rather than books, a valuable platform and one that should thrive and it isn’t the keepsake value.

Would you bin a kindle?

For me the man on the train proved to me that the compelling feature of newspaper as a medium is that we are prepared to throw it away. Bin it, shred it, leave it on the bus. Whatever we do we are happy to spend money on it and then leave it.

That’s why I think Jo’s book idea is a good one. But it’s also why I think that the newspaper industry excitement (or maybe that should be panic driven hope) for the development of e-readers and digital paper is so, so wrong. I have actually heard newspaper managers talk about how things will be ‘all right’ once digital ink is sorted.

Would you buy this and bin it?

Would you buy this and bin it?

Allowing people to download the daily newspaper to an e-reader or flexible screen may feel like it gives the industry back some of the monopoly on the distribution platform it thinks it needs to survive. But in reality it flies in the face of the way we consume and discard our daily news fix.

Maybe that’s just me. But I’m sure the man on the train would rather have his pile of paper.

Newspaper photo by Pete Ashton from Flickr

NCTJ create Video training resource

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I’m back in work after a stint of what’s known around here as freshers flu. (all the new students bring more than just eager minds to class)

I know I have a lot of things that I need to post to make good on stuff I started before a bit of a work induced blogging hiatus. But I had to pass comment about this.

According to Hold The Front page the NCTJ (UK based newspaper training body) have created a video guide for all journalists struggling with video.

The eight-minute film has been produced by Lloyd Bracey, chief examiner for online and video journalism at the National Council for the Training of Journalists.

It’s essentially a 101 on how to shoot a neat interview and a sequence with some other stuff thrown in. Go and have a watch, it’s pretty good.

Good as it is though, I have a problem.

The overriding claim is that this is aimed at reporters making the shift to video – newspaper people and in that respect I don’t think it succeeds for a couple of reasons

  • It’s over 8 minutes long – Why isn’t it broken in to easy bite sized chunks? One for each section
  • It has no supporting material – Where is the ‘multimedia’ why not text and images and video on the same page.

From what I’ve seen, right across the board of all newspapers, people have moved well beyond this. By looking at what other newspaper journos are doing you get a better feel for what is required.

The skills and advice the video offers are sound and very well presented. It would make a great basic tutorial for starters. But it isn’t the only one out there. To stand out and really offer that advice to newspaper reporters it needs more application.

The truth is it’s a way behind where the industry is at and I would have expected the NCTJ to be reflecting a better application of the medium in their practice based on what their industry is already doing.

How the regional papers use video: The Bradford Telegraph and Argus

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Lots of things have got in the way if finishing my little review of what the top regional papers are doing with video but, battling through, I’m at the end of the list. Last but by no means least is the Bradford Telegraph and Argus

The T&A is owned by Newsquest (in turn owned by Gannett and the 2nd largest regional newspaper group in the UK according to their website). They’ve recently rolled out a new design for their local sites with a mixed but generally positive response. It’s a design that still needs a bit of work on the design front for me. I like the use of images but the use and formatting of text is still a bit loose for my liking – a bit too much trapped space. But one possitive is that the new designs put video right at the top of the site.

The Bradford Telegraph and Argus puts video at the top of the page

The Bradford Telegraph and Argus puts video at the top of the page

The platform
The video content on the site is obvious from the front page. A large video player takes pride of place on the page with a selection of other stories underneath. It’s embedded using Newsquest’s own, flash based, media player. It has a nice big thumbnail with a play icon that is not too distracting and plays on the page. There is a headline under the main thumbnail but it’s just too small and lacks emphasis. This is a shame. If they moved the text to the top of the player and upped the font size to something similar to the other headlines, I think it would sit better on the page.

The featured video also had a link to the story, which is great, but it isn’t consistently used and when you get to the story the video isn’t embedded in to the page. It is presented as a link back to the sites dedicated video/pic page. That’s a shame as there is clear space for video on the page. The story about the dad delivering his bay in the back of his car for example has a nice big picture, almost identical to the video thumbnail.  Why not use the video?

The Video/pic page is well laid out

The Video/pic page is well laid out

The dedicated video/pic page is also clearly linked in the main menu and is further split between local video and national video. The national video is provided by the Press Association although it isn’t branded and it generally falls in to sound bites and clipped content model.  It is nice to see that this video comes linked to related articles on the site rather than just warehousing a clip library.

Regardless of the section, the display is the same. It’s structured in the familiar player/archive style with the main story presented as a sizable thumbnail image. There is a nice clear headline, time and date and description alongside which is automatically generated from the lead paragraph of the article.

There is also a link to the article which is more consistently employed than on the front page but the back links from article to video player are often missing and those that are there often don’t work.

The hacking back of headlines and intros cripples the content

The hacking back of headlines and intros cripples the content

The archive is managed through a tired system of thumbnails for recent stories and then a text list of older videos. The thumbnails are nice but the player seems to truncate the content of the headline and intro, cutting the text and adding ellipsis. So Flats residents ‘lived in terror of arsonist’ is shortened to Flats…  This is rubbish, spoiling the usability of the page and taking any useful meaning out of the teasers.

The presentation
The majority of video on the T&A falls firmly in to the packaged content category – scripted VO, interviews and GV’s – across news and feature content. It’s a format that hasn’t really changed. Going back to the first video in the archive and apart from a short intro sequence (now dropped) the stuff has come out of the gate pretty much fully formed.

There is some nice sequence work in some of the packages which help cover script or interview sound well. The sequence at the start of the interview in a piece on the medical use of maggots is a good example (a later GV of students is poorly picked though). But the frameing on interviews is often too loose and the much of the camera work is very shaky.

A recent piece on plans to move a memorial to victims of a suspected IRA bomb opened with archive pictures which had obviously been shot freehand. A tripod and a little more restraint would have made the images more useful.  This problem pops up in a number of places. The article about railway closures suffers from a lack of ‘static’ shots and verges on the seasick.

The T&A use script well

The T&A use script well

The station closure story does illustrate a nice handle on scriptwriting at the paper. Using ‘sparks fly’ in the script as you see pictures of sparks flying could be seen as heavy handed but at least there is some thought about scripting with pictures rather than simply reading the article over pictures. The delivery of the script across all of the packages is good so it’s a shame the quality of the pictures

Mixed in to the packaged content is a range of clipped content that is more illustrative than editorial. This ranges from footage of a UFO, from a reader to corporate stuff like the University redevelopment video. Here the inability to embed video in an article page shows .

The video accompanying the story of the conviction of Aabid Hussain Khan turns out to be home video footage seized during the investigation. This needs to be embedded with the article to really fly. In the stand alone player it doesn’t really work, mainly because of the automatically generated description so it can’t be changed to add the context needed for video to work.

Overall
The style of the video on the T&A site is limited but like most of the other local sites I’ve looked at I can’t fault the range. The choice of story is generally good with plenty of visual opportunities to explore. I feel the hand of photographers on a lot of the video with some interesting staging of interviews, many of which feel like the set-up for a picture. It can often feel a bit artificial but it works more often than it fails.

Technically the only thing I would offer in terms of shooting is “USE A TRIPOD!”. Failing that find a way to introduce archive images in the editing process via archive/scanning rather than shooting on location.

But for me the biggest improvement is one that Newsquest could make to their video player.  The automatic elements of the player display are restricting the editorial impact of the content. Stripping the headlines and description from the article may feel like a time saver but it means that they often unsuitable as stand alone descriptions for the video.

Being able to write proper leads for the videos in the stand alone player and tweak the headlines (how SEO is ‘Guilty’) would pull a good effort even closer together.

And that marks the end of the list. Tomorrow a round up of what I learned about video from the regional press.

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How the regional papers use video: The Yorkshire Evening Post

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For the next in my series reviewing the way the UK regional press use video I’m going to take a look at The Yorkshire Evening Post owned by Johnston Press

Before I get in to the review I should disclose an interest. I provide training for JP journalists and photographers in the use of their video kit. It’s a two day course that introduces the camera (a sony a1e) and Avid Express software as well as shooting and editing tips. So as well as an interest you could also say I have take some responsibility for the content as well. eek!

The platform

The YEP has a number or routes to video

The YEP has a number or routes to video

The Yorkshire post site follows the same centrally designed template that all the JP papers do. I’m not really a fan as I think it is too cramped by generic content and ads. Too much sales and not enough content. But I guess I’m not reviewing the design.

Video is available through a link in the main navigation through a link in a block further down the page. The Yorkshire post also has a number of themed video strands – The Sin Bin, The Boot Room and The Pavilion linked from the main menu and small image ads but more on them later.

Clicking the video link takes you to a menu page. No player here, just thumbnails to the stories as all the video on the YEP site is ‘embedded’ with an article. But the page has clear headlines and some neat descriptions as well as the odd thumbnail. Generally I would have mixed feelings about not being able to view the video here as well as in an article. When you get to an article page there are plenty of links to other stories; a bonus of using the article part of a cms to serve the video link. But in this case I think it’s a mistake.

The main reason for this is that the video page doesn’t seem to have an archive of any description. Go to /audio-and-video and you get a fuller set with a paged archive but it seems a lottery if it turns up or not following video links. That’s a real shame as the standard page only gives you ten or so videos to work with and if you are looking for a particular video, a good repository here would be better than wading through the search for the article that it appeared on.

A lot of this, I’m guessing, comes down to the way that JP serves it’s video.

You have to work for your video

You have to work for your video

Go to an article page and you’ll see that video isn’t actually embedded. You have to press the green play button and a pop-up window appears with the video in a window. This is generally WMV format video – which meant intermittent reception on my mac. I think the delivery platform is something that JP are going to have to bite the bullet on and change in their CMS if they want to properly integrate multimedia content in to their sites.

The Presentation
The content falls in to two clear forms of presentation – video and slideshows. But both are served through the video player as video clips. So in this case slideshow is probably more descriptive of the style rather than the delivery.

The slideshow quality is pretty good but suffers from the lack of context caused by the problems with the external player. Take the VW Camper story as an example. Nice pics and groovy music but where is the context. No graphic to set it up or captions. If the story had been embedded then it would make much more sense. The same follows for pretty much all of the slideshow content.  If it’s going to be seperate then it needs a hell of lot more context. Location sound would help. How about some interview sound or sync sound of the sermon over the pictures of Don Fox’s funeral?

The video sufferes the same problem. The stuff is generally well shot and well put together but a lot of it lacks context. The recent post office closure protest video would keys well in to the article but the lack of VO or set up means it doesnt stand alone and in the seperate player, I think it has to.

The Pavillion - One of the YEP's sports shows

The Pavilion - One of the YEP's sports strands

Away from the general video and slideshow content is the YEP’s themed content that I mentioned earlier. The paper has put together three exclusively sports based strands. The Boot room for Football, The Sin Bin for rugby and The Pavilion for Cricket.

These take the form of double-header talking heads between a journalists , one of them usually the senior writer for the sport, sitting at a desk in front of a greenscreened background. The technical duties for this, I happen to know, are handled by the Visual Communicator and though sound can be a bit rough at times and a tighter shot would work better for me, the quality is consistent. Presentation wise things can get a bit stilted. Once they find their stride the shows are pretty entertaining but they are too long.

The shows also have the offer of some interactivity and they’re sponsored which I imagine ticks a lot of boxes. Perhaps the addition of some onscreen graphics highlighting the fixture or match they are talking about and the punter they are answering would break up the presentation a little. Oh, and a nicer table.

One other themed video that’s worth a mention is their Haunted Leeds feature which is a hokey bit of fun. This is a sponsored effort and takes the Most Haunted format and makes it a bit web2.0. Not directly video produced by them but, although it does have one of the ghost hunting locations at the Newspaper offices. If nothing else, I thought the thing was worth a mention for the only user submitted video. Nothing to see? No really.

Overall

That may seem a bit of a cursory overview of the video on the site. But to be honest the quality and range of the video is pretty good. Yes, the increased reliance on the slideshow format on the YEP site means that any talk of video has to be done in a kind of inverted commas. It’s not video but it is, if you know what I mean. For me that’s not a problem it’s semantic.

There is obviously room for development. Their slideshows need to break out of the music and pictures formula and get a littl more editorial and narrative drive if they are going to be locked in the linear delivery of the video player. Otherwise they need to allow flash embedding or somehing equally as interactive in control.

Maybe the slideshow approach is more here interesting not for it’s content but for the way it illustrates a clear editorial shift away from ‘traditional’ video to something more ‘managable’.  It feels like the way someone like the Croydon Advertiser has approached thing, excpet a bit in reverse. Wheilst they started with slideshows and slowley integrated video. It seems that the YEP ar going the other way. That’s not a negative assesment. It shows that things will find a level that the newsroom is comfortable with.

Away from the quality I think the real issue is  the way the content is presented generally.

What really causes problems for me on this site is the way the ‘video’ is served. Having no embedable player system essentially cripples the video on the site. Where other papers have the capacity to archive video in a section and, though many chose not to, link and embed it in article pages, the YEP can do neither. The video exists in a no-mans land to be summoned by a benevolent user who will click, hopefully not have blocked pop-up pages and has the right mix of media player and codecs on hand.

Both the video and slideshow stuff is becoming more illustrative and the seperate player robs it of valuable context. But rather than spend a huge amount of time trying to shift a lot of the context in to the videos, (although they need some) they need to address the delivery.

There is some good stuff here that could really lift an article page, yet the player makes it so near and yet, so far.