Content, style and meshing it up

When talking about visual journalism, one issue continues to pop up. Are we stylizing more than we should and is the content overpowered by the style?

Especially in an age where technology is even more readily available to kids, who dabble around on the keyboard with their nutella-smeared sausage fingers, it's easy to fall into a trance-like state while fiddling with software and become obsessed with making something look aesthetically pleasing. 

But aestheticism is an essential part of documentary journalism... at least a big one. An awfully shot video, home video style with shaky hands and uncontrolled zooming, puts people off and in worst cases, deters from the content. And even aesthetics cannot rescue an image from an audience being unfazed with it because they have been over-saturated with images like that (to name a crude example, a starving child in Africa). 

Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas more or less brings this up in an interview. 

There is an ongoing challenge for us, as documentarians, to be committed and engaged, while at the same time innovative. I fear we have deadened out. [...]

Why aren't people interested in what we documentarians are passionate about? Why are we such a small ghetto?

Doing documentary work is not just building the relationship and shooting. It's also finding the spaces, be they magazine pages, books, or exhibitions spaces, to transform and present the world we see differently. [...]

The interesting question is, will there be a further extension of the vocabulary and the language of documentary? Can we go further than we've gone?

 

Susan Meiselas in an interview with Ken Light [Traub, Heller and Bell, The Education of a Photographer (New York: Allworth Press, 2006), 42-47]. 

The need to aestheticize your work in innovative ways is challenging and necessary for the sheer financial survival of a visual storyteller as she says. And to extend her theory, the internet forces photographers/videographers not only to be innovative in style, they also need to figure out a way of being innovative within the framing/meshing of a story. Or it seems like their editors need to. 

Meshing it up

One way I have seen some web outlets try their luck in being innovative is in the integration of the image with an interactive graphic, giving the easily distracted online audience a second visual stimulation. In other words, offer your viewer another spectacle to look at. 

In this example, a video piece about Chinese architecture by Travis Fox on the Washington Post the dots on the map track the video content. So when the presenter speaks about a certain building or monument, the respective locations/dots on the map start pulsing to give the viewer an instantaneous understanding of where the video is placing them. 

Eliminating distraction (not necessarily innovative)

A countermove to the aforementioned framing is reclaiming the space on the monitor, also known as real estate in web lingo. Something I have discovered recently is the way in which a lot of standalone projects reclaim the space on your screen by filling up the entire browser, if not even the entire screen. Branding, as you have it with news website through headers and surrounding links, becomes secondary and is mostly hidden somewhere in a corner of the layout. 

Here in theplaceswelive.com, which I mentioned before, the photographer is taking full advantage of the real estate offered on a web browser. 

In another web project, http://www.livehopelove.com, does something similar with a full screen option that blocks out even other applications (in case people feel tempted to switch to another application).  

Image as a component

Additionally, I believe that animation have done a lot to transform the moving image. 

This video from the New York Times uses still images and audioslideshows intermeshed. The images you see below are placed on a virtual map. once the images come in focus, the voices of each individuals give an opinion about the most recent presidential election. 

I'm sure similar animations have been there before. But this model is, more or less, referring to recurrent features you see in the newspaper, interactive audio features. 

All in all, it feels as if the image has been re-contextualized. It's similar to what happened with images once they were cut out, processed and placed in articles in magazines. Except that now there are much more possibilities of what an author can intermesh an image with. Interactivity and animation programs have infiltrated the realm of journalism. (Whoopie!)

In some ways, the image not only stands alone but can and often has become a larger component of a multi-faceted experience competing for attention with all the amateur-to-professional content the world wide web has on offer. 

That is, if you have a good connection and the proper computer for it (the digital divide is a whole different issue, I will hopefully get into here one day). 

Reporting with two cameras dangling off your neck, pen and paper stuffed into your pockets and the line "would you put on that mic" in mind

So reporting for every format possible sucks. But what sucks more is not reporting at all. And if I gotta report in all sorts of media to get my stuff out, I will. 

Here a few things that have worked for me so far while trying to report for a package, i.e. a print article that needs video and photography as well (I'm not an expert, there are a million ways of doing this):

1.) Basic video and photo equipment: 

• a camcorder/camera with a wireless microphone attached on top, mounted on light tripod that you can easily fold up if you need to walk a couple of steps
• an SLR with a good zoom lens, autofocus, possibly a bounce flash attached (if dark)
• pen and piece of paper stuffed into your pants pockets
• a good backpack that fits all this and cushions it

2.) Reporting methods:

The interview: 

• BEFORE: you get in take 15 mins to get broll of the building, some interiors, anything you think could help introduce the interviewee visually. Is he an architect? Find some model buildings in his office, film him working on a project on his computer, etc. 
• DURING: I like to do the general print interview without the camera, that gives you an opportunity to warm up to the person and you can jump in when the interviewee is veering off topic/not answering your question. While the person is talking take some notes on WHAT s/he's talking about and write down a little list of things/topics/etc covered that you might need on tape to illustrate your story; THEN TURN ON THE CAMERA, by now and even before the 'print interview' you should have found your story angle. Ask questions directly related to the story, 4-5 important ones and get them to give you a succinct answer, even if they might have answered the question before (helpful: jot down the time code for that quote, that'll make editing much faster)
  
• AFTER: Now that you're done with getting interview content, both for video and print, get out your list of things/topics/etc  that you wrote down while talking to the person and go on a scavenger hunt for the stuff. Back to our architect, he spoke about a certain building that s/he's working on. Ask him to show you models on his computer or even miniature models that s/he might have lying around. Get shots of those things from two different angles and three different views (wide/medium/close-up)

A few things that could also make life easier:

• Ask people for their name, occupation and where they're from and tell them to spell their name to you on camera
  
• Time codes can save you lots of time. If you can sit down while your camera is on a tripod, write down a note and the time code. That way you can get the exact quote much faster.
• Separate video time from photo time. If you need both, get video with clean and undisturbed natural sound 
• Use wireless mics during Man-On-The-Street assignments. You can control ambient noise much better and won't have to hold camera and stick mic at the same time. 
• Breathe. Stop. Take your time. Video is most powerful when you have a strongly framed image in which the objects in the image are moving, not you. Shut up (very important when gathering natural sound), let the camera do its work while resting on a tripod and gather your thoughts for the next shot.

Things I'd like to have/need to buy: 

• A fanny pack - where I can stash the wireless microphone I'm carrying around when doing a general survey among people on the street (and where I can keep my pen and paper and some business cards)
  
• A mini-tripod that I can rest on tables, book shelves and even my chest
• Small bags to organize my stuff - good batteries, empty batteries, tapes, etc. When you have 10 minutes with the CEO of some company you'd better be prepared

Anyhoo... I'm putting this out because I train reporters in this and have thought about this for quite a while. Comments much appreciated. 

The new role of the image...?

Someone talked to me recently, told me that it'd take very long to take a great shot. You wake up before dawn, he said, you go on top of a tall building, talk your way in, if you have to. Or you schlepp yourself from street to street, the body of your camera dangling off your neck, the strap grinding its way to your bladebone. A quasimodo-to-be, ten years from now. Or you swarm around troublemakers, a parasite digging invisible, needle-like arms into the open pores of their subject/object. 

You get the right angle, turn a little wheel on your camera, correct your lighting, click, you got your shot. 

It sounds like an idealist's ode to the photojournalist. And yes, there seem to be a few great photographers out there, who seem to be able to live for a month on one photo's earnings. 

But the viewer clicks on. To photo slideshows, photo series, photos tagged in albums, to interactive maps and graphics. And so a photographer either goes on a scavenger hunt for the next interactive map, running from one building/person/event to the next; or has to take mug shots of 50 people who give representative opinions, Man-On-The-Street polls on the elections, Britney Spears, Detergent; or is s/he is one of 40 random photographers who work for Getty Images, the AP, Reuters, Corbis, who contribute namelessly to a larger project. 

It slaps the photog ego in the face, which is sort of satisfactory to me. It takes away from Walter Benjamin's prediction that photography politicizes/is inherently politicized due to its fake objectivity, its need for a verbal framing. Now the multimedia framing negates its singularity. Takes away from its wordlessness. Contextualizes the photograph for the consumer, while s/he is just as capable of re-contextualizing the image through posting it on facebook/blogger.  The image has become a free-floating currency. The iconic image mutates into a malleable (both in size and meaning) broche, worn, traded, bought, lost, sold. And it loses its charisma, or to use Benjamin's vocabulary, its aura, once more. 

Monks Funnel Money Into Myanmar

We have been very involved with the Burmese community in New York and decided to start up a blog to get the latest news about Cyclone Nargis out there. www.burmaemergency.wordpress.com

We also started working on finding stories surrounding this topic. While my Master's Project partners Divya Gupta and Karen Zraick made a video about protests in New York that was published on thirteen.org. Here is a piece I did for the Wall Street Journal (the first one I pitched, produced, shot and edited):

As NGOs are having trouble getting into Myanmar, a group of Burmese monks in New York has raised more than $2 million, which will be sent directly to monasteries in disaster-stricken areas.

Returning to the family with a camera - this time for recreational purposes

See the little baby in the middle? That's Aung He, who's staring at our Master's project with his big, dark eyes. He was still in Linday Ko's belly when we filmed the video project about their family.

It was a great relief to seem them laugh at what we did and we'll hopefully be able to give them a few DVDs, which Linday said she'd send to her mother in Thailand.

Finally, I feel free to hug her without thinking I am compromising my journalistic 'objectivity'. Though I do not believe there is such a thing as complete distance from your 'subject' when you're reporting on them for so long, it's much harder to report on someone whom you greatly care about.

There were always these question: If they need someone to speak to someone on the phone should I jump in? Should I help pregnant Linday with basic tasks or even try to help when their children are having difficulties in school? Should I get involved, insert myself into the story when I notice that bills, taxes or similar issues are not being taken care of? It's a delicate balance between doing what is only human and doing what you need to do to get an accurate portrayal of your characters.

I had to go against my natural instinct a lot and am glad I can simply bring by a box of chocolates now without having to second guess it. In some ways this reveals my sympathy for them, which of course has been somewhat counterproductive when it comes to getting the real picture. But I was very grateful for having good editors and excellent, smart Master's Project partners who'd caution me to film the little mischief Lulu too much and concentrate more on the oftentimes reserved and taciturn Taw Ko.

In any case, I've grown to like this family a lot and hope that they might have found a liking in me as well.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Multimedia musings that seem outdated now

Conceiving a multimedia project is quite the challenge but encourages you to really go nuts with the tools at hand. A white screen is what you have at the beginning and with Adobe Flash, there is almost no limit to your creativity.

This degree really gave us the time to explore various questions that I've heard reiterated in larger newsrooms here and abroad: What the heck do I put in a video; how do I best convey numbers and who still cares about words?

So here are some lessons worth $50k in tuition fees and a lot of sleepless nights in a smelly computer lab: Text matters cause most net media consumers are bored office workers who love to procrastinate around lunch time (when the number of site viewers peak) and they don't want to be caught by their bosses combatting their boreout. Text is still the most effective way for getting you information quickly.

Videos are often not consumed in their entirety for the same reasons but are generally more powerful when it comes to telling more individualized stories. Slideshows are a little work-friendlier. Clicking away on the internet - from afar that looks like clicking away on a excel sheet, right?

And Interactivity. What can I say. Over the past year, I have fallen in love with Adobe Flash. The Flashplayer, that thing you have to download from the Adobe homepage when you're on an old, old PC, is what makes things beam in, move from left to right or click around on maps, photo galleries, etc.

Interactivity, if done properly, draws in a lot of people. Big time. Maybe not for longer than 30 seconds, but as the Internet is seen more and more as a resource to personalize and filter information according to one's own taste, the interactive feature that combines a lot of useful/interesting information with a compelling and easy-to-understand design wins. The LA Times did a crimewatch interactive (google map AIP), recording each murder that happened in Los Angeles. This data base is constantly updated and sorted by name, I presume daily. This lends it longevity that videos or slideshows might not have. Constantly upgraded, constantly renewed data.

To end on a good note:
http://www.wefeelfine.org/

About learning flash and being spat on while filming a little refugee boy

After about 6 months of reporting and an additional month of production, we have finally published our Master's project on Burmese refugees in the greater New York area,From Burma To New York.

Packaging for multimedia

How do you tackle a project like this which is both politically sensitive and multi-layered. How do you convey the complexity of the resettlement process without boring people? How do you elevate the individual's story from a sea numbers? And how do you construct a project that will encapsulate all dimensions of the resettlement process?

Our answers to these issues consisted of three main mini-documentaries about three individuals, each at a different stage of their resettlement; four interactive features that visualize the larger context; and complementary elements, such as slideshows or short video clips.

Each element was assigned a job: the mini-docs were supposed to bring color into our project. We Se, a newly arrived refugee who used to be a teacher in the refugee camps along the Thai-Burmese border, finds solace in his belief in God and dreams of becoming a Christian pastor one day. Taw Ko, a one-armed father of four, lives in an all-Burmese building where his neighbors and fellow landsmen translate letters for him. Myra Dahgaypaw is doing a Bachelor's degree and is working for the Burmese government in exile several years after her arrival in the U.S.


Taw Ko and his son Lulu in their house in Brooklyn.

A graphic illustrated how many people had fled Burma and were now living in refugee camps along the Thai-Burmese border (151,894 according to the Thailand Burma Border Consortium) and how atrocious the situation was there, which eventually led to what we illustrated in another graphic, namely the sudden admission of about 14,000 Burmese refugees to the United States in the fiscal year of 2007 (an eightfold increase from the year before when only about 1600 were admitted).
















Graphic of Thai-Burma Border and the concentration of refugee populations inthe refugee camps there

Moral decisions in reporting on refugees

But all this tech and editorial training was nothing in comparison to the reporting lessons we took home. Not only were we speaking to and taking the time of people who have have lived through gone through some pretty atrocious situations. On top of that, a large number of them have lived in refugee camps for more than 20 years and, before coming here, had no concept of what a key was or how to use Western toilets (the International Organization of Migration actually teaches some of them how to use toilets, among many other skills that are essential for living in the U.S.) and that means that many of these refugees might not have a clear understanding of what it's like to have your face plastered on the global platform that is the internet.

Now, many of these refugees have been ethnically persecuted for being Karen, an ethnic minority in Burma that has been fighting for independence since Burma's independence from British colonial rule. Many Karen Buremse refugees are still facing the same situation. We have encountered many refugees from Burma who have had worries about getting their relatives in Burma into trouble by participating in our project. And in some ways, someone who is struggling with using a microwave might not fully comprehend what it means to partake in a project that will be posted on the internet.

Nicholas Kristof wrote a very interesting column about this issue:

As a reporter, I always feel a tension between the interests of the broader community of refugees — for the most compelling individual stories possible, so the world will pay attention — versus the interest of the individual victim, who often wants privacy and doesn’t want to risk getting in trouble by telling her story.

[...]

And the refugees have no concept of what it means to be in a major newspaper or network broadcast, so you can’t just let them weigh and accept the risks themselves.

That is not to say that we should take away people's agency and presume that refugees aren't at all media savvy. Yet, we had to carefully assess each time whether the people we interviewed really understood what we were doing. We also had to deal with communication problems which made it even more difficult to clarify to our interviewees what were doing.

I guess I'll see what they think when I visit the Ko's on Sunday. Linday Ko, Taw Ko's wife, gave birth to their son Aung He in February. I haven't seen the little boy yet and am mighty exited. I'll have my camera with me. Finally for recreational purposes.

HD in pornography - for the geek/pervert in you

Produced by Dave Mayers and Lam Thuy Vo

While the West Coast porn scene is going nuts over high definition technology, New York producers are reluctant to jump on the band wagon. Find out why. (Music: Vierte Heimat)




Find more projects on the theme of "dirt" here:
http://www.nycinteractive.org/