Carnival of Journalism Post: Workflow and Strategizing Video for a Print Newsroom

This post was written for the Carnival of Journalism debate on the role of online video in journalism. I'm taking a very pragmatic approach, looking into the workflow within a print newsroom. Please feel free to give constructive criticism and tell me whether you've found better strategies in working with video.
When in a newsroom, editorial decisions are difficult, especially when you work for a daily newspaper and resources for video are tight. Having had to make those decisions while heading video operations for The Wall Street Journal in Asia, I’ve had to figure out ways to allocate resources. When does it make sense to really go all out on a story? What kind of video can add value in what kind of scenario? Here’s a thought.

Categories
To help one get an overview of how we could build out video operations at newspapers it might be good to look at the spectrum of videos newspapers do offer at this point in time. On some level, the Internet gave newcomers in video, such as newspapers, the opportunity to be experimental and break out of what had become a somewhat formulaic approach to video (See Charlie Brooker’s spoof news story as an example:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4). It liberated the format somewhat, giving videographers the chance to dabble in various genres and possibly modify them. Here are a few categories I’ve found online (click to enlarge):







Decision Making
It’s difficult to determine which kind of video to do when. Ideally, we’d all be spending weeks with a character at a time to produce a nice 15-minute first-person narrative, but that’s not always possible. And not every editor wants to pay for that.

The system below is one based on deadlines. Please note that some of the most important questions here -- how important is this story? How visual is this story? How much access do I have? -- need to be weighed with each story and are a bit harder to put into a ‘template’ like the one below (I will try to do a float chart one of these days detailing these decisions, somebody please kick my butt so I'll do it).

It’s an important story but when is it due?
1.) It’s due now!
The most value added at this point is quite possibly news analysis videos.
When the Japan earthquake happened, the ABC correspondent in Tokyo was on air for hours on end. Al-Jazeera was streaming footage and photos they could find with reporters talking about what they saw. We put out breaking news videos

2.) We have about a week to go before this publishes:
This answer might prompt more questions: how much access do we have? How many resources can we allocate to this story, i.e. how much money do we have available? Depending on the answers of those questions we could then opt for either a video package or a reporter-shot package.

3.) We have AGES til this publishes:
In this case it we could finally try to a first person package or a really extended package.

Proselytizing the Idea of Multi-platform Journalism
Perhaps crucial for this to work is to engage reporters in the print newsroom in multimedia storytelling, both as shooters themselves but also as people who start thinking about stories on various platforms. None of the above are really possible unless we know about stories in advance and can evaluate whether a story has ‘video potential’ or not. Small experiences a reporter has with doing his or her own video can lead to a change of mind that later translates into him or her calling a multimedia producer earlier to produce a story.

See Andrew Lih and my explorations of how to teach reporters video journalism here:
http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2011/10/01/fiveshotpattern/


Conclusion
Striking a balance between daily demands and enterprising journalism is hard, but both are needed and video can be a strong medium for both. I suppose until every newsroom has unlimited budgets for every form of journalism -- from videos to infographics to news applications and articles -- I suppose this could be a good interim strategy to determine when it's feasible and sensible to produce a video at a print organization. Print journalism is still the fastest -- and cheapest -- medium in which to produce and consume information and until we have the luxury of having the resources to train, equip and financially enable reporters to be multiplatform journalists, I think a model like this might be helpful.

Lessons Learned: I Need a Slideshow, a Video, an Infographic...

As a multimedia reporter, it's important to familiarize yourself with the different kinds of media there are and what their strengths are. There are stories that are more visual, others that lend themselves more to graphics. Sometimes picking and choosing the right medium for the right story is a better approach than to have 'everything' for every story. Here's a short breakdown of what I gathered from lectures, readings and concluded from my own observations:

The categories:
Infographics:

One of their main strengths is that they can deliver an instantaneous understanding of large sets of data, i.e. convey the larger context of a story. A line graph can show rise in prices over time faster and more effectively than can a paragraph that describes numbers. A color-coded heat map that shows higher percentages of a certain ethnic population can be better at explaining racial diversity in New York than a paragraph detailing the breakdown of every neighborhood. How-It-Works float charts are probably better at showing the mechanics of a process than a lengthy essay.

Interactive graphics:

Interactive graphics give another dimension to infographics. Interactivity adds the ability to hide information until a user prompts it and to create a multi-layered experience of information consumption. It also allows for heightened user engagement, too: be it through user submissions, continuous linkage (allowing for users to continue exploring). So if a data and information-driven story is particularly complicated, interactivity allows the journalist to stagger the amount of information presented. It allows to show correlations and give detail only if a viewer wants it.

Video and slideshows:

Visual storytelling is best used for personable approach to a story and at its best can show a larger story through a characters’ story. If done well, characters are often emblematic of the larger issues at hand: it's a way of humanizing the consequences of a new law; of showing a trend story through a character that exemplifies that trend; or even just to show a component human nature through the ups and downs of the story of one or a few people. Also think about what would best be SEEN rather than DESCRIBED in words (these are often action-driven or event-driven pieces).

Interaction of those components:

These components can also interact with one another. Some have employed flash and javascript to lay out a story like an online magazine, except that the photos and graphics that punctuated the pages of a magazine now move. We are now able to use flash, javascript and other software/programming languages to curate our elements, adding another layer of information. An information graphic could be used as a navigation for a number of video components, for example.

I often use the 'template' of a print story to explain the examples above. In a written feature the formula goes like so:

1.) Anecdotal lede: starting with a person that exemplifies your story

2.) Nutgraf: What's the story about

3.) Context graf: This part often gives the numerical significance of the story, a la "she is one of thousands of people who have..."

And then it alters from going back and forth between characters, experts and analytical paragraphs.

One could look at a video as a drawn out anecdotal lede and data graphics as extensive context paragraphs. Just in a different medium.

B-roll sucks

Someone said to me once that I should forget about the concept of b-roll. And I really took it to heart.

In visual storytelling we often rely on our radio track to tell our stories. A voice tells us all the facts of the story. The basic print story structure often applies:

We have an anecdotal lede, or in visual language the 'beauty shot,' the most gripping footage, the friggin money shot, whatever you want to call it. Then you launch into a voice over, telling me immediately what's going on and why I should care -- in print lingo a nutgraf. All that nicely done with some b-roll plastered on top of that vaguely illustrates what you're talking about. Then throw in the first quote, like you would in an article. Continue with some context, some transitions, a kicker at the end, ideally another quote and if you don't get that then throw in a nice concluding thought. Voila, you got your general news video, often done within a few hours after an event happened if you've had staffing at the place.

What my colleague though instilled in me though was that visual story arch was just as important. Sequence shots, processes and action shots are imperative in telling a visual story that runs parallel to your radio track (the voices of interviewees, the narrator's voice). It's a visual sense of understanding the processes that constitute the story that you see in every day life: the chronology of going to the beach.

A visual sequence tells this story: First the act of packing a bag to go out, putting the towel in, the sun lotion, the sunglasses. Sitting in a car, driving to the beach, the radio blasting, then getting out of the car. Sitting on the beach, drinking a soda, eating a popsicle. Then the beach emptying at night. That's one continuous story and after the radio track that tells me about the increase in people going to the beach, I've ended up also experiencing a trip to the beach. From beginning to end.

It's easy to forget that part of video. We concentrate on getting all the shots, the signage, the cut away shot of someone's hands, maybe a few atmosphere shots, people walking...and then we forget the bigger picture. The entire story. And true, some stories are more complex. You need to jump from one location and one interviewee to another.

But then there are chapters, each of which can be a little visual story in itself and you can play around with that, play with the rhythm of the video, work in short moments, in which you visually end one chapter and start another. It's time for the radio track to release the visual experience of something and for people to stop glueing some images to words that someone says. I don't like that one dictates the other, and while they are supposed to be interdependent, I figure you should give them a bit more play, too.

I tried to do that in this video:



I think I, like many who started in photography, often looked for a shot that could tell it all. But we're not staring at something for many seconds. Video is linear, continuous and as Walter Benjamin said, it leaves you almost no time to reflect, moments are gone so soon and only the most memorable shots remain. It's not just about stimulating someone.

I understand there's been a renaissance for the photograph, which now often employed in an audio-slideshow gives room to reflect. And that is one way of gripping someone emotionally. But I think there's still the power of visual sequencing and the continuity of video that I'd like to embrace.

Filmic storytelling and journalism

A colleague of mine recommended a book to me about editing, Walter Murch's "In the Blink of an Eye" (Walter Murch edited Apocalypse Now, The Godfather II & III and The Unbearable Lightness of Being among other movies). My colleague raved about the book because the author looks at editing in a more philosophical/conceptual way, rather than as a mechanical process that is needed to bring 3 hours of footage down to 2 minutes.

I'm about half way through the book, which is pathetic considering the large print and the lofty language in which it is written. But what I've read so far really spells out some of the most valuable advice I've been getting in shorter conversations from my colleagues. Visual storytelling is so much more akin to film than I thought.

I always saw fictional storytelling as somewhat divorced from journalism because of the infinite freedoms that the fantastic realms of film offer. But a few things still ring true when cutting a journalistic piece that seem to work so well in film. Kind of a d'oh moment, but heck...as a purist who likes to think that style should only be employed in both non-fiction and fiction, when it serves a story-driving purpose, I had a natural aversion to applying filmic theories/methods to journalistic pieces.

Which brings me to the heart of this post. How can we learn from film in journalistic endeavors and how much storytelling is and can be in the editing?

Choosing a shot

In some ways, Murch says, choosing what material you use is also choosing what not to use. Murch's theory is to use the following criteria, in order of importance and with weight in the decision making:

1.) Emotion (51%)
2.) Story (23%)
3.) Rhythm (10%)
4.) Eye-Trace (7%) --> what my eye wants to look at in large frame
5.) Two-dimensional plane on screen (5%) -- > so no funky angles
6.) Three-dimensional space of action (4%) --> where ppl are placed in relation to oe another

[Murch, Walter. In the Blink of an Eye. 2nd Edition. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2001. p. 18]

I particularly find the last four points rather interesting, small stylistic devices that I would otherwise not have thought of. The eye-trace, "the concern with the location and movement of the audience's focus of interest within the frame", for instance, gives me an idea of what I should shoot. If my interviewee is speaking of his job as an apple picker, I will continue to follow her/him while apple picking and start out from far away, get a medium shot, a shot of the person's face and then finally focus on the apple, the main subject of the interviewee's sound bite.

This hierarchy seems very reasonable and akin to some of our purposes. But to him the most import criterion seems to be emotion of a shot, which trumps over every other aspect combined. So he'd still go for the shot that encapsulates the right emotion, even if it might not further the story. And as useful as this guideline is, I'd think that this would be a classic case of "drowning your kittens," i.e. abandoning parts of your reporting that you fall in love with but have nothing to do with your story.

Since delivering information surrounding a main hypothesis (aka your nut graf) - and by that I mean not just facts but also aural, visual and emotional information - is imperative in journalism, I'd like to extend Murch's theory for my own purposes. Only if the emotions is imperative in enhancing the story, then I'd choose the shot accordingly. Because video is so powerful in highlighting the individual in a story, that, as contextualiazed in the nut graf, shows how the story applies to a large number of people and is the reason why we should care about the story, we can think of the material we choose as both a vehicle of factual information but also a constant reminder of the human and relatable side of a story. So in some ways, I'd like to think that if you go for emotion, it also has to have some relation to the story.

Yes, it is photography and video material that is a medium that is particularly good at delivering emotions. But I consider it one of various types of information (like a context, historical background, expert opinion, etc.) that make for a well-reported story. The photograph/moving image is like the anecdotal lede, the quote, or as some editors call it, the color of the piece.

Rhythm

Something else I've learned to appreciate is pacing and rhythm, Murch's #3 concern. An audio-visual story is bound to linearity, unlike an article or a graphic that allows for panning, scanning and skimming, and I firmly believe that rhythm is essential in delivering information in a digestable form but also enhance a piece's emotional value. There are natural rhythms that we set by choosing certain shots and - more importantly even - sounds for the introduction of a video. Above all, video is a medium that allows for emotional reflection within a verbal informational skeleton, built by the accounts of interviewees and narrators.

Pauses in narration and purely audio-visual periods in a video not only serve the purpose of punctuating a story; they separate ideas as mentioned above but also give the viewer time to take in the ideas that s/he has just been presented with and add another layer of information, mostly an emotional impression, that enhances, contradicts or extends the verbal information they follow. All that means for an editor is: don't cut so tightly to the script. Let the broll run by itself for a few seconds, let the visual be the punchline to the idea you're presenting.

Blinking - deciding where to make the cut

One of the most interesting things that I discovered in this book, is Murch's theory that:

"[...] the blink is either something that helps an internal separation of thought to take place, or it is an involuntary reflex accompanying the mental separation that is taking place anyway.

[...]
We must render visual reality discontinuous, otherwise perceived reality would resemble an almost incomprehensible stirng of letters without word separation or punctuation."

[Murch, Walter. In the Blink of an Eye. 2nd Edition. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2001. pp. 62-63]

He then moves on to say that often, imagining the blinking of a person can help the editor decide on how to cut a piece. Someone who is in a fight, he says, might blink more often and if we look at sports videos, say a boxing video, then you can see how quick cuts can mimick the blinking and the pace of the sport and add an additional layer of information to a journalistic piece. Same with employing blackness (shut eyes) in combination with sound.

This method is probably best employed when doing video profiles of people. It seems like the cutting then places the viewer into the shoes of the person portrayed. Mimicking her or his gaze, their blinking pattern, can be very effective.

Anyhow, I hope this was as helpful to some as Walter Murch is inspiring to me. It's a good and quick read (if you're not me, who has too short a commute to get more than 10 pages of reading done each day).