I am planning to do a documentary project with people in a historic African-American neighborhood in Winston-Salem, who would be contributors just like the students in this “Geo-Historian” project. However, our new photojournalism class includes a creative corps of students who have both digital cameras (many of which shoot short video clips) and also many have smart phones.
Do we want to experiment? Read (and listen to video) all about it HERE.
Sisters House datestone
Visit Wikipedia, at this LINK, to find that website’s take on Monsieur Barthes, the late French intellectual who, among many other monographs and papers, wrote Camera Lucida, one of my favorite — though iritatingly evasive — “meditations” [not my original word-- several folks use it to describe this book] — on photography.
My meditation on photography
The First AmendmentSign in the museum next to The Chicago Triune
In Spring 2010, pictures — photographs — matter as much as words (to many, perhaps photos mean more). As I move into teaching photojournalism I’d say this topic is about shooting or creating images that are accurate, that reflect something real and yet are interesting. Photographs ARE information. The sign above suggests the history and legal status of news-gathering in America. It’s good to begin there.
Taking an online multimedia course through Media Bistro (love that website!!) is now paying off for me. [Maybe no one else will be happy.. but anything that forces me to act when I know something's not perfect is a very fine aid indeed.]
You can now go to my YouTube site here — reesedykers – to view the rough cut (very very rough) with intentionally degraded video quality of cancer treatment for Peabody, a very cute dog. This is just a segment of what will be a 10- to 15-minute documentary short feature. But I’m also going to produce an NPR-style audio feature to upload to an independent producers’ site. ALSO, I hope the exposure on YouTube can lead to some other ideas. Since I got my certificate in documentary studies at Duke in May 2008, I have found that I love doing this stuff. But it’s time-consuming and difficult if you have a day job that is not about teaching such techniques. I’m working them into my classes anyway. But for now, no tech or monetary support.
Now, if this could be my day job. Wow!
Here’s a link to my YouTube channel, where I today uploaded a short video shot in January 2009 in Cuernavaca, Mexico. I shot it while sitting in a restaurant in Acapulco. The idea was to create a brief vignette of my month-long immersion in Mexican culture and language. When I returned home, I edited onto the original short a title page, using iMovie (a program that I find to be really useful & quite frustrating). I’ve got several short videos like this from Mexico 2009.
For my next trick, I’ll upload a short video segment from the documentary/multimedia journalism project that I began on November 9, 2009. The story is about a valiant little dog who became part of a cancer treatment trial at the NC State veterinary school, a trial in which vet school docs are working with Duke University physicians to trade data, in a program aimed at helping both women with breast cancer and dogs who have cancerous tumors and might otherwise lose a limb (or their lives). Things are looking good for Peabody — who ended her 5-week treatment just before Christmas. She’s recovering at home.
Being “multimedia” involves learning to perform well a variety of story-telling tasks that once were the province of individual experts. “Print” journalists reported and wrote news stories; editors assigned photographers to “illustrate” the stories (usually long after the photojournalist should have been involved in doing visual reporting), “broadcasters” shot video and did standups in front of cameras– but for TV stations; radio people gathered “audio” and put it on air. Then we got this thing called the World Wide Web. Now everyone does everything. So I’ve learned to shoot photos — at the right is a shot of Peabody, the dog undergoing cancer treatment at the NC State vet school.
I also have learned to shoot video at the
Duke Center for Documentary Studies.
And at the Duke doc school, some NPR folks
also taught me to do audio docs.
More on that in my next post….
For almost two years now, in various venues, from FaceBook to my website and in entries in a couple of blogs, I’ve written about changes journalism is undergoing. I no longer teach journalism as “print” journalism, because teaching a skill based in a single medium seems irresponsible. Journalists today must be multimedia.
With this post, I’m discussing my efforts to alter my personal bag of tricks. I now do carry a bag when I “do” journalism — not just a reporter’s notebook and a pen. I bring a digital audio recorder, a digital still camera (with a Leica lens) that also shoots video, plus a Canon digital Rebel for high-quality still photos. I’ve lately begun carrying an HD video camcorder. And I’m usually carrying at least one tripod.
This LINK takes you to a story on a local TV website about an oncology program at the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine. Since November 9, I’ve been following a dog who is undergoing cancer treatment there — Peabody, whose human is Penny Griffin, an art-history prof who is my neighbor in Old Salem, near the college where we both teach.
The "boot" protects the foot that has a cancerous tumor
Photojournalism is, today, storytelling through gathering multimedia elements– good photography, good video and good audio, sometimes under difficult conditions. A student in my Comm262 Photojournalism course, Neha Rayamajhi, from Nepal, found this link to work done by a special group of photojournalists:
See the multimedia documentary here.
Thank you, Neha, for this gift.
New York Times columnist Frank Rich had another great column Sunday (May 10). He ended with these words:
“Not long ago, we laughed at the idea of pay TV. Free television was considered an inalienable American right (as long as it was paid for by advertisers). Then cable and satellite became the national standard.
“By all means let’s mock the old mainstream media as they preen and party on in a Washington ballroom. Let’s deplore the tabloid journalism that… will always be with us. But if a comprehensive array of real news is to be part of the picture as well, the time will soon arrive for us to put up or shut up. Whatever shape journalism ultimately takes in America, make no mistake that in the end we will get what we pay for.”
As classes end at Salem College this week, including my Media Writing & Researching course, I have been considering my policy of teaching journalism as education for citizens who need to know journalism’s function in our democracy.
I hope that most students who have taught me and learned with me this semester will consider, even if journalism seems a poor career destination right now, that in a liberal arts college and in our democratic republic, knowledge is power. Without careful journalism, citizens have little power because they can’t know what their government is doing (or why). What we learn from watching or listening to bloviating cable TV talking heads or radio curmudgeons (of whatever political persuasion) is fun — but such opinionating merely re-enforces our political views. It doesn’t tell us honestly what other points of view really are.
Here’s a Link to the Frank Rich column — The American Press on Suicide Watch.
In media-writing, we discussed this video a few weeks ago — acknowledging that for today’s college students, especially seniors, the video can be discouraging. However, I urge viewers to consider that rather than fear, the video can inspire excitement. It’s hardly possible, for college-educated people to be left behind if they continue to think critically, to observe, to be curious and to continue their educations beyond a bachelor’s degree after getting a little experience and gaining clarity about their ‘bliss’. Today and for the century (and, really, for the most successful people of every era),” earning a living is about having a passion for work– NOT a particular job to do as an automaton.
Here’s the “Did You Know” link.
Salem datestone