Yes yes, this clever bit of video has gone viral … but seriously, doing the above is harder than it looks. If you really want to know how to do this, and do this well, go here:
The NPPA News Video Workshop
This is the 50th anniversary of the News Video Workshop, where the best in the business of visual storytelling have learned and shared their skills and wisdom. I’ve attended this workshop twice, and wrote about it last year. As the promo materials share:
The NewsVideo Workshop is a week long, intense immersion into the world of moving pictures and sound. You will spend 12 – 16 hours each day learning from a faculty of more than 20 nationally- and internationally-recognized, award-winning journalists: including Bob Dotson, and Darrell Barton. These two alone have 9 Emmy Nominations, 4 Emmy Wins, 2 Photographer of the Year Awards, and 1 Sprague Award among them.
My Twitter feed since Sunday has hit some brief highlights of a workshop I’m attending this week in Norman, Oklahoma.
It’s a workshop who’s attendees are facing incredible change in their world: newspapers are closing, television revenues are shrinking, and more and more citizen journalists are providing lower quality product for storytelling.
Lila Merideth directs a scene on her second day of the NPPA News Video Workshop. (Photo by Donald Winslow)
The NPPA News Video Workshop, for the last 49 years, has brought the concepts of visual storytelling to news photojournalists. When I first attended here in 1997, there was little awareness of the Web as a storytelling medium and most, if not all, attendees came from local TV stations. They captured their video using matching, standard-issue, multi-thousand-dollar broadcast cameras. Twelve years later, news shooters are nearly the smallest percentage of attendees. This uears workshop is made up of storytellers from the military, education, and newspapers as well. The cameras used here have changed, too, and now include small DV camcorders to the high dollar cameras.
What’s changing is the cost barriers to video storytelling . With the barriers to storytelling are lowering, one of the subtle goals of the workshop is to be sure the quality does not lower. And while there is a place for the quirky, poorly produced YouTube video of your neighbor’s welcome mat being stolen by a racoon, inexpensive equipment doesn’t mean the story has to be poor. (For example, this shared by NBC’s John Larson, (added 4-14, my friend Sue Ellen sent this better link via Vimeo) the shooting quality is very mediocre, but the story concept is solid (watch it all the way through to see it build).
Two toolboxes
The reason I am here is to build two conceptual toolboxes: the first will be used to tell better visual stories in my lectures and on line teaching. The second toolbox will be used when I teach a graduate seminar in Storytelling in Leadership scheduled for winter term on our campus. Teaching storytelling on a medical campus is a skill that will help current and future leaders understand was to effect change, improve quality, and guide their organization through the overwhelming challenges they will face in their careers.
“Anyone involved in quality improvement efforts knows that scientific principles are at the center of this work. But even the most evangelical quality engineer will caution that this is only part of the solution. Improvement strategies and measurement tools are most effective when embedded in an organizational cultural that ensures that changes are embraced and sustained. And there is no better means of inspiring cultural change than through the simple craft of telling stories. As Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, puts it, ‘Measurement is important, but it’s the stories behind the numbers that are the most enduring wellspring for change.’”
Local television news, done poorly, is banal, lame, and mind numbing. As is any poorly told story. Substitute “lecture” or “online class” for “local television news” and the sentence remains true. Strong effective storytelling, as demonstrated by the presenters here, become compelling, emotional, and the “wellspring for change” as Berwick mentions above.
How the workshop progresses
As I wait for her direction, Lila Merideth of the Associated Press prepares her camera during the NPPA News Video Workshop. (Photo by Donald Winslow)
The participants here have daily assignments and the format is essentially the same: they are given an assignment (usually a rambling description of a cultural trend and a series of lame questions.) Their task, in a mater of a few hours, is to create a commitment statement (what is their story about) and video record no more than 4 minutes of tape. The 4 minutes of recorded video is brutally critiqued and then, the participants edit it down to a one minute story. All of this without audio.
Critics of this workshop, and this style of news photojournalism, say the results are too formula. The attitude from many of the workshop presenters is to ask the participants, for this week, to follow the formula. To “play the game” in the words of long time workshop faculty Darryl Barton and to follow their step-by-step formulas.
How this relates to education
Storytelling — and video storytelling — does not supplant the lecture or the textbook. But it can add emphasis, pacing, and sequencing to learning. Done well, a visual story can lead a student to understand and synthesize ideas. it can illustrate concepst in ways a text book can not. The key, for the educator, is to learn the craft of storytelling first, then move to the digital media and learn how to adapt the storytelling techniques to the medium.
While there are limits to cameras like the Flip, the price point of $200 makes HD video affordable in the classroom. The techniques taught hee can apply to the simple Flip as wel as the $60,000 cameras. When learners see how effective storytelling can be, they can then be beter prepared to use storytelling and the techniques with the professional equipment brought by their AV departments, communication firms, or local television outlets.
As we’ve collectively watched the changes in our economy, one industry that is being hit hard is journalism. Especially hard, for me, is learning of the Rocky Mountain News closing.
I had the opportunity produce a feature about the RMN photojournalism team in one of the most difficult moments of their history: the 1999 shootings on the high school campus at Columbine. That multimedia project, Covering the War At Home was produced in cooperation with other digital pioneers Dirck Halstead and David Snyder and is still live — in its 1999 format — at The Digital Journalist. The RMN coverage of Columbine earned the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography in 2000.
To understand the personal impact of this one paper’s closing, please take 20 minutes to watch:
From my colleague at News Photographer magazine, Donald Winslow:
FIRST LOOK: New View Of The Inauguration
In a new view of an American Presidential Inauguration that’s never been shot or seen before, photographer Chuck Kennedy from the McClatchy-Tribune Photo Service made a remarkable image of President Barack Obama taking the oath of office as the 44th President of the United States.
The NewsVideo Workshop is a week long, intense immersion into the world of moving pictures and sound. You will spend 12 – 16 hours each day learning from a faculty of more than 20 nationally- and internationally-recognized, award-winning journalists: including Bob Dotson, and Darrell Barton. These two alone have 9 Emmy Nominations, 4 Emmy Wins, 2 Photographer of the Year Awards, and 1 Sprague Award among them.
