Day 2: Hongkong: Video at the Front: International Multi-media Journalism Workshop

One Day Two, we move to video journalism for the web. And, there comes the Director of New Media of Washington Post, Ben De La Cruz, with his ten golden rules of the game.

But before that a few touching stories from WashingtonPost.com. The inauguration of Barrack Obama was seen from every the perspectives of people at every level, the young weeping black couple amidst millions to see him take oath, the white woman’s aspirations, the black octagenarian couple sitting on the home television who never thought that this day would ever come in their lifetime, the revelers in the pubs and the consumers in the mall, to politicians and hyper-active media men.

The annual health fair in a far-flung district town of USA for the common man and how elite medical professionals take on their task of coming for social service was another story. The third was on a rally for choice, choice of the unborn to be born, against abortion, and the socio-ethical debate around it.

There were two stories explained: one on being a black man in Washington Post and the other on debt trap in New York Times. Both these stories are presented in their respective portals as truly multi-media stories. There are written features, videos, first person audio testimonies, hundreds of interactions in the discussions segment, dozens of related photos and interactive info-graphics, all often woven into one single story apart from being additional inputs to the larger story. A different genre and experience of journalism!

Discussions were on the rule of thirds in video compositions and their uses, on each and every function of an usual digital camera for news shooting, on filters, lenses and natural light shooting rules, et al. Interestingly, no pans and zooms in shots for the web. Static shots of various durations and positions, with different frames telling the story make a basic rule of the game.

Finally, the interesting part. Going out to shoot with one set of equipments all by yourself. For ease of movement, we were in pairs of two. My partner shot a short film on the birds market of Hongkong, a unique part of the business district. I shot almost 30 minutes of rushes on the famous flowers market of Hongkong. We shall use FCP to edit our own stories tomorrow morning and I hope to edit the same in two minutes or so.

But, that’s not before I get up at 5 am and go out to shoot another story on the morning hours of Hongkong, 5.30 to 7.30 am, at Mongkok metro station, Edward Road, et al, albeit with my partner.

The moral of the story for today: video stories are not for the television medium only, which is the dumber use of the video. The more intelligent and challenging way to use video journalism is for the internet in web 2.0 and web 3.0 scenarios, with an integration of various media and presentations in the same story or theme. And example is always better than precept.