Hongkong Workshop: Final Report: Signs of the Times to Come:
4th and 5th Days:
The fourth day was dedicated to publishing our stories on the web and some basic design rules. Several superbly designed websites were shown and basic issues explained.
Some basic fundas: avoid over design. Respective negative space, what we call as white space in India. Balance is important, and not symmetry. Typeface families should be two ideally, and maximum three. Know your audience and their possible design preferences. Pick colours for a reason. If something does not have to be there, just take it out. Interactivity through design is about fun and function and not technology. View your design as a whole, and not in piece-meal. Design for functionality, and with the context of the issue or theme being represented. Basic web navigation principle of telling where you are and telling where you can go, was explained as well.
Several usable portals discussed for design, audio use, uploads, etc, were www.delicious.com, audacity.sourceforge.net, soundcloud.com, xtimeline.com, vimeo.com, addictomatic.com, trapped.com, worldpressphoto.org, Patagonia.com, adobe.com/designcenter/video-workshop, soundslides.com, guardian.co.uk/data-store, etc.
The basic web video shoot rules were re-debated.
Always wear headphones. Have tight, medium, wide, extra close and extra wide shots of all aspects of the subject on record. Ten seconds of shot sizes must. No pan, zoom in and out as functions in shoot, since they get pixilated when transferred to the web, often. 80% B-roll (cutaways, stocks, etc), 20% A-roll (direct interviews) and some ideally C-roll (interview given in action, interview and demonstration simultaneously). Almost all shots on tripod, shooting details as well, and shooting consciously several transition shots, proposed opening and closing shots with options, and be completely quiet during shoots (as much possible).Good and bad rushes examples given in large numbers to illustrate the points made.
After the audio and video stories were made, and they were processed using flash, they were uploaded on the web as well.
The concluding day focused on the fundamental aspects of the changing scenario in the field of global journalism and a concrete project ahead was discussed.
Communication revolution being a reality in the context of multi-media and web era today, differing skills for writing and editing across media platforms are becoming the key aspects in journalism skills today. Story-telling techniques hence are changing today, and a new set of video and audio ethics of fairness and balance in stories are becoming pertinent more than ever before.
Curiosity has always been the hallmark of good journalism, and along with that passion and compassion, apart from fairness and balance, and a clear understanding of the thin line between journalism and advocacy are becoming critical even in this age. And web-based or multimedia journalism cannot afford to be lazy journalism done in hurry, as is often believed. The inexpensive way to publish worldwide through web has to be made best use of.
Hence, teachers have to reasonably know the strengths and weaknesses of the various available media or channels to understand quality work and the needs of the story, apart from a strong grounding of legal (culture/society specific) and ethical issues (not moralist ethics). The discussion harped on not to teach ethics on the usual reactive basis (as with morals, and what not to do), but on a proactive basis (as to what to do), ethics for good quality, correct, fair and balanced journalism in pre, post and during production phases of multi-media stories. Also, global perspectives are important for web-based journalism today. Audio and video content gathering, editing and story-telling techniques will be critical for all journalists in the future media-neutral convergent journalism: this was the essence and unanimity in the discussions of the last day.
Also, photo-journalism and photo-editing skills and ability to produce audio-driven photo-galleries and stories shall be important as well. Multi-media design, online interactive info-graphics skills, social networking expertise to tap the power of this sphere, and understanding usability trends of the web, were also detailed.
Audio, video, picture and text elements in multi-media journalism shall complement each other and not just repeat the same information or emotions, thus enhancing the value and not replicating it. Make the learner and the audience of tomorrow visualize the audio or the print story, and customize the information by making it dynamic and on-demand, and not static as today.
Hence, the workshop concluded in this part of the discussion that the New Age Journalism teaching cannot have a rigid stratified medium-specific curricula. Journalism hence has to move from the current paradigm of tool-based (medium and unitary skill focused tools) teaching and learning TO practice based teaching and learning. Even the use of online, offline, 2D and 3D Flash interactive info-graphics will make information dynamic and on-demand rather than being static.
In this scenario, preparing a text-book for multimedia journalism becomes a daunting task. The more viable idea is to create an online educational scenario as is a multi-media teaching tool, and regular updating an online text-book collectively created dynamically by a given team which is available to all, is a viable option for the future.
A critical point noted was that software should be taught only in the context of being better story-tellers and researchers. www.lynda.com was suggested for self-learning of software.
The workshop strongly recommended that we involve students in real world projects, and cut down heavily in classroom hypothetical exercises beyond the initial stage. Teaching of journalism of tomorrow should incorporate international perspectives and experiences, focus on telling stories by the subjects rather than by the scribes, and maintain very high expectations from the learners and instill real life professional standards. It was noted that the multimedia story-telling can integrate an element of social change by giving the subject a larger voice to tell their own story. And, on the other hand, an element of gaming can bring in some entertainment as well. www.rcrusoe.org was shown to illustrate this point.
How such real life projects of multi-media journalism can integrate all forms of channels of communication into one single whole on the web was illustrate very ably through the stories in www.southofhere.org and www.westgrove2008.com.
Possible training stages in multi-media story-telling were outlined, evaluation points or parameters discussed and noted for media educators and discussions done on the same.
The concluding session talked about the need and contours of a new paradigm of journalistic ethics in details in a polemical style. This session also discussed a new set of projects to be taken on multi-media platform. One such project focusing on the issue of WATER was detailed which has been largely completed. A water journalism website www.1h2o.org and water project details on www.onewater.org were detailed.
The next such global project in which some 50 leading media schools world-over, SIMC included, will now participate shall focus on World Cities. This project will create a repository of stories that are told by people living in cities around the world (roughly 55% of world population are now in urban centers) and produced by story-tellers, nee multi-media futuristic journalists, in those cities who understand the context and content of these stories the best. And, for this, under-reported areas will be taken up. For the moment, migration, economic sustainability and gender equity areas have been taken up to focus in this World Cities project.
Stories will be portraits of individuals or families living in cities. The central feature of the multimedia story shall be around 7 minutes long video, may be complemented by a pictures slide-show with sound, and interactive info-graphics. Stories shall be principally told in the voice of the subjects of the stories, and always placed in the context of a transforming city. Stories must have high visual content, high quality interview with the subject integrated with high quality natural or ambience sound, with commentary minimal if used at all. Use of music can be limited to start and end, if at all. In general, music for manipulating audience emotions should be avoided.
Also, there will be high value in positive stories from cities that might be exemplary across borders, apart from stories that critique contemporary urban life.
Apart from their audiovisual timeline, story-tellers will need to submit a 200-word synopsis, a list of online and other resources that can help audiences explore the story and topic further, and a list of keywords that relate to the story. The stories can be in any language, but the story-teller will commit to captioning the story in English to help the sub-titling process. www.dotsub.com gives choice for sub-titling in any language.
These stories related to World Cities project shall be accessible through a website called www.citiesxborders.org.
In the Indian context, SIMC will be taking charge of stories from Mumbai and Pune, and stories suggested, keeping the three focus areas in mind, are related to Asia’s largest slum Dharavi, large number of migrant student population in Pune, water crisis in Mumbai, urban transport skewed against working women in Mumbai (on the lines of the film of Paromita Vohra which talks of Mumbai sanitation skewed against women), unsustainable exploitation of hill-tops in Pune, bar dancers of Mumbai, migrant jewelry workers of Mumbai, innovative solutions for bridging distances in Mumbai, et al.
We have also proposed a South Asia Multimedia Journalism Workshop, a pan-India Journalism Educators Conference, and SIMC Journalism Trainees’ Conference on Multi-media Journalism: all back to back in early 2010, with major preparations for the same, which shall now be considered and cleared by the Knight Frank Center for International Media, Miami, soon, with necessary suggestions.
“Determining what is news, whether to present it, and how to present it. What else is there to media ethics.” John Merrill in “Gone, Going, Coming: Ephemeral Media Ethics”.
The fourth day was dedicated to publishing our stories on the web and some basic design rules. Several superbly designed websites were shown and basic issues explained.
Some basic fundas: avoid over design. Respective negative space, what we call as white space in India. Balance is important, and not symmetry. Typeface families should be two ideally, and maximum three. Know your audience and their possible design preferences. Pick colours for a reason. If something does not have to be there, just take it out. Interactivity through design is about fun and function and not technology. View your design as a whole, and not in piece-meal. Design for functionality, and with the context of the issue or theme being represented. Basic web navigation principle of telling where you are and telling where you can go, was explained as well.
Several usable portals discussed for design, audio use, uploads, etc, were www.delicious.com, audacity.sourceforge.net, soundcloud.com, xtimeline.com, vimeo.com, addictomatic.com, trapped.com, worldpressphoto.org, Patagonia.com, adobe.com/designcenter/video-workshop, soundslides.com, guardian.co.uk/data-store, etc.
The basic web video shoot rules were re-debated.
Always wear headphones. Have tight, medium, wide, extra close and extra wide shots of all aspects of the subject on record. Ten seconds of shot sizes must. No pan, zoom in and out as functions in shoot, since they get pixilated when transferred to the web, often. 80% B-roll (cutaways, stocks, etc), 20% A-roll (direct interviews) and some ideally C-roll (interview given in action, interview and demonstration simultaneously). Almost all shots on tripod, shooting details as well, and shooting consciously several transition shots, proposed opening and closing shots with options, and be completely quiet during shoots (as much possible).Good and bad rushes examples given in large numbers to illustrate the points made.
After the audio and video stories were made, and they were processed using flash, they were uploaded on the web as well.
The concluding day focused on the fundamental aspects of the changing scenario in the field of global journalism and a concrete project ahead was discussed.
Communication revolution being a reality in the context of multi-media and web era today, differing skills for writing and editing across media platforms are becoming the key aspects in journalism skills today. Story-telling techniques hence are changing today, and a new set of video and audio ethics of fairness and balance in stories are becoming pertinent more than ever before.
Curiosity has always been the hallmark of good journalism, and along with that passion and compassion, apart from fairness and balance, and a clear understanding of the thin line between journalism and advocacy are becoming critical even in this age. And web-based or multimedia journalism cannot afford to be lazy journalism done in hurry, as is often believed. The inexpensive way to publish worldwide through web has to be made best use of.
Hence, teachers have to reasonably know the strengths and weaknesses of the various available media or channels to understand quality work and the needs of the story, apart from a strong grounding of legal (culture/society specific) and ethical issues (not moralist ethics). The discussion harped on not to teach ethics on the usual reactive basis (as with morals, and what not to do), but on a proactive basis (as to what to do), ethics for good quality, correct, fair and balanced journalism in pre, post and during production phases of multi-media stories. Also, global perspectives are important for web-based journalism today. Audio and video content gathering, editing and story-telling techniques will be critical for all journalists in the future media-neutral convergent journalism: this was the essence and unanimity in the discussions of the last day.
Also, photo-journalism and photo-editing skills and ability to produce audio-driven photo-galleries and stories shall be important as well. Multi-media design, online interactive info-graphics skills, social networking expertise to tap the power of this sphere, and understanding usability trends of the web, were also detailed.
Audio, video, picture and text elements in multi-media journalism shall complement each other and not just repeat the same information or emotions, thus enhancing the value and not replicating it. Make the learner and the audience of tomorrow visualize the audio or the print story, and customize the information by making it dynamic and on-demand, and not static as today.
Hence, the workshop concluded in this part of the discussion that the New Age Journalism teaching cannot have a rigid stratified medium-specific curricula. Journalism hence has to move from the current paradigm of tool-based (medium and unitary skill focused tools) teaching and learning TO practice based teaching and learning. Even the use of online, offline, 2D and 3D Flash interactive info-graphics will make information dynamic and on-demand rather than being static.
In this scenario, preparing a text-book for multimedia journalism becomes a daunting task. The more viable idea is to create an online educational scenario as is a multi-media teaching tool, and regular updating an online text-book collectively created dynamically by a given team which is available to all, is a viable option for the future.
A critical point noted was that software should be taught only in the context of being better story-tellers and researchers. www.lynda.com was suggested for self-learning of software.
The workshop strongly recommended that we involve students in real world projects, and cut down heavily in classroom hypothetical exercises beyond the initial stage. Teaching of journalism of tomorrow should incorporate international perspectives and experiences, focus on telling stories by the subjects rather than by the scribes, and maintain very high expectations from the learners and instill real life professional standards. It was noted that the multimedia story-telling can integrate an element of social change by giving the subject a larger voice to tell their own story. And, on the other hand, an element of gaming can bring in some entertainment as well. www.rcrusoe.org was shown to illustrate this point.
How such real life projects of multi-media journalism can integrate all forms of channels of communication into one single whole on the web was illustrate very ably through the stories in www.southofhere.org and www.westgrove2008.com.
Possible training stages in multi-media story-telling were outlined, evaluation points or parameters discussed and noted for media educators and discussions done on the same.
The concluding session talked about the need and contours of a new paradigm of journalistic ethics in details in a polemical style. This session also discussed a new set of projects to be taken on multi-media platform. One such project focusing on the issue of WATER was detailed which has been largely completed. A water journalism website www.1h2o.org and water project details on www.onewater.org were detailed.
The next such global project in which some 50 leading media schools world-over, SIMC included, will now participate shall focus on World Cities. This project will create a repository of stories that are told by people living in cities around the world (roughly 55% of world population are now in urban centers) and produced by story-tellers, nee multi-media futuristic journalists, in those cities who understand the context and content of these stories the best. And, for this, under-reported areas will be taken up. For the moment, migration, economic sustainability and gender equity areas have been taken up to focus in this World Cities project.
Stories will be portraits of individuals or families living in cities. The central feature of the multimedia story shall be around 7 minutes long video, may be complemented by a pictures slide-show with sound, and interactive info-graphics. Stories shall be principally told in the voice of the subjects of the stories, and always placed in the context of a transforming city. Stories must have high visual content, high quality interview with the subject integrated with high quality natural or ambience sound, with commentary minimal if used at all. Use of music can be limited to start and end, if at all. In general, music for manipulating audience emotions should be avoided.
Also, there will be high value in positive stories from cities that might be exemplary across borders, apart from stories that critique contemporary urban life.
Apart from their audiovisual timeline, story-tellers will need to submit a 200-word synopsis, a list of online and other resources that can help audiences explore the story and topic further, and a list of keywords that relate to the story. The stories can be in any language, but the story-teller will commit to captioning the story in English to help the sub-titling process. www.dotsub.com gives choice for sub-titling in any language.
These stories related to World Cities project shall be accessible through a website called www.citiesxborders.org.
In the Indian context, SIMC will be taking charge of stories from Mumbai and Pune, and stories suggested, keeping the three focus areas in mind, are related to Asia’s largest slum Dharavi, large number of migrant student population in Pune, water crisis in Mumbai, urban transport skewed against working women in Mumbai (on the lines of the film of Paromita Vohra which talks of Mumbai sanitation skewed against women), unsustainable exploitation of hill-tops in Pune, bar dancers of Mumbai, migrant jewelry workers of Mumbai, innovative solutions for bridging distances in Mumbai, et al.
We have also proposed a South Asia Multimedia Journalism Workshop, a pan-India Journalism Educators Conference, and SIMC Journalism Trainees’ Conference on Multi-media Journalism: all back to back in early 2010, with major preparations for the same, which shall now be considered and cleared by the Knight Frank Center for International Media, Miami, soon, with necessary suggestions.
“Determining what is news, whether to present it, and how to present it. What else is there to media ethics.” John Merrill in “Gone, Going, Coming: Ephemeral Media Ethics”.
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