Oh Christmas Tree
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Jenn and I put up and decorated our tree yesterday. Here’s a time lapse of the ordeal.
Happy Holidays!
Tags: personal, photography, vacation, video
A Dying Subject Has Her Say
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Hopefully you’re all familiar with this story Rob Finch and company worked on at The Oregonian.
PDN has a write-up on the story this month.
At the event, Finch shot only still photographs. He explains, “Video would have added this uncomfortable element. It would have been constant eye-recording from the corner. It would have created a barrier around Lovelle, where her family felt they couldn’t go, and I felt I would be affecting the scene too much.”
As I shoot video more and more I’m finding this to be the case more often. With a still camera I’m able to work much more intimately and quietly. With a video camera my presence always seems to be noticed.
“There’s a lot of power in the audio. It’s too hard to concentrate on the audio and the photographs at the same time.”
Renee Byer spoke this weekend at the Atlanta Photoj seminar about her Pulitzer prize winning story. The only problem was when she presented the still images she presented them to a music track. Nothing wrong with that except the track was so distracting that it took away from the power of the images. My mind was constantly fighting to block out the music and in turn diminished the impact of the images.
“We sometimes gear stories to the medium we have to present it. It seems to me that there are more compelling stories out there if we’re willing to adapt form [media] to the story rather than the other way around. Online allows that—maybe not completely—but we’re allowing a whole new form of storytelling.”
Tags: inspiration, photojournalism, video
The Video Explosion
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
This might be the beefiest article I’ve read on video in the newspaper world.
A few notables:
Many photographers are especially eager to master the new field. Video offers them the prospect of deliverance from print-centric thinking, and perhaps a more prominent role to play in newsrooms.
The fact is no one is more vital to the survival of the newspaper than these new visual journalists. They are not entering a field such as television news with an established hierarchy that has been there for years.
“People are listening to music through really high quality headphones now,” she says, “and they’re used to good sound.” Even if the visuals are poor, she says, good audio can often save the day.
Video requires roughly 10 times more work on an assignment as [still photography] and then 100 times more work as you’re editing it. Imagine filling a 16-page special section with a hundred pictures–out of a routine city hall meeting assignment. That’s shooting video. You have to shoot every detail in the room, every angle, every expression–just to get a few seconds of video to put on top of the few seconds of audio that you’ve edited down from two hours of tape.
It’s a time-consuming job, one that keeps Contreras at his computer from 8:30 a.m. until 10 some nights. In addition, he and several colleagues update the Web site each morning, on a rotating basis, from 4:30 to 7. “I go home, take a nap, then come back,” he says.
Good to see my co-worker from the summer, Evelio Contreras, getting mention in the article as he is a print reporter turned multimedia producer down in Roanoke.
Hopefully editors will get the idea from this article that producing storytelling video takes time. Good storytelling no matter the medium takes time. Melissa Worden blogged about the time commitment yesterday.
Tags: journalism, video
Walter Murch. The Jordan of film editing.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under video
When it comes to film editing it doesn’t get better than Walter Murch. If you have the slightest interest in the power of a strong edit I highly recommend his book In The Blink of an Eye.(it’s about $7 used on Amazon)
“My job as an editor is to gently prod the attention of the audience to look at various parts of the frame,” he says. “And I do that by manipulating, by how and where I cut and what succession of images I work with.”
These next few quotes come from The Search for Order in Sound and Picture:
The strange thing is that you take the emotional treatment that sound is giving, and you allow that to actually change how you see the image: You see a different image when it has been emotionally conditioned by the sound.
I, of course, couldn’t have said it better myself. Sound brings an incredible emotional level to our work, which makes it very easy to abuse if you’re not careful.
The best sound is the sound inside somebody’s head. What does it take to trigger that? That’s the key to it all because those sounds will be unique to each person in the audience. They’ll naturally be the most personal and the most high-fidelity of all the sounds.
People eat with knives and forks, they eat with chopsticks, and they eat with their hands. The real goal is getting the food into the mouth. Balzac wrote 80 great novels in 20 years with a quill pen. So from a certain aspect, technology is irrelevant. What is always relevant is what you want to say. If you have something to say, you will find a method irrespective of the technology.
What do you have to say? It’ll always more important than the tool you use, but that’s probably commonsense for you all.
A quote from this interview:
Look at how we use sound in The English Patient. Many times the sound for the scene that’s about to happen starts to bleed into the end of the earlier one. You are aware of something happening, but you don’t quite know what is is. Then, when you cut to the second scene, you find out.
We’re seeing this a lot more as our editing matures. Bring the audio in slightly before the cut to “cue” the audience for what’s about to take place.
More links to articles and interviews by Murch. Some of the links are dead, but it’s still worth a peak.
Tags: inspiration, murch, video
Video Workload survey results.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under video
I’ve been meaning to link to this survey for awhile now. Andy did a great job with it and it should prove useful in educating those around you on how time demanding video production can be.
A few key findings:
You should allow 4 hours to produce 1 minute of video
There are no clearly defined roles in newsrooms for video (This tells me photojournalists should be establishing themselves as the visual storytellers before someone else moves in on the opportunity)
Photographers would be expected to shoot stills as well as video for a story in 66% of the newsrooms who responded…..If we take the headline that the same person will be shooting and editing video these figures are pretty scary. You’re going to be very busy.
Tags: journalism, photojournalism, video
Larry Clark documentary
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
‘Larry Clark: Great American Rebel’ (2003), a French documentary that explores the life of photographer and film director Larry Clark. Features clips from ‘Kids’ (1995), ‘Another Day in Paradise’ (1997), ‘Bully’ (2001), ‘Teenage Caveman’ (2002) and ‘Ken Park’ (2002.) can been seen on YouTube in six parts. Here’s part one
The rest can be seen here:
Part 2 of 6
Part 3 of 6
Part 4 of 6
Part 5 of 6
Part 6 of 6
Tags: photography, photojournalism, video
Eyes of the Storm.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under video
If you haven’t watched this piece by The Times-Picayune photo staff on their Katrina coverage you owe it to yourself to take the 25 minutes to watch it.
It’s a fine example of not only great storytelling, but photographing with a compassionate heart and eye.
“I shot pictures in self-defense because there was nothing else I could do” - Ted Jackson
“I felt like I was witnessing the city drowning frame-by-frame I was watching the city drowned.” - Kathy Anderson
Tags: photojournalism, video
Production, Post and Online Distribution for Hometown Baghdad.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
You may or not be familiar with Hometown Baghdad. It’s a video series that brings you into the lives of everyday Iraqis who attempt to live a normal life during the war.
Check out the Q&A on the series at Studio Daily.
A few highlights:
And we began to realize that we would have more freedom and a bigger potential audience than we could have ever hoped for on TV. Once we realized that, we never looked back and have been happy that we didn’t go to TV first.
There’s a paradox for you. We had to go online because TV didn’t want us but because we went online, TV wants us now.
We posted to YouTube because YouTube was built for viral potential. It also has the biggest audience of any other site…. It’s also on some other sites like veoh and dailymotion. And lastly, it’s on Joost. So there are high quality alternatives.
And we shot about 120 hours of footage. And then our editors went through the footage, found the stories and pieced them together. And as you can see, sometimes the stories weren’t so linear. We often found that it was more interesting to show a few different scenes on the theme of losing power in your house than it would have been to just show Adel in his house, losing power and then turning on the generator.
You can view videos from the series at their website Hometown Baghdad.
Tags: Uncategorized, video
My 2nd video. Quad Racing.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Here’s the second piece I shot since picking up a video camera and much like the first video it was another learning experience. I went to a local track where I found Christopher and his family. Here’s what worked and didn’t:
Picking a story that lends itself to video is a no-brainer.
The level of noise these quads create made it a must to consistently monitor my audio levels. It meant a lot of adjusting on the fly as the quads raced closer I’d have to compensate and likewise when they’d race out of my frame. My headphones were useless with the machines around.
My final shot in the piece I don’t have any B-roll audio from because I ran over from shooting the end of Critter’s race and had my audio levels dialed way down so it wasn’t blown out from the sound of the quads and forget to dial it up in my haste to capture the moment. Luckily the A-roll I got from Critter’s dad worked along with it. With time hopefully forgetting something like that won’t happen again.
Interviewing out at the track was impossible. The sound of the quads and bikes drowned out any hope of getting a clean track. Ever try setting up a tripod in a truck? I don’t recommend it.
Interviewing kids can be hard. Christopher didn’t have much to say on tape. I tried to interview him on three different occasions even letting his dad have a crack at it, but nothing really worked. So in the end I had his dad drive the story. For some kids and even adults it might be better to do informal interviews as they’re doing their thing.
The video camera is slowly starting to feel like my still camera meaning I’m thinking for it versus it thinking for me.
All the dust led to a head error, but luckily it disappeared.
Finding one character to drive your story is a great idea.
Anticipation is key and even more so than it is with stills especially in searching for what Mr. Leeson calls the extended moment. You always need to be thinking ahead for your next shot. (On a side note, David, even through video iChat can still give a hell of a presentation.)
I was tripod free for this whole piece except the A-Roll. I’m learning to make use of whatever might be around for stability and that mobility helped me capture things I would of missed had I been using a tripod. With the speed of the machines I would of been eating dust as I was still trying to get the first tripod leg down. By working tripod free I was able to run around the track and shoot the racers at various points on the track. For each lap I was able to shoot from atleast 4 different positions. (My technique improved since the first piece where I was all about the sticks.)
And finally my dodge ball game needs work. The little fella handed out a whooping.
Have a look for yourself and let me know what you think.
Tags: Uncategorized, video
Art of Editing: United 93
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
More on film editing and using parallel cutting from the people at Avid.
A few tidbits:
Parallel cutting, or intercutting between scenes or locations, is one of the earliest film editing techniques. It was used from the start for last-minute rescues and for depicting simultaneous events. Parallel cutting avoids the challenges associated with classical continuity cutting within a scene, which took years to develop and refine: following the 180-degree rule, cutting on a character’s action, maintaining continuity of time/place, and so on.
It enables the editor to move from place to place, creating a sense that multiple events are unfolding simultaneously, as they do in United 93.
As anyone knows who has watched a Hitchcock film, parallel editing can be used to create tension and suspense, stretching time until the climactic moment.
via: The Edit Blog
Tags: video
