Sell your Caribbean news video

[ENG FTP]

Stringers with FTP Experience,

We have a client that is looking for Caribbean news/events that take place in the United States and Canada. Visiting diplomats, Caribbean festivals, Cricket matches, and immigration. Be creative. To sell it the video will need to be FTP.ed to the client's server in Barbados. We will provide you with the transcode parameters and the server url after we QC it.

If purchased the clips will most likely only pay a few hundred dollars so forget about shooting on spec. What you can do is if you shoot something for your local stations and is has a Caribbean angle submit it and you may make a few extra dollars.

A few rules. You MUST MUST MUST have the right to resell the video and you have to have been the person that shot it. You will also need to include with the clip a short story summary and a link to more details.

In our humble opinion this is just the beginning of the future of news gathering. Your local market does not have to be your client base. There are tens of thousand of broadcasters around the world and they all are looking for material to fill their shows.

Bruce Wilkinson
Satellite Applications ENG FTP
Operations@engftp.com
www.engftp.com

[Hiding Under Here]

Two interesting quotes that jumped out at me from this post:

If purchased the clips will most likely only pay a few hundred dollars....

In our humble opinion this is just the beginning of the future of news gathering.

I just thought compressing them might make an interesting debate.

[Baltimore Shooter]

Yeah, I saw those too. Even if I was in the Caribbean, I'd pass on it.

Warren

[ENG FTP]

There is big interest in Carnival celebrations which local stations cover as well. New York has one planned for Labor Day. There is one in Boston and maybe other cities too. If you own it and can FTP it let's give it a try.

Bruce Wilkinson
ENG FTP
www.engftp.com

[Hiding Under Here]

But that invitation goes against your own warning to photographers not to shoot "on spec". You told people to submit Carribean stories only if they shot them in the line of duty and owned the rights to that material.

See, here's what bothers me about this. People are asking us to slit our own throats. And for what? Soemone in the Carribean is so hard up for "news" content, they are willing to build stories around content so general that it can be enterprised by a photographer who has no clue regarding the CONTEXT of the footage they are shooting. Can that be done with decent results? Sure it can. But if you do it to make a quick buck, you are engaging in two self-defeating behaviors.

First, you are working cheap. And you are allowing some organization with a nebulous journalistic mandate to survive and compete on your back. By working for these folks, you are proving that the wishful paradigm that people will work for nothing in this field is both possible and a reality. Let them use youthful newcomers who don't have the technical chops. Why help them create a polished product by using your skills, experience, expensive equipment and abilities?

Secondly, as much as the new media wants you to believe they are the future, that cheap television news content is the wave of the future, let THEM prove that it can happen. No doubt many of these new approaches -- citizen journalism, no need for satellite trucks, VJs, etc. -- will gain some traction in coming years. But will they win the day and push out the older, more substantive and lucrative media simply because the internet will continue to change everything as we know it? Perhaps not. And if you abandon your goals and professional understandings because you believe you will be left out in the cold if you don't join this "revolution", then you just might be the lemming they step over on the way over the cliff into oblivion. Just because technology allows you to transmit without a satellite truck doesn't mean you should support a fly-by-night news operation out of the Carribean. If the new media want the support of competent professionals, perhaps they should demonstrate their own willingness to commit to something more substantive than cultural festivals.

[ENG FTP]

Hiding Under Here,

As you mentioned perhaps this is a topic worthy of debate. I read your post several times and at the root of it I believe is the question of why should professional camera persons support low budget fly-by-night news operations. By using their hard won skills to support operations like these you actually play the role of enabler which will assist them in surviving and possibly even compel competent organizations to compete at the same low budget level. The final nightmare to this scenario is an entire fleet of young kids with PD 150s shooting two minutes of cover and sending it back to the station from a wifi Hotspot. No truck operator, no producer, no real camera person.

Technological changes (advances?) always have a disruptive effect. Remember there was a debate once upon a time about the use of video versus film? There was also an analog versus digital transmission debate for a while. In my opinion no technology, old or new, will ever take the place of real journalism. If the right questions were asked and answered on even AM radio listeners would find their way to it. On Demand 1080i Streaming Downloadable Podcasting to your Cell phone is convenient for sure. It’s just not going to win the day without real content and real information.

My ambition here is not to have you or anyone relinquish their professional goals. It’s been my experience that often it is the crews that keep the reporters in check with staging issues and perhaps the occasional stretching of the facts. My goal with this simple Caribbean project and ENG FTP in general is to start a process that opens up new markets to sell video. Finding a way to sell what you shoot on a worldwide basis not a local basis. Record companies hated the idea of selling single song downloads for a dollar each until they realized they could sell a million an hour. It is a noble ambition and as you put it so well not with out its perils.

Here is how this will play out. The FTP of video for news gathering will survive and in time become a staple. It’s cheap, easy to use, and contrary to some opinions the quality can be as good as a full bandwidth satellite transmission. What will happen in the mean time is, like any technological change, much of the Old Guard will resist it. The new kids, looking for an angle, will therefore embrace it since management wants to use it. Those kids, not having the requisite skills the Old Guard posses, will make blunders both technically and judgmentally and most likely the technology and the kids will get the blame. This will delay but not stop its eventual full deployment.

Video never gives the full meaning of a story the words do. During screenings Don Hewitt would turn his back on the monitor and just listen. The often quoted Edward R. Murrow came from Radio before he made television history. As terrible as this sounds TV can and will survive with bad video I just wish it did not have to. I wish the Old Guard, with their years of experience, would just wake up one day and open a book and try something new. Some will and when they do great things will happen.

Having the ability to shoot a visiting Head of State from South Africa that happens to be in Iowa for his daughter’s graduation and then being able to sell that video in an instant to SAB is an opportunity no camera crew has ever had until today. Selling a few minutes of a surf contest to TV Globo because one of the contestants happens to be a national hero is an opportunity no one can afford to pass up.

Like it our not FTP is here to stay. We can embrace it and use it to our collective advantage or we can disparage it and hope that it just goes away. I happen to think, just like the record companies eventually found out, that this will in fact become an opportunity to find new clients and new ways to do business. It will eventually lead to the betterment of professional video and to journalism at large.

Bruce Wilkinson
ENG FTP

[Nino]

Bruce, something puzzles me about this whole thing. Understand first that I’m not in the news business, but I know the Caribbean market very well and have commercial clients in just about every known island. I have continuously at least two jobs going on for clients in the Caribbean and at least once a week I send them MPEG files of work progress via computer.

Apparently you have one client and that’s Barbados, probably the most technologically advanced of the Islands. I know that market very well too, if there’s any way to save a dollar they will. As I understant it a stringer has to broadband the work to you and then you turn around and send it to the island either broadband or via satellite. If this is an ongoing deal what would prevents stringers to establish contact and deal with them directly. Especially stringers in cities with large Caribbean population such as Miami, New York and as far as Barbados go also Toronto, Canada.

[Tv Shooter]

Two things pop out at me Bruce...

1."If purchased the clips will most likely only pay a few hundred dollars so forget about shooting on spec. What you can do is if you shoot something for your local stations and is has a Caribbean angle submit it and you may make a few extra dollars."

Well problem is,if it's being shot for the station and someone sold it to you,they sold you something they do NOT own rights to.If they work for the station,and went to the event on company time,even if they shoot it with their own dv cam,it still is owned by the station.And copyright violation is a big money deal....so the deep pockets(you) gets hammered.

2...."this is not something you'd shoot on spec".

This is the freelance forum,so most likely anything such as what you're looking for would be done on spec by members here.Again,that would be the ONLY way you could safely be sure the rights are clear.

That said,I also know that FTP has been around for awhile,and I use it to send approval copies of work to corporate clients,as well as video to people like Weather Channel.While the compression makes the video look ....well compressed....it is still a viable way to transmit video for certain things.It's certainly not as good as a sat feed,but it has a lot of promise in the future,as compression and all those tech issues get sorted out.

And a "few" hundred bucks...that's a vague parameter.A "few"-that can be anywhere from 2-900.I would assume it depends on what the video is and how good it's shot?

Welcome to the forum though....:)

[Hiding Under Here]

I disagree that this kind of production will lead to the betterment of TV journalism and television photography. I don't see how that is possible.

It was predicted a few years back that a similar evolution would happen in filmmaking as a result of the proliferation of cheap and easy to use non-linear editing systems. What you have now in the film business are several small alterations -- many young folks making "films" and enriching festival sponsors, HD video being embraced by Hollywood -- neither of which is revolutionary. And certainly neither of which is making the film industry substantively "better". It could be argued that films are worse now. But the connection with video and non-linear editing is a difficult one to make.

More simply isn't better. Technology doesn't always improve professional craftsmanship. Breaking up the components of traditional news gathering because the potential exists to do it will only diminish the industry and the craft, not enhance them.

The PD150 scare is long behind us. Those cameras were perceived as a panacea by mainstream television news producers. However, they caused more problems than they solved. In the end, the large television news entities -- the networks -- found niche uses for MiniDV-like format cameras. Producers took them into places where large cameras would not be welcomed. We use them for POV shots in feature pieces.

When one attempts to understand the future, one should always examine the possible effects new technologies will bring to bear. However, I have come to the understanding that technology doesn't ALWAYS create change for the better. Sometimes it creates opportunity, other times it stimulates confusion. I believe that telling us that shooting Carribean cultural festivals for short money is the first step towards a "better" future isn't true. It's a marketing pitch -- and one that people should examine closely. What would make television journalism, in my estimation, is if the dillution of the audience for video news broadcasts that were assembled by competent professionals would abate. But that isn't happening. People are watching traditional news broadcasts in declining numbers. And what's replacing them, in the void created by the internet, isn't pretty. Moreover, that "marketplace" is increasingly asking people like us to work for less and less money. In the end, what I fear we will have -- particularly if we believe claims such as those presented here -- is an extremely decentralized and uncontrolled number of news sources that have neither a professional mandate, nor a sunstantive sense of responsibility towards the presentation of news material. Instead, internet news sources will pander to their audiences and present sensational video footage when it is available. There will be no "center" no "core", no reason to view the country as a whole.

If and when we reach that nadir, I believe it will all fall apart. And those of us who helped create this idiocy will have ourselves, in part, to blame.

What I challenge the original poster to explain is how the creation of so many diverse and numerous news sources will lead to the "betterment" of journalism. How can it make us better photographers? More happy in our work? More content with the assignments we are shooting?

[freedom]

Bottom line is it just isn't worth 'a few hundred bucks', unless you can get a few hundred bucks from many sources for the same clip. But who will police that? I can see where the clip gets sent to the Barbados client and they sell it to a bunch of other users with you left out. Good luck collecting from some island country on a $200 video clip.

[Hiding Under Here]

I just want to be clear that I am not cracking on Bruce or his technology. I'm trying to debate the concepts involved in the new technology panacea ideology.

[ENG FTP]

Great debate guys. Let's pick it up again in a few days. Ernesto calls.

Bruce Wilkinson
www.engftp.com