VJ Global Sampler

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Michaelrosenblum

Michaelrosenblum

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I am in Weimar, Germany today at the 2nd annual VJ Film Festival. This is sponsored by the Bauhaus University and is for VJs all over the world. Some work for broadcasters, some are indepedents. All work in the 'vj' style. First prize is €10,000 (about $13,200).

Below is the link. Take a look. These things run a very very wide spectrum. Most of them, as you will see, are not in English, though many are subtitled. The VJ movement is much further along in Europe than in the US.

These are not 'news', at least in the conventional sense, although there are a number of submissions from BBC and ARD journalists that have aired on their networks. Take a look at Clive Lewis' work, for example.

In any event, since you are interested in seeing what is happening, this should give you plenty to look at.

http://www.videomission.net/
 
Michael,

I have not previously entered into this ‘hot’ debate in this forum, preferring to take a seat in the sidelines. I guess this has been because I am so far away, and I think it will not become an issue here in Australia.

WRONG!

ABC (Australia) has been VJ’ing for sometime now. It has been common practice to send a Cameraman/Journalist overseas to cover assignments that otherwise may have been too difficult as a full ENG Crew or even an OMB & Reporter. They have been able to access areas that in another circumstance would have been nearly impossible. There has always been that loss of quality, but more so due to the effectiveness or lack of it in the equipment. Now with better DV Cameras and HD DV Cameras as well as Radio Links, and better Lap Tops and Software, these problems of quality are decreasing. I also believe that these VJ’s are getting better at what they do.

However, this means of Broadcast was only ever confined to those “other stories’ that required that type of coverage. It has never been in our mainstream system.

WRONG!

Our Network (ABC) whilst not the wealthiest and poorly Government funded, as it’s a non commercial network, is the largest network in Australia and South East Asia. It has both a TV and Radio arm. We also have Radio Bureau’s across our vast and diverse country. Now the ABC wants to train and equip these remote Radio Reporters with DV Cam in the event that they can shoot and contribute to the TV Network. They will most likely not edit, as to send their vision in, but before long they will edit as well.

I am not a huge fan, but I think it’s inevitable that things will go this way. Whether in the long term, it’s the right way to go or it’s financially better………….who knows, time will tell. I still think there will be a place for me, with 25yrs experience, and maybe that is in training and passing on my skills and knowledge to others. Am I teaching someone to do my job? Of course I am, because regardless, I am never going to be here for ever, so I may as well try to teach them to do it as well as I do.

I visited Videomission and ‘randomly’ selected a few items to look at. They were good. They were shot and edited well and the stories were quite interesting. My only concern was that whilst you gave us some good examples of good work out there, I am sure there are equal if not more bad ones. My only consoling thought on that is that when I look back at some of the stuff I was shooting years ago……..it was crap! It’s taken me time to develop, and I guess so will the VJ!
 
No one is saying that some of the vj shot stuff wont be any good. At a contest like this you are taking the "best" of a limited universe.

What is being said here is that not just "anybody" with a camera can shoot/write a compelling story, which you seem to expound. Even with 9 weeks of training.
 
I was recently on assignment in Jacksonville, Fla and feeding out of WTLV. For those that aren't familiar with that station, it is unique because it's one of the few in the country where the News Product airs on both the NBC and ABC stations. Needless to say, because of the high profile market saturation - they are the dominant player in Jax. Also a Gannett owned station.

Which is why I was surprised to hear from their Chief Photographer that they will soon be implementing the VJ model within their newscasts. As expected, the response from photogs and reporters has been overwhelimingly negative, and some are questioning why a huge company like Gannett would take the risk.

The answer is obvious. Newspaper circulation is shrinking. If Gannett can't find a way to cut corners in it's other media outlets, the bottom line suffers. That's why the VJ model appeals to them. It's all dollars and cents.

Again, I have no problem with MR's vision and agree with many of his opinions. I've been one-manning it for more than a decade and often times prefer it depending on the story.

But to say stations are jumping on this bandwagon to "revolutionize" the industry is nothing more than a slick marketing campaign.

I've seen the final product, not only here but on KRON and the BBC as well. While some of the pieces are quite good, the majority of the work I've seen has been sub-par and to some extent not suitable for air. That's not to say the VJ's won't improve. But to expect someone to master these crafts in one week (as many of the stations do) is not realistic. MR will even agree with me on that.

In my opinion, that's MR's biggest challenge. Making the stations follow through completely with the entire concept. Not only with VJ training, but on the technical side as well. The way our engineering department was forced to dive head first into this thing did nothing but create chaos and everyone is suffereing because of it.

Corporate Broadcasters care about the quaility of their newscasts about as much as McDonald's cares about people eating healthy. Until this mentality changes - expect more of the same.

[ November 04, 2005, 11:12 AM: Message edited by: white balance ]
 
I'm a little confused because I thought these were all supposed to be examples of work by VJs who "did it all". The fact is I've found several of the stories, while possibly shot alone, by a single individual, when it came time to air, it was voiced by someone else.

That's not the VJ concept Michael has been promoting!

Specifically...the story on juvenile prisons was shot by a fellow named Wolf-Dieter Jacobi but voiced by a woman...unles Wolf had some kind of fancy operation to....change. Or maybe it's possible I'm not "international" enough and Wolf-Dieter is a girls name. ;)

There was some nice work displayed. Sadly, none of it applies to daily local news coverage. All involved long turn-around time. Something which is unacceptable for the majority of work in a United States television news room.

Some pretty stories, a few of them even well edited, but irrelevant to the realities of daily local news coverage.

What should be shown to impress us would be same day stories covering an important event. Not features which took months or years to produce.

Some of the subject matter was interesting. Much more of it was predictable. Predictable editing mixed with a less than consistent level of quality within individual pieces.

I'm sure these folks won awards. I have serious doubts any of them are making a living as full time VJs.

Where are the success stories of VJ's covering daily news? They just aren't there and in many ways this awards web site backs up that conclusion.

WKRN is also proving a point we've made over and over again here. Local news operations are not going to live up to the 30 percent failure rate so vital to Michaels concept.

Not everyone is made into a VJ. Not everyone is even considered a VJ by newsroom management. It's cost cutting while still expecting same day material every day. No different than the expectations from any other news managers in the US.

WKRN didn't even last to the end of the year following Michaels plan. To me, it's another example of the realities many of us are aware of in United States television newsrooms. A reality which will never live up to the grand plan MR promotes.

WKRN isn't doing it. I have no doubt KRON will go the same way.

As far as I can tell. The WKRN experiment has failed. It is not the VJ model Michael has claimed.
 
I don't disagree with any of this. It is going to take time, and there is the ever present danger that bottom line minded corporations are going to embrace this as a way of saving money and cheat the viewers out of the potential that the system carries when fully implemented and given time.

I also think that both the technology and the economics of this make it inevitable. That is why it is critically imporant for professionals in this business (like you guys) to embrace this and take control of it first. It is going to happen for sure, and the sooner you get ahead of it and introduce standards of work and quality, the better for the business. Running away from this or denial is a dead ender.

The festival in Weimar certainly attracts the best, but I have to tell you in all candor that I have been doing this for years, and every year the stuff gets better and there is more of it. What we used to look at as great a few years ago pales in comparison to what we see coming in now, and this trend will only continue.
 
Michael,

You know who you remind me of? The fat kid in school who keeps getting bullied, yet still tries to make friends with the bully!

You're not going to change any minds here, but I admire your resolve. :)
 
Mike - I shot you an email answering your questions. Feel free to drop me a line if you have anything else. Thanks.

[ November 04, 2005, 11:10 AM: Message edited by: white balance ]
 
OK, I picked one at random: http://www.videomission.net/?video=10e379425fe0f3b7e2cba54a3f494e78

All I can say is "Whoa...." This one VJ piece was astonishing.

This is a story about a recruitment event by the US Army, where 13 and 14 year old kids came, saw, killed the enemy in a virtual battleground and ate free pizza.

The story shows the methods of the recruiter, who basically tells a 14 year old girl that statistically speaking she'd be safer in a combat zone than she is living normal daily life here in America. Nothing could be more patently false. But guess who is considering joining the army? As a father of two myself, I found this story riveting and quite scary. It's one thing to go into the military knowing fully the risks and danger involved. It's quite another to lure teenage kids in with free video games and pizza and tell them they're safer in Iraq than they are here. Watch this piece - no joke, this is what one girl is duped into believing. This happens all over the country every day, even in the schools our kids attend.

This piece deserved an award not because it's a VJ piece, but because it could go toe to toe with anything you'd find on Dateline or 60 minutes. The video was 4 1/2 out of 5 stars, the research was 5 out of 5, and the impact of this story is a grand slam. You could easily cut this down to 2:30 and drop it in any newscast in America. Hell, you could cut it into 5 segments and do an indepth series on the US Army with it. Talk about a sweeps piece! It's that timely, that relevant and that damned good.

THIS is what the VJ model means to you and me. Not just OMB cheap news. The freedom to take your time and craft a quality story such as this that blindsides the competition who's best counter is "How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop really? Our I-Team finds out."

Think about it. WKRN is still new at this and still thinking old school daily turn news. If they can be convinced to get it, really get it, this is exactly what they can do. Look out if they do. Seriously.

Very interesting stuff. Very. Thanks for the link.
 
Originally posted by Natural Born Stringer:
OK, I picked one at random: http://www.videomission.net/?video=10e379425fe0f3b7e2cba54a3f494e78

All I can say is "Whoa...." This one VJ piece was astonishing.
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Um… you weren’t bothered by the auto iris, auto focus and over modulated sound? Lets not talk about the framing, crossing the line or many other beginner mistakes. Don’t even think about the fact that the camera was so low it was shooting up everyone’s noses.
As for content your right it could have been cut down to one 2 min story the thing just repeated the same message over and over and that’s bad writing… This is the best the VJ’s can do?
 
Astonishing? Come on now, your standards are low for something that obviously had a lot of production time involved.

First of all, the gratuitous camera movement is a pet-peeve of mine. It's like the shooter had to go pee the whole time. There were some nice, steady, tripod shots which worked well... something you don't see often enough.

Second, the story lacked something. Can you guess what it was? It is a basic element to reporting. It's very important: the other side's opinion! D'oh! Kind-of left that out. There was some reporter editorial but no sound from the other side. Basically, this was only half the story.

Third, it was not anything different than what a OMB can accomplish, i.e. calling it a veejay piece is the same thing as calling it an OMB piece.

Fourth. Overall production value was ok. Why not use a better camera for that shoot if it available? Good shooters become just as ubiquitous as anyone with a handycam... I know. I've done it. The NPPA professes it. So, maybe the author didn't have a good camera available but better cameras are available to us and make better pictures. Use it if you got it.

The piece was easy to watch but lacked some important parts. This type of piece would need some work to get on a legitimate newscast. Overall, though, not a bad job for what it was. Complete journalism, no.
 
And, leaving the technical flaws to those better qualified, you weren't bothered by the fact that the piece was two-to-three times longer than it needed to be, was written and delivered in a near monotone?

Besides...this doesn't advance the ball at all. We've all agreed that in undated, long form or documentary style or feature reporting, where there is no deadline and no particular difficulty in gathering facts, one man bands can function acceptably, if not as well as traditional crews.

Rosenblum is fond of saying it's inevitable. I say he's wrong, and this kind of story proves it. It's mediocre at best and isn't attracting an audience. No audience, bye bye one man band model.
 
If someone I worked with turned up with this we would be having a chat about what went wrong and how they could fix some of the basics. They probably would spend the next six months assigned to the easiest shoots till they showed some improvement. After a while I might trust them to shoot general news… send it to an award show no.
As to the journalistic content I don’t know of a sub that would have let that go to air.
 
I'm so going to get this game. I'm hitting the Army recruiter sometime this weekend to check it out. I'll tell you, watching this story made me proud to be an American.

Seriously, how do you expect the American volunteer military to keep its ranks up? By telling 13 year olds that they'll likely get killed if they join?

As to the video quality - small CCD, bad lighting, auto iris, too much low angle stuff. Amateur. Writing was good. Editing was good - except for the repeated shots. Shooting was bad. A Lowel Rifa would have made a big difference in the interview. A decent lens and a 2/3 inch CCD would have spruced up the video quality. Setting the camera on your shoulder during the cross talk would have given you a more pleasing eye level shot. A sound guy would have allowed the camera to shoot from across the room on sticks getting shots with foregrounds and backgrounds instead of all these wide angle sequences with their awkward cuts.

Sorry. It was a good story. But with a professional shooter it would have been great.
 
Oh boy, here come the hornets...I see I've stirred up the nest.

Sigh. You guys are hopeless. Truly. Forget VJ. Continue with stories like this one: mms://wms.azcentral.com/kpnx/news/1103walters5pm.wmv

Do the doglick. Follow it up with 3 shots of b-roll. Don't bother with getting reactions from coworkers or family - no time for that. Don't ask hard questions like why this clown got probation again and again, you'll piss off the cops. Who cares that even with federal and state gun control laws in place this guy still got a gun, robbed TWO stores in less than an hour, killed someone and then fled the state because our keystone cops couldn't find their butts in a paper bag without a flashlight and a map - we don't want them to look bad or anything. Just parrot Mister PIO and sprinkle in some facts from the web, slam it together in an hour, slap a bug on it and call it done. The viewers are too stupid to handle anything more than this anyway.

WTF do I care? Makes my job easy. Rather than have to do annoying things like research facts and line up interviews and write a real news story I can just continue to chase ambulances and cop cars so long as I get sound from the PIO - so your reporters and writers don't have to think. Your reactions prove I'll have no problem selling "news" for years to come.

A few people might even tune in and watch!
 
NBS You raised some very good questions which any halfway decent news room would follow up over the week but you are comparing the worst of local news with the “best” of VJ. A day turn around news story with no pictures vs an easy dateless picture story.

[ November 04, 2005, 04:18 PM: Message edited by: cameragod ]
 
Originally posted by cameragod:
NBS You raised some very good questions which any halfway decent news room would follow up over the week
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Yes. Agreed. But mark my words - they probably won't. This market doesn't usually do it like that. Others do, but not here. Out here we just tell you "Police say {insert PIO statement here}".

but you are comparing the worst of local news with the “best” of VJ. A day turn around news story with no pictures vs an easy dateless picture story.
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The worst of local news? Isn't that a bit harsh? After all, "More Arizonans watch 12 news than any other" blah blah blah whatever. Surely it can't be THAT bad. Besides, it was shot so well on such great gear! There was a reporter AAAAAND a photog! A full crew! Doesn't that count for anything?

Please note, all I did was pick a link at random from their website. I didn't go out of my way to find what you yourself dubbed "the worst". But your reaction to it was pretty revealing nonetheless....

But OK, to be fair, YOU pick one that you think shows the "best of local TV news" as it exists today, and tell us why you think it's great. Find me one you think a VJ could never do. Then we'll compare apples. Whaddya say?
 
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