Hoping for the best, I continued to search. Return number eleven was actually a pretty good video story, an excerpt from a show on the satellite and cable broadcaster G4, which targets eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds with a steady diet of video game-oriented shows. Host Kevin Pereira takes you on his tour of the Gulf, and his co-host attempts to interest viewers with this unusual lead-in: “All right, so you remember that time you spilled a Pepsi on your PS3 and you thought it was the worst spill ever? It wasn’t.” As the segment ends, the viewer knows she’s not on CNN when the camera returns to the show set and pop-up boxes helpfully inform viewers where to buy the blue jeans Pereira is wearing and what hair products he used. Hmmm.
Searching Google News and specifying video did pull up stories from mainstream media organizations, but most were print stories that referred to BP’s well cam. Nowhere in that search, or in a YouTube search for “news BP Oil Spill,” did a video story I knew about turn up: AP’s unique Web video of journalist Rich Matthews’s June 7 scuba dive into the oily Gulf.
Although it’s not a candid essay, it is pretty gutsy journalism. Matthews zipped himself into a wet suit, clutched his camera, and dropped down over the side of a boat to give viewers a first-hand look at the foul miasma beneath the waterline. The swirling, reddish ooze had the consistency of cake batter, Matthews reported, and though it quickly gunked up his goggles and smeared his camera lens, he was able to record oil in every direction, in plumes and blobs, along with what one diver called “snot balls” of oil dispersants. “It was a different take on a story that was getting tedious” to cover in constant drips of breaking news, says Kevin Roach, AP’s vice president and director of U.S. broadcast news. “The story opened up a lot of eyes.”
But the AP story wasn’t anywhere near the top of my search query returns a month after it was originally posted—though the video was widely noticed when it was first shot. It had logged more than 160,000 views on YouTube, and Matthews had been interviewed on the Today Show, CNN, Fox News, the BBC, and numerous radio stations.
Executives at both YouTube and its parent company, Google, recognize that finding and categorizing news video is still an elusive goal. “Video is a rich media type and there are added complexities to making it easily discoverable and useful,” a Google spokesman says. “While we constantly work to improve our understanding of video and other information, in the meantime we encourage video publishers to submit video sitemaps so their videos are more easily discoverable in all Google’s services.” In other words, returning relevant material for video search queries is really hard.
Search today still generally begins with text, with people like me typing “BP” and “oil spill” and “video” into a query box. Google takes that query and attempts to match my key words with documents and images online that Web folks have tagged with matching key words. Although the Google spokesman says the search should be able to sense that I’m looking for news video, there’s no easy way to tell it to do that. Google is working on at least two projects that might eventually help improve its video searches. The first is a speech-recognition process being employed at YouTube that can automatically caption audio files, creating a text transcript that could then be searched. The second is Google Goggles, an experimental application for smart phones that offers hope of enhanced visual search. I take a photo of, say, the Eiffel Tower and upload it to Google, essentially asking it to tell me about this image. Google Goggles recognizes the image and sends me information about it.
Abs. Superb!
Drew, Leacock et al were massive pioneers, fundamental in shaping a visual medium and a methodology, as were Rouch, Marker et al in Europe. You could even look to the work of Eisenstein whom instigated cinema verite (kino). All had a passion, all searched for an aesthetic.
Videojournalism's Achille is in part its search for a home. Shooting a camera, making a news film was never quite as revolutionary as it was made to seem. Jessica Borthwicke in 1914 would further prove that when at 24 with a Newman camera and a few days training she left London to film the Crimean war.
What's dogged film all the while and thus attracted stern critique is the search for an aesthetic. History informs us these have arisen through a number of supervening moments.
But videojournalism's supervening time, at least as a creative aesthetic construct has often been junked in favour of a replication of a status quo inured by saving costs and multiskilling.
It's finding one now; small pockets.
If you'll pardon me. In 2005 when I was awarded a Batten Award, this was the precise question within videojournalism that taxed me then and still does today.
The judges commented on viewmagazine.tv (the site and video I produced) as:
“This interactive magazine foreshadows the future with its use of hip new story forms and highly video-centric Web tools.”
-2005 Batten Advisory Board Judges
That future then, is now upon us at present, but the aesthetic and philosophy has moved on. There's a fresh media ascendancy, albeit limited at the moment that resides in the collocation of photography and video, animation, and less a reliance on television and at times the classic video obs docs lingua franca.
Hence the bril work of Travis Fox, Angela Grant, Brian Storm et al. I've had the opportunity in many cases of talking to them personally or on the dog and bone (Gosh these air fares are killing me).
Your post is prescient as I have just returned from interviewing some of the UK's leading television/media figures about this,, such as Stuart Purvis who was Editor-in-Chief and then Chief Executive of ITN from 1995-2003.
One little unknown story, which I'm pursuing acknowledges the contribution of a UK cable outfit in 1994 solely dedicated to videojournalism called Channel One. I'll post what Stuart says on Youtube and my blog.
But Channel One 1994, which I was part of accepted in its early days (tutored by a young Michael Rosenblum) the need for a newish aesthetic.
What's more none of the videojournalists were constrained by a paradigm or semiotic of news production. We made programmes - a Zero or Z principle of media production. Nothing was wasted, it all unfurled together.
We were informed, at least I was, by a run of programmes on BBC e.g. Reportage and Def II. Stuff today we might take for granted, but led to great late night debates and films.
And today many of those former videojournalists work in the industry and their work has attracted huge acclaim e.g. Dimitri Doganis Raw TV .
The videojournalism ( that poor word) I see is one that is maturing but beyond its traditional stables, driven by, yet not wedded to exclusively a cinema aesthetic, a motion graphic derivative, a visual verite, a narratology which will do for it, what blogs did for news copy. A time when we'll video hyperlink pieces and drill further into aspects of design and video and how they work.
There's still work to be done, but articles like yours Jill become, or should become a camp fire to explore the contemporary, antecedents, and what ifs.
Videojourna
#1 Posted by David Dunkley Gyimah, CJR on Thu 23 Sep 2010 at 11:09 AM
If you folks aren't careful, you'll invent television.
#2 Posted by Stuart Watson, CJR on Thu 23 Sep 2010 at 04:26 PM
Good roundup, but how on earth did you miss KobreGuide to the Web's Best Videojournalism, which showcases nearly all the gems you've cited and hundreds more, all selected and annotated by pros, published by legendary SFSU Prof. Ken Kobre since 2008... It is consulted daily by leading media organizations, top practitioners, aspiring VJs and journalism students around the world... It's one-stop-shopping for all videojournalism enthusiasts who want to view the best the medium has to offer, and are stymied by the very problem you cite -- news Websites hide their stuff so well that nobody can find it amidst the rubble... Another point worth making: Local audiences for, say, the Detroit Free Press (freep.com) or the St. Petersburg Times (tampabay.com) are unlikely to view videos on out-of-town websites -- despite the fact that many have national and/or universal appeal... KobreGuide.com increases the visibility and audiences for those meritorious video stories. ... http://www.KobreGuide.com
#3 Posted by JERRY LAZAR, CJR on Thu 23 Sep 2010 at 05:13 PM
I would be interested to know where you would draw a line between video journalism and documentary film-making - topics? audience? distribution? challenges getting noticed? funding? The two would appear to be very similar.
#4 Posted by Michael Fox, CJR on Fri 24 Sep 2010 at 12:21 AM
Great piece. I think the biggest factor related to time spent is the user's expectations prior to clicking on a video. Simply producing a 15-minute video isn't enough. You have to build an audience that appreciates long-form visual storytelling on your site by producing great work. If a video is sandwiched between a web gem and some breaking news, then why would any user expect to stay for an entire 15-minute piece?
I don't see how any organization can build an audience that will stay for longer stories without clearly separating the different forms of video on the site. On the Web, you don't know what you're going to get until you click. Anything that news organizations can do to alleviate that uncertainty on the web will be crucial to the success of in-depth, visual journalism.
#5 Posted by McKenna Ewen, CJR on Fri 24 Sep 2010 at 11:21 AM
I think Vimeo (www.vimeo com) should yield better results than Google or YouTube for this type of content, since it's generally home to more professional film makers. I think another videojournalism website worth mentioning is Journeyman Pictures (www.journeyman.tv).
#6 Posted by Rodrigo Ordóñez, CJR on Fri 24 Sep 2010 at 11:51 PM