Can Design Save the Newspaper?

I overheard a conversation today between the managing editor and the graphics editor. It went something like this:

ME: What can we do to have a different layout

GE: Well lets use a cutout of a photo to help shape the page and be the main element

ME: Okay, so how are we going to do this

(both are now looking at a few rough sketches)

GE: I've got all these great ideas, but the composer's don't always know what I'm trying to do

ME: Not to put more work on you, but then why don't you just design the front page?

I remembered after hearing this conversation that the photo editor had mentioned a TED talk regarding this exact same topic - newspaper design.

I went to TED.com and searched for the video and low-and-behold there it was, all six minutes and eight seconds of it. [EDIT: It appears the embed code isn't working, so here is a link]

Now isn't that totally badass?!

I know personally, the thing that prevents me from picking up a regular paper in the morning (Exponent excluded) is that its just boring to read. These, on the other hand, are vibrant, living pieces of art that help to display the news.

Can page design save the industry? It did for one publisher in Eastern Europe. Could it work here in the good ol' land of opportunity? Maybe for someone brave enough to try it. Will it work for The Exponent? Probably not.

For one, layouts like these require immense amounts of planning and very skilled designers. While I'm sure our designers could develop something like this, doing it every day between classes probably isn't feasible. Secondly, lets face it, most of our news is niche and, if you aren't a student/faculty of Purdue, you aren't going to care much.

Where I do see something like this fitting in, however, is special issues. Entertainment guides, Tailgate Guides, Welcome Back, Semester in Review, etc.

Could it help The Exponent? Lets just say I don't think it would hurt to try something new every now and then.

Pre production saves time AND money

First, watch this video:

The Satin Dollz in "Whatever Lola Wants" from Dan Blank on Vimeo.

Now Watch this video:

The Making of "Whatever Lola Wants" from Dan Blank on Vimeo.

A couple things to watch. 1) The upper left corner is a pre production animation of what the director wanted the video to look like. 2) The bottom left corner is what was actually shot. 3) The right half is the finished product.

While a few of the scenes are easy to tell they were green screened, several of them look seemless. I've tried Green Screening before and frankly I sucked it up. However it was a valuable learning experience and I fully recognize where I went wrong.

The lesson here is to plan everything, literally everything, out so that you don't waste time (and thus money) on the set.

Oh and by the way, the final budget for this music video was around $2,000 - that's pretty darn cheap.

Journalism in the UK and US

Maura posted an interesting question about journalism in the UK. I've been following the semi-recent debacle regarding photographers in the UK and Police response under Sections 43 and 44 of the Terrorism Act (2000). Basically these codes allow police to harass photographers under suspicion of terrorism. Recently, Section 44 was repealed because of the negative attention (and obvious legal issues) it has raised. However even with the repeal of section 44, people have still been stopped and questioned under Section 43. But I digress; I'll come back to photography in a bit.

Now back to Maura's original questions about the hijacking of the royal family's mobile phones. This is an obvious violation of privacy and any standard wire-tapping laws. The investigation isn't about the legality of the hijacking, as it was most certainly not legal, however it is about the police decision on when to stop the investigation of Andy Coulson's role in the matter.

The News of the World did something that was, from a journalism standpoint, completely unethical. Illegally monitoring conversations in order to create a story is possibly one of the worst things a journalist can do.

With all things digital, nothing can ever be erased. A memory card can be formatted over and over again and yet free software can be used to recover the "deleted" files. Always be careful with digital media 'cause once its out there, there's no take-backs.

As for the relationship between reporters and police here in the United States, that seems to be a case-by-case basis. I have experienced, personally, both sides of the spectrum when it comes to dealing with police. When covering news stories (primarily breaking news such as bomb threats, medical emergencies, and the recent string of pedestrian accidents) There has been little to no animosity between myself, other reporters and the police.

However, I have been personally harassed by a Purdue Police officer while taking photos on campus for my photography class.

I also follow a blog about the First Amendment and photographer's rights called Photography is Not a Crime. While I don't necessarily agree with Carlos Miller's aggressive methods of professing his rights as a US citizen, I do agree with the message he is delivering: Photographers are not Terrorists and everybody has the right to photograph and videotape in public.

I have been following Carlos's blog because he has been, over the last several years, aggregating information about police misconduct with photographers and videographers. Many times this involves camera operators for news stations and newspapers being arrested for "Disorderly conduct," when its clear the only thing they are actually being arrested for is (as Carlos puts it), "Contempt of cop."

Recently, several mainstream news sources have suddenly caught on to this not-so-new story of police officers not really understanding the law. One of the more famous ones right now involves video shot by Anthony Graber. Graber was arrested and now faces 16 years in prison for wiretapping charges, all for filming a police officer pulling him over. What makes these charges even more ridiculous is that the cop was in plainclothes, in an unmarked car, and as soon as he stopped, pulled his gun from its holster to confront Graber.

Graber filmed the incident and then put the video on Youtube. This prompted the police to raid his house and confiscate cameras and computer equipment while he spent 26 hours in jail before being charged.

Graber captured all of this while wearing a GoPro Hero HD camcorder on his helmet. A camera sitting on someone's head is definitely not hidden. While Maryland is a two-party consent state, it was obvious that a camera was present at the time of the incident.

While Graber is charged for wiretapping (which I'm pretty positive will be at least lessened if not completely dropped) There are many other people who have been helped by having their incidents recorded. A recent, and horrifying, example took place outside a Los Angeles Forever 21 store. Unfortunately the video has been removed from youtube due to a copyright infringement however it is viewable at LiveLeaks.com. Its obvious to tell that the man in the white shirt is trying to communicate that he and his friend are deaf and cannot speak or hear well. The man in the choke-hold is obviously trying to communicate that he cannot breathe.

Now if that isn't enough reason to carry some sort of camera with you every where you go, I don't know what is.

Here is a brief list of some mainstream articles about photography and police and photographer's rights:

USAToday.com

Time.com

NYT.com

WashingtonPost.com

ABCNews.com

NPR.com

PopularMechanics.com

Two Vids: One for Kicks, the Other for Lernin' Gud.

Kicks:


Just a quick video from today's interview with some football players. Same setups as before, but this time I used my Tascam DR-07 recorder and the Audio Technica Hand-held mic for audio instead of the shotgun mic (way too much wind noise).

Fer Lernin' Gud:

This video was not done entirely by me. Most of the work was done by Jeremy. He started on as a videographer this summer and is sticking with us (thanks!).

What I wanted to point out here was the difference in audio. The audio from the callout itself (when John Cox is talking) is recorded with the on-camera microphone. These microphones are put in merely as after-thoughts so the average joe-shmo can shoot a complete video straight out of the box. They are low-quality and pick up about every sound imaginable (but not in a good way).

The voice over, however, was recorded using the Tascam DR-07 audio recorder directly (it has a pair of stereo microphones). I think you can hear the difference for yourself.

Lesson learned: Always record audio separately, or at least plug a nice mic into the camera.

To Be or Not To Be (a Journalist) and Thoughts on Social Media

Who is a Journalist?

Dan Gillmor is a writer and educator at Arizona Sate University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Recently, Dan wrote an article for Salon.com on "Who's a journalist? Does that matter?"

I agree completely that with tools like facebook, twitter, digg, reddit and a host of other outlets for laymen to communicate, we all are creating media, and lots of it.

I also agree that not all of this is journalism. Not even Dan calls himself a journalist most of the time feeling that

"Calling myself a journalist, which I did from time to time, tended to make me feel like I was pretending to a higher role than the craft, however vital and honorable it may be, merited."

While trying to define who is a journalist in class, the example of Jamal Albarghouti was brought up. For those of you who don't know this gentleman by name, he is the only person to have captured video during the Virginia Tech shootings. Jamal used his Nokia cell phone to capture not only footage of a S.W.A.T. Team entering a building, but also 26 shots fired by the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho.

Many fine points for both side of the argument were brought up during the discussion. Jamal acted with the Media in mind, wanting to show people what happened, instead of running away, he started rolling video and even moved forward toward the danger. On the other hand, Jamal is an engineering graduate student, while he did take the video he gave it away (not a professional choice), and he provided absolutely zero context for anyone watching the video.

When you watched the video the first time, did you know what it was? I sure didn't. My position is that Jamal, and many other people in positions similar to his, are not journalists. They don't practice journalism as a vocation, they don't provide context, they don't even know what is going on half the time. While their actions are valued and are important, Journalists are the ones who take this information and turn it into something of substance for the audience.

Thoughts on Social Media

Who doesn't enjoy a good tweet about someone's poop?

"Holy Crap! ...I need more fiber in my diet.

7:32 PM Aug 24th via txt"

Or maybe about the sexual encounters of a newly-wed couple as a prank from the best man?

"They’re on the job! #26 - Action commenced at 22.04GMT. Weight: 156KG.5:04 PM Feb 18th via Power Twitter

They’re off the job! #25 – Action concluded at 22.15GMT. Duration: 8m.10 s. Frenzy Index: 10 (http://song.ly/2j6j3). Judge’s Comment: "OOF!"5:16 PM Feb 17th via Power Twitter"

I love twitter. I think it is a fun way to keep up with people you know or people in similar lines of work to you, or just follow someone who likes to party.

Twitter also provides an opportunity for people to quickly provide information to each other. Did you read that Dan Gillmor article I linked above? Do you recall the traffic information tweets during that snowstorm? Yeah, that's pretty much why twitter rocks.

On the other hand, we have Facebook. Fuck you, Facebook.

and I'll leave you with that for now. I'll finish it when I get back from class.

and by back from class I really mean at 2:26am the next day because, well, that's just how I roll.

Back to Facebook. When I first got accepted to Purdue, one of the first things I did was head over to Facebook (shown to me by my older brother) and start an account. It was a fun tool that I used to keep in touch with high school friends, and people I met at Purdue. Then came bumper stickers, then gifts. Then farmville. And mafia wars. And now god knows what because they've changed their layout so many God damned times I don't even know what I'm looking at.

And in the meantime Mark Zuckerberg and his team of cronies have decided to change the privacy settings to, oh wait, that's right. There are no privacy settings.

What was that Facebook? A public outcry for control over our own content and respecting copyright and privacy? Oh, I guess you could just send out a quick press release and put a few confusing-as-hell-and-impossible-to-get-to settings back up. But don't worry, Zuckerberg is still impossible to friend and I'm sure his data isn't getting mined at all...

Yet I still use you facebook. Why? Because of your 500 million users. Not because I like the system, but because it is the easiest way for me to keep in touch with my friends all over the world.

Granted, when Diaspora is released to the public, I'm opening an account there, but I'll leave my FB account open so others can still contact me if all else fails.

/rant.

Notes: Coach's Interview 8-25

Notes is a segment where I will break down a multimedia piece I complete and describe what I like and don't like about it. I'll talk about how it's made and why somethings happened (or didn't happen).

First Up: Coach's interview on Wednesday:



Aspects of New Media:
Video - hopefully you've gathered there is video footage involved with this piece ;)
Audio - Audio is one of the most important aspects of video, yet can stand on its own too.
Graphics - While not the main aspect here, it adds information and gives a more professional touch

Now for the detailed breakdown.

Video:

This video was shot with my Nikon D300s and a 35mm f/1.8 lens. I used a monopod to help stabilize the video, but I can't wait until I get a shoulder mount!

Overall it looks okay. I had some exposure differences from one interviewee to another, especially with coach Hope. I fixed it a bit with some color correction in post, but going from direct sunlight to shade is going to cause problems no matter what. I also had a slight focus problem when talking to coach Clark (0:50).

Audio:

The audio was capture with my Sennheiser MKE-400 shotgun mic mounted directly to the camera and plugged into the audio input.

I opted not to use a less sensitive mic like a hand-held or lavaliere microphone simply for the ease of use. I didn't want to spend the time syncing the audio in post so I traded audio quality for speed. A great example of using a strongly directional microphone like the Sennheiser is audible at 1:15.

You can also hear the wind moving across the microphone and some handling noise throughout the piece. I used the foamie that came with the microphone, I really need to get a dead-cat wind screen.

Graphics:

I added a few things at the suggestion of Maura. I made all of the graphics in Photoshop and saved them as .TIFF files with transparency layers.

Firstly I added a date-stamp in the upper right. This was pretty simple, and while anyone can look at the upload date, its quicker to just see it in the video to see if its current.

Secondly I added a "bug" to the lower right. This is a simple graphic used as a watermark.

Finally I re-vamped the super so it looks cleaner. Overall doing all of the graphics took about 20 minutes and I think it was worth it. They provide some basic information while giving the whole piece a more professional look.

Well, that's it for now. I'm off to bed!