Thursday, November 27, 2008

Video journalism - BBC Interview. Deconstructing the snatch multiple angle videojournalism interview


Results - How to create a multiple angle interview in 3 mins from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

This is the interview above. And below a second camera shows how I made it. Here's some more tips below.



Untitled from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

David interviews Mary Hockaday, deputy head of BBC Newsroom

The r-o-interview which in Video Journalism stands for Reverse, over the shoulder, interview is one of the quick fire interviews every VJ should have as part of their kit of tips and tools.

In the second interview you see me move the camera to two outside -the-zone locations.

In most interviews that will do, though as you'll see from the further links to interviews below, there are at least four more spots to increase the arc of the film.

The arc of th film refers to creating a level of interest before the film flattens. It's a Hollywood term, as much.

At the point I ask a question, there's an L cut or split edit, so the impression is created that indeed the camera on me constitutes a second lens. In this instance I haven't crossed the line, but in many cases I do, but it's still hard to spot because of the parrallex affect.

Essentially crossing the line is a visualisation stunt the brain has difficulty rationalising. Done well however and it works to make your film more creative.

Watch Bourne or any of the contemporary films and you'll see how creatively it's done.


Deconstructing video Journalism some more
I have played with the gamma and some other areas to give the video a false sense of depth of field thus mimicing 16mm.

I have also constructed a slow zoom. This is for two reasons.

Firstly, the zoom , a movement-image affects the pace of the film. Remember the arc again.

Secondly, I'm masking what is not obvious in the film, a jump cut and the extraneous use of the hand held microphone.

If you look on the second video, you'll see where I have positioned the mic. Yep right next to me. This is where the purists lament my basic lack of techniques.

But the mic you see in question has no function for the interview.

It's what the interpreters on the left side of the screen are listening to for their translation to Russian, French, Serb etc. Sorry I should have explained, we're at an international seminar.

To a lay person therefore the microphone looks out of sorts so I have hidden it altogether.

It took 5 mins odd, 3 mins to edit, and 5 mins to upload. I spend 20 mins rendering the effects attached to the video.

If I had archive of Mary I would have dropped that into the film. It adds value, but has to be relevant to the subject.

Here, below are examples of interviews using tripods etc. For hand held and tagging interviews, hopefully another gig will come up when I can show how that works.

Interview Yahoo's VP for Product Strategy, Bradley Horowitz.

Interview Rachel North, who survived 7/7 bomb in London. An example of a quick snatch interview. We were on the same panel and I spoke to her soon afterwards.

By the way, there are no controls on this video. If you used Flash before 2004, then you would have noticed Flash did not have a player system. I'll redo this interview with a player at some point.

David Dunkley Gyimah is a jury member for the RTS Innovation Awards 2009 and International Video Journalism Awards in Berlin 2009. Currently a lecturer, he's been a broadcaster since 1987  working on programmes like Newsnight, Channel 4 News and ABC News ( South Africa) and has been a video journalist since 1994.  More

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