What exactly are multimedia journalists accomplishing, or aiming to become? Recently, as I plug myself into the Bay Area blogosphere, I’m also seeing more and more video projects, taken upon by multimedia journalists, some of them trained from the highly-respected Berkeley graduate program in Journalism, that has such a huge focus on digital media.
Yet to me, as I watch these videos, I have an uneasy feeling that these often amount to no more than an aural slideshow. Not to be offensive, but some of these have neither the penetrating insights of the best documentaries (it doesn’t even have to be the best, we can just take the first half of Errol Morris’ Gates of Heaven as an example), or the artistry of a dramatic production. I don’t know why this is, but I feel the aesthetic values of these productions are overly kitsch in its hi-tech, ubitiquous web pretensions.
The reason I’m having these responses can be attributed to my training and my interest in film. When I view anything in video form, it is the painterly visuals, the compositions, the very filmic elements that I scrutinize first. This does not mean that I don’t understand what a video newscast is. I perfectly do and I know what their purposes are. However, when we have videos that appear on the hyperlocal blogs, and whose stated purposes seem to be rather a profile than a purely news segment, the film critic in me naturally awakened as these images enter my eyes. And here, is where I find these productions problematic and I will try to define my apprehension through the following points:
If you think I am looking at these from too much of an art perspective, then feel free to correct me. But I am. The underlying aesthetic value of these productions are undermined by the following:
A lack of fluency with the medium of video. HD, 24fps, 60fps, progressive scan--these are not the technique of a film or videomaker. These are just specs that camera makers put to make one think one can achieve what is sold in theaters.
Just like how in journalism class students spend tons of time perfecting the opening line to entice the reader into a story, most of these videos have not found quite a way to visually engross the viewer. Too much of the same is being churned out, but with the editorial pressure of news, I guess this is expected. I don’t think, and I don’t propose ever, that one can just place a camera in front of a subject and expect the subsequent video to generate any kind of visual excitement. If we are using video, why not really use it? But if we really use it, then do impromptu effects spring up based on how we receive videos and derail the journalistic intent of a production? Sure, because visuals and sounds are very much evocative arts, sometimes, more so and immediate than words, and this leads to my next point:
Message, agenda, theme. These are the questions we ask of every film. Yet you can't not not ask these questions for multimedia productions as well. The convergence of media production means the available critical inquiry needs to be consolidated and expanded.
Then again, if we keep trying what I've suggested, then are we training journalists or filmmakers? Are multimedia journalists following the traditional of a documentarian, say Charles Ferguson, or a nowadays video artist like Godard in his 70s?
All these doesn't matter. What we have to find is an answer, that which profession has a greater capacity to influence, inform, and engage us intellectually and emotionally? Well, one can say that a well made video will engage us no matter what. Sure.
Lastly, these videos, I feel, seem to be inheriting souls from the art of photojournalism, but I believe it is the wrong approach. Contemporary photojournalism, the most popular (note 'popular') ones, always seem overly melodramatic and sentimental to me. Dramatizing triviality to the point of numbing our senses to all but the most cruel, violent, and graphic events. Almost anyone with a wide angle lens today is equipped to produce usable photos. But the permanence of these photos? Very much debatable.
So how can videojournalists that's graduating from Journalism programs, not film schools today, equipped with their video capable dSLR, produce focused, penetrating, and aesthetically valuable work, without falling to the excesses of present day photojournalism? And produce effective work that match written reportage? I believes these videos, and their makers, need to define a creative identity and purpose. I don't think we can do that yet, with the great number of videos populating youtube today. Look at the reportage videos on 60 minutes, is this what our journalists aim to make? Internet TV?
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