Video Journalism for the Web

A Practical Introduction to Documentary Storytelling

Kurt Lancaster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136506482
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Giornalismo

As newspapers and broadcast news outlets direct more resources toward online content, print reporters and photojournalists are picking up video cameras and crafting new kinds of stories with their lenses. Creating multimedia video journalism requires more than simply adapting traditional broadcast techniques: it calls for a new way of thinking about how people engage with the news and with emerging media technologies. In this guide, Kurt Lancaster teaches students and professional journalists how to shoot better video and tell better stories on the web, providing a strong understanding of cinematic storytelling and documentary production so their videos will stand out from the crowd.

Video Journalism for the Web introduces students to all the basic skills and techniques of good video journalism and documentary storytelling, from shots and camera movements to sound and editing—as well as offering tips for developing compelling, character-driven narratives and using social media to launch a successful career as a "backpack journalist." Shooting, editing, and writing exercises throughout the book allow students to put these techniques into practice, and case studies and interviews with top documentary journalists provide real-world perspectives on a career in video journalism. This book gives aspiring documentary journalists the tools they need to get out in the field and start shooting unforgettable multimedia stories.

Chapter 1 Differences in Style Documentary Journalism versus Broadcast News—A Comparative Analysis of a Similar Story at CNN versus the New York Times

DOI: 10.4324/9780203145753-1

Introduction to Documentary Journalism

In this chapter, I show the differences between documentary and broadcast news styles by examining two different news stories completed in the broadcast news style and similar stories produced by video journalists working at newspapers. I explore how the style engaged by documentary journalists tends to be character-centered and contain shots that move the story forward visually, while the broadcast style utilizes reporters’ narrations instead of the characters’ voices as the primary means of crafting their stories, with shots tending to be more utilitarian rather than cinematic.

If documentary journalism is more cinematic, engages deeper character studies, and supports strong visual journalism, then why isn’t it utilized more often in the broadcast style? The advantages of the broadcast news style—it’s fast and simple: Ultimately, viewers may end up determining which style becomes more prevalent. Right now, newspapers are in a position to experiment with a variety of news styles online. Broadcast news stations are fixed in their style by tradition and decades of making it work. They could express different styles online, but it requires additional resources. Regardless, I offer this analysis as a way for students and practitioners of visual journalism to think about how they approach their stories, and to help those shooting and producing broadcast news to think about how they might approach their work more cinematically, with more attention to visual storytelling and character presentation.

• It can be produced quickly (and, when on a deadline, that’s imperative); while, in documentary journalism, more time is needed to produce a piece.
• A wide-range of audience types can quickly grasp the story and get it in a short attention span, and if they’re cooking dinner, they can still hear the story, since it relies primarily on narration; in documentary journalism the audience is required to watch the story, often needing to pay close attention to capture its nuances.

How to Tell the Difference between TV News and Documentary Journalism Styles

The case studies below will clearly show the differences in style, but this list summarizes some of the primary elements of the two. It’s not a cut-and-dried formulaic list, but, in general, it is what distinguishes the two styles:

TV News Style

• TV reporter often in front of the camera.
• Character secondary to the reporter’s presence.
• Reporter’s narration the primary means in telling the story.
• Character’s voice used to augment the reporter’s narration.
• Images used to illustrate the story.
• Audio captured in the field as the only audio used.
• Camera operated by a crew member, guided by the reporter and/or producer.

Documentary Journalism Style

• Journalist behind the camera.
• Character primary.
• Reporter’s narration, if used, provides context.
• Character’s voice utilized to tell the story.
• Images show the story cinematically.
• Audio consciously designed to help set the tone.
• Video journalist usually works alone and uses the camera to write the story, visually.

Case Study 1 “Girl Poet Takes on the Taliban with Her Pen” (2:37) by Stanley Grant, CNN (FEB. 18, 2009)

www.cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/02/17/pakistan.girl.poet/index.html

The stories were selected randomly. Ellick’s and Sharaf’s documentary was on the main video page of the New York Times, and I was compelled to watch it all the way through. This is my way of saying that I’m not purposely looking for broadcast news work that stands in contrast to the documentaries I found at online newspaper sites. But it was a serendipitous search, allowing me to explore how the two different styles work.

First, let’s look at CNN’s “Girl Poet Takes on the Taliban with Her Pen” and compare it with Case Study 2, the New York Times’s “Class Dismissed in Swat Valley.” In each story, there is a profile of an eleven-year-old girl living in Pakistan: one in Islamabad, the other in the Swat valley region. Both struggle against the Taliban’s desire to force girls out of schools. Over two hundred schools for girls have been destroyed in Pakistan by the Taliban.

In Grant’s “Girl Poet Takes on the Taliban with Her Pen,” we see the story of Tuba Sahaab, a girl fighting for the right to an education as the Taliban try to prevent her and other girls from attending school.

The story is inspiring and it captures the heart of the audience in just over two and half minutes. We feel for Tuba and her plight. The cinematography is strong, especially shots 8–14, where visual elements capture Tuba’s desire and personality. The zoom-in with Grant sitting next to her, as we go to the final shot of her face, touches the heart. Yet, with all due respect to Grant’s hard work on this inspiring piece, by placing the reporter at the center of the story, his personality dominates, and not that of Tuba Sahaab—he’s the figure that draws the United States audience in, he’s the character we can relate to, as he talks about Tuba and her accomplishments, his narration providing the story, the story needing few, if any, visuals to inform the audience of its content. If we read the transcript, we can see that the visual shots only supplement the story and offer little in helping to reveal deeper story elements.

Grant frames the story around Tuba’s hopes for President Barack Obama to help set her country right. From the opening narration—“President Obama, you have won a young heart in Pakistan,” Grant laughs with personality. Shot 3, with a series of questions and answers revolving around Tuba’s excitement about Obama becoming president, sets up her desire and hope—but it is a bit disingenuous, since Grant and his audience know it’s highly unlikely that Obama will be able to do anything about her plight. Even if unintentional, she is framed as being naïve, and his lines at the end—“I think you’ll get a chance … there’s no doubt what you can do”—encapsulate the American ideal—the American Dream—voiced paternally to a “daughter” who may, in fact, be overreaching the bounds of her own safety. Grant becomes the figure by which she, perhaps, sets up her hopes. What happens if there is no response?

The story focuses on a central character with a story, and it is shot well—meeting the standards of good documentary filmmaking. Ultimately, however, this style lacks Tuba’s voice. Rather, Grant’s personality takes over the piece and he becomes the central character by which we vicariously experience Tuba’s emotions, struggles, dreams, and hopes. We don’t feel invited into her world and it becomes filtered through Grant as our host to Tuba’s world. For a package created for CNN, the television news style works for what it needs to do— convey a story quickly and in an entertaining way without going deep into the underlying political issues.

Let’s contrast this story to a similar one done for the New York Times, this one produced in a documentary style.

Case Study 2 “Class Dismissed in Swat Valley” (14:24) by Adam B. Ellick and Irfan Ashraf, the New York Times (FEB. 21, 2009)

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/02/22/world/1194838044017/class-dismissed-in-swat-valley.html

Ellick and Ashraf tell the story of an eleven-year-old girl and her father living in Swat valley, a hundred miles from Islamabad. It is 5.4 times longer than the CNN piece, so there’s time for the journalists to explore their subject in depth, so perhaps it’s an unfair comparison. Yet, in order to create strong visual journalism, it’s important to look at the differences in style, which can be utilized for nearly any length.

Despite the length of the piece, Ellick engages a documentary style, a style far different than the one produced by Stanley Grant for CNN. The main difference involves the amount of time Ellick and Ashraf spent with this family—forty-eight hours documenting them right before the Taliban ordered the closure of the schools for girls in the Swat valley region. The narration provides historical and political context, and includes file footage of battles, Taliban whipping people into submission, and beheaded bodies. The images visually drive home the point that the fear the family experiences is real. Their story may not be exhaustive, but it expresses political context and contains the information needed to understand the family’s predicament. In the CNN piece, I feel pushed into it through a rapid narrated style that tells me what to think, taking the story at face value, while the New York Times piece—although guiding us with narration—feels more like an invitation into the story, taking us deeper into the emotions that circulate among the characters.

In sequence one, comprising just under the first minute (0:00–0:57), we see eight shots: images of Swat valley, an Islamic flag, followed by the sounds of gunfire and the images of burning and shooting. We hear the father, Sahudeem, talk about how “there are some people who want to stop educating girls through guns,” followed by his daughter talking about wanting to become a doctor. The shot stays on the two for a few moments (shot 7), then cuts to a close-up as the daughter, Mulala, covers her face, the emotional truth of the Taliban’s will overwhelming her (shot 8).

See Figures 1.1 and 1.2.

In many ways, the CNN and the New York Times stories are the same—two eleven-year-old girls struggling with the idea that education could be lost to them if the Taliban get their way. The characters speak in their own voice, but in the first minute of the Times piece the only reporter-voiced narration we hear is: “In Swat, Pakistan, schools for girls are under assault by the Taliban.” The rest of it involves file footage and a narration provided by the father and a dramatic hook as we hear Mulala speak about her desire to become a doctor. The moment doesn’t feel rushed and we don’t feel the reporter’s voice guiding us along through the story, as seen in the CNN piece—where we get the reporter’s voice right away, Grant’s onscreen presence becoming the dominant figure in the piece, our guide into Tuba’s world. Ellick and Ashraf, on the other hand, let the father and daughter be the central characters, the reporter’s presence unfelt, and the narration remains fairly unobtrusive.

Figures 1.2Shots 7 and 8. Adam Ellick cuts to a close-up of Mulala, as her father, Sahudeem, consoles her in “Class Dismissed in Swat Valley” from The New York Times (Courtesy The New York Times. ©2009 Used with permission.)

In a later sequence (7:50–9:24, shots 40–54), we can see the main difference between the two styles—which I’ll call reporter-personality vs. hybrid cinéma vérité.² In Grant’s story, the reporter stands as the central character, the guide who takes us by the hand and tells us the story; shots usually move us from one moment to the next in quick succession as determined by the narration, rarely allowing the audience to stay on a particular moment and rarely letting the subject say more than a few words. Indeed, out of the thirty-two shots in Grant’s story, Tuba speaks only in seven of them, three of which include the presence of Grant. On the other hand, in Ellick’s story we can begin to see how the technique of cinéma vérité has been utilized to provide an intimate portrait of the family’s day-to-day life on the brink of change. We see Mulala speak intimately about her father and the dangers involved. We see her getting ready for bed. We see her at prayer. We see her picking up and talking about her school uniform and how sad she is for not being able to wear it. These are the kinds of elements that define the differences in style between documentary journalism and conventional broadcast news.

To clearly illustrate the stylistic differences between the two, in the sequence of Grant’s story where we hear Tuba speak: “I want to give peace to my country, to my nation, everyone” Grant follows with: This is followed by Tuba reciting a poem_ “Tiny drops of tears. Their faces, like the angels, washed with their bloods. They sleep forever as with anger.” That’s Grant’s sixty-seven words compared to Tuba’s nineteen.

The eleven-year-old is a self-styled warrior poet, a small girl pitting her pen against the Taliban’s sword. A girl from a simple home in Islamabad, she says she is committed to truth. Through her words, she reflects the pain of other children in her country, the injustice of other girls denied an education, of schools burnt to the ground, books banned, and too much death.

In contrast (again, realizing that Ellick and Ashraf are not seemingly on a length restriction, as Grant is), the filmmakers in the New York Times piece allow a girl outside a school to read an entire revolutionary letter against the Taliban, the only narration setting up what is to follow: “While boys’ schools stay open, more than two hundred girls’ schools have been blown up by the Taliban. ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Foreword by Brian Storm
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: What is Documentary Journalism?
• 1 Differences in Style: Documentary Journalism versus Broadcast News—A Comparative Analysis of a Similar Story at CNN versus the New York Times
• 2 Finding a Story and Shaping the Structure: Starting with Character in Jigar Mehta’s “The Recession-Proof Artist”
• 3 Shooting the Image: Composition and Lighting in Travis Fox’s “Narcocorridos and Nightlife in Mexicali” and “Crisis in Darfur Expands”
• 4 Conducting Interviews and Writing a Script: A Workshop with “Icarus Refried: A Pro-Creative Process”
• 5 Editing for Rhythm: Travis Fox’s “Redefining China’s Family: Women”
• 6 Getting Clean Audio and Crafting a Sound Design: An Audio Workshop with Philip Bloom, Travis Fox, and Wes Pope
• 7 The Blogging Journalist: Travis Fox and the Mexican Border Stories
• Afterword: New Voices by Bob Sacha
• Notes
• References
• Index