Above: Workshop Director Dirck Halstead makes a point to the Platypus 2000 class while visual journalist David Snider records the moment during the first week of the Platypus Workshop at the University of Oklahoma. (Photos by Mike Harmon.)

Animal House: Gail Fisher of the Los Angeles Times shoots her B-Roll assignments at the Little River Zoo. (Photo by Mike Harmon.)

Neither beast nor fowl, still photography become Platypi

Norman, Okla. -- They arrived with dreams and ideas. They struggled with cameras and computers. They pondered rules and routines.

Twenty-nine still photographers entered video boot camp on March 12 and emerged two weeks later as professional television novices. They had survived the second national Platypus Workshop.

Workshop Director Dirck Halstead coined the term Platypus to describe his vision of the photojournalist who tells a story using video. More than a TV camera operator, the Platypus is the producer and writer of his or her assignment, using a small digital video camera and very affordable editing software.

The Platypus Workshop convened here one week before the annual National Press Photographers Association TV Newsvideo Workshop for professional television crews. The Platypus program was designed to get participants "up to speed" in TV storytelling.

Participants of the six-day video workshop worked in groups of three. Each team had one leader who was signed up to shoot and edit. Most agreed it was the biggest attack on the ego they've ever endured, but the results empowered them with the ability to tell their stories by themselves.

"I've been privileged to be so many places," explained Halstead, a photographer for TIME magazine in its heyday, "but I've been throwing away half," by limiting himself to still photography. Halstead learned to shoot, edit, and script television stories in the 1990s, and has now conducted three Platypus Workshops to offer these skills to other interested photojournalists. The weekend before LIFE magazine announced that it was closing its doors, Halstead reflected on the tight budgets and limited picture space in newspapers and magazines. "Photojournalism is D,E,D, dead. Get over it, it's not coming back."

But shrinking news budgets will also create new opportunities for hybrid journalists who can tell television stories without using large and expensive crews.

Day One of the workshop was an exercise called Vox Pops. Each team was required to go to a shopping mall to shoot interviews with, well, the Voice of the People. The shooters found that while the principles of lighting and composition are the same as in still photography, they could no longer be "the fly on the wall" waiting to capture the decisive moment. They had to present themselves to their subjects, and ask them questions.

Subjects who might shy away from a still photographer welcome the same photographer equipped with video. "People love to be on camera," explained Halstead, "It's part of the culture." The workshop students were convinced of this truth when they shot their Vox Pops exercise at the Mall in Norman. Shoppers readily answered questions from the philosophical ("what does God look like?") to the topical ("how are gas prices affecting you?"). As the tapes were critiqued, the Platypus teams learned the importance of asking the right kinds of questions to generate interesting and usable responses.

Workshop assignments were shot with the Canon XL-1 digital camera. The medium-size three-chip camera has the "best bang for the buck," according to workshop instructor Rolf Behrens. The veteran news photographer, editor and producer for SKY-TV in Africa, switched from his Betacam, the 25-pound industry standard, to the DV camera after injuring his back a few years ago. Behrens has since shot several TV programs with the XL-1, including an entire two-part Nightline special for ABC-TV News with Platypus' David Snider, and contributed to another Nightline piece about the buffalo in Yellowstone.

The Canon XL-1, with its interchangeable lenses and dedicated XRL audio inputs, makes good clean pictures and sound. The controls are user-friendly and are fairly intuitive for those trained in either stills or video.

Following a critique session, the class moved on to Day Two.

"Everyday the bar's gonna be raised," promised Halstead. The shoot/edit participants, still struggling with mastering the camera, were asked to shoot "B-Roll," the footage that makes up 80 percent of most television stories.

Every shot tells a story
Rolf's Routines were handed out and drilled. Anticipate, focus, frame, shoot, hold. Find a new shot. "One shot is never enough" and perhaps the most difficult caveat for a frame-by-frame practitioner: "Every shot must have a beginning, a middle, and an end."

Behrens described the riot footage he shot in South Africa at the start of his TV career. Although he thought he had shot everything important, the tape editor who screened Behrens' video fast-forwarded his footage, popped the tape, and threw it out the window. The shots were not usable because they were not held long enough. He then screened an example of a successful shoot from another riot. This time the video told the story.

The Platypus shooters were asked to make five minutes of B-Roll footage, concentrating on making sequences, series of wide shots, close-ups, reverse angles of the same action. Close-ups of the face are especially important in television.

The team footage was screened and critiqued by workshop faculty. Next up was a lesson in editing.

Final Cut Pro is the edit software that is rapidly becoming the industry standard for independent TV and film-makers. Similar to the pricey ($20K-$30K) non-linear systems by Avid and Media 100, Final Cut Pro costs about a thousand dollars.

Behrens and Editor Dick Swanson, a convert to video following a tremendous career at Life magazine, teach and preach Fundamentals of Editing using the Final Cut Pro system on the Apple G4 computer. The five edit bays at the Platypus Workshop also included a Sony V-10 player, to input the video material to the computer and an external TV monitor. The package is easy to put together. Amy Roth Turnley and her husband Peter Turnley, who are producing a TV documentary in France, decided to buy an edit package in Oklahoma during the workshop. They found everything they needed at Comp USA, and were set up ready to edit, with Behrens' help, in a few hours.

The beauty of non-linear editing is abundant: Its point-and-click simplicity makes it easy to use, and the edit information can be stored on a Zip disk, for easy re-access.

Now each workshop team was able to edit their B-Roll tapes into a one-minute video. Eric Miller, free-lance photojournalist and picture editor for Reuters in Minneapolis, said the challenge of learning Final Cut Pro was "an experience from hell. It's like having to prepare a color photo for press for the first time in Photoshop, under deadline pressure, but with sound." After, he marveled, "It's a great program, it's deep," as his team attacked the next assignment -- to shoot 10 minutes of video and edit a two-minute piece, on Final Cut Pro. "It's an interesting challenge," agreed Pauline Lubens, of the San Jose Mercury News. "Right now it's a frustrating new challenge."

News taste of accountants
Hans-Jurgen Burkard says the world is changing. His assignments for Germany's Stern magazine take him around the world. "If you're in there already," he reasoned, "why not do a film?" He traveled from Chechnya where he was shooting the destruction of Grozny so he would not miss the Platypus workshop. "Otherwise I will have to wait 'till next year, and that is too late."

An evening teleconference with Tom Bettag, executive producer of Nightline, revealed a tremendous interest in this kind of journalism. "One of the great lies is that America is not interested in foreign news," he told the Platypus class. "The truth is: Accountants aren't interested in foreign news." In fact, "The U.S. is starved for foreign news."

Peter Turnley, whose small Sony video camera looks well worn, agrees. He shot his half-hour Nightline special incorporating stills and video from Bosnia almost immediately after completing the Platypus Workshop last year. Driven by the need to tell more, after he takes pictures destined to the cover of Time magazine, he takes the DV camera that hangs on his shoulder, and tells the story on video. This year he returned to Norman to take the second week of study, the Advanced Video Workshop of the National Press Photographers Association.

Arnold Miller, of the 48,000-circulation Cape Cod Times of Hyannis, Mass., said, "[I] fought my way here across the beaches of Cape Cod." Working in his edit bay, he said, "Click it, drag and drop, insert ... this is so cool!!!"

Paul Buck, a free-lancer from Dallas, invested his own time and money on the workshop. "I want to learn now with others like me. It's taught by professionals who know what they're doing, and know what we're capable of doing." He is anticipating a commercial potential to tell some of his assignments in video. "I want to be there before it's too late."

Rick Kozack had a scare while working for the Washington Times Magazine. "I met that bean counter in the elevator one day." Now a free-lancer, he sees the potential in new media. With his new skills and a great connection to America Online, where his wife is the director of photography, his future, which may have looked bleak last year, is now very exciting.

Tyagan Miller has an opportunity to tell "parts of the story that aren't told in stills," on a documentary project. When the grant sponsors suggested video, he decided to enroll in the Platypus Workshop, with some encouragement from last year's graduate David Turnley.

"Anybody can do this provided they have the motivation," Halstead continued to encourage his students. And the rewards were great. The emerging Platypi used their video exercises to tell stories about characters in small town America.

One character was Chip, who makes the ultimate onion burger. Agreeing that the fat from the burger will probably clog your veins, Chip blithely explains how the extra stress on your heart is good for your health. "It's like taking your heart for a jog. The journalist who got a great laugh from this footage is David Bergman. Staff photographer on the Miami Herald, Bergman has a great feel for people plus an affinity for video. "I'm intrigued by motion and sound." Bergman will bring the excitement and energy back to the 429,000-circulation Herald, along with his one-minute video about the Ultimate Onion Burger, and another character story about a guy with a body-piercing parlor.

The 10 teams shot for a couple of hours, logged their tapes, and edited for about six of seven hours. In the end, they screened their pieces. Each one told a story in video.

"We're talking about empowerment," Halstead told the Platypus Workshop participants, "the ability to tell stories, by yourself."

"How often have you heard applause for one of your pictures?" asked Behrens. By the end of the Platypus Workshop, everybody was capable of making a video that inspired ovation.

-- Amy Bowers

Platypus philosophy: The on-line magazine The Digital Journalist is edited by Platypus Workshop Director Dirck Halstead http://digitaljournalist.org.

See also A Platypus starter kit

From THE COLE PAPERS, April 2000, Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved.