Hybrid help: Free-lance Photographer Patrick Barth from London and Kjeld Smed, a free-lance from Denmark, look on as Platypus Instructor P.F. Bentley assist them with setting up computer monitors in the edit bay of the 2001 Platypus Workshop at the University of Oklahoma. Photo by Mike Harmon.

Size matters as photojournalists morph into videojournalists

NORMAN, Okla. -- "My camera is smaller than your camera!"

Furthermore, "My camera bag is tinier than your camera bag!"

These outcries, extolling the virtues of simplicity and reduction, were made by faculty members of this year's Platypus Workshop, held at the University of Oklahoma March 11-23.

Departing from the outdated model of the burly TV cameraman with his large camera and overgrown lens, the era of small and smaller has arrived. Network and cable television executives have been signaling their acceptance of small digital video cameras and inexpensive editing systems for the production of what some call "non-scripted television."

Memos have been circulated announcing the projected demise of the three-to-four-person TV crew and the emergence of the crew of one. Expensive and bulky post-production edit packs will give way to inexpensive software loaded in Apple PowerBooks. Television reporters better learn to shoot, caution these TV executives, and members of traditional TV crews should secure their futures by learning to research and write.

"Big changes are afoot; this is a very bad time to be any kind of visual journalist," agreed Dirck Halstead, director of the workshop, a boot camp designed to make still photographers proficient in small format digital video production.

Platypus is the mascot promoted by Halstead, who morphed himself from a Time magazine still photographer into "video journalist" over the last five years.

Unable to ignore the dismaying worldwide decline of photojournalism, Halstead floated his ideas on the on-line discussion list of the National Press Photographers Association (Nppa).

Halstead and other contributors to the Nppa list suggested that still photographers would need to learn new skills to become hybrid visual storytellers. No longer "just the photographer," these "newspukes and picture-takers" would need to broaden their scope to include reporting and writing, and learn to tell a story on video as well. What mascot would epitomize the Ace Survivor?

Tom Burton of Florida's Orlando Sentinel, suggested a platypus, the furry egg-laying tangle of mammalian confusion. Halstead took the little beast under his wing, along with a digital still camera, a video camera, and an idealism that won't quit, and presented it worldwide on his web site, the Digital Journalist (http://www.digitaljournalist.org/). There he proposed that photojournalism was dying a rapid and painful death, but offered his vision of the future.

Come with me, he invited accomplished still photographers. Learn some new skills and market yourself as a "visual storyteller." Let the others laugh at your strange little camera; the duckbill will thrive.

Halstead offered a workshop in 1999 to 30 photographers who were not afraid to train in video. The first Platypus Workshop was conducted here, coinciding with the yearly training of TV shooters offered by the Nppa. The Nppa workshop, known to many as simply, "The Workshop," is a six-day skills course offered to television professionals.

The Platypus Workshop, packed with video virgins, most of whom had never used a mini-digital video camera, ran twice as long, to accommodate the steep learning curve.

Higher regard
In the launch year 1999, the Platypus Workshop was tolerated as an ineffectual oddity by the Nppa Workshop's broadcast staff and mainstream participants. The following year, Nppa staffers began encouraging their students to check out the inexpensive but user-friendly digital editing systems used by the Platypi.

This year the fully enrolled Platypus Workshop was held in higher regard by the Nppa team, for both the camera and edit systems, and the photographers using them. John Premack, president and director of this year's under-subscribed Nppa workshop, told his TV shooters, "The empty seats are a silent reminder of what's happening in our industry, of cutbacks in television." Of Platypus, he said, "For them, the future is now."

The future, indeed, is in a transition driven by the economies and technologies of television and the World-Wide Web. Three years ago it looked as if the dot-com explosion would power the photojournalists of the future. This year, TV pros, who never really bought into the dot-com frenzy in the first place, have other expectations.

At the Workshop, senior faculty members discussed their hopes for new opportunities to tell visual stories, and their anxieties about the future of good solid visual journalism. "Cameraman" and "cameraperson" are no longer the preferred terms for TV shooters at the Nppa. In fact, being a shooting specialist is seen as a liability. Now the participants are being trained to be "story tellers."

The prevailing wisdom is: Everyone must be a producer, for television or new media. TV veterans who merely shoot and edit will be dinosaurs, eating from the shrinking food supply while it lasts. People who want to continue their careers as storytellers will leave television. TV news and newspaper photography will be entry-level jobs, low paying and dead end. Some broadcast stations will drop out of the TV-news business, and cable will fill the need.

The Platypus class of 2001 grasped these concepts with ease. And, unlike the prior groups of 30, this was the first group that was not intimidated by the shoot-and-edit hardware and software. The teaching team of Rolf Behrens, from the TV news side of the industry, and P.F. Bentley, from the world of magazine photojournalism and now a self-proclaimed Platypus, moved their students quickly through the training.

By the end of the first week, each of the 10 teams, consisting of two or three people, completed a one-minute video assignment. These short reports, well shot and nicely edited on small-format digital video, by the newly hatched Platypi, demonstrated their ability to tell a non-fiction video story.

"This is one of the best groups we have ever taught," Halstead said. "Reflecting the reach of the Digital Journalist, nearly one third of our students come from overseas. One of our scholarship students is a photographer from Central African Press in Nairobi. We also have a high concentration of students from Scandinavian countries."

Some are free-lancers, others sent by their newspaper, and others were university students. The enrollees were also in Norman for the purpose of making contacts and getting advice to help find outlets for their work.

'Find a cause'
Fritz Nordengren, a multi-media producer, offered his suggestions during a special presentation to the Platypus Workshop. Nordengren, who develops and creates traditional and new media for non-profits, has an impressive background in the business side of journalism that dovetails perfectly with his creative talent in advertising, marketing, photography and web design.

His company, New Media for Non-Profits (http://www.nmnp.org/), designs media for major charities that do medical relief work. "Find a cause you believe in," said Nordengren, "and you are helping them with something they believe in."

Nordengren graduated from the First Platypus Workshop in 1999, adding video storytelling to his skills in web design, still photography, radio and brochure design. He helps his clients select and create the appropriate format for their message. This can be as simple as launching a web site for a Boy Scout Troop, or as complex as providing streaming video for medical charities that do relief work like "Operation Rainbow."

He emphasized the importance of establishing a business relationship with the client. "Non profit does not mean No Budget," he said, and cautioned workshop members from working for free. At the very least, charge them $50, he suggested.

Nordengren praised the teams for taking two weeks of their time to travel to Oklahoma to learn something new. "There are two kinds of people," he continued, "the ones crying the blues and the ones doing something about it. You are a very unique group of people -- instead of saying, 'The sky is falling!' you are taking a chance, taking a risk. ... I hope you realize you have what it takes to change the face of storytelling. You are the visual journalists of the future."

He encouraged each member of the Platypus class to choose a project and stay focused on it. Find a story, think about who will benefit from that story, and then contact those people and offer your services. Most non-profits can go directly to contributors who will write a check for a specific project. "Don't give up!" said Fritz. There will be a place for good content and well-told stories. And, he assured them, "The people in this group are able to help you accomplish your goal."

The goals this year were to tell stories from as far away as Uganda and Cambodia, to as close by as the neighborhood animal shelter. Faculty members Bentley, Halstead and Behrens demonstrated their travel kits, emphasizing the importance of traveling light.

Behrens, co-producer of several stories for ABC-TV's Nightline, said, "I reduced things to the minimum. We've reached the stage where you can do it on your own."

The light digital video equipment allows him to continue to shoot, after back injuries prohibited him from hefting a traditional news video camera.

Halstead concurred: "I've greatly reduced my gear, my kit." Although he takes both still and video equipment on assignment, he now brings two bags and a small tripod, less gear than he used to bring for his former still pieces.

Two nylon bags
Bentley vividly illustrated the value of portability with his hilarious description of getting in and out of Cuba last year while traveling alongside the network television crews. Bentley was able to move quickly with his two Cordura-nylon bags, while "The Crew," burdened with "The Crew Gear," typically packed into 14 cases weighing several hundred pounds, was delayed for hours by Cuban authorities.

Bentley needed only a few minutes to demonstrate his kit. One bag holds his camera, portable light and tripod. The other carries batteries, microphones, some diffusion filters and gels, a few clamps, cables and accessories, tape -- and, we presume, a Leica and change of clothes.

The reverse boast of "mine is smaller than yours," continued into the first weekend of the workshop, when Behrens and a television crew from Spanish-language TV started comparing flashlights to see whose light was the better source for low-light shooting.

The edit system used at Platypus 2001 was, once again, Apple's Final Cut Pro software on a Macintosh G4 computer. The program is extremely user-friendly and students were able to begin simple edit projects almost immediately. Behrens, a beta tester of Final Cut Pro and a pioneer in its use for broadcast television, uses the system on his G4 PowerBook.

The economies of the mini-digital video technology for shooting and editing reality television are very impressive. But will the changeover from traditional media cause the product to suffer? That's a question pondered by John Premack, Nppa's president. Looking at the worldwide influx of brand new "visual storytellers," some unskilled and untrained, Premack takes an historical approach.

Premack experienced the transition from news film to news tape in the mid-1970's and feels that the first years of the change in news gathering technology were, in fact, accompanied by a drop in quality. Some of the problems were created by jurisdictional disputes between electronic technicians and news film shooters. The techs had the background to guarantee the technical quality of the video signal, but no training in journalism or broadcast news. The "newspukes" had the know-how to cover a news assignment, but struggled with the constant adjustment of the video signal needed to keep the early electronic news-gathering cameras within Federal Communications Commission specifications.

Ultimately, some of the news-film camera staff converted to electronic equipment, and those technicians who were the most willing to learn the requirements of TV-news field production endured. Eventually, the on-air quality of television-news tape rebounded.

Two cameraman-directors on the Nppa faculty, Darrel Barton and Bob Brandon, expressed their concerns that the current market for content providers requires more work for less pay.

Premack forecasts a future in which TV news will be shot and reported by entry-level personnel, who will move up to management positions in television, or will leave TV to pursue more gainful employment.

And what of the others, the visual storytellers, steeped in journalism, conviction, intelligence and creativity?

For now, the Platypus Workshop can only train and support them, and see where the work of One Storyteller With a Laptop and Two Itty Bitty Bags will hit you.

-- Amy Bowers, abtv@colepapers.net

Apple Computer Inc.,
(408) 974-4611.

From THE COLE PAPERS, May 2001, Copyright © 2001, All Rights Reserved.