UPDATE: To see the archived videos and liveblog of this event, go here. You will learn how to use your DSLR, along with tips and tricks to make it an incredible tool for you in editorial, corporate and filmmaking settings. We will teach you field sound recording, cinematic storytelling, the use of lenses, tripods, multimedia applications, and Apple's Final Cut Pro editing software.Students provide their own HD DSLR camera and lens -- all else is supplied. The cost of the workshop is $1795.
We teach high-definition digital shooting, editing, and multimedia with an emphasis on storytelling. We have taught over 300 photojournalists since our inception in 1999. Our graduates have gone on to do television documentaries, Web videos, especially for newspapers, and even films. One of our graduates was a nominee for an Oscar in 2006. The 2010 winner of the Sundance Film Festival Documentary Award for his film "Restrepo" was Platypus graduate Tim Hetherington (currently nominated for an Oscar).
What's the best way to tell a story about a town that disappeared? It seemed the site acted as a kind of public album, a touchstone for the people who lived there, but also, for those of us who didn't. It was unpretentious, honest, and represented a sentiment and perspective that we felt needed sharing...It could have been a book, but it probably makes more sense that it became this.The end result is astonishingly visual, with lots of still images and video clips, and inventive use of audio.
The animations, multimedia and interactivity throughout the massive step-through documentary are impressive, to say the least. But, as I took the time to click through to the end, I couldn’t help but think to myself that the site seemed overly flashy and cluttered... My personal preference is that of a cleaner layout.***
All together, this site houses nearly 50 frames of multimedia content divided into 10 chapters. Up until 2008 all of my multimedia projects were done 100% in Flash. But the more I read about HTML5 and the inability to play Flash on Apple products, I’m beginning to wonder whether producers should start experimenting with other languages for the interactive component.
The producers spent a year working on it and designed everything in Photoshop before animating it in Flash. If it takes a year to produce something of this capacity, how is an interactive Flash site going to have competitive advantage in the longterm, and withstand the quicker and more scalable programming languages that help producers make something comparable in days or weeks?
We're proud to announce that KobreGuide is officially an affiliate of the New York Video School (NYVS), an online education center created by pioneering videojournalist Michael Rosenblum. NYVS provides anyone with a video camera an easy and affordable way to learn to make films and videos like a Hollywood professional.NYVS instructors have worked with PBS, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, ABC, CBS, the New York Times, and many other leading media institutions.
As a NYVS member you'll have access to video courses, critiques, tutorials and a learning community that will help you quickly become a master at video editing, video production, videography, iMovie, Final Cut Pro and much more!
The Lady Mary left the Port of Cape May on the morning of March 18, 2009 on a routine scallop fishing trip. The vessel with its crew of seven traveled 66 miles to a restricted scallop fishing area. Early on March 24, the boat sank to the bottom of the ocean, and six of the seven crewman were killed. Was the boat swamped in rough seas? Or did a passing container ship strike the boat without ever knowing it? After months of investigation, the Star-Ledger explores the mystery of the wreck of the Lady Mary.
Congrats to Sonya Doctorian, new deputy director of photography at the Washington Post. She will focus primarily on photo projects, staff development and multimedia storytelling.Doctorian is an independent online videojournalist based in Denver who joined the Rocky Mountain News in 2003 as projects photo editor. She also worked as its first videojournalist until the paper closed in 2009, just short of its 150th anniversary. Doctorian and the video team won a regional Emmy for their online documentary, "Final Edition," which chronicled the newspaper's final weeks. After the Rocky folded, she began producing independent short-form documentaries.Two of her video stories for AARP Online were showcased on KobreGuide to the Web's Best Videojournalism.
Look at all these heavy-hitters who will be on the panel of Beet.TV's Online Video Journalism Summit, which will be streamed live on Feb. 1 (9-11:30 am ET).
Todd Bieber (pictured) was cross-country skiing in Brooklyn's Prospect Park after a recent blizzard and spotted a canister of film lying in the snow. 
Congratulations to all Academy Awards nominees for Best Documentary (feature) and Best Documentary (short subject), announced today. This is the inside story of Street Art - a brutal and revealing account of what happens when fame, money and vandalism collide. The film follows an eccentric shopkeeper turned amateur filmmaker as he attempts to capture many of the world's most infamous vandals on camera, only to have a British stencil artist named Banksy turn the camcorder back on its owner with wildly unexpected results.
One of the most provocative films about art ever made, "Exit Through the Gift Shop" is a fascinating study of low-level criminality, comradeship and incompetence. By turns shocking, hilarious and absurd, this is an enthralling modern-day fairytale... with bolt cutters.
The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a "Saudia Arabia of natural gas" just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown.
"Gasland" will be broadcast on HBO through 2012.
"Inside Job" is the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, "Inside Job" traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia. Narrated by Matt Damon, "Inside Job" was made on location in the U.S., Iceland, England, France, Singapore and China.
"Restrepo" chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. The movie focuses on a remote 15-man outpost, "Restrepo," named after a platoon medic who was killed in action. It was considered one of the most dangerous postings in the U.S. military. This is an entirely experiential film: the cameras never leave the valley; there are no interviews with generals or diplomats. The only goal is to make viewers feel as if they have just been through a 90-minute deployment. This is war, full stop. The conclusions are up to you.
The war in Afghanistan has become highly politicized, but soldiers rarely take part in that discussion. Our intention was to capture the experience of combat, boredom and fear through the eyes of the soldiers themselves. Their lives were our lives: we did not sit down with their families, we did not interview Afghans, we did not explore geopolitical debates. Soldiers are living and fighting and dying at remote outposts in Afghanistan in conditions that few Americans back home can imagine. Their experiences are important to understand, regardless of one's political beliefs. Beliefs are a way to avoid looking at reality. This is reality.
Filmed over nearly three years, "Waste Land" follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores”—self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Director Lucy Walker has great access to the entire process and, in the end, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit.
Ashraf Al-Khaled was celebrating the happiest day of his life when an Al-Qaeda suicide bomber walked into his wedding and killed his father and 26 other family members in front of his eyes. Now, he is rising from that horrific tragedy to break the silence in the Muslim community on this taboo subject by speaking out against terrorism. "Killing In the Name," directed by Jed Rothstein," follows Ashraf’s quest to speak with victims and perpetrators and expose the true cost of terrorism, taking us on a journey around the world to see if one man can speak truth to terror and begin to turn the tide.
It’s a sad fact that stories like Ashraf’s pepper the news almost daily. In the last 5 years, over 88,000 people have been killed or injured in terrorist attacks worldwide. The majority, like Ashraf, were Muslims.
How can someone be so robbed of their humanity that they happily commit mass murder and suicide? It’s one of the fundamental human questions of our era, one that has haunted Ashraf since his wedding day, and what is now driving him to rise from horrific tragedy to take an unprecedented step – breaking the silence in the Muslim community on this taboo subject by speaking out against terrorism.
At times chilling and moving, terrifying and hopeful, this film is a far- reaching and necessary first step in tackling what is arguably the most pressing issue of our age. As Ashraf puts it, “If we can’t even talk about it, this terror will never end.”
"Poster Girl" is the story of Robynn Murray, an all-American high-school cheerleader turned “poster girl” for women in combat, distinguished by Army Magazine’s cover shot. Now home from Iraq, her tough-as-nails exterior begins to crack, leaving Robynn struggling with the debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Shot and directed by first-time filmmaker Sara Nesson, "Poster Girl" is an emotionally raw documentary that follows Robynn over the course of two years as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and redemption, using art and poetry to redefine her life.
In the heart of Tel Aviv, there is an exceptional school where children from forty-eight different countries and diverse backgrounds come together to learn. Many of the students arrive at Bialik-Rogozin School fleeing poverty, political adversity and even genocide. Here, no child is a stranger.
"Strangers No More" follows several students’ struggle to acclimate to life in Israel while slowly opening up to share their stories of hardship and tragedy.
With tremendous effort and dedication, the school provides the support these children need to recover from their past. Together, the bond between teacher and student, and amongst the students themselves, enables them to create new lives in this exceptional community.
"Sun Come Up" follows the relocation of some of the world’s first environmental refugees, the Carteret Islanders – a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean.
When rising seas threaten their survival, the islanders face a painful decision: they must leave their beloved land in search of a new place to call home.
The film follows a group of young Carteret Islanders led by Nick Hakata as they search for land in Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea 50 miles across the open ocean.
The move will not be easy as Bougainville is recovering from a 10-year civil war. Many Bougainvilleans remain traumatized by the “Crisis” as the civil war is known locally. Yet this isn’t a familiar Third World narrative. Out of this tragedy comes a story of hope, strength, and profound generosity.
San Kamap (Sun Come Up) means sunrise in pidgin and reflects this sentiment - the resilience of the community, and the hope that’s present at the start of a new day. The Carteret Islanders have formed their own organization, Tulele Peisa, working with local leaders on the ground to relocate 1,700 islanders to Bougainville over the next ten years.
Villagers in central China take on a chemical company that is poisoning their land and water. For five years they fight to transform their environment and as they do, they find themselves transformed as well.
Zhang Gongli is a farmer who grew up in the village of Qiugang, in Anhui Province; his house and fields lie near the banks of the Huai River. In 2004, private chemical companies took over an old state-owned enterprise that had long produced pesticides and dyes in Qiugang. As production ramped up, black waters disgorged from the plants and flooded the fields of Qiugang. Fish died, crops failed, and villagers grew alarmed by the large numbers of their own succumbing to cancer.
When his own fields could no longer be farmed, Zhang filed a lawsuit against the factory that adjoins his land. He lost. This marked the beginning of a stubborn and often dangerous campaign that spanned five years. Our film follows Zhang and his allies in the village as they draw up a petition to bring to Beijing, recruit support from the local media, reach out for help from a local NGO, and in time, make contact with environmental activists from across China.
From clandestine trips to the nation’s capital to private negotiating sessions with factory representatives, our footage reveals a rare portrait of grassroots activism in contemporary China. Far from a simple black-and-white portrait, the film tracks the villagers as they seek out the help and power of the national government to curb local businesses and local officials. The film’s intimacy leads us past the headlines and clichés about modern China to offer a memorable portrait of villagers wrestling with, and transformed by, China’s headlong rush into modernity.
When "This American Life" host Ira Glass (pictured) talks about storytelling, we listen. Q: What is the value of telling stories?Read the whole terrific Q&A with Ira Glass here. There are lessons aplenty for visual journalists.
GLASS: The story is a machine for empathy. In contrast to logic or reason, a story is about emotion that gets staged over a sequence of dramatic moments, so you empathize with the characters without really thinking about it too much. It is a really powerful tool for imagining yourself in other people's situations.
The mission of our show [is] to take the people and present them at exactly life scale. So when we do a story about sailors on an aircraft carrier that is flying missions over Afghanistan in the early months of the war on terror, we didn't only go for the heroic gung-ho men and women who are traveling in harm's way, we go for what it is actually like for the majority of the people there. In the show we did, the first person you meet is a woman whose job it is to fill candy machines on the ship with candy. That's her job in the war on terror, which she laughs about.
Most people on the aircraft carrier don't fly planes, or shoot guns at bad guys to make the world a better place. They do laundry, they check the radar, they fix the intercom system. That's a lot of what it means to be in the military.
Q: How do you tell a story well?
GLASS: There is a kind of structure for a story that was peculiarly compelling for the radio. I thought I had invented it atom-by-atom sitting in an editing booth in Washington on M Street when I was in my 20s. Then I found out that it is one of the oldest forms of telling a story -- it was the structure of a sermon.
I actually realized it when I went home for Yom Kippur in Baltimore. We have a great rabbi. He is one of those guys whose sermons are the total entertainment package. There is one anecdote after another and then, of course, the Torah portion for that week. He then ties it all together with some heartfelt emotional moment.
So I'm with my sisters and my mother and he is giving the sermon and doing his thing, and I thought, oh, that's the structure of my radio show.
Q: Does every story that makes it onto "This American Life" have a moral?
GLASS: A moral overstates it. Every story has some thought about the world...
Some rare good news for documentary producers and fans. JustFilms will also leverage the foundation's global network of 10 regional offices to identify and lift new talent from around the world and to strengthen emerging communities of documentary filmmakers.Directing the JustFilms initiative will be Orlando Bagwell (pictured), an award-winning filmmaker ("Eyes on the Prize") who has served as a program officer and director in the foundation's Freedom of Expression team for the past six years.
JustFilms will focus on film, video and digital works that show courageous people confronting difficult issues and actively pursuing a more just, secure and sustainable world. The initiative will pursue three distinct funding paths, each receiving roughly one-third of its annual overall budget:
•Partnerships with major organizations such as the Sundance Institute, the Independent Television Service and others.
•An ongoing open application process that will help JustFilms stay attuned to fresh ideas and stories wherever they may emerge.
•Partnership with other Ford Foundation grant-making programs where the introduction of documentary film could help draw attention to an issue or advance a movement.
•Enlarge the conversation on issues of importance by investing in documentary films that capture people’s imaginations and engage them in shaping their futures.Learn more about JustFilms here.
•Expand the community of independent documentary filmmakers and lift the voices of new and innovative filmmakers from around the world.
•Help filmmakers craft important stories, and also develop strategies for finding and building audiences across a variety of platforms.
For your weekend viewing pleasure, we share with you the first episode of "Making Stuff," PBS's new four-part NOVA series exploring the materials that will shape our future.Pogue travels from the deck of a U.S. naval aircraft carrier to a demolition derby to the country's top research labs to check in with experts who are re-engineering what nature has given us to create the next generation of strong stuff.The one-hour show was written, directed and produced by Chris Schmidt.
What will the future bring, and what will it be made of? From the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age to more recent periods dominated by plastics and silicon, materials have defined the progression of humankind. Now we are once again poised on the verge of a materials revolution, as researchers around the globe push the boundaries further than ever before, using biology and chemistry to imbue materials with new qualities that are expanding our technological frontiers.You can watch the fascinating series here.
The United Nations estimates there are now about 20 "megacities" on the planet -- urban areas where the population exceeds 10 million. The fastest growing is Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Among these megacities, The World Bank says Dhaka, with its current population of 15 million people, bears the distinction of being the fastest-growing in the world. Between 1990 and 2005, the city doubled in size — from 6 to 12 million. By 2025, the U.N. predicts Dhaka will be home to more than 20 million people — larger than Mexico City, Beijing or Shanghai.How can you get a handle on such a vast topic?
As the 11th Sundance Film Festival opens today in Park City, Utah, one of the most anticipated documentaries is “Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times” by Andrew Rossi, who, as the title suggests, spent a year following the fabled institution's reporters and editors.What is probably most interesting is that many of the stories covered by the Times in the film are about the technological forces that have put it and other traditional media organizations through the digital ringer in recent years.One of the biggest "characters" in the film -- in every sense of the word -- is Times' media columnist David Carr (pictured, left), who can be very funny, and doesn't pull his punches.
Here's a multimedia project with an alluring navigation scheme that shows some creative planning and thinking. "The goal of the project is to inform the wider Australian population about the issues faced by, and contributions made by, African migrants (a highly under-represented community within the Australian media). However, we also wanted the content to work for these African communities, so we have translated the whole site into six African languages.Considering the slop-pile hodgepodge that normally passes for Web video pages, the effort devoted to arranging and presenting the mix of individual tales is admirable.
One of the other unique features is the related content area. As themes emerge within individual videos we relate them to other stories within the site. For example, a boy in Melbourne may be talking about discrimination, and the site will suggest sections of other videos that also discuss discrimination."
A rare and candid TV interview with Martin Luther King, Jr. -- unseen in 40 years -- is the centerpiece of this timely hour-long tribute, courtesy of SnagFilms. It features exclusive interviews with Jesse Jackson and Colin Powell that provide fresh insight into the life and personality of the late civil rights leader. 
Newsday teamed up with with local news station News12 to produce an inside look at one of the most dramatic gubernatorial contests in New York State history. Over eight months, Maier and Paraskevas filmed hours of video footage -- including exclusive interviews with candidates, party leaders and key political figures -- to track the ambitions, betrayals and behind-the-scenes influences in this race. This combination of video and print appeared in the pages of Newsday, the websites of Newsday and News12, was broadcast on special reports on News12, and presented on News12’s Video on Demand channel.
Two recent online video documentaries explore separate cultural perspectives on the issue of rape. Eventually, I received permission from Pollsmoor Prison, a maximum security facility on the outskirts of Cape Town, to interview dozens of men convicted of rape. The permission process to film at Pollsmoor took 2 years...
My guide inside Pollsmoor was warden and therapist Chris Malgas, who runs a counseling program for convicted offenders using groupwork and individual therapy. My follow up story is a raw look at some of those interactions between Chris and his group, a testament to why it's so difficult to stop South Africa's cycle of sexual abuse...
The perpetrators testimonies provide a grim picture of growing up in the townships and the crimes these men committed. Many talked about being exposed to violent gang culture from a young age, where rape was a rite of passage.
During my time at Pollsmoor, I learned as much about Chris, a 33-year veteran of the prison system, and his motivation to keep his voluntary program going, as I did about the environment inside and outside prison that grooms these men to commit their crimes...
A year after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, women in Haiti’s still-teeming tent cities face yet another threat: sexual violence. With little protection from community or law enforcement, many have been violently raped, only to become pregnant with their attackers’ children.
Photojournalist Nadav Neuhaus traveled through Haiti’s tent cities last summer, photographing and interviewing dozens of residents in the camps that still house more than 1 million people. During a visit to Camp La Piste, home to 50,000 displaced people, Neuhaus noticed an unusually high number of pregnant women. A community organizer and a local midwife confirmed his worries: Many of the women were pregnant as a result of rape.
They came to Camp La Piste after losing parents, brothers and husbands in the earthquake, leaving them to fend for themselves in the sprawling squalor, where roving gangs of armed men terrorize residents.
In a new report, Amnesty International documents the rise in sexual violence, including at least 250 rapes reported in the first few months after the earthquake. Fueled in part by these sexual attacks, the birth rate in Haiti has tripled since the quake, climbing from 4 percent to 12 percent, according to population experts.
Most women told Neuhaus they don’t report the rapes, either out of shame or fear of repercussions. Even if they wanted to report the crimes, there's little help in a country where police and justice systems are destroyed or distracted and where resources for the powerless are almost non-existent.
The annual Stan Kalish Picture Editing Workshop has trained more than 1,000 journalists in visual storytelling since its inception in 1990 at Marquette University in Milwaukee.New in Kalish 3.0 are sessions in User Generated Visuals with discussions about recruiting the visual talents in your community, strategies for raising the level of contributed work and integrating community members as a part of your organizations' news coverage strategies. Many visual editors are now working with freelancers and community members so we're retooling our ethics session appropriately.Tuition is $650. Enrollment is limited to 30. Apply before May 1 here.
All the values of The Kalish remain: leadership, managing by example, and the ethical treatment of people and images. Those themes are the framework for intense, exhausting discussions about visual storytelling. Establishing narrative, selecting the media mix, editing to the narrative, and producing the story are in our curriculum. We combine a mix of lectures, hands-on exercises, critiques and group discussions to create a more complete learning experience.
"For most of my life, I've despised highrise buildings," writes Canadian documentary director Katerina Cizek. "It was with considerable humility that I began to examine my own relationship to the urban and the vertical." Concrete residential highrise buildings are the most commonly built form of the last century. On the outside, they all look the same. But inside these towers of concrete and glass, people create community, art and meaning amid the ruins of modernism.As Telegraph21 reports:
Meet remarkable residents who look out on the world from highrise windows, and harness the human spirit.
With more than 90 minutes of material to explore, "Out My Window" features 49 stories from 13 cities, told in 13 languages.
Cizek directed the project via Skype, Facebook and email, in a collaborative process with photographers, journalists, architects, researchers, activists, digital developers and artists from around the world.Cizek's documentary work has chronicled the Digital Revolution, and has itself become part of the movement. She works across many media platforms: linear films, radio, print, television, emerging new media and live presentations. Among many other accomplishments, Cizek also created and rolled out the award-winning NFB Filmmaker-in-Residence program, an innovative partnership of media with medicine, previously showcased on KobreGuide to the Web's Best Videojournalism.
In Cizek's words, "the fragmented, non-linear stories of 'Out My Window' reflect the way we tell our stories. Pieces. Snippets. Small tales that, as they add up, create a collage of meaning, of experience. Together, subtly, gently, the stories accumulate into epic narratives about globalization, migration, poverty, environmentalism, reclamation, and the search for spiritual meaning."
Here are five lessons the media should learn from the Columbus Dispatch's video story about Ted Williams. (That golden-throated homeless guy does have a name.)
Everybody's got a story. You just gotta stop and ask them. That's what Columbus (OH) Dispatch videojournalist Doral Chenoweth III discovered when he asked to hear the "God-given gift of voice" that a panhandling homeless man advertised on a cardboard sign off a freeway ramp: "I'm an ex-radio announcer who has fallen on hard times." 
It's been nearly two years since KobreGuide to the Web's Best Videojournalism showcased the short New York Times video "Being Aron Ralston," about the young Colorado mountain climber trapped by a boulder for six days before he amputated his arm to escape death. 
Here are links to Time magazine's Best Photos of 2010:
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