Platypus Workshop in San Jose, 3/27 - 4/2

For those who want hands-on lessons in videojournalism, the Digital Journalist's Platypus Workshop for February is sold out, but there's still time to register for the March 27 - April 2 session at San Jose (CA) State University.

Platypus founder and leader Dirck Halstead writes:

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.

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).

Students provide their own HD DSLR camera and lens -- all else is supplied. The cost of the workshop is $1795.

To register, contact Michael Cheers at duane.cheers@sjsu.edu. For more information about the workshop, contact Dirck Halstead at dhalstead@mac.com

First Platypus Workshop for 2011

Dirck Halstead's next Platypus Workshop for videojournalism will be held February 13-19, 2011 at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX.

"The only thing you need to supply is your own DSLR capable of shooting HD video. We also recommend you get a Zacuto finder for the camera as well as a hard drive."

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 latest Final Cut Pro editing software.

Since its inception in 1999, over 300 photojournalists have been trained in multimedia at the Platypus program.

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, and the 2010 winner of the Sundance Film Festival Documentary Award for his film Restrepo was Platypus graduate Tim Hetherington.

You can attend the workshop as a shooter or as a producer, to collaboratively create the class exercises and a final 3–5 minute documentary or news story.

The cost of the workshop is $1795. NPPA and ASMP members are eligible for a 10% discount.

Register at the Precision Camera & Video website - or at (512)467-7676 Ext. 360.

For more info, email Dirck Halstead at dhalstead [at] mac[dot]com

How the Platypus Can Change Your Life

An open letter to photojournalists and videojournalists from DigitalJournalist.org publisher Dirck Halstead:

In the late Nineties I knew I needed a lifeboat in a hurry.

After 29 years of trotting the globe for Time magazine, I could see that the photojournalism I had known was sinking. Budgets that today would be unimaginable were being slashed, not just at Time but at all the other magazines and the movie studios that I had worked for.

If you are a photojournalist today, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Fortunately for me, a guy named Michael Rosenblum came along with his radical prediction that the new Hi8 video would revolutionize TV. I helped him get his idea funded, and Video News International was born. VNI was later bought by The New York Times and eventually faded away, but from this dream, the Platypus Workshops emerged.

In the first workshop, at the University of Oklahoma, four Pulitzer Prize winners were among its students.

Now after 37 workshops, it is hard not to find a leader in photojournalism that has not attended one. Among them are David Turley, Peter Turnley, Kim Komenich, Don Doll, Gail Mooney, David Leeson and Kimberly Acquaro, who was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005.

Many have become leaders in the industry and have won countless awards.

This year, the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for documentary went to Tim Hetherington, a 1999 Platypus graduate, for his feature film about a platoon of soldiers in Afghanistan, "Restrepo." Since attending the Platypus workshop, Hetherington has also won three World Press Photo Awards, in 2000, 2002 and 2007.

The most common remark made by graduates is "this workshop changed my life."

We still have a few places left in our Las Vegas workshop that starts April 2nd, but if you want to learn a new skill, which can transform your own life, you need to register now. Invest in yourself. Invest in your future.

More Platypus info here.