Zach Wise is currently a multimedia producer for the New York Times. Before going to the Times, he was the senior multimedia producer for the Las Vegas Sun. Before he left the Sun he finished this great multimedia piece on Nevada’s water woes. Great navigation, interactive elements throughout and great reporting are all part of this report. Click on the image above or go to the story, and then read about how Zach put it all together.

James Nachtwey, one of the greatest living photojournalists today, just released this story as part of an effort to spread the word on XDRTB through TED. For more information go to the XDRTB website.

ATTENTION: ALL WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS/MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISTS

Reel Venus is seeking entries of short films, photography/multimedia slideshow presentations for its 5th Annual showcase which is set to take place October 2,3 & 4 2008.

Reel Venus is an eclectic 3-day showcase of alternative and mainstream film/video shorts (30 minutes or less) photography and multimedia presentations directed/photographed by WOMEN filmmakers, video artists and photographers from the U.S. and abroad. Works must have been completed after July 2007. Go to www.reelvenus.com for more information.

DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES: August 30, 2008 – $20.00.

email: reelvenus.submissions08@gmail.com
phone: 212-714-8375

Melissa Fowler
Reel Venus Film Festival
Founder/Director/Curator

From the website: “At War” is a documentary film shot and directed by Scott Kesterson, who spent a year embedded with US forces in Afghanistan. The film is produced and edited by David Leeson, Pulitzer Prize recipient and currently Executive Producer – Video and New Media for The Dallas Morning News. The film is subject-driven storytelling, allowing the truth of the moment to speak in the tradition of ethical still photojournalism. At War explores the timeless nature of war and conflict, and ultimately challenges us to look at ourselves as beings filled with love and hate, fear and courage, passion and chaos.

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From the Barefoot Workshops website:

CONTENT
This 2-week delta workshop is designed for new documentary filmmakers who want to launch their careers in film and television documentaries or for those with experience in some aspects of filmmaking that are looking to expand their skill, understanding and mastery of the whole process. producers, cinematographers, editors and writers with narrative experience who are considering working in non-fiction filmmaking are also encouraged to enroll. This workshop is ideal for working professionals who want to develop important skills, which will allow them to work with other filmmakers.

In this unique workshop, students will explore every aspect of documentary filmmaking. Cinematographer, Chandler Griffin, will help you develop an understanding for the visual structure, style, and production requirements of a wide variety of documentaries along with storytelling and the art of writing and directing. This will include laying a visual foundation by spending many hours exploring how light, composition, and emotion make up the image. Many different lighting techniques and styles will be covered. Chandler will also be covering all editing demos using Final Cut Pro. Using case studies along with student’s ideas, the goal of the course is to provide an intense overview of the art of documentary productions. Every student will learn how to evaluate non-fiction ideas, create their own ideas and develop an understanding of documentary film aesthetics and the storytelling process.<

THE PROGRAM
The workshop meets formally 6 days each week. There will be lectures, screenings, presentations, technical demos, a review and critique of all dailies, supervised editing sessions, discussion of documentaries, and individual meetings with the Chandler. The workshop combines lectures and presentations with supervised and formal instruction in production laboratories (camera, lighting, sound, editing), shooting on location, transcribing, screening and discussion of current and classic documentaries, meetings with visiting filmmakers and written assignments. Students will write and develop proposals for future projects.

PRODUCTION
The workshop will break into groups with each group producing a completed 7 to 10 minute piece shot on digital video and edited with Final Cut Pro. Students will meet and scout their subjects and write treatments and outlines to guide their production. from there they will conduct interviews, tape B-roll and coverage for a sequence, record sound and take their material into post-production. There they will be instructed in creating first an edit on paper, then on the computer, where after assembly into a final edit, they will color correct, mix sound and add titles to their finished work. The projects will encompass the diversity of documentary styles and allow the individual the chance to problem-solve by learning to work as a team.

PRESENTATION
On the last night of the workshops the documentaries will be screened for the community to enjoy. The filmmakers are encouraged to invite family and friends. Because of the full support of The Mississippi Film Commission, documentaries produced with Barefoot Images are automatically accepted for a special screening at the Crossroads International Film & Video Festival in Jackson, Mississippi, and students are encouraged to submit to other festivals around the world.

Chandler Griffin/Barefoot Workshops
917-385-9343
chandler@barefootworkshops.com
Brooke Bassin/Barefoot Workshops
Brooke.bassin@barefootworkshops.org

At War is a documentary film shot and directed by Scott Kesterson, who spent a year embedded with US forces in Afghanistan. The film is produced and edited by David Leeson, Pulitzer Prize recipient and currently Executive Producer – Video and New Media for The Dallas Morning News. The film is subject-driven storytelling, allowing the truth of the moment to speak in the tradition of ethical still photojournalism. It explores the timeless nature of war and conflict, and ultimately challenges us to look at ourselves as beings filled with love and hate, fear and courage, passion and chaos.

The reported cost of the Sony PMW-EX1 HD camera will be in the $8,000 range. A bit pricey for personal consumption, but remember the old days when the first digital cameras were in the $20,000 range. It wasn’t until Nikon introduced the D-1 in the $5,000 range that prices came down. Give it time and these should come down in price as well. The advantage of course is getting rid of tapes. From Sony:

The PMW-EX1 is the first in a new range of professional HD products – called XDCAM EX – which are the first to record onto memory-based SxS ExpressCard media. Designed from the ground up to exploit the ultimate high performance of SxS PRO memory cards, the PMW-EX1 combines a state-of-the-art, non-linear XDCAM workflow with simply the best HD quality yet seen in a compact camcorder. It is also the first handheld camcorder to carry the legendary CineAlta 24P brand with multiple frame rate recording capability such as 59.94i, 50i, and native 23.98P, as well being 1080i/720P switchable.

There is also a choice of a 35Mb/s High Quality mode or a 25Mb/s, HDV 1080i compatible mode. To take advantage of this high performance recording capability, the PMW-EX1 uses an all-new imaging system consisting of three ½-inch type CMOS sensors, each with an effective pixel count of 1920×1080 to produce images in full HD resolution. In addition, there’s a purpose-built Fujinon Professional HD ½-inch 14x lens and a unique dual focus ring mechanism.

In fact, there are innovations in every detail of the PMW-EX1, from its IT-friendly MP4 file recording to advanced creative features, such as selectable gamma curves and “Slow & Quick Motion” capability.

To maximise recording time, the PMW-EX1 has two memory card slots which means with a pair of 16 GB SxS PRO memory cards, it can record up to 140 minutes of HD footage.

A wide variety of accessories are also available, including a USB Reader/Writer, a wide-conversion lens, battery and charger.

The PMW-EX1 HD compact camcorder is the ideal solution for a wide range of customers from broadcasters through to independent videographers and film makers who want exceptional HD picture quality and state-of-the-art workflow from a compact and affordable camcorder.

Comparison of Camera vs. Boom Microphone: Here’s a quick comparison I did of recording dialog with an MKH60 Shotgun Microphone mounted on a camera vs. mounted on a boom.

The Blogging Scholarship
Is Your Blog Worthy of a $10,000 Scholarship? Do you maintain a weblog and attend college? Would you like $10,000 to help pay for books, tuition, or other living costs? If so, read on. We’re giving away $10,000 this year to a college student who blogs. The Blogging Scholarship is awarded annually.

Scholarship Requirements:

• Your blog must contain unique and interesting information about you and/or things you are passionate about. No spam bloggers please!
• U.S. citizen
• Currently attending full-time in post-secondary education
• If you win, you must be willing to allow us to list your name and blog on this page. We want to be able to say we knew you before you became a well educated, rich, and famous blogging legend.

Important Dates:

• Submission Deadline: Midnight PST on Oct. 6th
• 10 Finalists Announced and Public Voting Begings: 9am EST on Oct. 8th
• Public Voting Ends and Winner Declared: Midnight PST on Oct. 28th

10 Future Web Trends
by Richard MacManus

We’re well into the current era of the Web, commonly referred to as Web 2.0. Features of this phase of the Web include search, social networks, online media (music, video, etc), content aggregation and syndication (RSS), mashups (APIs), and much more. Currently the Web is still mostly accessed via a PC, but we’re starting to see more Web excitement from mobile devices (e.g. iPhone) and television sets (e.g. XBox Live 360). What then can we expect from the next 10 or so years on the Web?

1. Semantic Web: In a nutshell, the Semantic Web is about machines talking to machines. It’s about making the Web more ‘intelligent’, or as Berners-Lee himself described it: computers “analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers.”

2. Artificial Intelligence: In the context of the Web, AI means making intelligent machines. In that sense, it has some things in common with the Semantic Web vision.

3. Virtual Worlds: Second Life gets a lot of mainstream media attention as a future Web system. But at a recent Supernova panel that Sean Ammirati attended, the discussion touched on many other virtual world opportunities.

4. Mobile: In 10 years time there will be many more location-aware services available via mobile devices; such as getting personalized shopping offers as you walk through your local mall, or getting map directions while driving your car, or hooking up with your friends on a Friday night.

5. Attention Economy: The Attention Economy is a marketplace where consumers agree to receive services in exchange for their attention. Examples include personalized news, personalized search, alerts and recommendations to buy.

6. Web Sites as Web Services: Major web sites are going to be transformed into web services – and will effectively expose their information to the world.

7. Online Video / Internet TV: This is a trend that has already exploded on the Web – but you still get the sense there’s a lot more to come yet. It’s fair to say that in 10 years time, Internet TV will be totally different to what it is today. Higher quality pictures, more powerful streaming, personalization, sharing, and much more – it’s all coming over the next decade. Perhaps the big question is: how will the current mainstream TV networks (NBC, CNN, etc) adapt?

8. Rich Internet Apps: As the current trend of hybrid web/desktop apps continues, expect to see RIA (rich internet apps) continue to increase in use and functionality.

9. International Web: As of 2007, the US is still the major market in the Web. But in 10 years time, things might be very different.

10. Personalization: Personalization has been a strong theme in 2007, particularly with Google.

-more

Traditional Journalism Job Cuts Countered by Digital Additions
by Mark Glaser
If you follow the world of traditional journalism, you can’t help but notice the seemingly constant stream of layoffs and buyouts at news organizations. But media observers don’t often emphasize the flip side: As newspapers and broadcasters slice their senior-level workforce, they are also quietly building their digital and online teams. -more

Video search is still a hot topic and this piece by Katherine Boehret at Wall Street Journal Online looks at the major players. She gives high praise to Truveo as one of the best of the bunch.

The Best Way To Search Videos On the Internet
By KATHERINE BOEHRET, Wall Street Journal Online
Some fascinating results can be produced when you scour the Internet using a giant search engine like Google’s. You can discover the seedy past of a creep you might have otherwise dated, find directions to the nearest Thai restaurant, or instantly learn how many inches are in a mile (63,360). But searching for video, the hottest content on the Web right now, isn’t easy. Sure, you can go to Google’s popular YouTube site and look for clips stored there. But that won’t find videos from other sites, especially copyrighted clips that YouTube doesn’t offer or has removed from its site. This week, I tested four video-search engines, including revamped entrant Truveo.com, a smartly designed site that combs through Web video from all sorts of sources ranging from YouTube to broadcasting companies. Truveo, a subsidiary of AOL, is stepping out on its own again after spending three years in the background, powering video search for the likes of Microsoft, Brightcove and AOL itself. It unveiled its new site last week, though I’ve been playing with it for a few weeks now. This Web site, www.truveo.com, operates under the idea that users don’t merely search for video by entering specific words or phrases, like they would when starting a regular Web search. Instead, Truveo thinks that people don’t often know what they’re looking for in online video searches, and browsing through content helps to retrieve unexpected and perhaps unintended (but welcome) results. I found that, compared with other sites, Truveo provided the most useful interface, which showed five times as many results per page as the others and encouraged me to browse other clips. In effect, Truveo combines the browsing experience of a YouTube with the best Web-wide video-search engine I’ve seen. – more

(1) New York Times: We love the general feeling of the NYT site, which is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate. The site is loaded with great features, and the website is rumored to be dropping its annoying pay wall, TimesSelect, in the coming months.
(2) Washington Post: Not only do we like the design and the navigability of the Post’s website, but we really love its database applications, which provide interesting tidbits of information difficult to find elsewhere. The Post’s website has been a huge success, and is one of the best examples of newspapers creating an online product that is significantly different from its print product.
(3) USA Today: Social networking. Social networking. Social networking. Did I mention that this site has the most robust social networking features out of any of the newspaper websites we researched? Oh yeah. And this site has social networking.
(4) Houston Chronicle: We like the non-newspaperish feeling that this homepage exudes. It’s significantly different from any other newspaper site. Chron.com offers its users interactive features such as comments and blogs, has a great RSS system made available right on the homepage, and looks good while doing it.
(5) Denver Post: The homepage of this site isn’t much to write home about, but registering with the site automatically gives you your own blog and your own photo gallery for uploading and sharing photos. When you add in some interesting political features, including a voter’s guide and a poll for picking candidates and combine that with alternative content views, internal and external bookmarking features, as well as links from stories to relevant materials, you’ve got all the ingredients necessary to build a great website.
(6) Knoxville News Sentinel: I’m not sure a newspaper website could look any better than this one. When we talk about de-cluttering sites and making them look “clean”, this is what we mean.
(7) Fresno Bee: Great homepage, interesting CrimeMap feature, and overall just a solid site with lots of technology and an easy-to-use format.
(8) Austin American Statesman: We really like the unique layout and coloring of this site’s homepage. We’re also giving this site points for allowing anyone to blog and for linking to many of the site’s blogs directly from the homepage.
(9) Tennessean: The blog-like feel of this site’s homepage helped it make our list. We also like the strong presence of multimedia on the homepage.
(10) San Jose Mercury News: On this homepage, we like the simple layout of the article headlines and descriptions. I also like the inclusion of the box with blog headlines, user photos, forum titles, and podcasts toward the top of the homepage. The site loads a bit slowly and is a little light on the features, but it does have all the core elements of a good site.

While it may never be used by news sites, a very interesting slide show tool from Animoto that was just released after finishing beta testing:

From the website: Animoto is a web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos, each a customized orchestration of user-selected images and music. Using patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and high-end motion design, the result is a user’s own personal creation with the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer. Playing on a widescreen video format, Animoto Videos present the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer using the same sophisticated post-production skills & techniques that are used in television and film.

Compensation is also decreasing with the median salary for journalists working for the daily newspaper industry declining by nearly $1,000 compared with salaries earned by graduates with similar jobs a year earlier. It would be interesting to find out how people in the multimedia end of the media business are faring in terms of compensation. The study did note that salaries were above the overall median salary of $30,000 for graduates taking jobs with specialized information publishing and online publishing but didn’t specify the exact job position.

There was no mention of anyone using web video. However, “Nearly six in 10 of the graduates reported feeling they had the ability to write for the web, and about four in 10 said they had the ability to edit for the web, to use the web for reporting, and to use still photographs on the web. About three in 10 said they had the ability to do web layout and design, do graphics for the web, and use web software. Only one in 10 said they had the ability to do web animation. Of the graduates, 17.1% said they had none of these abilities on graduation,” according to the report.

According to Lee Becker, director of the Cox Center and professor of journalism in UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication:

“The percentage of 2006 journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients with at least one job offer on graduation was 76 percent, comparable to the figure of a year earlier. The percentage of master’s degree recipients with at least one job offer on graduation was 72 percent, also comparable to the previous year. At the same time, salaries for graduates with full-time jobs did increase and even managed to outpace inflation just slightly. Benefits, however, showed a marked decline. Only half of the journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients with a job in communication were working a 40-hour week. A quarter reported working between 41-50 hours per week. One trend in the work environment of the journalism and mass communication graduates seems quite distinct and likely to continue. Graduates find themselves in jobs where work involving the web is a quite prominent part of the routine. Graduates use the web to obtain materials for the various types of reports they produce. And they use the web to distribute the materials they produce. The field has become more web centered in recent years, and it will almost certainly become even more so in the future.”

Summary of 2006 Graduate Survey Results

• Only 3.1% of the journalism and mass communication graduates in 2006 had no job interviews as they entered the market.
• The percentage of 2006 journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients with at least one job offer on graduation was 76.2, comparable to the figure of a year earlier.
• On October 31, 2006, 63.7% of the journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients from the past spring held a full-time job, and 11.9% had a part-time job. These figures are statistically comparable with the figures from a year earlier.
• The percentage of master’s degree recipients with at least one job offer on graduation in 2006 was 72.2, statistically consistent with the estimate from a year earlier.
• On October 31 of 2006, 64.8% of the master’s degree recipients had a full-time job; that figure in 2005 was 65.7%.
• For the women, the market remained largely unchanged from a year earlier, while for men the market was weaker.
• The gap between the experiences of bachelor’s degree recipients who are members of racial or ethnic minority groups and those who are not also persisted in 2006. Students who are members of minority groups had a harder time finding a job.
• Four in 10 of the 2006 journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients with a job in communication reported that at least part of their assignment involved writing and editing for the web, an increase from 2005.
• The percentage of graduates reporting that they are designing and building web pages also increased in 2006.
• Only half of the journalism and mass communication bachelor’s degree recipients in 2006 with a job in communication were working a 40-hour week when they returned the survey instrument. A quarter were working between 41 and 50 hours.
• Median salaries for journalism and mass communication graduates, both at the bachelor’s and master’s degree level, increased by $1,000 in 2006 compared with a year earlier. The increase was just enough to keep up with inflation.