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Day 15 — Bootcamp is over. Now comes the hard part.

Based on the last three weeks, I suspected our final day of Bootcamp was not going to tie things up, but launch us into there year ahead —and that is exactly what today’s speakers did.

This morning, Jan Schaffer, Executive Director of J-Lab, told us how her organization is actively exploring the role of journalism and questioning its traditions.

Jan Schaffer describes how J-Lab is changing the way journalism is practiced.

Too often, said Schaffer, journalistic work has been considered a “data dump,” a one-sided process in which  journalists and publications present information to an audience they assume will consume it. End of exchange.

J-Lab is attempting to find ways to engage consumers, hold them accountable in their duties as civilians and, in turn, hold officials accountable. Such journalism, said Schaffer, should have a civic impact, build an active and engaged community and add value to that community. In order to accomplish all that, J-Lab is building “new inroads and entry points” for news consumers, such as games and databases.

As journalists, we have to take into account that consumers are actually becoming collaborators—and push ourselves to produce content that inspires them to interact.

Our second speaker, Jeremy Stone (son of I.F. Stone), upped the high expectations our speakers and professors have given us.

Jeremy Stone talks about the work of his father, I.F. Stone

I.F. Stone, rather than working with the support of a publication, wrote in “considerable isolation,” Jeremy Stone said. After the Daily Compass closed in 1952, Stone started I.F. Stone’s Weekly.

After reading part of the May 30, 1995 issue (The Supreme Court Strikes a Blow at the Witch Hunt), it’s clear what Jeremy Stone said about his father’s “tremendous sense of independence.” His writing about what he calls the “McCarthyite inquisition” is brave, detailed and provocative.

Although I.F. Stone’s Weekly dug deeper than many blogs do today, his entrepreneurial attitude and his willingness to write for his audience rather than for a publication is inspiring as we move into a time in which this is the norm.

This afternoon, Thalia Assuras (former CBS correspondent) gave us some insight into what might lie ahead after graduation.

Thalia Assuras talks about the challenges of working in TV news

“Some days are filled with anxiety and fear of failure,” Assuras said.

We must also be ready ”to go live at any moment, to be ready to go anywhere at any moment.” Assuras kept a change of clothes in her office just in case.

As journalists, our commitment will be to the news, which happens outside of traditional work hours. Over the past three weeks, we have worked from nine to five to complete assignments that were never more than a metro ride away.

Bootcamp was not about making us experts in the technologies we used, but has made many of us realize we can and should engage with new things and strive to  utilize them effectively. Nor was it about about making us ready for the jobs we came to graduate school to get but about hearing speakers whose careers are proof of the hard work in store for us.

I started Bootcamp three weeks ago with high expectations for the program to which I was about to devote a year of my life. I’m leaving it with high expectations for myself.

Day 14 — Video screenings and lessons from Jim Brady

A recurring theme throughout Bootcamp has been the importance of learning through experimentation. Viewing our videos and listening to our speaker (Jim Brady, former executive editor of Washingtonpost.com) today really accentuated the importance of being open to new things.

The morning began with a look at the videos the class had created.  During the critiques that followed, we discussed the mistakes we had made. Most remarkable, however, was the fact that we had all done some things well, despite the fact that few of us had significant video-editing experience.

Based on my own editing experience and my classmates’ final products, my next video project will (hopefully) include the following:

Clearer sound. While in the field, it can be awkward to ask an interview subject to speak louder or move to a quieter location, or to do a few tests beforehand. Yet the few minutes it takes to do so can save a lot of time during editing—and save the story. Audiences can forgive lower-quality video, but, as was apparent today, bad audio is distracting.

More close-ups/detail shots.  For me, the most memorable shots of the day were close-ups and detail shots. In this video, the team got inside a vendor’s cart to show a taco being made. This team got up close to a crab at the fish market. For a story on cab drivers, this team took a ride in a taxi to get some memorable shots of the meter and of the driver in the rear-view mirror.

After our video, someone pointed out what a difference it made when we got down at the same level as the dogs instead of shooting them from above. While editing, I had noticed that we had a wealth of  footage of the dogs taken from our height, and less than half as many shots taken at dog-level. In fact, my partner and I had labeled those precious close-ups and kept reminding each other to be sure to use them. They held our story together.

Less wasted film. Before I got in the habit of planning my shots, I hit record excessively. This was evident when my partner and I waded through our video.

An effective establishing shot. Our professors have reminded us constantly to tell a story with whatever medium we are using. It is vital to establish that story clearly and early with a shot that helps viewers orient themselves.

Smooth and logical transitions. Jump cuts are distracting and awkward. Equally disorienting is when the video does not correspond to a sound bite. I now know how important it is to get footage of the things described in interviews so that they can be matched during editing.

Our videos were not perfect. Yet, we learned  a lot in a very short time because we were pushed to try something completely new.

Trying something completely new is what has defined the career of Jim Brady, who spoke to us this afternoon.

 

Jim Brady explains how he predicted the future of journalism.

Brady started his career “when newsrooms just had typwriters,” yet became “evangelistic” about the need for journalists to embrace the internet.

Newspapers, Brady explained, are “great general interest products,” which include information on news, politics, travel, entertainment and sports.

“But somebody is doing every one of those things better on the web,” he said.

While working at Washingtonpost.com, Brady pushed new ideas that were initially rejected by some of his coworkers: blogging, allowing comments on the web site and linking to other content. His ideas, which were foreign to some of his contemporaries, turned out to be vital ingredients to keeping an audience in the digital age.

Over the past three weeks, one of the many things I have learned is that success (the success of journalists like Brady, our success in this course, and our future success in this industry) depends on keeping a forward momentum.

My first video: Dog Days of Summer

Editing video was both harder and easier than I expected. Final Cut Pro is surprisingly user-friendly. But creating a piece that is coherent, interesting, audible and polished is a skill I now admire even more in those who can do it.

Here’s what happened during the hours it took us to produce one minute of video:

Step 1: Choosing our quotes

We started by finding soundbites from our interviews that we felt helped tell our story. Although we only had three short interviews, they added up to about five minutes of content. We focused on quotes that directly addressed how the dogs were coping with the heat and edited out any repetitive material.

Step 2: Choosing an opening shot

Our first quote was from a professional dog walker, so we wanted to choose an establishing shot with him in it. We also wanted it to include as many dogs as possible to show that our piece was about dogs in general, rather than a specific dog. And of course we wanted it to convey that it was hot outside. We therefore chose a shot of the dog walker walking accross the park carrying a water jug with the dogs following him. The clip also included natural sound of the dogs barking.

Step 3: Choosing the ending

The last shot we took that day was of the dog-walkers leaving with the dogs. It was an interesting shot of them holding a dozen leashes and heading off into the distance, but it didn’t evoke our story’s topic (the heat). Instead, we chose a quote from our final interview, in which our subject says that “it’s 100 degrees out” and paired it with a close-up of a dog panting.

Step 4: Adding b roll

We wanted our b roll to tie into the quotes and capture the natural sounds of the day. For example, when the dog walker mentioned that the dogs were less playful in the heat, we used a clip of him trying to play with a dog who  just wanted to lie down. When he spoke about giving the dogs as much water as they wanted, we included b roll of the dogs crowded around the water bowls (and natural sound of them drinking). We also had plenty of shots of dogs panting to continuously establish the heat of the day.

Step 5: Timing

This was the most difficult part, as it entailed experimenting with different placements of our b roll. For example, would it be more logical to introduce an image first and then have a voice come in that addressed it? Or would it be more effective to start with the voice and then introduce an image? Or introduce them both simultaneously? Then there was the matter of making sure there were no jarring transitions and deciding when to use audio cross fades. Even with just a minute-long clip, there were infinite possiblities.

Day 13– Panicking your way to success

One of the things we’ve learned a lot about in Bootcamp is what makes a good story.

Susan Zirinski, executive producer of 48 Hours at CBS, has a lot of good stories. Today, we got to hear some of then when we spoke to her via Skype.

An interview in the digital age: Susan Zirinski talks to us via Skype

There  was the one about Tiananmen Square and her decision to protect a source by bringing him to the US Embassy. And the one about her part-time college job at CBS, which inspired her to become a journalist. Then, there was the one about a surprise job offer that launched a three-day panic attack. Terrified, she took the job anyway.

“I don’t think I’ve ever gone into a job I felt I was ready for,” Zirinski said.

Zirinski calls herself a “fearful person” who “live[s] in anxiety,” which sometimes wakes her in the middle of the night. However this fear, she emphasized, is a “motivating force.”

With two days left of Bootcamp, this particular story struck me—because the things I have been most worried about during this experience are the things that taught me the most and taught me the quickest.

Day 12– “Let go of your fear of failing”

This was the advice Professor Olmsted gave us this morning before sending us off to edit video. I was not afraid of failing, because my goals for today were simple ones: learn things I didn’t know before (not difficult, as I knew nothing about editing video) and learn enough so that I can continue to practice (a lot).

Professor Olmsted rallies the troops during a fire drill

Days like today are challenging and sometimes frustrating (but rewarding) because they require me to learn something new every minute.

Final Cut Pro

 

Rob Roberts demonstrates Final Cut Pro

 

 

 

Rob Roberts took us through the basics this afternoon. On one hand, I was surprised at how intuitive the the basics of Final Cut Pro are. I had never used any video-editing software before, but the visual nature of the program (dragging and dropping, and viewing the sound and video as separate layers) made it accessible. I am nowhere near able to create professional video stories, but I’m working my way out of my former ”how-do-they-do-that” mentality.

Capturing video

After a crash-course in Final Cut Pro, we spent a crowded, chaotic hour in the lab with Professor Carolyn Brown, who navigated us through the process of capturing our video.

Professor Carolyn Brown talks external hard drives, capturing video and how not to lose our work

It was here I learned how things that get plugged in can (and will) malfunction—and that things that require hours of work can be easily lost. Capturing video and making sure everything gets saved correctly requires attention to detail and constant double-checking.

Editing video

This morning, Professor Hatch told us that learning to edit our own video will help us become more skilled at shooting because the editing process forces us to “deal with the mistakes [we] created.”

While editing the video, I noticed the following mistakes:

1)  The microphone was in a lot of our shots.

2) The microphone was not working. After Professor Olmsted investigated, she found that the bottom of the microphone had not been snapped in tightly. The sound we had been hearing in our headphones had been the sound the camera had picked up. At times, there was reasonably clear audio of our interviews. At times, there was audio of our interviews nearly getting drowned out by the bus. After painstakingly going through the video, finding good clips to use and discarding a lot of great ones because of background noise, I will never make this particular mistake again.

3) Things that weren’t as obvious during quick play-backs on the camera were very noticable during editing: shaky shots, panning, shots that were not held long enough and quite a bit of film wasted on duplicate shots.

As we continue to edit tomorrow, I hope to find out what we did well—and make it into our final product.

My slideshow– People-watching at the zoo

Check out my slideshow to see (and hear) how the most interesting creatures at the zoo are not the ones in cages.

Day 11– My introduction to video

My encounters with the unknown continued today. Within a few hours, I went from having never shot a video story, to having a camera in my hands, to having 25 minutes of footage to edit.

It all started with Rob Roberts (senior video editor for USA Today) giving us some encouraging advice.

“Video isn’t that hard, and a lot of people will tell you it is,” said Roberts.

Rob Roberts of USA Today gives students a crash course on video story-telling

However, working with video video is “time consuming,” Roberts warned us. Telling an effective story requires a variety of shots: close-up shots, mid-range shots and wide shots. In addition to interviews, b-roll (with natural sound) is vital. The challenges of recording audio also come into play: viewers may forgive a less-than-perfect video, but poor audio will make them lose track of the story—and lose interest in it. For all these reasons, a one-minute piece featuring the most effective shots might entail taking about 25 minutes of footage.

Students learn the basics before heading out into the field

The next thing I knew, my partner, Erissa Scalera, and I had a camera and an assignment (how pets were dealing with today’s heat). We headed for Walter Pierce dog park, hoping that at least some pet owners would be braving the heat.

There were. The dog park gave us lots of opportunities engaging video and audio (dogs barking, dogs lapping up water, dogs panting).

Shannon beat the heat by drinking plenty of water

As with gathering audio, the greatest challenges of shooting video were the ones I discovered while trying to do it.

Getting good sound is difficult when you don’t want the microphone to show. One of our best interview subjects was very soft-spoken. It was a challenge to keep the microphone out of the frame and still make his voice audible. While recording my audio story, I was able to put the microphone inches from the speaker’s mouth. Today, that was not an option.

Getting good sound is difficult in a public place. We filmed in a dog park that was right next to a bus stop. Busses came about every five minutes, so we learned quickly we would have to time the interviews accordingly.

A lot of thought goes into composing a shot. The rule of thirds looks simple on paper. In practice, it takes a lot of time, especially when dealing with moving subjects.

Getting a variety of shots (close-ups, mid-range and wide) involves a lot of planning. Erissa and I were constantly reminding ourselves and each other to get a variety of shots. I often found myself so fixated on getting a particular close-up I wanted (a dog drinking from a water bowl) that I missed some opportunities for wide shots (more than a dozen dogs crowding around the water bowl).

Animals don’t care how much film you are using. On the plus side, animals are not camera shy, and they don’t pose for the camera. However, seemingly simple shots can be a challenge. Crouching down to get a shot of a dog drinking from a water bowl makes the dog curious—curious enough to stop what it’s doing and sniff the camera or lick the microphone while other dogs jump on the person holding the camera and paw at the microphone cord. We were instructed not to pan the camera, yet it was difficult to get long enough shots of dogs that were constantly on the move (despite the heat).

Editing my video tomorrow will likely teach me more about what is a very new skill for me.  I hope I will be able to agree with Roberts that it is “not that hard.”

Day 10– Expert advice

One of the most rewarding aspects of Bootcamp is the fact that we get to hear from journalists with decades of experience as well as recent alums who are just embarking on their decades of experience.

Jim Asendio prepares us for life after graduate school

Jim Asendio, News Director at WAMU, is a mentor of young journalists, and he had plenty of advice for us. The radio station he used to work for is about to go dark, and Asendio emphasized to us the importance of being marketable in a field where a lot of qualified  people are looking for jobs.  Multimedia skills are not just a plus, but a requirement.

“The more you know how to do…the more saleable you are, the more portable you are,” said Asendio.

A passion for story telling, however, is what makes a journalist “pop out” among dozens of applications. And, ultimately, whichever form of media we use, our ability to tell a story

“You want people to go, ‘I don’t care what he or she is doing the story about, I know they take my breath away.’”

Our next speaker was more than 6,000 miles away. Rawand Darwesh, who currently works for the Kurdistan Regional Government in norther Iraq, is a 2005 SOC graduate. We spoke to him via phone after encountering technical difficulties with Skype.

Our conversation with Rawand Darwesh. Sykpe didn't work out so we moved on to plan B: the phone

He warned us about what he called the “CNN effect,” the American news audience’s  inaccurate perception of Iraq because of exclusively negative media coverage.

The Kurdistan region, Darwesh said,  is like “a different world” from the areas that dominate the news coverage of Iraq. He encouraged us to think of our job as “passing a message to the world.”

“Journalism is a responsibility,” said Darwesh. “Take on all parts of the story.”

Keosha Johnson talks about post-grad life

Keosha Johnson, a more recent alum (class of 2008), spoke to us this afternoon. Because Johnson was in our shoes not too long ago, she was able to tell us what it’s like to start a journalism career—by sharing her immediate experience rather than memories.

“You have to know everything and you have to be interested in everything, or you won’t be able to get a job or keep it,” said Johnson.

She also gave us a very memorable piece of advice: “Know you are going to fail.” Those words might at first seem intimidating. But I think it captures the reason I am going to graduate school—to prepare myself to fight for the career I want, not sail into it.

Day 9– The sights and sounds of the zoo

Bootcampers on the AU Shuttle enroute to the National Zoo

Today I discovered just how difficult it is to tell a story though sound and photos.

When Professor Olmsted announced we would be creating audio slide shows about the National Zoo, I figured that my partner, Kristen Becker, and I would have no problem getting dynamic photos and lively quotes and have plenty of time left over to check out these. However, we spent nearly every minute of our allotted time working.

Here’s why:

1) Animals aren’t always photogenic. It seemed like all the animals were napping while we were there. Those that were awake were not exactly posing for us—take these cheetahs, for example:

Cheetahs avoiding the "paparazzi"

Lucky for us, the people at the zoo were a lot more animated than the animals were. We decided to make our story about how the most interesting creatures on display at the zoo were not behind fences and Plexiglas.

A kid being a kid (or a monkey?)

Our chosen angle created additional challenges.

2) People are not always talkative.  Nearly everyone we approached was enthusiastic about participating in our story. Then our recording devices made them shy. Getting lengthy, interesting responses required a little coaxing through follow-up questions (which will have to be edited out).

We had also hoped to get some responses from children. However, children are shy. They will find a way to give a one-word answer to every question.

3) The zoo is a noisy place. It was not always possible to find quite places to do interviews. Even off the beaten path, there was always something—voices in the background, wind or the random waterfall. Also, places that were nearly quiet one minute would inevitably be filled with rowdy teenagers the next.

4) There is a lot to keep track of. When I’m taking down quotes with a pen and paper for a text story, it’s not difficult to control the interview. Today I was constantly preoccupied with background noise, getting photos and remembering not to fidget with the microphone.

5) Going back through the audio yields some unpleasant surprises. With a print story, I could use my own words to frame and elucidate my interview subjects’ incomplete sentences. When I listened to my audio later that day, I found that the way people talk is not always clear and does not always incorporate the context of the situation, making it difficult to use their words to tell a story.

At the zoo today, I learned very little about animal behavior. But I learned a lot about human behavior that will help me with future slideshows. The things I should have done this time will be the things I won’t forget to do next time.