New Film Blog

I just started a new blog: Oregon Film News. A variation of my UO Cinema Studies program news package is up!

WMTM Update

On Monday night the We Make the Media non-profit group held another meeting. This time some members of a smaller group focused on investigative journalism, also from WMTM, joined us. This group headed by OPB's Emily Harris came to find out whether our groups shared enough goals to merge. Last night she sent out an email announcing that they have, in fact, decided to merge with us. Exciting news!

As usual, we had a lot to cover and it was a struggle trying to keep things on track. Twenty-two of us attended the meeting, and most had a lot to say. Colin Lovett, our chair, did a remarkable job of keeping us on schedule, which I really appreciated, because I had to leave right at 9 to get back to Eugene to finish a project.

A non-profit lawyer came to the meeting to briefly introduce himself and tell us some basic things we need to consider. He's going to come to our next meeting to answer more questions.

We still have a lot of research and planning to do, but we've certainly made a lot of progress.

Finals week will seem like nothing after this.

After many consecutive late nights in the editing lab I finally finished my multimedia piece. As it turns out, I need to make a lot of changes to it, but I think it was the best-organized and most consistent solo video project I've done so far.

I only slept about three hours last night and then got back to campus to do add some final touches. I was there from 10am until past 1am.

In class today our instructor informed us about what days we're doing our finals (six minute newscasts). I'm going Tuesday, which is the first day. Our script rough drafts are due tomorrow, and I haven't even started mine yet. Before I can get to that I need to finish a paper for History of the Motion picture.

Despite having virtually no life outside of school, I always feel like I'm behind. No matter how far in advance I start on a project, I always seem to end up pulling an all-nighter (or a few) to get it done. I don't know if I'm exceptionally slow or if I just need that pressure in order to make final decisions. Maybe I just make too much work for myself. I think I tend to get over-ambitious, especially when I'm shooting. I always seem to shoot way more b-roll than I need and it takes me a really long time to capture and sort through it all and then I struggle to keep it organized. I hope it will get easier.

I came home to try to get some rest for a few hours before I get up to do more homework, but I'm not sleepy on account of too much coffee and stress. I don't have time to sleep for long and I'm so exhausted, I wonder if it's even worth taking a nap.

If I can just get through the next five days, the worst will be over. I just have to finish this paper, write my script, put together all the video I need for my newscast, write two more papers, and do my newscast, and then all I have to worry about is final exams for History of the Motion Picture and Latin American Cinema, which by comparison to what I'm going through now, don't sound too bad!

I

I Live at the J School

I feel like I have no life outside of the J school these days. No time for a social life, and often skip other classes to work on Electronic Media projects. Would never get them done otherwise!

This weekend I took one of the J408 workshops. This one, taught by Andre Sirois,who also taught Video Production last term, was on sound recording and editing.

We went over equipment, such as different types of mics (some of this I remembered from previous classes, but the review is always good), cords, headphones and digital recorders.

We also watched some videos about how sound works and went over different ways it can be used.

We took digital recorders and mics on our lunch break and experimented with recording different types of sounds, then returned and uploaded the files. Andre showed us how to do all kinds of stuff in Soundtrack Pro and then gave us some time to experiment with it.

He later emailed us a packet he put together with lots of helpful info, which I'm glad to have, as I was way too tired to retain all the details at 8am Saturday morning after a long, busy week with many late nights.

I fell asleep before 9 (unheard of) Saturday night and slept for more than 13 hours! I felt really rested for the first time in weeks. It seems I'm at the J school past midnight at least three nights a week.

I spent most of Sunday and Monday shooting b-roll at parks for my multimedia package. I've done a lot of editing, but have a long way to go. It seems like I always have a hard time figuring out how to organize my sound bites until the last minute when the pressure's really on. I'm kind of overwhelmed at the moment. I really hope it all comes together. If nothing else, at least I should be able to make my audio sound good this time!

Yesterday I registered for Spring classes. It will be my last term if everything goes according to plan! I'm really excited for Documentary Production with Jon Palfreman. I'm really looking forward to working on a more in-depth project. I also really admire Palfreman's work, and feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from him. I hope that there will be more creative freedom in this class than there is in Reporting for Electronic Media.

More News

I turned in my second news package today. I think it turned out a lot better than the first, though I still struggled to get it down to two minutes.

From a technical standpoint, I think it turned out pretty well. The biggest issue I'm having is getting the audio levels for all the different clips properly adjusted. the variation seems to be much more exaggerated when played on a TV than on a computer.

In terms of content, I think my story was pretty well focused and organized. I was really happy with the sound bites I got from my interviews, and I felt like I had a better sense of how to "write to" the bites this time. I still couldn't fit everything in that I wanted to, though.

I did my first stand up for this assignment. I really dislike being on camera, and I think I come across as kind of stiff and awkward. I hope it will get easier if I have to do more of these in the future.

I'm thinking about re-editing the piece and making it into something more to my taste.

I'm now starting on my last project for this class, which is a three minute multimedia piece using video and still images. I think I will feel more comfortable with this format, but it may require more planning.

Struggling with Broadcast Reporting

A week and a half ago I completed my first news package for J432. It was possibly the hardest project I've ever done.

I had a number of technical problems (mostly with mics not working properly), which made the footage from two of my six interviews unusable. I always record audio on two channels, using both the on-camera mic and another one directed at the subject (usually a lav), so that I will have some ambient sound in addition to the voice, but also as a back-up, so that if the some of the audio from one is unusable I will still have something. Maybe I had the levels too low on the on-camera mic, or maybe there was too much ambient noise, but I had no usable sound. Will have to be more diligent about using headphones for sound checks, and not just relying on the camera's audio meters.

Working alone, I'm finding is very difficult. I enjoy writing questions and conducting interviews by myself, but lugging all the equipment is a serious physical challenge, and the amount of time it takes to set up is substantially longer than it was when I worked with a group or even a partner. I sometimes feel overwhelmed trying to make small talk with interviewees (not one of my strengths) while I'm setting up and trying to make sure I'm not forgetting anything (white balancing, checking audio levels, etc).

I also struggled with focus. There turned out to be a lot more to the story than I initially realized, and I couldn't fit everything into my two-minute piece. I had to leave out a lot of information that I thought was important, and really struggled with writing a voice over that filled in the information I couldn't pack in with sound bites.

I also found writing in TV news style really challenging. I hadn't done formal news writing in a while prior to this class, and writing for broadcast is a truly daunting task for me.

I almost never watch television news, partly because I don't own a functional television, but also because I usually don't like television news. Trying to emulate something that I generally find to be formulaic and insincere is pretty frustrating.

I do really like some radio news,particularly what I hear on public radio, but I don't think much of it adheres to the style my instructor expects me to use for these assignments.

Radio Lab host Jad Abumrad, for example, probably doesn't sound "authoritative" enough, and sometimes speaks in a manner that some TV news viewers might find offensive.

Personally, I think he and co-host Robert Krulwich do a fantastic job and I really value their work. I love to listen to them and trust them because they seem sincere and unpretentious, and to be genuinely interested in the information they present.

They cover topics that I know very little about (but am often curious about), but make them accessible and interesting for a general audience without making me feel like they think I'm not smart enough to understand. I also like that the show is creatively produced,using music and sound bites to aurally illustrate ideas in way traditional news shows would never dare.

I can't think of any daily news shows on radio or television that I have this sort of appreciation for. Maybe that's the curse of daily news. When something has to be done immediately, I suppose there isn't much room for creativity or really trying to draw your audience in in a sustained manner. Of course the short format of daily news is also extremely limiting.

I find short format really unappealing. I really enjoy doing a lot of research on a topic, and producing things that are visually interesting is really important to me.

I suppose it's good for me to get experience with this kind of work, but I'm really looking forward to next term when I'll finally be in Documentary TV Production.

It's Going to be a Busy Term!

Week two of winter term has begun. I don't have any Monday classes, but managed to stay busy today.

The weather wasn't bad so I walked to campus. I submitted another application for office space for the University Film Organization. I really hope we get it. We really need a physical space! Also did some online planning for a group assignment and then headed over to Cafe Yumm for the first My Eugene meeting.

I'm really looking forward to getting started with my internship। It sounds like it will be really flexible, so I won't have to worry about time conflicts, which is great for me, because I'm often busy with UFO and We Make the Media activities. There are seven other interns, all of whom are J school students, and we each chose a couple of assignments we're interested in working on. Additionally, we each submit three events to the calendar per week, so if anyone knows of any cool stuff going on around Eugene, please let me know about it!

The New York Times Continues to Embrace New Tools

Yesterday I was reading a fascinating article about Nancy Meyers, one of the very few successful female Hollywood directors, on the New York Times Magazine website. I came across a word that I didn't know and highlighted it, with the intention of pasting into a search engine, when a little speech bubble with a question mark in it popped up, as if the word itself was beckoning me to ask it about itself. I had never seen this before, and was intrigued. I clicked the bubble and a reference page opened up in a new window!

After playing around with it a bit, I've found that your results will vary. Sometimes you'll get entries from multiple dictionaries and a thesaurus, sometimes just one basic dictionary definition. Results for proper names are mixed: selecting the Beatles yields entries from Columbia Encyclopedia, the Fine Arts Dictionary, and WordNet, but nothing comes up for film score composerHans Zimmer or the recent film "The Dark Knight." Nothing comes up for "Skyping" and "cougar" has only one definition (which does not apply to the word's use in the article).

It's an imperfect tool, but I imagine it will improve with time. Innovations like this are what make the New York Times website one of the best news sources. The New York Times is one of the few big papers that has truly embraced the move to digital and is using new technology to make news more accessible. Rather than dumbing down the writing to reach a broader audience, the paper (news entity? news organization?) continues to produce thought-provoking, original stories, and has simply made it easier for readers to look up the words they don't know!

The New York Times, like all legacy media, has faced and will continue to face many challenges as technology and the demands of consumers change, but has demonstrated that it is pragmatic and adaptable, and I believe that it will continue to be one of the most respected and widely-read national news sources.

The New York Times' website is more appealing than the print paper, not just because it is free and easy to access, but because it encourages and rewards its readers' curiosity in ways a print edition never could. If anything, this is evidence that the future of journalism is not the bleak, watered-down drivel that many fear it will be. If those who truly care about good journalism work towards using new tools to make news better, rather than seeing them as a threat, the journalism of the future could be far better than any we have known.

Multi-Media Non-Profit News Group Update

Last night myself and 11 other We Make the Media attendees interested in forming a multi-media non-profit in Portland met to discuss further plans for the organization.

After much discussion, the group decided as a next step to break into two subgroups, which will work on the organization's values, and on researching existing non-profit news organizations, respectively. Both subgroups plan to meet again in the next couple of weeks to get started, and the whole group will get back together at the end of January to report back on what has been accomplished, and to select a name for the organization. One member also volunteered to meet with a lawyer to discuss filing for 501C3 status.

There was also discussion of merging the group with another breakout group from WMTM. This group, headed by Think Out Loud host Emily Harris, is focused on local investigative journalism, and seemingly has a lot of overlapping goals with our group.

Other things we discussed that will begin to take shape over the next few months are constructing a business model and putting together a board of directors.

We elected Colin Lovett, who put together a Google site for the group, chair, and I volunteered to be secretary. My meeting minutes should make future blog posts about our meetings easy.

Twitter as an original source

Criticism of the Oregonian's reporting on Ted Wheeler's ski injury sparked a Twitter discussion on the ethics of quoting Twitter posts.

Ian Malkasian (@ianmal) wrote "running stories w/ twitter as a primary source is risky & in my mind poor journalistic judgment." In another Tweet he posed the question"in the absence of no other corroborating info. is the twitter stream of an elected official on the record?"I re-Tweeted the question and got a few responses.

Betsy Richter (@betsywhim) replied "yes. In the Wheeler case, you have the photograph, which corroborates his story, plus the Tweets from his wife. plus he's already gone on record as stating communicating via Twitter/Facebook fosters government transparency/good comms practice."

T.A. Barnhart wrote "Ted thinks so."

Ronald Morgan (@rhyzome) answered "Um, yeah, as is an email, phone call or any other media."

Suzi Steffen (@SuziSteffen) directed me to an episode of OPB's(@opb) Think Out Loud (@thinkoutloudopb) from October, in which Ted Wheeler, who was a guest on the show, discussed his thoughts on the the benefits of using social media such as Twitter and Facebook. "When you read the Tweets, they come from me directly, warts and all.... What you see on Twitter is what you get. That is your county chair." He goes on to say that Tweets are governed by the same public records laws as e-mail and other public communications. "I just assume that everything that I put out there is public information..." he explained. He did note that the law has not been able to keep up with technology, so this may not always be the case.

I'm interested to hear more thoughts and opinions on this topic.

Oregon Live is Anything But

The Oregonian's web site, OregonLive.com, failed to report on Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler's broken back resulting from a ski accident, hours after Wheeler broke the story via Twitter this morning until about 3PM. Shortly after Wheeler's Twitter post appeared the story was reported by Our PDX, KGW, and Matt Davis' blog on the Portland Mercury's Blogtown. At 2:52, after Multnomah County issued a press release , Oregon Live posted their story, which contained no original information, and did not mention Twitter. Many on Twitter are wondering what their excuse is. The Portland Tribune, which beat the Oregonian by a couple of hours, at least attempted to reach Wheeler for comment, and posted a link to his web site, which they noted includes a link to his Twitter page.

We Make the Media

I dragged myself out of bed early Saturday morning to attend We Make the Media, my second conference at the Turnbull Center. My husband was nice enough to drop me off before he headed over to Blitz Ladd to watch the Ohio State v. Michigan game with some of our other friends from Columbus.

I tweeted from my phone (not one of those new-fangled smart ones) throughout the day, but left my laptop at home. I'm kind of sad that I missed out on reading all the Twitter discussion that went on during the conference (which I did read as soon as I got home), but am also glad that I was able to focus my attention on what was actually being said in the room. I think the tweeters made a lot of good observations, but I also thought some of the comments were rather dismissive and disrespectful of the older attendees, who were less media savvy, but very experienced and knowledgeable in other areas, and certainly every bit as passionate about working for change as the younger crowd.

After checking in, I ran out for some coffee and made it back in plenty of time to get seated and somewhat caffeinated before Joe Smith took the floor and introduced keynote speaker Steven A. Smith, a seasoned newspaper man who grew up in Portland and Eugene, and attended U of O and Ohio State (I'm always intrigued by the number of people who seem to move back and forth between these two O states). Everything he said about the industry was in line with what I've been hearing at school and at other conferences: everything's going electronic, there are serious funding problems that no one's figured out how to handle yet, shrinking newsrooms are leading to a decline in the quality and quantity of news being produced, small local papers are doing the best, etc.

Next a panel of media professionals introduced the topics of the breakout groups and then Joe Smith opened the floor up to the roomful of journalists, who had more to say (much of which they had already been tweeting) than I think he anticipated. One of the proposed breakout groups was replaced by an "Unconference" group that planned to tackle a number of the issues that attendees felt were being overlooked.

I decided to go to the OPB group, which was focused on expanding the organization and possibly forming a new non-profit. There were about 15 people who stayed for the duration of the session, and about 10 more who popped in briefly, often just long enough to share their opinions and avoid hearing those of others. It was kind of strange, I thought. I was also surprised by how much hostility developed during the session.

There was certainly a divide, which was apparent the whole day, between those who were more into new media, and more open to new methods, and the more old-school crowd, who seemed not to take Twitter and blogs very seriously, which I think fueled some productive discussion about the role of citizen journalists and how they can be included without dismissing or hurting "real" journalists (or how we can even make such distinctions), and how to be more inclusive of marginalized groups in the media; but there also seemed to be some tension that I had a hard time placing. I suppose when you put that many smart, vocal people in a room you're bound to have some clashes of personality. I certainly came away with a better understanding of the range of opinions on a number of topics, and hope others did, too.

In the end, I think our group came up with some good ideas about how to improve OPB, but there wasn't much discussion about forming a new non-profit, and after our group representative presented to the room, Joe Smith suggested that OPB move ahead with some of the proposed actions, but that we not continue to discuss it as a group.

After all the groups presented, individuals formed more specific proposals for actions, which all of the attendees voted on by way of a complex hand-rasing system. I think new technology could have saved a lot of time and frustration there. I'd certainly jump at the opportunity to use the iclicker I was required to spend upwards of $30 on for my Grammar for Journalists class last year (and have never used since).

Over the course of the afternoon, there was a noticeable decline in the size of the group. I'm not sure how many people left because of other obligations, and how many just felt that nothing productive was going to come from the conference.

Finally, after about eight hours of trying to figure out how such a large group of people with such disparate ideas could take action together to improve the outlook of journalism in Portland, we broke into smaller groups once more to make concrete plans.

I joined a group that plans to create a new non-profit multi-media entity. Ron Buel, one of the conference organizers and founding editor and publisher of Willamette Week (and another UO alum), was appointed discussion leader. I think we may collaborate with some of the other groups. We're planning to meet again in three weeks. Hope this goes somewhere!

Lots of others are blogging about this event. I'll add to this list as I find more:

Thoughts From the Spiral
Carla Axtman on Blue Oregon
360 Convos
Reporting 1 Blog
Civics 21
Still a Newspaper Man
Joe Wilson
Oregon Media Central
Ran Dum Thots

nozzlmedia
WordCount
T.A. Barnhart

Keep printing?

I've chosen the topic of '"selling" newspapers in a digital age' for my J203 term project. I've just begun my research, and a few days ago came across this excellent blog by Alan Mutter. He has a lot to say about the future of the newspaper business, some of it quite at odds with what I've been hearing elsewhere, for example this: "almost every newspaper company still needs to print newspapers if it wants to stay in business."

Obama and Adams in the news

I spent the long weekend (no classes on Martin Luther King Jr. Day) in Portland, and watched clips from the inauguration on CNN.com before driving back to Eugene on Tuesday afternoon. I listened to further Obama coverage on KOPB until the signal faded, and then switched to KLCC. It was a little anti-climactic for me, after all the excitement of the campaign and election night, and most of the coverage wasn't too insightful, though All Things Considered had an interesting analysis of Obama's inaugural address including a comparison to speeches of previous presidents.

What's been more interesting in the past few days is the coverage of the Sam Adams scandal, which is getting almost as much attention in Portland's papers as our new president.

Perhaps more interesting than the news coverage itself is the debate that's going on in the comment sections that follow the online stories, such as those on the websites of Willamette Week, who broke the story, and the Oregonian. The response is surprisingly thoughtful and intelligent, expressing a variety of opinions about Adams' actions, whether or not he should step down, and on the media's coverage of the story. That's something you don't get when you pick up a hard copy of the newspaper. I'm really glad to be able to follow the responses of Portlanders from my computer here in Eugene.

2008 Election Coverage

Election coverage this year seems to be all about user participation.

This will be my first election sans-TV. In '04 my roommates and I actually went to the thrift store and bought one just to watch the debates and election returns. This year I thought about it, but decided not to bother. Like many people in my age group I will get most of my news tonight from internet sources (although I will be listening to public radio coverage at work this evening).

For months now I've been frequenting the Election 2008 sections of various online news sources and have been pretty impressed with how sophisticated they have become.

The New York Times' Politics section has a couple of unique features. One called Your State of Mind is a box in which adjectives scroll across the screen from left to right. These are the words entered by visitors to the site describing their current feelings about the election (you are allowed to update your entry every 30 minutes). The words that are largest and nearest the top are the most popular entries. You can also choose to view only the words entered by people supporting Obama or McCain. It is pretty interesting to compare the two.

The other, which becomes active at 6pm, is their pop-up dashboard. It's a small window that opens up and will provide live election updates, allowing you to stay updated while visiting other websites.

They have a multimedia What to Watch for on Election Night feature with an hour-by-hour breakdown of what they expect to be significant.

The site also includes an interactive map that shows which way each state is leaning in different races and how many electoral votes it gives to the candidate. It also allows viewers to change the colors (red for republican, blue for democrat or yellow for undecided) to look at different hypothetical scenarios.


CNN's Election Center 2008 page has a Your Races column that you can personalize to include up to 35 races that you want to keep an eye on (for example the Ohio presidential race, California's proposition 8, and the Oregon senate race). They also have a map, but theirs only shows poll results. They do have other interactive features including a debate forum and a whole website called iReport where voters can share their experiences at the polls.

PBS's Vote 2008 page encourages voters to video their voting experiences and share them via YouTube. They have an interactive map similar to the New York Times', which they share with NPR's Election 2008 website. They also provide links to election-related quizzes.

MSNBC's Decision '08 website offers yet another interactive map as well as a Presidential Results widget that updates every 10 minutes and can be shared on Facebook and other such sites (available in 3 sizes!).

Moving Away from Print Media

Here's a segment from PBS News Hour about some significant new developments in the move away from print media. The panel of guests includes Mark Glaser who wrote an optimistic entry on the future of journalism in his blog, Mediashift.

For a darker perspective on what's to come check out Epic 2014, a short film about the hypothetical future of the industry.