“WHAT’S YOUR TRIP?” IS BUYING

on our mac-inspired set

As the new year starts, we are kicking off another round of “What’s Your Trip?” with Andrew Zimmern for The Travel Channel.

The show is a platform for independent VJs and would be Travel Journalists,

We’re looking for short pieces (1-3 mins), and we’re paying! ($250 a minute, up to a max of $1,000).

We’re looking for the unusual, the interesting, the humorous, the amazing.

Lot’s of things qualify as travel – food, great stories, sports, adventure. Pretty much anything that makes us look at it and go ‘geez, this ought to be on TV’. From past experience, funny works great, but don’t feel limited.

We’re starting to review now, so upload your submissions to: (www.travelchannel.com/yourtrip) and we hope to be in touch with you soon!

NOTHING HAS CHANGED

Despite the tall glass towers and Armani Casa shops that line the main streets of Shanghai, there is a great deal of Communist China that has remained untouched.

The first thing that remains untouched, apparently, is the censorship. While I knew that the Chinese were censoring politically sensitive websites dealing with Falun Gong or the Chinese democracy movement, I was astonished to learn this morning that my own blog is being blocked by the Chinese censors. (Not that I think there is a lot of VJ business to be done in China, and not that we were planning an Academy in Shanghai in the near future). Never the less, I am a bit astonished at this. It appears to have something to do with the ‘democratization of video’, putting ‘the power of the media in the hands of the people’, and the various references to Communism. Like some kind of porn filter, these things apparently alert the censors. One can only wonder how busy they are, but in a country of 1.2 billion people, this must provide some pretty good employment for the masses.

In any event, it makes it difficult to post to the site, as I cannnot even access it, but I have a very good friend in New York who is going to post it there for me. Let’s see how this all works out. And hopefully, I will keep you posted.

En Route

On our way to Shanghai today.

For the next two weeks we will be in China, so stand by.

1.2 billion potential new VJs and a Beijing based People’s Academy sound pretty good to me.

Now THAT’S Service

We arrived in England a few days ago and are staying with family in a small village about 120 miles north of London.

A day after we arrived, the boiler gave out. No heat. No hot water.

We called just about every ‘24 hour’ boiler service company we could find. They all had the same answer.  “We don’t work on Christmas Eve” and “Nothing until after the New Year, sorry”.

I called the company that made the boiler. British Gas. Just about anyone I could think of.

Nothing.

“We don’t do anything between the day before Christmas and the day after New Years”.

That is “British” service. About on a par with the old Soviet Union.

So we gathered around the fireplace and have been living there ever since. It’s COLD out here!

Ironically, on the same day (Christmas Eve), my new Leica M8 stopped working. Or at least the read-outs on the back of the body and the digital controls gave out. The camera still takes pictures, but you can’t review ‘em, can’t download ‘em.

I searched the web for advice or help. Nothing.

Then, I emailed Ken Hansen.

Ken Hansen is one of the pre-eminant camera dealers in the country.  He used to have a place in NY, but I think he has since decamped for Florida, but I deal with him over the phone and online. He got me the M8 when no one else could find one, and when B&H was telling me that it was a 4 month wait.  Ken not only got me the M8, but shipped it to me in NY with a small, handwritten note, asking me to drop him a check to pay for it ‘when I had a minute’.  (This is NOT how they do business at B&H).

Finally, I emailed Ken.

I got a first answer in a matter of hours – on Christmas Eve.

I got more information on Christmas Day – he had checked with a few technicians he knew.

I got more emails the next day.

Alas, it looks like a loose connection, and it appears there is nothing he or I can do until I am back in the US.  I can live with it, but what unbelievable service.  That’s how you build customer loyalty for life.

As for British Gas. I am sitting here in a down coat typing this to you now.

Merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year to everyone.

The Impact of Commonality

You push the button, we do the rest

In this week’s New Yorker, John Updike reviews  The Art of the American Snapshot, published by The National Gallery of Art and Princeton University.

Its a fascinating book about how snapshots pervaded and changed our own perceptions of ourselves and our lives; but it made me think that if the ubiquity of home photography had such a pervasive impact on our culture, what will the ubiquity of video cameras do to us? And by the same token, what will the ubiquity of video cameras do to video itself? We are surely poised for a change.

There are, according to the BBC, nearly 200 million video cameras in circulation globally at the moment.  That is a lot of cameras – but, (and this is an important but), there are more than 3 billion cell phones in circulation, and as cell phones begin to gain video capacity, it is not unreasonable to project that a decade from now, there will be more than 3 billion people who will carry video capability with them on a daily basis.  Not only video capability, but the ability to immediately upload those video images to the web.

We used to think that 500 channels was a lot of video to deal with, but I think we are rather a the very beginning of a kind of ‘videoization’ of society, if you will.

The Brownie camera, shown above, brought back memories to me, as it was my very first camera. You loaded in a roll of b&w 120 film, a few twists on the nob, and you were off.  As were millions and millions of other people, producing, quite literally, billions of images.

Eastman’s revoltion was to transit photography from a very difficult, expensive and specialized medium to one that any aspiring 9 year old could operate and any family could afford. The result was that photography went from being something rather special to the most common of events.  Photographs became snapshots, and instead of being an art form, and highly stylized, became instead the way we recorded our lives – not or publication, but for ourselves to share with our friends.

Prior to Kodak, photography was for the elite, the wealthy, the newspapers. One went to a photo studio to have a formal portrait done in a sitting, coiffed and carefully lit.  After Kodak, photography lost its ’specialness’, but in it sheer commonality gained a very different role – it became highly personalized.

Now SONY and soon NOKIA, are doing to video what KODAK did to photography – making it common.

Professionals will decry the terrible quality that these amateurs produce – and there will soon be an unstoppable tidal wave of their video. (Just imagine 3 billion cameras going 24 hours a day).  The ’specialness’ of video images will be washed away.  Video will become ubiquitous. (And I don’t mean home videos of the family vacation – I mean all video all the time).

What will it look like?

What happens when the rare becomes the everyday?

In ancient Rome, one might spend their entire lives without ever seeing a piece of paper.  Paper was extremely rare, expensive and difficult to make.  Written scrolls were highly prized and carefully guarded and protected.  Today, we cover our walls in paper (literally).  The Sunday paper would have cost a thousand lifetime’s income in antiquity, Today, we read a few sections and then wrap fish with it.

Soon video images will be as common as wallpaper – in fact, they may indeed be wallpaper.  But certainly as common as photo images.  Look around you and see how many photo images you see – advertising, magazines, newspapers, walls, kitchen refrigerators.

This is where video is headed.

You push the button, we do the rest.

Scripting Without Paper – 3rd in a series

“Writing” a script for a video or television piece is inherently destructive to the quality of the storytelling.

I know this may sound heretical, but it is true.

We are working in a medium of picture and sound. We should keep true to the medium.

Shooting video, then transcribing it or taking time-code notes, writing the script on paper, and then using that paper to transfer back to video degrades the quality of the work – intellectually. It is as though a painter would set out to write an essay about what the painting should look like, and then proceed to try and paint it from the written notes.

It does not make any sense.

Of course, when I learned how to make TV, whether news stories or documentaries or cable shows, this is how they were all done.

But there is another, better way.

Trust me.

Let’s go back to Fluffy’s story once more.

We all agree (and to may it is self evident) that we begin with the most powerful shot.

Fluffy on the operating table.

Now we have the viewer’s attention.

We put up the shot to open the piece, and now we have to ask ourselves, ‘what is the viewer thinking when they see this?’

We know it will get their attention, but we have to now take advantage of that moment.

If you have done this right, not only will you have the viewer’s attention, but they will also be thinking something. Show them the shot of the dog and they will be thinking, ‘what happened to the dog?’

Stop and think about this for a moment.

All across the country, every who is watching the first shot is thinking exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

Everyone.

This is a pretty impressive trick.

And now you have a moment to capture the audience as yours.

All you have to do is talk to them.

‘To’ them… as opposed to ‘at’ them.

Everyone who is watching this is thinking the same question at the same time – ‘what happened to the dog’.

All you have to do is answer the question.

“Fluffy was hit by a car and may die”.

By saying this, you raise another question: “will the dog die?”

Again, you have no choice but to answer the question: “there is only one man who can save fluffy”

Now, everyone is thinking the same thing at the same time – ‘who is that man?”

And again, you have no choice but to answer the question in everyone’s mind: “His name is Dr. Jarvik”

You put up the video, it makes people think of a question. You answer the question, they think something else, you respond to what they are thinking.

This is not so much a ’script’ that drives information down people’s throats – sit there and take this. It is rather a dialogue with the audience. You are in conversation with them. Except it is a conversation in pictures as well as sound.  The pictures drive the question – you answer the question with narration or sound and another picture. That answer drives yet another question.

Dialogue…. no script.

See the difference?

It is the same way we tell the story to our spouses at the dining room table. We don’t recite a script – we engage in a conversation.

“You’ll never believe what happened today”

“What?”

“This dog was hit by a car”

“No kidding”

“yeah – and then, this kid came in with the dog..”

“Really”

Storytelling… dialogue. Conversation.

This makes for much more engaging stories – and much more engaging scriptwriting

Without writing.

More On Fluffy

More notes on scriptwriting

OK.

So you’ve spent the day at the Dog and Cat Hospital, and while you were there, you were witness to (and filmed) the amazing rescue of Fluffy the puppy hit by the car and saved by the vet.

At the end of a long day, you come home.

Your home life is not so good.

Your wife is on the verge of divorce. (Maybe she has already filed!)

You, on the other hand, are trying to rescue the marriage.

“Honey” you say, as you enter the house, “I just had the most fascinating day at work”.

“Oh really” she says, not bothering to look up from the newspaper.

“No. Really, I saw the most fascinating thing. And I shot it all”.

“Great” she says, absentmindedly flipping through The New York Post.

“I want you to look at some of the stuff I shot”, you say, hoping to garner both her attention and her respect (forget it).

She continues to flip the pages of the paper.

“You know…. I’d love to…. but…. I’m kinda ….hmm….30 percent off sale at Zabar’s…..kinda…. busy….”

“No” you say in earnest… “really, I just want you to look at some of the stuff I shot… It’s pretty interesting”.

“Love to babe”, she says, still immersed in The Post, “but….I’m really pretty….wow, Bloomingdale’s one day sale… pretty busy….”

Now you start to get annoyed.

“Just look at one thing” your voice going up. “Just one God damned thing….OK?” and you slam the table. (Trust me, I was married to one of these, once).

She looks up.

You’ve got her attention.

“OK” she says, making eye contact with your for the very first time. “Show me one thing”.

Now…what is the one thing you show her?

Is it the exterior of the Dog and Cat Hospital?

I don’t think so.

Because it if is, she will wish she filed a year ago.

What kind of moron thinks that is interesting?

No, you show her the most exciting thing you have. Fluffy being saved by the vet, on the Operating Table.

If that doesn’t get her attention, nothing will.

Now, your audience cares even less about you than your soon to be ex-wife.

Is that even possible?

You bet. You know why? Because you didn’t spend that weekend in the Bahamas with the audience.

You didn’t have that thing in the back of the car in December with the audience.

They audience could not care if you died then and there on the spot. Even less so than the soon to be ex.

So why do you insist on starting your pieces with that exterior shot of the building?

Nothing will drive them away faster.

You HAVE to start with the most exciting footage you’ve got.

Have to.

There is no option.

This makes scriptingwriting much easier.

Find the most exciting thing you’ve got and put it on the screen first.

You’ll get their attention. No one is turning away from Fluffy on the OR table.

No one.

Now that you’ve go their attention, what are you going to do with it?

Kevin Cooney Comes for Coffee

Yesterday, Kevin Cooney dropped by the house for coffee.

He is in NY on a brief visit from Japan.

About 8 months ago we kicked off the Travel Channel Academies and Whats Your Trip?, the TV show that showcased the new talent we were finding and developing.

When we saw Kevin Cooney’s first videos, we knew we had found something unusual – or he had found us.

God only knows how much talent was lost in the ‘Golden Age of Television’, when there were only 3 networks and only a few hours a day on the air. Video is such a plastic medium, it has so much potential- and we are only at the very beginning of what we can do with it.

Let’s start with Cooney:

Born on Long Island, he went to Syracuse University where he studied film, and then like many aspiring filmmakers, headed or Los Angeles. After a frustrating year, he headed for Japan for a vacation … and never came back.

Seven years later, he is earning his way in Japan as a stand up comic – in Japanese.

For Cooney, who did not speak a word of Japanese before he left LA, this is a pretty staggering achievement.

He is also becoming something of a TV personality on Japanese TV – and is completing a pilot for NHK, the BBC of Japan, somewhat similar to (he says), Larry David. The Larry David of Japan – now, there is a series.

We met Cooney because he still loves to make his own film, and always carries his small HDV camera. He sent us his short video of eating Octopus Ice Cream – and we fell for it.

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Cooney reminds me of a kind of Nicholas Cage – but with talent.

He is headed back to Tokyo and wants to make more videos. I told him to go for it.

He says he can show us a side of Japan most tourists never see – like a restaurant where they bring out a bowl of water with a piece of tofu floating in the center. In the bowl are also live eels. They turn up the heat and as the water starts to get hot, the eels burrow into the tofu to try and save themselves, and then are cooked into the tofu – ready to eat. Yum!

That ought to rate well.

“Writing” for Broadcast

Fluffy must die?

You are shooting a story in a veterinary hospital when suddenly, a small 5-year old girl comes in cradling her puppy.

The dog has been hit by a car, and though barely alive, the little girl has scooped her up in her arms and carried her to the vet’s.

With tears in her eyes and anxiety in her speech she plaintively asks: “mister, can you save fluffy?”

The vet takes the dog, places her on the operating table, and before your eye (and camera!) he proceeds to save the dog’s life.

Great story.

You got it all.

At the end of the day, you go home, exhausted to your wife and kids.

Sitting at the dinner table, you have a great story to tell.

You can’t wait, really.

Once everyone is seated, your wife turns to you and ‘anything interesting happen today’.

The kids lean forward. They can sense you’ve got a great story to tell.

You sit ramrod straight in your seat and with your best ‘Edward R. Murrow’ voice of God, you solemnly state to the table:

“More than 2500 dogs are struck each year in the greater metropolitan area. Fluffy (pause for dramatic effect) was one of the lucky few.”

The room is silent.

Your wife turns to you.

“Honey”, she says, “maybe you should dial back on the xanax a little bit”.

Because no one… no one… talks like that.

If you were in the vet’s office when fluffy came in and when the vet saved the dog’s life, you would say:

“You won’t believe what happened today!”

everyone leans forward.

“I saw this guy save a dog’s life”!

‘You’re kidding”, they say, or think.

“No, seriously. This little girl came in cradling this puppy. It was covered in blood, and I guess it had been hit by a car”

Do we have their attention?

“Then what happened?”

“They the little girl said, ‘mister, can you save my dog?”

Wow!

THIS is how we tell a story to our family.

Our kids.

Our friends.

A guy in a bar.

Well, guess what? The viewers are our family. Our friends. Our kids. A guy in a bar.

The way you tell a story to them is the way you should ‘write for broadcast’.

It works.

Particularly when you marry it to pictures that tell the story.

Try it.

Or, as someone a bit more uptight might say..

“courage”.

What I Learned from Charles Kuralt

On The Road to making better video….

When we train VJs now, we train them to work in very different ways.

One of the ways we differ is that we teach them to lay in all the pictures first on the timeline, then the audio and lastly to write the narration.

We want their work to be picture stories first, as opposed to being led by the narration.

Most television news in the US is made the other way. A script is written, and then the ‘talent’ goes into a record booth and records the narration track from a written script.

The narration track is then laid down, sound bites included, and once the narrative audio is complete, pictures are wallpapered over the narration.

This makes for scripts that are chock full of information but often hard to follow

We like to work the other way around.

We like to lay in all the video, then the sound bites, and then have the VJ narrate (as opposed to write) the narration directly onto the laptop while watching the video go by. They are, essentially, storytelling to the pictures in real time.

I learned this way of working a long time ago, when I was a producer for Charles Kuralt at CBS News.

I had cut my teeth making docs at PBS in NY, and I was used to working the other way around.

When I had my first story to do with Kuralt, I prepared a written script as usual and booked a record booth for him to lay in the narration track.

He never showed.

I called him.

He told me just to cut the piece and leave spaces for the narration.

You mean, you don’t want to record the narration? How am I going to deliver the piece?

Just cut the piece and leave spaces for the narration, he told me. And make sure I have a copy of the script.

I was sure we were headed for disaster and my new job with CBS News would soon be over.

The show was broadcast live on Sunday mornings, so I went over W 57th Street to watch what I was sure was a misunderstanding for which I would be blamed.

I sat in the corner and watched as he delivered the throw from his stool and the tape began to roll.

Then he lit up a cigarette, watched the monitor, and proceeded to read my copy to the pictures as they went out live.

His timing was impeccable. But I could also see that instead of reading a script he was talking to the audience as he and they watched the pictures.

It was the real way to turn video into compelling storytelling.

And it worked.

So now we do the same thing with our VJs.

Assemble the pictures, then tell the story they tell as you and the viewers watch the pictures go by.

It works.