Feels like just a few weeks ago that I was announcing “They’re Off!” — referring to the departure of mother-daughter documentary film-making team Gail Mooney and Erin Kelly. Well, it was actually the end of May, and since then Mooney and Kelly have had one hell of an adventure. Arriving back home only yesterday, Mooney proves her amazing video editing skills and gives us all a great taste of “Opening Our Eyes” with this wonderful behind-the-scenes short.
Aug 31 2010
Learing on the Job, Or Not?
“I’m not sure I’d agree with you as far as learning multimedia on the job,” Gail Mooney commented to one of my recent posts. I’m glad she brought the point up. In writing about the new multimedia project I have taken on for Human Rights Watch, I wrote: “Photographers can learn multimedia skills on the job,” and explained that thinking this way is what allowed me to take a leap and offer HRW services requiring skills I am still learning.
Learning on the job can mean taking a calculated leap, with plenty of support - like this woman boarding a train in Lima, Peru.
I think that Mooney and I are probably really on the same page, and simply looking at the fine line between offering services we are not capable of delivering professionally and offering services out of our skill range but that we know we can deliver. When it comes to still photographers offering video and multimedia services, we can do this by outsourcing services or, more specific to my point, knowing through experience that we can learn the skills called for — before and during the job.
Not Pro Cake Baking
It would be an unprofessional disaster if I sold professional services to bake a wedding cake this weekend. I just couldn’t do it. But regarding my offering multimedia services to HRW, there are a few thing to consider that put this “learning on the job” in a different category:
- I studied multimedia in college pretty seriously, making a polished project that was used by the United States Post Office for public education. (Yes, the technlogy was very, very different.)
- I’ve been playing around with modern multimedia, learning some skills and — just as important — identifying the many skills I still have to learn.
- I’ve been interviewing numerous photographers over past three years on the topic, processing their advice by writng articles.
- Many of these photographers have become friends and have made it clear that they will support me when I need help with my own projects.
- When I pitched the project to HRW, I made it very clear that this would be a relatively simple project, fundamentally using the skills I already have (if not yet at the most professional levels).
- I was honest and direct with HRW that I would be learning on the job, and that we would need to consider this in terms of both project timeline and our working relationship.
Learning on the Job IS Professionalism
None of these points are to argue with Gail Mooney. She’s been working very, very hard for more than a decade on her film-making skills and she’s still learning. This must be respected. It is why I wrote a post about how hard it is to make movies, in which I encouraged photographers to Continue reading “Learing on the Job, Or Not?”
Aug 24 2010
How to Compress Final Cut Express Movies for YouTube
Looking for step-by-step instructions for prepping (i.e. compressing) HD video files from Final Cut Express for YouTube? If so, you’ll find the answers you need in this great video tutorial by BIGlittleBROTHER. Very friendly, super informative and, apparently, works for iMovie ‘08 projects as well.
I have to give a super BIG thanks to BIGlittleBROTHER for this one! He really helped me get rolling with Final Cut Express (see last post), and his approach to explaining allowed me to adapt his methods to suite my specific needs.
No wonder his tutorial has gotten 46 thousand views!
Aug 23 2010
Final Cut Express Newbie – Take One – Video Compression for YouTube
After all my worrying, I finally buy Final Cut Express and to my virgin eyes the program looks just like Final Cut Pro — totally intimidating! To get beyond this I force myself to avoid all the possibilities and think about the most basic task I want to accomplish. Answer: Upload video footage from my Canon G9 to YouTube.
This past weekend I grabbed my G9 and pretty quickly had this:
Clearly this sucks. Horrible compression from hell. Worse than “dumb” iMovie would help me produce. However, I have succeeded in getting the footage in and out of FCE and on YouTube fast, and that was the point.
For “Take II” (below) I referred to a FCE tutorial on Lynda.com, and found some help on how/where to compress for broadband, getting this:
Not bad at all, but I wanted to see if I could find better, “ideal” settings I could use.
I found clear, awesome instructions on best HD compression for YouTube in Final Cut Express/iMovie from BIGlittleBROTHER in his awesome YouTube tutorial. I wasn’t shooting HD, but I thought I’d give it a try, and got “Take III”: Continue reading “Final Cut Express Newbie – Take One – Video Compression for YouTube”
Aug 19 2010
Finally Going with Final Cut Express. Right Move?
I finally decided to go with Final Cut Express 4 as my primary multimedia and video editing software after way too much thinking about it. I spent the $200 and a friend smuggled the program into the country for me a couple weeks back. (It would have cost twice as much locally, and might have been in Spanish.) In retrospect, I can’t believe I have spent so many months thinking about which video editing software to to use, grinding my teeth over the $200 cost of Final Cut Express (FCE), not at all sure if it would do all that I want.
I’ve been using iMovie (post version 6) exclusively for more than a year-and-a-half, and the program began to frustrate me almost immediately. iMovie is certainly simple but using it has felt like trying to edit with handcuffs on. I quickly found there were certain things — seemingly very basic things — that I simply could not do. (I was disheartened to read many reviews that said that the “improvements” to iMovie made the program much worse than version 6.)
However, I reminded myself that I was learning basic editing and producing pieces that were making friends and family laugh, and I couldn’t justify the expense of Final Cut Pro ($800) or Adobe Premiere ($800).
Final Cut Pro Wary
Even if I had the cash for Final Cut Pro, I’m not sure I would have shelled it out. Everyone says the FCP learning curve makes learning Photoshop seem like a breeze. About a year ago I had the opportunity to play around with Final Cut Pro on a friend’s machine and the experience left me shell shocked — completely intimidated. I didn’t feel like my hands were handcuffed; I felt like I had no hands. I just couldn’t do anything.
I was starting to appreciate the benefits of iMovie, but I really needed to advance, but I held off buying, obsessing about FCE’s functionality.
What’s Wrong with FCE?
Upgrading to FCE would seem to be a no-brainer, but I found lots of Continue reading “Finally Going with Final Cut Express. Right Move?”
Aug 17 2010
Documenting Tango to Learn Multimedia
Yesterday I headed over the tango festival going on here in Buenos Aires to photograph a workshop being given by Claudia Bozzo, my tango teacher. She had seen my tango stop-motion movie and asked me if I could document her class and “make something special,” which I heard as, “Here’s a chance to practice your multimedia skills.” This seemed like a good idea given my work for Human Rights Watch. It also seemed like a good time to put my photography skills to work documenting aspects of a culture that daily becomes more my culture.
Carla, on sound, interviews Claudia, on tango.
You can check out the down-and-dirty gallery of images I’ve selected to form the base of the what Ralph Clevenger calls a “music motivational piece.” As you can see, none of the images are stellar, but that won’t be critical — once they are zipping by to music. You can see that I was taking Mary Lynn Price’s advice and working to record the full spectrum of activities in wide, medium and close-up shots.
My girlfriend, Carla, did a great job recording sound, although I didn’t do a great job of instructing her how to do so. I wasn’t clear on what audio I wanted. I also wasn’t clear on how to shoot video segments, which I did frantically with my Canon G9 in between photographing stills.
Frankly, I found the experience overwhelming and confusing. And that wasn’t because there were more than 100 people stuffed into a very tight area, making it very difficult to move around. The real problem was that I was not clear on how I would be using the images and/or video and/or audio to create my piece. However, I wasn’t dismayed.
Thanks to advice from many photographers, I realize that creating multimedia is all about editing. And now I have some raw material to get into Final Cut Express and get editing. As I figure out what I can make, I will undoubtedly learn how I can better balance capturing stills, video and audio to record this kind of event for multimedia.
Aug 13 2010
Taking Culture, Not Pictures
It’s been a great week — with my work with Human Rights Watch off the ground and getting some news images in print — and, on this Friday the 13th, I can’t help but think about good luck. I really do feel like good luck has come my way recently, and that my life and work are starting to blend in special, unexpected ways — ways that I have wanted, but ways that did not happen when I was more desperate, more anxious, trying harder to make something happen that I was not yet ready to handle.
What the heck am I talking about?
What I’m talking about is that when I moved to Argentina more than four years ago I had big dreams about learning Spanish and traveling all over South America and making great images and telling even greater stories. But that didn’t happen. For one thing, learning Spanish — I mean really learning to live with the stuff — has proved far more challenging (and rewarding) than I could have have ever imagined. For another thing, I got focused a lot more on the “simple” aspects of daily living that I had never focused on so well in the United States.
BEFORE: Christmas Eve in Villa 31 -- when being an outsider gave me an in.
In short, you could say I moved to Buenos Aires to escape the more mundane aspects of life that I wasn’t handling too well back in the USA and, very much to my surprise, what has happened is that I have come to cherish the mundane more than anything else. Family. Friends. Living in the moment. Taking care of body and mind.
Then this Human Rights Watch gig seems to fall in my lap, and that’s really exciting. But what’s particularly nice I don’t feel manic excited or super lucky or all revved up, like I’ve won the lottery or something. I just feel mellow lucky and, more than anything, I feel really lucky that it was the circuitous, couldn’t-have-predicted-that route that has brought me here. I did not get here, as so many successful people proclaim, by keeping my eye clearly on the prize. How the hell could I? I didn’t know what the prize was. I was stumbling and I still am, but this week the stumbling feels like it has a bit more grace to it.
I am writing all this by way of sharing that it is not my photography skills nor my desire to work with multimedia nor my great business skills that created this opportunity with Human Rights Watch. What really allowed me to get this job is the fact that I live in Buenos Aires, that I learned the language and that, more than anything, I can see the cultural as both an insider and an outsider. This is not only allows me to get access to Continue reading “Taking Culture, Not Pictures”
Aug 11 2010
A Photojournalist (Published) in Argentina
Today an image of mine from yesterday’s Human Rights Watch press conference appeared in “Pagina 12,” Argentina’s biggest progressive newspaper. Images of mine from the press event also ran on a number of international news Web sites. Yes I’m pleased about this, but I’m also quite surprised.
When I arrived at the Human Rights Watch press conference (to unveil “Illusions of Care”), I had two goals. My primary goal was to meet contacts to help with my multimedia project for HRW. My second goal was to experiment with photographing still images while also capturing video and, gulp, recording audio as well.
I figured that the material likely would not make it into my multimedia project, and so I didn’t have to worry about the low quality of the video from my Canon G9, nor about the fact that I had no idea how to record audio with my brand new Zoom H4n, which looks like a spaceship and comes with an instruction manual that left me confused an anxious.
In other words, although I was messing around with a lot of equipment, I wasn’t nervous. No pressure. But then. . .
I noticed that there were no other photographers at the press conference and I thought, um, shouldn’t we be putting my work to use for HRW? At least, I thought, I should make sure I get one or two suitable images for press use, just in case.
I only really got my head on straight regarding press images after the conference, back at the hotel that HRW was using as their strategic center. There were giving lots of interviews and so I finally said, “Shouldn’t we be offering my images to the press?”
Indeed!, the team said. So I rushed back to my computer, set up a gallery of selects, and started responding to emails and calls that were coming in.
Marianne Mollmann speaks at Human Rights Watch press conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 10, 2010, to release report "Illusions of Care: Lack of Accountability for Reproductive Rights in Argentina."
Thinking About the Client
I realize, of course, that daily news photographers think very clearly (and in advance) about how to get their images quickly into print. I’m not that kind of photographer, and so I don’t think that way. (That’s not an excuse; I’ll be more alert in the future.)
In terms of getting my images published I wasn’t thinking about how to make a few extra bucks on licencing a few tiny images. The important thing for me was to make myself part of the HRW team, help them with their press efforts and — no small matter — show them what I look like working in action.
Yes, I’ve already got the “go” for the multimedia project, but I am working with only one contact, who already has my confidence. Yesterday, two of her colleagues saw me go the extra mile for HRW, and I’m sure that, at some point in some way, this will serve me well.
Aug 10 2010
Working for Human Rights Watch – Multimedia Style
Human Rights Watch held a press conference in Buenos Aires today to drum up interest in their latest report: “Illusions of Care: Lack of Accountability for Reproductive Rights in Argentina.” I’m pleased to announce the cover image of the report was made by yours truly. It was great to put my photography to work for HRW. It’s even greater that it’s a relationship that has just begun. The next phase will involve my making for them a multimedia production, a topic about which I have been writing so much lately. (In fact, my writing led directly to this job, which is very cool and which I will explain below.)
For the “Illusions of Care” cover I was charged with making an image that spoke to the report’s theme — roadblocks to better reproductive health care for women and girls in Argentina. I could not show the identity of anyone I photographed, unless I obtained a model release, and so I focused on a graffiti-filled hallway in the maternity ward at Hospital Alvarez in Buenos Aires. (The graffiti “Aca nacio” features prominently in the image. “Born here” in Spanish.)
Actually, I was able to get model releases from a number of women I photographed. And some of these images show the women with distressed expressions that might have made a more powerful cover image. However, using one of these images for “Illusions of Care” would have been disingenuous, to say the least. The care at Alvarez maternity ward is excellent. The women’s expressions were the result of them being in various stages of labor.
Although many of the images I made at Alvarez were not right for the report cover, I’ll likely be able to use some in the multimedia project I am now working on for HRW.
Building Trust Was Key
A couple months back Marianne Møllman, the author of “Illusions of Care, contacted me to see if I might be able to make a cover image for the report. I told her I was Continue reading “Working for Human Rights Watch – Multimedia Style”
Aug 06 2010
Still Images Are Like Mt. Rushmore, Videos Are Like the Bubonic Plague
In the world of new media, still images are like solid, immovable monuments, while videos are like fluid, unstoppable viruses. Given the fact that most of us want our images and ideas to “go viral,” understanding this concept is critical.
I have a lot to say on this topic, but for this first post directly speaking to the strange paradoxical way in which — in the world of the Internet — still images are like Mt. Rushmore and videos are like the bubonic plague, I will simply offer an illustration of the concept.
Let’s start with the little, uncredited thumbnail you see to your upper right. I stole this image from a photographers Web site, I give him/her no credit and I provide no hyperlink back to his/her site. This kind of screen-grab stealing and usage happens 3.4 million times a second, and it’s totally illegal.
Below you see a bigger version of the same image. Now I will tell you it was made by Ian Shive. You will note that I’ve added his copyright stamp, and if you click on the image you’ll see that I’ve created a hyperlink to his site. Further, I will tell you that Ian Shive is a wonderful photographer, a great guy and that you should definitely check out his site and use his services. The fact that I’ve done all this does not change the fact that I what I have done is totally illegal. I have stolen this image from Shive’s Web site, broken copyright law and abused Shive’s right to control his intellectual property. I just can do this with a still image without breaking the rules.
Now, I’m going to post the five-minute episode one of “Wild Exposure with Ian Shive”, a video hosted on Vimeo.com. This multimedia production by Shive and Russell Chadwick features stunning video by Chadwick, amazing still images by Shive, an original musical score the team had commissioned, and yes, you got it: the same photograph that I already stole twice in writing this post.
Not only am I legally allowed to share this video, I am encouraged to do so by Shive, who enabled the “Embed” button, allowing me to post this video directly into my post. And there is no stipulation that I have to say wonderful things about Shive, or provide a link back to his main Web site. In fact, I’m free to host this video on my “The World’s Shittiest Videos” Web site, and even if this really irritates Shive, there’s very little he can do about it.
While it’s impossible to move Mt. Rushmore, powerful viruses have a way of a way of moving with wonderful, unstoppable speed.
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