Digital Media – A Portfolio
A major facet of journalism in today’s world is the use of digital media. The rise of the internet and the continual improvements of mass communication mean that any event can be broadcast and witnessed by people across the world within mere minutes of it happening, via TV and radio or online. As such, it is important for prospective journalists to have a firm grasp on the concept of digital media, how it is implemented and how it affects the modern world.
Week One: Video Capture
In the first week of Digital Media we covered the use of handheld video cameras as a digital medium. Video footage is one of the most important commodities available to a journalist, and so having a video capture device close at hand is essential. Fortunately, with the development of modern technology quick capture of video footage on a digital camera or a mobile phone camera is available at a moment’s notice.
Thanks to modern technology, video capture is always readily available (Sources: http://www.mobilementalism.com, http://www.eastcoastphoto.com)
However, while handheld video camera devices have the advantage of being easy to carry and store, they also have disadvantages – primarily in video quality. Mobile phone cameras tend to have a fairly low resolution and framerate in video capture (most mobile phone cameras are less than two or three megapixels), and while digital cameras are generally of better quality than this they are known to produce blocky, juddering video footage depending on the ambient light, focus, etc. This is also true in the handheld camera’s ability to capture audio – while most mobile phones are digital cameras are able to capture audio alongside video, it can often be distorted by interference from other electronic devices and background noise (especially wind, if video is being captured outdoors), and so it may often to more advantageous to use a dedicated microphone. (see: Week Three)
Week Two: Video Editing
As a progression of video capture, video editing plays an important role in digital media. In most cases not all of the raw video footage captured is needed, and so the irrelevent content will need to be “trimmed” or “cropped”. The video may also need to be sped up or slowed down, or have a piece of separate audio playing alongside it, to suit the needs of the journalist’s broadcast, video feature, etc.
There are a number of video editing programs available, but one that is often used is Final Cut Pro. This piece of software, developed by Apple Inc., allows the user to crop video, adjust playback speeds, increase or decrease audio volume, add transitional effects, and many more besides. It also supports a large range of video and audio formats, making it an ideal digital media commodity.
Final Cut Pro is a good choice for video editing software. The top-left window shows the files in the selected folder available for use; the top-right windows are the playback windows for the selected piece of edited footage and the overall footage, respectively; the lower window shows the timeline, where audio and video can be arranged. (Source: http://www.newenglandfilm.com)
In Final Cut Pro, video is assembled by placing various pieces of audio and video into the timeline, shown in the bottom half of the screen. This timeline has separate “channels” for audio and video; video files can only be placed in the video channels, and audio files in the audio channels. However, there are a number of different video and audio channels on the timeline; this allows overlays and transitions to be used between audio and/or video files.
From the timeline, files can also be “cropped” to a shorter length. This is done by selecting the file on the timeline and placing “IN” and “OUT” markers on the timeline that appears on the left playback window in the top half of the screen. If the file being cropped is a video file this will be played back accordingly; if it is an audio file, a visual representation of the audio will display on the playback window and the audio will play. Furthermore, files can be sped up and slowed down using the various options from the toolbar located to the right of the timeline.
Once the appropriate editing has been done, the user can playback the overall edited footage by clicking the play button on the right playback window in the top half of the screen. This plays back the combined video and audio as positioned on the timeline, as well as any transitional effects used; the playback from this window is a representation of the finished product. From there, the edited footage can be saved as one of several different video formats. Alternatively, the user can save the Final Cut Pro project file for further editing at a later date – provided that all of the raw audio and video files used in the project are located in the same directories on the computer in use that they were in at the time of saving.
Week Three: Audio Capture
Aside from video, audio is also a useful facet of journalism – audio files can be used to provide an overlaying soundtrack or a voiceover to a piece of video. In most cases it is better to use a dedicated audio capture device such as a microphone to record audio, both for audio-only purposes and in accompaniment to video. This is because these devices generally provide a much clearer and higher-quality audio playback than the microphones found in video cameras. Most modern microphones also have USB ports and capture audio onto a small flash drive in .mp3 or .wav format, which are the most common digital audio format, hence they can easily be uploaded onto a computer and used accordingly through a video editing program (see: Week Two).
Microphones are often used in accompaniment to video cameras during interviews to provide higher-quality audio playback (Source: http://blogs.courant.com)
The most common type of microphone used during interviews is a unidirectional microphone. This is a microphone whose range of recording is mostly limited to the area in “front” of the microphone, i.e. the part pointed at the source of the audio. This means that alot of background noise and interference can be omitted from the recording, and hence is useful for recording audio from a single point of origin, e.g. a person speaking. A series of unidirectional microphones can also be set up to record audio from several specific points of origin, e.g. several people talking. These can then be overlayed and adjusted accordingly on a video editing program to provide a more even playback if desired, for example if a panel of people are being interviewed.
Another type of microphone used is an omnidirectional microphone. This microphone has a wide range of recording, limited only at the area “behind” the microphone. These microphones are often used to capture a more panoramic audio range, or are more preferably used in interviews with several people instead of setting up several unidirectional microphones. Because of the large range of recording that these microphones have, they are often positioned vertically to capture sound from all sides, or angled to one side to capture sound from one side and omit sound from another – this is a good means of reducing background noise and interference.
Examples of unidirectional and omnidirectional microphones, respectively (Sources: http://www.aues21.dsl.pipex.com, http://www.trewaudio.com)
Week Four: Text
One of the most useful commodities in used in digital media is that of text. Text is one of the most versatile tools available to a journalist, and if implemented correctly it can be used to highlight, explain, elaborate, summarise, assert, relay, coerce, and so on.
Text is found in variable quantities, depending on the media being used; obviously in radio journalism text is not readily available to the audience, whereas in online news articles and blogs text is the most heavily-used commodity of all. TV news broadcasts fall within these two extremes, often using text as captions and means of offering short, summarised points without removing the audience’s attention from the main broadcast entirely.
An example of text being used on a BBC News broadcast to summarise a news story – possibly unrelated to the one currently being presented – by means of a scrolling caption (Source: http://idents.org/)
Week Five: Blogging
With the advent of the Internet, an important rising media source is that of blogs. The term “blog” is derived from the term “web log” where individual users (known as “bloggers”) are able to publish their own news and opinions on any number of topics.
Perhaps one of the most integral differences between blogs and other sources of media is that blogs are not necessarily maintained by journalists, but by ordinary people who simply wish to share their views with the world. This has become a new means of employing a cyclical model of communication – blogs are a means of feedback through which the receiver of news (the audience, and hence the blogger) can convey their thoughts on a topic at hand. In either case, the power of blogs on digital journalism has clearly been identified and reacted upon – many news sources and freelance journalists have established their own blog channels to publish news stories on various topics.
The BBC Business Blog, written by the economics editor Stephanie Flanders (Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs – screen capture)
While most non-journalistic blogs are generally less professionally-upkept than those of journalists in major news corporations, they are regardless an important empowerment to the ordinary people whose opinions would otherwise go unheard. Many sites such as WordPress and Blogger now offer the ability to create and maintain a free blog for anyone with a valid e-mail address, and websites such as Twitter have allowed people to use short, direct updates to maintain a quick and constant feed of news that users can output for any to see. Many individuals have even taken to blogging on popular video hosting sites such as Youtube, in a growing sub-culture known as “vlogging” – a derivative of blogging and a contraction of “video logging”.
Twitter, a popular “mini-blog” site, combines the user interaction of social networking sites with the ability to provide short 140-character personal updates. (Source: http://www.twitter.com – screen capture)
SevenSimpleMinds, a collaborative YouTube vlog (Source: http://www.youtube.com – screen capture)
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