Adam Leonard's Blog

Independent Journalism

adamleonard — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:06:45 +0000

Hello, and welcome to my journalism blog. I will be updating this blog regularly, adding weekly reflections and pitches, and uploading my latest videos as I go.

Please stay tuned for more exciting student journalism.

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Week 1

adamleonard — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:31:15 +0000

Another semester means a whole new page in my portfolio as a journalist, and a whole new set of skills.

As I was walking to our first class I noticed someone wearing a full velvet tracksuit (Including the pants, jacket and a hoodie). I have no idea why anyone would want to wear this, unless they have given up on all aspects of socialising, but anyway it put me in good spirits for the rest of the day. If this experience is anything to go by then this semester is going to be a good one.
As revolutionary as our degree is, there is supposed to be a big reliance on convergence. That is why this semester we are doing JOUR315, which is a flow on from last semester’s JOUR215. After a class with our new lecturer Shawn Burns, I am confident that this will (con)verge on great. He must know his stuff because he loves using buzzwords such as voxpops, talent, grab and butt-edit. It almost sounds as if we are going to be filming pornographic material.

In this class we read through the stimulating subject outline, including assessments and how much of a social life I am not going to have this semester.

In our first class we discussed what ‘convergence’ means. It is the direction that journalism is heading in, especially due to a heavy reliance on the internet, rather than print journalism. It not only combines elements of audio, still photography, moving pictures, test, and animations, but has a certain element of audience interaction, in which the audience can dictate what they want to see.

Week 2

adamleonard — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 13:33:13 +0000

Shawn discussed further our assessments and their due dates, in particular our first assignment due next week. We started mucking around with cameras. Immediately I can tell that people are going to struggle, as they have no comprehension of what a tripod is or does. With my history of briefly composing home videos and 21st videos I already had an edge on most of the class. But this wasn’t like shooting a normal video, this was journalism, so I had to basically start fresh including certain shots, camera angles, pans, zooms and cover shots. This should a challenging but very interesting subject.

Week 3

adamleonard — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:35:21 +0000

Our first assignment is due on Sunday. It took me a while but I think I have a grasp of what is required for this assessment. It is basically a pitch, so instead of writing it out like an essay, we have to compose it as if we seriously wanted permission from our editor to go ahead with a story. So the idea is to make it sound as interesting as possible. This was much clearer after a lecture from Shawn. I am going to focus on the 2009 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. It is definitely newsworthy and regularly appears in news programs or is covered elsewhere. However, I have chosen to take a local angle on it and focus on the local talent being nurtured, rather than the international acts performing.

We also had a lecture on interview techniques, which I found extremely useful, and with this knowledge we split into groups and filmed an interview and some cover shots. This was much harder than it sounds. After learning about the theory behind it all, and with my film background you think I would have been all right. But no, this is a whole new ball game; I’m not even wearing the right sporting equipment. Our group firstly had terrible interview technique, didn’t have any interesting questions, didn’t have any decent cover shots, and didn’t have a clue. There is no way I would ever watch this. I just hope we learn from this and hopefully put a bit more effort in for other tasks.

Week 4

adamleonard — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:36:06 +0000

This was a stressful week for me, not only did we start thinking of ideas for assessment 2 and using final cut, I also found out that Gumbi was actually a guy; that gives me a whole new perspective on my childhood. Admittedly I have some knowledge of video editing software, but Final Cut is much more complicated and I have to learn it from scratch. But it does look more professional and has two benefits I can immediately recognise: you can have more than one tracks in the audio and video, and it renders as it goes, not leaving you unable to watch your half-finished product on playback.

Week 5

adamleonard — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:36:36 +0000

This week Shawn showed us his package – well not literally, of course. He showed us 2 minute package that he had put together from 35 minutes of footage from the weekend. This seems to be a hell of a lot of footage to be shot for such a short package, but I guess Shawn knows more than me, as he is the teacher. We had to pick out grabs that we thought were suitable and chop them up using Final Cut Express. This included shot listing, which is what I assume people are sworn to do in hell for eternity. It was very interesting as some people were selecting grabs of up to 30 seconds, bearing in mind that the whole piece had to be 1-2 mins. 8-10 seconds is the ideal grab. You can even butt-edit two small grabs together, concealing the edit with a cover shot.

Week 6

adamleonard — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:39:20 +0000

We had to start thinking of ideas for our next assessment, which is a 3-minute package that includes elements of convergence and the new techniques we have learnt. After what seemed like years of deliberating I finally decided upon a topic and an angle: I would focus on the new fad of the wii at the pub, which is traditionally a blokey environment. Just as we had to pitch for our first assessment we had to consider cover shots, possible talent, including voxpops, and complications with audio, footage, or legal issues, etc.

Easter Break

adamleonard — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:02:58 +0000

This is the time when I could catch up on my work, without breaking my chocolate-eating habits. I went along to my local pub and the staff were more than welcome to have me film and interview them. Honestly, I was really happy with my final product, as I didn’t include any meaningless fades, and included ambient sounds. I have really put in the effort for this assessment and I hope that my mark reflects this.

Week 7

adamleonard — Sun, 31 May 2009 13:40:26 +0000

Example example exampleIn class we looked at a wholly convergent website set up for ABC Gallipoli. It was a news site in which the user dictated entirely what they wanted to view, rather than being told what they want to view. It had many convergent features, but most exciting and original was the inclusion of a ‘Google Earth’ application in which users could track down particular battles and follow their movement. We also had to split into groups and choose a story from a newspaper that we could transpose into a convergence piece. Many people found this complicated, but I think our group had a comprehensive understanding of ‘convergence’ now. We also worked on our assignments.

Week 8

adamleonard — Sat, 30 May 2009 13:40:55 +0000

In class watched everyone’s video for assessment two as they spoke to it. It was extremely interesting to see the process that people took and bumps they ran into, and also how advanced they ere technologically and in compiling a package. I was actually quite shocked by the standard of some of the videos. Some combined interesting subject matter, with good talents, good grabs, and decent editing. However, I did notice that when many people got lost as to how to combine two clips, or didn’t have enough cover shots they went fade-crazy. Fade after fade after fade; honestly I started fading in-and-out of their videos. Also people weren’t careful as when they faded they chopped off the last words of a grab, which is unprofessional and brings the whole video down. In my video I made the mistake of giving the microphone to the talent, and in some circumstances there was bad lighting. Without sounding cocky and in comparison to the other videos I believe mine can possibly be mentioned in the distinction category.