engaging stories... ...told economically

Adapted from a presentation given at the RTS meeting on 28/11/2011


In part 1 I talked a little about the strategic reasons for engaging with the idea of mobile reporting from an iPhone. Here we get tactical and I shall explain how to put together the disparate pieces of technology required to be able to get reports from interview to publication in just fifteen minutes.

The iPhone is currently the device of choice for multimedia reporting. It can record CD quality audio and, although the video is not to broadcast specs for HD it is arguably better than what we had in the late 1970s.  It also has the fastest video rendering. Android and other smartphones are baying at Apple's heels, so it won't be long before there will be significant choice. In any case, if you have the first/only footage of something significant then 'good enough is good enough'.

The iPhone has a tiny lens, so no matter how good it is, geometry dictates that the amount of light reaching the sensor will be limited. The iPhone is not heavy. So it wobbles easily and that doesn't make it easy to acquire professional looking footage. The solution is the Owle Bubo, a sold billet of aluminium milled to take an iPhone and to put a larger accessory lens in front of it.

The iPhone mic is good for audio recordings but not good enough for filming as it faces sideways. The next step up is to use the mic that comes with an Owle Bubo. It plugs into the iPhone and faces forward. It's fine for simple interviews in quiet locations. But you really should attach a broadcast mic and get in close. For that there is a choice of  interface cables and many microphones. Some have XLR plugs and others have 3.5mm jacks. Some have a monitoring adapter too so you can leave it on while editing. I use VeriCorder's cable as it has some circuitry inside for better signal to noise performance.

Some mic's need Phantom Power. I found the B29L pre-amp manufactured by AKG to be small and not particularly expensive. The device has two inputs but you'll need converter cables from XLR at the mic down to a mini XLR at the other end. It also has a belt clip, useful since there are lots of accessories to manage.

Lighting is often required. The Rotolight interview kit comes with a variety of filters so that you can balance for various different lighting conditions. There are two light heads, one of which can be mounted on the Owle Bubo and the other can be handheld or mounted using any of the variety of brackets and stands available.

The above will give you a sound, still and video recording system which is compact and fairly unobtrusive. With practice you can get really quite reasonable results, certainly good enough for radio, TV and online news reports, and even feature films if you like.

If you have the CNN news app it allows you to shoot stills and video and upload them directly to their iReport site either as a guest or to your own account. It also allows you to upload a report which you've already edited too. There are several options for editing on the iPhone. iMovie and ReelDirector are two common ones but I prefer VeriCorder's 1stVideo app. It comes in two versions, a consumer version which will do pretty much everything you'll need and a Network version which is aimed at newsrooms. The latter can be deployed for specific channels and events. Simply downloading the free app gives the iPhone much of the functionality of a single camera satellite truck with edit.

From within the app you can import or acquire audio, stills and video which you can then edit into a package for streaming directly into a newsroom server system. The editing is simple but adequate with cuts, mixes and captioning. The bottom line is that if you can't tell a story then you won't be able to hide the fact with production quality bling.

After my RTS talk, I was able to shoot and edit a short piece in around fifteen minutes. I uploaded it to a server and everyone could see the piece on the web from whatever device they had available to them.



It could equally easily have been sent to a TV newsroom for inclusion in a broadcast. The ramifications of this technology are profound and perhaps welcome in the light of the BBC's recent agreement with BECTU over rates for freelance. In particular, the use of this technology will allow the speedy production and delivery of reports at very low cost.

The final piece of technology is to do with story itself. For this we turn to Aristotle again. His beginning, middle and end was not a prescription for a three act structure, but to illustrate the notion that a story must be complete to be beautiful. Beauty is the quality which makes a story compelling to its audience.

So these short reports must be complete to leave the viewer satisfied. The traditional reporters' questions are borrowed from Kipling:

I keep six honest serving men,
They taught me all I knew,
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

These are good questions, but they can be arranged as part of a quad of complete questions:

• What and where is it?
• How does it work?
• What does it mean?
• Why is it important?

What, where, when and who are subsets of what and where is it. How is from my second question and Why is part of How. This leaves two questions often unanswered.



The film above is a very simple example of an extremely short, but complete story. The production value is absolutely minimal but there is no doubt that the content makes a complete piece.

My examples are very early experiments in an area that I believe will become quite pervasive, driven by price and emerging technologies.

In the UK, equipment and advice can be sourced from Appleworld Distribution at Pinewood Studios. There is a lot of information on VeriCorder's site and the 1st Video app is available from iTunes.

If you are interested in learning more then please contact me by phone or email.

Adapted from a presentation given at the RTS meeting on 28/11/2011

About six months ago the World Association of Newspapers, WAN-IFRA, held a conference in London. Entitled 'Digital Media Europe', it was to highlight efforts of the printed press to address issues around declining circulations. They must find new ways to engage old audiences who are increasingly going online for a rich variety of media.

1. Phone apps are perceived as personal utilities in the main, so phones can often go where those who are obviously press sometimes can't.
2. Being filmed with an iPhone is a lot less intimidating than with a big camera. 
3. A newsroom can turn anyone with an iPhone into a reporter simply by asking them to download an app. CNN have an app and so do VeriCorder.
4. You can shoot edit and upload all on the same device. 
5. Phone content can be got to distribution faster than anything except live broadcast - and it can do that too.
6. It is incredibly cheap by comparison with broadcast kit.
7. Standard codecs are now common.
8. Increasingly, news is being consumed on mobile devices which are not able to use the highest quality anyway.