June 5, 2015
Photographer Michael Blair
lights up most when talking about sharing story decisions with a reporter to
make a superior story.
Michael has the same lament as
every photographer I've ever talked with. Stories in recent years have become
shorter, harder with less time for features or orchestrating images. The days
when you might sneak a three-minute piece into a cast are over. Here, the
standard PKG time is 1:30, but sometimes producers will squeeze out an extra :15
seconds for them.
The Fox station has fewer
photographers and relies on MMJ (multimedia journalists) who shoot their own
video. Then they pull the SD card out of their camera, ingest the video onto
their laptops, edit the video on their laptops, and then ftp the video to the
station via the internet.
Michael says it's faster and
cheaper, but he believes his station gets substantially more quality both in
look and content by having the photographer look after the visuals, while the
reporter looks after the story information and then collaborate.
KOTV crews edit in the field,
too. But they have to take a couple more steps to get their video back to the
station. KOTV shoots with higher quality cameras that use P2 cards to store the
video. After they have finished editing, they export the video back onto a P2
card through a card reader. Then, the P2 card is put back in the camera. It is
then fed out of the camera through a "Dejero" unit to the station. The Dejero
unit is like a giant cellphone with the signal capacity of six cellphones. So,
while the FOX station usually ftp's their video to the station, KOTV typically
sends its video back by cell pack. Of course, you can still send video back by
microwave live truck. But the live trucks aren't used much anymore because the
video can be sent via cell or internet.
The Dejero units have another
advantage. The bandwidth is big enough and stable enough that you can go live.
That was a surprise to me, that the cell packs are replacing live vans for
live shots.
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