An insight into Cinema Journalism
In the 1960s TV Journalism came into its own. Then a pioneering team of journalists suggested cinema journalism as a new form. It took off but was limiting.
In 2015, an award winning videojournalist (that’s me) built on the success of the pioneers via a global PhD. I showed they were onto something and proved how just immersive Cinema Journalism is to audiences.
It took me to China, India, Russia, Lebanon, Ghana, Egypt, UK, US, Denmark and the Syrian border, to name some countries, because it’s a cultural form of storytelling.
I took this shot (top) off the Spanish Mediterranean. It meant free diving to about 20 feet of water to take the photograph. It just seemed to symbolically illustrate Cinema Journalism.
I’ve presented to several conferences and networks over the year such as TV2 in Denmark, Facebook-India and to journalism profs and practitioners in Russia — all last year.
Here’s the thing. TV journalism has a long and established tradition and form which is passed onto new gens. About thirty years ago, the UK welcomed its first video journalists. Their work and methods were transformative.
When mainstream news adopted video journalism it subsumed it into its TV form. By 2005 a few video journalists, both in newspapers and TV, explicitly embraced cinema. They won awards. However there was little theory that underpinned the form. As a practitioner and researcher I’ve written about its theory, how it functions, and that gradually audiences have demonstrated how much they are drawn to its form.
