Online news overtakes TV. What it means?

TV is no longer the place where most people get their news. It’s online, reports OFCOM today. Over the 2000s I travelled extensively around the world observing, exchanging thought and having the opportunity to engage and train great talent. Russia, India, Egypt, China, Algeria -all were different in their own way.

This photo was taken doing some work training young Syrian filmmakers, near the Syrian border. I travelled there with a human rights lawyer and courtesy of support from the Institute of War and Peace.

Some years later, we did an AI analysis of the films I made to interpret the style of films being produced — which was based on a form called Cinema Journalism. I was already a videojournalist, drone and mobile journalist.

Cinema journalism was less about the medium/tool and more about the philosophy and style. For instance you might easily recall your best fictional film, but you might be hard pressed to name your best news report.

Since then I’ve delved further into Cinema Journalism (CJ) and it’s led to invitations to speak to global leaders.

Its significance grows. How? OFCOM’s report shows audience’s preferred platforms. There are many reasons, such as its availability, the mobile revolution, algorithmic recommendations, different styles and so on.

There’s a 2008 write up online from the Press Gazette where I’m training UK regional journalists to become CJs comes to mind.

“Citing examples such as Black Hawk Down as the sort of film we should seek inspiration from, Dunkley Gyimah threw concepts such as mis-en-scene into the mix. At some points, when he blew us away with the art-tastic productions that fellow VJs on the global scene had produced, it seemed difficult how we could get our work to fit into that model.”

Cinema Journalism’s Revolution

That model has way expanded now. The revolution in cinema journalism was re-cast online and cable. Re-cast because you can trace one of its roots to a key figure I had the pleasure of interviewing, Robert Drew behind Cinema Verite (Direct Cinema).

Without the constraints that TV news executive had built for themselves, which worked until audiences and politicians became savvy circa 1990s, talent like Wash Posts Travis Fox followed a style that mixed journalism and cinema. He won countless international news awards — voted by peers.

But it’s not been all plain sailing. Like any medium cinema can be used to distort, and that is evident on many platforms. And no, cinema journalism is not fictional.

The rub is then if you’re learning how to make TV, a student perhaps, you’d be minded to understand this new form, particularly as audiences move online. It’s not an easy form to grasp, but once you do, you begin to understand how every frame contributes to story cognition.

Interestingly enough CJ can now be seen occasionally across television. Next week I’m interviewing one of the BBC’s emerging gifted news filmmakers. That interview, coupled with others, offers enough persuasive evidence to show its impact.

This, I fear won’t halt TV’s decline, particularly too as AIs analysis of my film in 2017 provides increasing means to understand filmmaking techniques and audience engagement. It’s still about the talent, as we find new ways of storytelling. All AI does it replicate; we’ll still need the human imagination.