Multimedia Reporting Fall 2019

https://jlc.exposure.co/la-warren

Upcoming Dates

Video pitches will be due this Wednesday, Nov. 13. Your final project will be a reported multimedia project consisting of a 2-3 minute video, a written story of about 500 words, and at least one still photo as lead image.

Rough cuts of your videos will be due on Monday, Dec. 2. The final project will be due on Dec. 11, our last day of class.

Here’s an example of a story with multimedia elements:

Islamic exorcisms used as a ‘cure’ for homosexuality in Indonesia: ‘If I am Muslim, I can’t be gay’

Intro to Video Journalism

With video, we build on the compositional techniques of photography and the structural, storytelling aspects of audio with one obvious additional element: Motion.

How does video storytelling for the web and mobile differ from TV and film?

• Need to be CLOSER to your subject. Web videos are smaller and more compressed.
• 20 percent of online viewers bail on a video within 10 seconds. So you don’t have a lot of time to grab your viewers and make sure they stick around.

How important is audio?

• Good audio is of paramount importance. If you have low-quality video and good audio, the video will still be watchable. If you have gorgeous visuals but terrible audio, it will not.

When is narration necessary?

Sometimes, you can let the subjects of your video tell the story all on their own — as long as you edit with care, presenting what they’ve told you in a way that makes narrative sense. One benefit of non-narrated videos is that they can feel more organic. There’s no disembodied voice stepping in to tell the story, which keeps the focus on the characters in the story.

But sometimes, for clarity’s sake or for stylistic reasons, narration is necessary, or text.

Narrated videos

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000002073002/treasures-from-the-sky.html?

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/americas/100000005277141/the-last-taushiro.html?”>https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/americas/100000005277141/the-last-taushiro.html?

Text-Narrated videos

These are more and more popular thanks to social media distribution because they automatically start playing as you scroll through your feed and they can be watched without sound.

Non-Narrated videos

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001846077/bronx-obama.html”>https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001846077/bronx-obama.html

Shooting Your Video

There are two main components to any video: your interviews and your B-roll. The rules of composition we learned for photography (thirds, colors, patterns, symmetry, etc.) all apply here, but you also need to keep an eye out for motion. Tracking shots involve following the action with your camera, while static shots involve keeping your camera still, but that doesn’t mean there’s no motion involved; you might just be letting the action go in and out of the frame.

What is B-roll? And what difference does it make?

A big difference.

Things to keep in mind while you’re shooting B-roll:

1. Shoot more than you think you’ll need.
2. Get a variety of shots. Close-up, medium, wide, detail shots, static shots, tracking shots.
3. Use a tripod whenever possible. If you don’t have one or you’re shooting in a mobile, chaotic situation, be resourceful about stabilizing your shots.
4. Think about your interviews and let them inform your B-roll shooting decisions. Look for shots that illustrate what the person is talking about.
5. Hold your shot longer than you think you need to. A good rule of thumb is to hold it for at least 10 seconds (AFTER it’s already steady).

Things to keep in mind when you’re shooting your interviews:

1. Frame the shot with your subject on one of the thirds, angled so that they’re looking slightly INTO the frame. Have them look at you, not at the camera, so be mindful of where you are sitting. It’s a bit intense when someone looks directly into the camera.

2.  If you’re working with a translator, be mindful that the subject will want to look at them, so make sure they are positioned in the ideal place to draw the person’s gaze.
3.  Prioritize good audio.
4.  Make sure their face is lit, but not too harshly.
5. Think about composing the shot in a way that allows for some negative space where the Lower Third will eventually go.

The Five-Shot Sequence

When it comes to B-roll, your job is to use these visuals to tell a story in a way that is very clear and keeps the viewer not just interested but oriented: clear on what’s happening. Cutting together a sequence is often an effective way of doing this.

The classic sequence that every budding videographer learns when starting out is the five-shot sequence.

1. Close-up on the hands.
2. Close-up on the face.
3. Medium shot.
4. Over the shoulder shot.
5. One additional creative angle.

You won’t always edit things in this exact way when you do a sequence in the real world; sometimes it’ll only be three shots, or it might be ten, and they might be in a different order. But the five-shot sequence is a useful framework for thinking about depicting an activity clearly and engagingly with video.

Next week, you’ll get your hands on the cameras. We’ll practice shooting and editing a five-shot sequence.

Announcement

I’m teaching an Advanced Multimedia Reporting course next semester, which is really an advanced video class if any of you are interested in developing your video skills further. We had so much quality video work come out of that class in the spring that we launched a whole new section on Dollars & Sense called D&Sdocs to feature them.

Wanna to be a successful public speaker? Toastmaster International Club may achieve your goal.

By Tao Zhang

Toastmasters International, the famous leadership and public speaking nonprofit organization, claims over 350,000 members in 143 countries. Most of these people are just trying to get better at public speaking. But in a place as diverse and full of immigrants as the borough of Queens in New York City, regulars at the “Queens Best Toastmasters Club,” have found it to be a great, free resource for improving their spoken English. Tao Zhang went to their weekly Saturday morning meetup in Elmhurst to get the story.

I’m at Elmurst Hospital for the weekly meetup of the local Toastmasters club, and Amelia Abad is in front of everyone delivering a monologue about how she met her husband.

He was also shy and timid, not talk too much. Moreover, is very providential. We were live in the same resident hotel. So we studied together. Some of the courses we had to take in management. And we went to together because we live in the same resident hotel. So you can guess what happened. We live well and we decided to get married.
Toastmaster Ciaran Donohue presides over the club meeting as usual. Six people are on the schedule to speak today, including club president Jesse Cassell. Here’s Jesse.

Good morning for the members and most for coming the guests. Sometimes, challenges are actually blessing in disguise. This man is named Valentine. Mr. Valentine, he was a real gangster, a real criminal. One day, he got a conflict with police officer, a several police officers. And he made his mind, you can’t get me campus, bang! Ah…he laid down but he woke up the other side. Who is agree with him was very well dressed man…”
The various speakers are all competing to see who will be voted best of the week.

To make you committed, that much stronger. And your success that much for accessible. It willing must to try you best. And fail make you committed and much stronger. And you success that much for accessible. Thanks.
Please take one minute to evaluate Jesse’s speech.

That’s Ciaran, longtime member and today’s Toastmaster. He also goes to other meeting in different week. He is an airline account executive. Since he joined toastmaster club, he got more knowledge of speaking. Good for his work and better to promote sales. Now he become a toastmaster to manage the whole meeting in each week. He can see many people fill confidence and logical to covey context on the best way.

For each meeting, there is different toastmasters. We like to, one of supposes that we are very on rule. So this week I have to be a toastmaster. I have been this club for many many years. Probably if add all years come to the club relevant to ten, but I dropped out for couple of years and come back. I have been long time of this club.

What is the motivation that you join to the toastmaster club?
Basically, the motivation I think certainly for most of people I think is self-development. That is underlining motivation. But really practical sense to develop your communication skills. And being able to stand, give presentation, give a speech to the audiences.

Toastmaster international is to make people who come here that obtain the most benefits of public speaking skills, leadership, personal growth, career advancement and confidence. When you join in the club and listen to once, you will realize that speech is another way to know the world.

That’s important for me in my work, important for a lots of us for life. For to giving it, that’s the public speaking motivation.

Do you think join this club effects your work and life?
Absolutely. I think it’s all especially work. In my work I have to get presentations, I have to do sales presentations, I have to do cheer meeting sometimes. So all of that required public speaking. It is not only public speaking, it is also leadership, expect clubs. We take on rules, we give to the projects. So there is other upper speaking club to help self-development. So turns into packaging your life, yes, it does effecting my life.

During one speech, the speaker, Mark Lavergne, notices my recorder and gives me a shout-out.

People are afraid of public speaking. Here is another statistic. We have reporter here. Eight-five percent is percentage of toastmasters in the metropolitan New York area belong to clubs is not exist 20 years ago. Everyone in the room is the part of eight-five percent. This club is not exist 20 years ago.

One of the things they teach here is that humor and wit can be important in connecting with audiences. If you want people more interested in your speech, be funny. Otherwise, people will tune you out like a stereotypical lecturer at a conference.

Every meeting runs four segments. First one is “Project Speech”, including six or seven speeches by different members. Four levels mark on the sheet of the day of schedule which are “Ice breaker”, “Introduction to toastmaster mentoring”, “Connect with storytelling” and “Communicate change”. Each speech follows one evaluator to estimate their speech. The toastmaster will give them one minutes to leave notes then go on the next.
I assume we are taking time out to a minute to time mark speech. Please pass all evaluations to the back. Evaluation is all finish. It is my pleasure to invite to table topic toastmaster evaluator Milton Freitas. [APPLUS] Fellow toastmaster, good morning…

Find another way to end this. It sounds too much like you’re promoting the club. Maybe tell us who was voted the winner and then sign off.
For Baruch College, this is Tao Zhang in Queens, New York.

Chai Time with Ani Sanyal 

By Yasmine Mohamed 

LOWER EAST SIDE — Natural entrepreneur. For many first-generation Americans, entrepreneurship is thought of to be a fate that is reserved for those with the money-making gene. But is that really the case?    

The Business Journals recorded more than 11 million minority-owned businesses in operation nationwide, nearly double the number of 10 years ago. However, although minority-owned businesses are on the rise, most minority entrepreneurs still face challenges that their white counterparts are able to avoid. Including lack of representation, confidence and investor support.

At Kolkata Chai Co., cultural differences are used as a strength instead of a weakness.

Ani Sanyal is the founder of the new cafe, Kolkata Chai Co., located in Manhattan’s East Village. The grand opening of Kolkata Chai Co. took place on September 18th, the turnout was unexpected; the line wrapped around the block. 

Ani and his brother Ayan Sanyal aim to transport his customers to the streets of Kolkata, India with authentic spiced tea. 

“My background is kind of crazy” Ani says. “I am the product of two immigrant parents from India. And for me, I just knew from a young age that I couldn’t really work for somebody else. I saw my dad got laid off a lot growing up and it was just this thing where I was like, it doesn’t make sense for someone else control your financial family’s future.”

So Ani started his own business, scratch that — businesses. From music to marketing, Ani and his brother do it all. He manages an artist named Anik Khan, runs a creative agency, and started a real estate investment group.   

“My brother and I have been running a creative agency for the past five years and, our business was like super busy and like as a way to kind of get away from always being behind a computer my brother just started to experiment with Chai.” Ani says. “We had been to, you know, India, our whole childhood kind of back and forth and so Chai was a big part of our lives, but he just started like cooking it up in his room in his in his apartment started, you know, giving it to friends and family and kind of letting them taste it and then kind of like, just kept rolling from there”

Chai is a way of life in India. you’ll find chaiwallahs on almost every corner. They are vendors who specifically sell the sweet, spicy, milky beverage. 

In America, “chai” has become known as a flavor of tea with predominantly cinnamon or cardamom elements. Ani and his brother Ayan noticed that there is a lack of authentic chai in New York, so… they decided to do something about it. 

“Some of the most beautiful things in the world we found in Kolkata. And some of the most heartbreaking things in the world we found in Kolkata.” Ani says. “So when it came to like creating a space in New York City, it was like what better way to shed light on a place that’s meant so much to us that a lot of people don’t know about. just reclaiming that narrative of what our culture and what our food and what our people actually are like.”

Ani is motivated by the sacrifices his family has made to come to America, he also wants young people to know that it’s possible to live life on your own terms.

“For me especially, I grew up as like a brown kid in the 90s and it wasn’t cool to like own your culture. I was like “wow” you know, our food smells crazy, or like my mom was like, just like making me dress in all these like crazy outfits and I was like damn ma, this is not it.” Ani says. 

“And I just remember being like, never been like super proud of like being where we’re where we were from. It took me like trips back home and just like spending time with my culture to understand how beautiful it really was.” 

Ani sounds determined to challenge white-dominated spaces so that the next generation of kids like him don’t feel unwelcome.

“If we don’t start changing the conversation and changing what spaces look like. And take that responsibility ourselves, then things are not going to change, and every space or every venue or every all the infrastructure in this country is going to remain the same.” Ani says. “It’s going to be white-owned it’s going to be a space that we don’t have the ability to influence. Like you go to every co-working space around the country. It all looks the same.” 

Another chai place called the Chai Spot opened last year (confirm) in lower manhattan, but Ani he doesn’t see competition. The Chai Spot, another chai place in lower manhattan is one that also sells a similar product; Ani explains why Kolkata Chai stands out from its competitors. 

“I don’t think there’s competition.” Ani says, “We created a new category, how I see it, you have coffee shops you have all these things, but you don’t have places that serve authentic Chai exclusively that understands young millennial diasporic culture, there’s no place doing that.”

Noran Omar, a customer at Kolkata Chai, sits nearby writing a paper. I ask her what she thinks of the place.

To be honest, this place gives me such brown vibes, and I love it. Do you know what I mean? I mean the music, the scents, the ambiance it just takes me back to my cultural roots which I miss very much. 

The brothers are anticipating future investments through content and collaborations. While mostly based in the Greater New York City area, Kolkata Chai Co. is anticipating expanding with pop-ups in L.A. and other markets in an effort to use chai as a means of connecting people across different generations and cultures.

Marriage fraud in united states has been happening for decades. A non us citizen marries a us citizen to get green card in exchange for money. And the amount for this fraud varies from $50,000 to $70,000.
Recently 100 people have been charged in Texas marriage fraud scheme to get Green Cards.

Muhammad Afzal spoke to a young woman in Long Island with the similar story.

Right Now, I am in Hicksville, a city of Long Island with huge south Asian community. The stores, restaurants, and the markets represent beautiful culture of south Asian countries. I’m on my way to meet a girl, who is 19 and only arrived in America six months ago from India.

I had to change her name at her request. So, Sash came to America with big ambitions, she wanted to start her college right away, and has been a bright student in India. Her certificates and awards from high school in her room shows her achievements.

“It was great at the start, I loved it. I met my parents after 5 years. I also came with the mindset of helping them financially. So, we could be a little happy family again”

But her parents are still not American citizen. So, they had different plans for her.

“They applied for an asylum, but the problem is, it still hasn’t been approved and doesn’t seem like, it will be any time soon”

So, they found an easy and the fastest way to get the green card, which was marrying their daughter with an American Citizen.

“It started about a month ago, they were like, O No, it’s time for you to get married. And I was like, but I am still too young, I haven’t even started my college yet. At first, they were trying to make me understand nicely. But then things got rough, they started forcing me too much, it was emotionally draining”.

Sash has still not agreed to marry yet, she is still trying to convince her parents. But this is not the story of just one girl. I met a woman who has been married for 5 years for the same reason. But most marriages in South Asian communities are not for the money, there is not money exchange. If a girl or a boy marries someone, they do it for the life, even if the purpose is to get the green card.

“I was married 5 years ago, have 2 kids now. I wasn’t married specifically for green card, or we didn’t give any money to my husband, but the goal was to come to united states”.

She was doing her bachelors back home, when her parents to decided to marry her abroad hoping for her better life.

“I was a bit reluctant at first, because I didn’t know the guy much, we talked for few months over the phone, I liked him, so I said yes, i am very happy with him”.

Marriages like these cannot be proven wrong, because there is no money exchange. But, is it morally right or wrong is the question to ask?

Thanks for watching. This is CNN Morning News.
I am Muhammad Afzal. Have a Great Day!

 

Baruch College is commonly known as a business-oriented school with mostly commuter students. In between the never-ending internships and side hustles, surprisingly, there are some Baruch students who care about music as well. Baruch’s only a capella group,  Blue Notes, name inspired by the famous jazz club in New York, is run by students who share a passion for singing. Founded in 2005, Blue Notes is a relatively new a capella on the collegiate a cappella scene. Ayse Kelce is reporting from one of their semiweekly practices.  

 It is a typical Thursday at Baruch College during club hours. As hundreds of students gather up for their on campus club activities, there is an unusual sound coming from the 9th floor of Newman Vertical Campus, room 135. Under the bright fluorescent light, about a dozen of Baruch Blue Notes members are singing. The president of

 the club, Rebecca Dhala, steps out from the circle of performers to talk to Kelce about Blue Notes.

“We sometimes feel like we are a little unsupported. The music departments in other colleges are a lot stronger. But, being the only a cappella group on campus can be a plus, it allows us to get closer with the music professors here at Baruch,” Dhala says. 

Dhala is a Music Major with a concentration in Management of Musical Enterprises. Students like her are hard to come by in Baruch, but Blue Notes is full of students with special talents.

Kevin Seise is the owner of the beat in the background in Blue Notes performances. He brings sound diversity to Blue Notes with being the only performer in his own category in an a capella group.

“Originally, I was a beatboxer. But, through the help of practice, I figured out that I am a baritone as well. My time here at Blue Notes has been very enlightening, and it definitely gave me an opportunity here to practice my singing. Now I am ten times more comfortable singing in front of a crowd. Being an a capella in a business school. We do not get enough recognition, ” Seise says.

Blue Notes is allocated a budget of $2,785 by the Baruch College Undergraduate Student Government. $2,430 of the budget goes to Fall and Spring Showcases. The club only has the rest $355 to plan any events on campus or hold General Interest Meetings. 

Altynai Eshinibaeva says that they do not get enough funding like the other clubs on campus, even though we are a big. She comments on the lack of recognition they are getting due the business focus of the school.

In addition to 19 current performing members, Baruch’s Blue Notes has two members for marketing purposes. It is the first se

mester that the club has a marketing team. They are hoping to get more recognition on campus. 

“There are a lot of a capella groups out there. But the only groups that get noticed are actually the Ivy League groups. Being i

n New York, there are NYU a capella groups, Columbia a capella groups… I feel like we can do more, and the school can do more for us. Especially in a business school, because most times, business and music can u

sually fall into each other in some areas. That correlation exists,” Jonathan Paul Michaelian says, and he is right about the competition.

NYU and Columbia both have nine a capella groups on their campuses. Yet, Blue Notes is gaining more recognition by attending other a cappella groups’ showcases, and using business and marketing strategies, what Baruch is actually famous for, to promote their music.