2012: The Year of the Dragon from Jonah Kessel on Vimeo.

The plan was simple: to one-up ourselves.

One year earlier friends and filmmakers Paul Morris, Kit Gillet and myself decided to make a short video documenting some of the fireworks in Beijing as China celebrated the Lunar New Year.

In fact, I even wrote about the experience on this blog here. Exactly one year later — we decided to do it again. However, this time — we wanted to go bigger. Much bigger.

This is a really interesting experiment: to come back to a video you made exactly one year later and reevaluate its strengths and weaknesses, and then try again. I believe this experience is a good check on your progress as a filmmaker and makes you step back and evaluate everything you do from shooting, to workflow to the art of story telling itself.

2011: The Year of the Rabbit from Jonah Kessel on Vimeo.

After we screened last year’s video we all agreed — it was kind of a stereotypical DSLR video with no real narrative. Pretty pictures, not enough of a story. There are a lot of these on the web.

This year, we wanted to tell the story of Chun Jie (Chinese New Year). However, we wanted to do it in such a way that would require very little dialogue. We wanted images to tell the story, but still have some voices in the piece — with the goal of keeping our own voices out of it. We wanted it to be cinematic but at the same time — real and unrehearsed. And while last year, we had no imposing deadlines, this year we would need to turn the video over in 36 hours to the New York Times. Now the experiment became — how to tell a story better than we had last year, shoot, process, translate and edit the footage — and transmit on China’s dodgy internet connections in less than 36 hours.

As we planned for the story and began to factor in the chaotic nature of China — we decided to bring in some more friends. Shooters Jim Fields and Keith Bedford would join our team, allowing us to be in multiple locations at once showing a wider variety of images from the celebration. We crafted a schedule, shot list and found an old man who via an interview we would setup as the story teller of Chun Jie, allowing us to dip out from narration.

To help to visually enforce the man as a story-teller and not just some old guy off the street, we put a pretty strong grade on his shots. We added about 15 points of sepia, added a vignette, desaturated, added contrast and sharpened a small bit. The hope was to visually represent the traditions that go along with this holiday for Chinese people by making him a bit more historic looking.

We encountered some of the same difficulties we did last year. The rolling shutter issue being a big and relatively unsolvable issue. While DSLRs are great for many things — for fireworks they are not. We did some tests and while we know we couldn’t stop it from happening, we did find ways to mitigate the effect. We found if fireworks were exploding at a fast enough pace to cause the rolling shutter, it would show up significantly less if the angle of the camera was in a relative perpendicular axes to the exploding object. Pulling further away from the object also helped a lot. However, in general, if you are using a DSLR and information is being recorded across the sensor in a horizontal motion as they do, and your subject happens to be exploding at an extremely high speed — you are simply using the wrong camera.

Nonetheless, we avoided it as much as possible and wrestled with the other innate problems of shooting fireworks such as exposing for something that (a) hasn’t happened yet and (b) you don’t know what will happen when it does explode. Dealing with quickly dying batteries in -15 C weather and trying to be setup in time to capture someone setting off a firework without telling them what to do is also an enormous challenge.

After 13 hours of shooting we all reported back to begin the editing process. We would have 23 hours left before deadline but there was much work ahead. Because of China’s slow web and long transmitting times for files the conversion files to Prores, translating, grading and creating the script would have be done with at least 2 hours to spare. This meant no sleeping, a lot of junk food, fast food and when things became painful, some beer. Days later, I made visual representation of this relatively comical 36 process to get this short film out.

ROLLING SHUTTER: 36 Hours in the Making of The Year of the Dragon from Jonah Kessel on Vimeo.

When we hit our deadline everyone was sleeping except me. Minutes before I was about to pass out, the video posted — and it posted front and center on the Times’ home page.

It was an amazing bit of timing and in one moment — the pain of the past day in half was gone and for just a brief moment, the world got a glimpse of an ancient Chinese tradition.

Happy New Year — 新年快乐

Jonah M. Kessel is a Beijing based freelance visual journalist working with the New York Times. Visit his web site here or follow him on Twitter here.

Wukan Video Journal from Jonah Kessel on Vimeo.

Using a fat Chinese man, a large backpack, a baseball cap and the hood from my sweatshirt, I attempted to hide myself.

I was sandwiched in between the beefy man and a f-stop Satori backpack jammed with gear on the rear of his motorcycle. He drove me down a dark dirt road in the middle of the night near the uniquely autonomous village of Wukan, Guangdong Province, China.

I was hiding from police and those who might not want attention drawn to the small village of about 13,000 people.

Earlier in the week, pissed off villagers had overthrown their leaders and in mass numbers chased the police out of town. When the police came back, they set up barriers and created a stronghold in their fishing community, only letting sympathizers and foreign journalists into the village. These outsiders started to grow in numbers and after a couple of days, a small media circus had developed.

The New York Times’ Edward Wong described the situation like this:

“The outsiders had come to see how furious residents had transformed their village on China’s southeast coast into a temporarily autonomous zone. Their anger focused on two issues: what they called illegal land sales by village officials, and the death on Dec. 11 of a village advocate while he was in police custody. The villagers chased out Communist Party officials, repelled an assault by police officers and barricaded all roads leading into Wukan with tree trunks. The two police stations in the village stood empty. So did the headquarters of the Communist Party committee.”

The villagers used this media circus and created a bit of a propaganda war. They shared their homes and food with us and drove us around on their motorcycles whenever we needed. This was a funny sight: I would be on the back of a motorcycle with a DSLR rig hung to the side, flying through small alleys and passing other motorcycles — all carrying journalists on the back as well.

With the global spotlight on this village, provincial officials were cornered and agreed to start negotiations with the angry mob.

Within 24 hours I filed one basic news video and one video journal (above) on my experience in Wukan. The video journal was paired with a text journal by Edward Wong. You can read his story “Canny Villagers Grasp Keys to Loosen China’s Muzzle” here. I shot mainly with one camera and a prime 24mm lens. While I love using jibs, sliders and mechanical movement, this video journal seemed most real shot hand-held.

While there was a lot of media there, I was the only DSLR video shooter (that I saw). All other newspapers, TV stations and wire service photographers were using standard video cameras — and with good reason. This was a tricky shoot and using a standard camera would certainly have been easier.

However, I knew it would be tricky and planned accordingly. Before I left I was told to pack light — bring no bells or whistles. Nothing extra. There would be limited car space, I would be riding by motorcycle and I would most likely have to run, so should bring only one bag.

Knowing this I created a really small franken-rig and minimized everywhere I could. Above, you can see what the franken-rig looked like disassembled and in use.

Above: f-stop Satori bag, Blackrapid RS-7 strap with Canon 60D with Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L USM, Canon 5DMII with Canon 24mm f/1.4 L USM, 2x Redrock Micro microHandGrip (Part # 2-19-0009), Redrock Micro Handlebar clamp (Part # 2-017-0002), 2x 18″ 15mm carbon fiber rods (Part # 8-011-0002), Porta Brace Universal Shoulder Pad, Jag35 Top Handle, Jag35 Tripod Plate Pro, Jag35 Quick Release Gorilla Stand with Zucoto Gorilla Plate, D | Focus Follow Focus, Jag35 90 Degree Clamp with ball head attached to a Ruige 5″ TL-S500 On-camera HD LCD monitor, Genus Counterweight for CSMK Shoulder Mount System (3.5 lb) and topped with a Rode VideoMic Pro Compact Shotgun Microphone.

I got all of this to fit into a single f-stop bag. The rig was small enough to fight for territory in press scrums and stable enough to run around in a less than stable environment.

This setup was also small enough to take onto a plane without checking anything. I kept one small tripod with me — although I barely used it.

The videos were largely edited during during the middle of the night or in the back of moving cars as I was fighting US East coast deadlines.

To see the strange conclusion to this story see my blog post “Wukan Journal Unfinished.” To see how this story unfolded check out these stories:

• Canny Villagers Grasp Keys to Loosen China’s Muzzle
• Demonstrators Who Took Over Chinese Village Halt Protest
• Officials Meet With Protesting Chinese Villagers
• Wukan Protesters Seek Return of Xue Jinbo’s Body
• Wukan Revolt Takes On a Life of Its Own

– Jonah M. Kessel is a Beijing based freelance visual journalist working with the New York Times. See his web site here and follow him on Twitter here.

So Canon have finally taken the wraps off the C300 large sensor camcorder amid much Hollywood fanfare at the Paramount studio lot. The corporation are clearly taking this market seriously as their global Chairman and CEO Fujio Mitarai personally launched the camera with many of their top brass at the event.

There are two versions of the camera – one with an EOS mount and the other with a cinema PL mount – the two are otherwise identical. There is no autofocus, autoexposure or auto white balance on either version. The body itself is quite compact and features a detachable grip and LCD monitor/XLR audio pack.

Along with the camera several new Cine style lenses were launched – a 14.5-60mm T2.6 and 30-300 T2.95-3.7 in both PL an EOS mounts, along with a set of three primes (24, 50 and 85mm) in EOS mount only.

Inside the camera is a 8.3 megapixel (4K) Super-35 sized CMOS sensor (similar in size to the EOS7D not the 5D mkII or 1D X) but the camera actually records 1080P, not 4K. The extra pixels are used to extract better colour information from the image, not resolution – more later on that.

The sensor is also designed to minimise rolling shutter and should be considerably better than current Canon DSLRs like the 5D mkII. Images can be recorded at 1080/24P (and one assumes 25 and 30P) but only 720P/60 – a slight disappointment.

The images are recorded to CF cards using the same XF codec as Canon’s XF305 and XF105 camcorders. This is 50Mbps 4:2:2 MPEG2 in an MXF wrapper. There are two CF card slots in the camera body as well as a 4:2:2 HD-SDI output for external recording. There is a HDMI output too which is good news for owners of HDMI monitors or EVFs.

It’s worth noting that there is no firewire port on the camera – possibly an issue for news shooters doing live feeds via satphones and Quicklink.

There is an optional wireless module that allows the camera’s exposure and focus to be viewed and controlled from an Ipad or PC – this to my mind is one of the most innovative features. Details are sketchy but this feature alone makes the camera a very attractive proposition to me.

Similar to Canon DSLR’s Picture Profiles there are a choice of gamma settings. Canon LOG gamma gives a flat image designed to be graded later, much like Technicolor Cinestyle. There are also more standard gammas which are designed to give a punchier image straight off.

According to Vincent Laforet there is a built in electronic ND adjustment that goes right to 1/64th and has no loss in image quality. For run and gun shooting this will be a huge bonus if it works.

The hype around these cameras online has been phenomenal but ultimately it’s performance that counts. Canon sources assure me that it does not disappoint and that it scores against competitors specifically in the colour reproduction and skin tone department. The camera has an all new 4K chip, which instead of rendering a 4K output creates a 1080P image with claimed much better colour fidelity. It does this by sampling 2 megapixels each of red and blue and four of green for each image – in other words four pixels are sampled for every one recorded.

Sources at Canon also claim the camera has been seen to out resolve cameras like the competing Sony F3 in initial tests – again I would like to see that for myself before reaching a conclusion.

How this camera works out for news and documentary shooters remains to be seen. On one hand the smaller size and weight compared to a Sony F3 or Red should be a real advantage. On the downside the ergonomics are not designed for run and gun shooting off the shoulder. Luckily rig manufacturers like Redrockmicro, Zacuto and Letus have already had access to camera to build solutions.

Hurlbut Visuals MCS rig with the C300

Canon have today made a very dramatic entrance into the large sensor video camera market today. I for one cannot wait to test the C300.

As with previous Canon products my good friend Vincent Laforet was one of the first to film with the C300 – his results are below with more details over on his blog.

There is also a new Canon website specially dedicated to the camera http://www.canoncinemaeos.com/
At least one dealer is already taking pre-orders for the C300 at just over $16,000 US.

Following our two previous DSLR pieces my co-collaborator Carlos Martinell and I decided that we wanted to do something more ambitious.

We thought it would be fascinating and fun to explore the vibrant NYC analogue film community – with our two Canon 7D cameras – and to do it creatively.  This was not a conceit, in fact quite the opposite; we hoped to show that people are indeed still working with film and doing quite well for themselves.

The rest hopefully speaks for itself.

As we move further into the digital world we hope the fundamentals of the medium are remembered and respected.

Cubie King is an Editor/Producer at CNN (New York Bureau).

On May 18th, students from Columbia University’s School of Journalism graduated from a year-long intensive program in reporting, writing, and, for some, HDSLR news production. While readers of this site have long been accustomed to the joys and heartaches of using DSLRs to capture video, this was the J-School’s first year of trying to use these cameras as a news-gathering tool. The process of teaching and learning the HDSLR workflow was intense and often frustrating. But, by graduation day, it was obvious that the results were well worth the effort.

Digital Media students at Columbia focus on many things: reporting, writing and online skills as well as photography and videography. As the head of the Digital Media department at Columbia, the idea of teaching my students one device for both stills and video was extremely attractive. And as a videographer who has been shooting HDSLRs for a while now, it was exciting for me to be able to share my real-world experience with these journalists-in-training.

The basic kit that students use at Columbia includes a Canon T2i, a Canon 17-40 F/4L lens, an Olympus LS-10 audio recorder, and a Rode NTG-2 shotgun. Besides the T2i’s, most of this gear was salvaged from previous cameras that had been retired. Students did not have Zoom H4n recorders, Small HD monitors, or any fancy Zacuto gear. Being an academic institution, we were working on the cheap. But, in retrospect, the fact that we had fewer accessories to confuse ourselves was a big bonus.

Digital students learn photography prior to learning video, so the transition from stills to video was not a big leap. Concepts such as aperture, shutter speed, and ISOs carried over smoothly from photo. But beyond that, everything else was a challenge.

“It felt like there was a lot to learn for someone who had been a pen and paper journalist for so long,” said Dewi Cooke, 31, a former print reporter who came to Columbia to gain digital skills.

The T2i does not have a manual audio feature so we were forced to record dual audio. Students often forgot to hit record on the audio recorder, and even if they did, Pluraleyes often failed. File management was another trap in the training processes. Properly setting up any FCP project takes some getting used to, but dealing with video files, audio files, sync’d files, and transcoded files tested even our most organized students. Data was lost or misplaced incessantly. It was an exercise in patience, but, like most HDSLR filmmakers, the students eventually figured out the work flow.

“It took us five months to learn how to use HDSLRs,” said Cooke. “But it was worth it. The shallow depth-of-field was visually appealing. And the small size of the cameras made it possible for us to shoot in places we would not normally be able to.”

Next year, we’ll continue to use HDSLRs at the Journalism school. With large sensor video cameras coming out, we may eventually go back to shooting on a more traditional camera. But, with the ability to shoot beautiful images in low light and in tight situations, it’s doubtful that we’ll completely give up on DSLRs any time soon.

Here are two examples of some of the fine work that students were able to do this year.

VIDEO 1: Produced by Lea Khayata and Beth Morrissey for our Multimedia Storytelling workshop tells the story of Al Niente – New York’s last sheet music store.

Al Niente: New York’s last sheet music store from lea khayata on Vimeo.

VIDEO 2: Produced by Dewi Cooke and Chitrangada Choudhury is about two best friends who are building their table tennis dream in Pleasantville, NY. One of them is Will Shortz, crossword editor for the New York Times and the other is Robert Roberts, a Caribbean table tennis champion.

Double Happiness from Dewi Cooke on Vimeo.

Duy Linh Tu is Assistant Professor and Director of Digital Media at the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University.