By Jonah Kessel

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.

By Jonah Kessel

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.

By Jonah Kessel

Word Crimes from Jonah Kessel on Vimeo.

Murong Xuecun is one of the least boring people I have ever met.

He is energetic. He is dynamic. He is impressively clever. And in the last year, he has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of censorship in China.

However, he is a writer.

And when New York Times’ correspondent Edward Wong first mentioned he was writing an in depth feature on Murong, I initially doubted an accompanying video component would help add much value to the package. I did some background research and found articles with still pictures of the young writer. Nearly every single one showed the author looking at a computer in some form or another, 3 out of 4 being a silhouetted picture of the back of his head with the computer out of focus or him at an internet café.

The images I saw were far from inspiring. I imagined a video full of talking heads, with sequences of static imagery that would inevitably go on for too long and insight viewers to click away.

But right before I decided it wasn’t worth making the video, I read this speech Murong had recently given which discussed censorship of written work in China. Words started jumping off the page:

This is castrated writing. I am a proactive eunuch, I castrate myself even before the surgeon raises his scalpel. Our language has been cut into two parts: one safe, and the other risky. Some words are revolutionary, and others are reactionary; some words we may use, and others belong to our enemies.

And just like that, I was hooked. This person was clearly an outspoken agent calling for change and reform in Chinese society. All of a sudden Murong turned from a writer into an incendiary subject on a hot topic. I jumped on board and got to thinking — how do I make a person who is visually boring interesting? And my first inspiration came directly from the same speech. Toward the top of his speech Murong discusses words likely to be censored should he use them in his books:

From my many years’ experience in writing and publishing, I could compile a Sensitive Words Glossary, in which you would certainly find the words “system,” “law,” “government,” as well as a large number of other nouns, several verbs, quite a few adjectives, and even a few special numbers. The glossary would also include all names of religions, all names of important people, all countries, including of course China, and also the phrase “Chinese people.”

On the backend of the speech, the author continued:

If there really were a Sensitive Words Glossary, I hope that it could be published; in this way at least we could all save a lot of time, and reduce the possibility of unwittingly committing “word crimes.”

My idea for the video came to me while sitting in a small airport in Burlington, Vermont on my way back to China I thought — maybe I can help him publish this list of sensitive words. I dreamed up a bunch of scenarios of how I could visualize a list of words and eventually came to the conclusion that I should let this man say the words that ordinarily he can’t say.

This train of thought continued onto the topic of voiceovers vs subtitles. Most international broadcast news videos gets a voiceover treatment – I started thinking it would be completely ironic to mute the man, when he is in fact, talking about words which he cannot use. I decided subtitles were more appropriate – which then opened up more doors for cinematic storytelling and made it a little easier to justify adding music to a news piece. Although I was excited to make the piece I was still a bit worried about keeping it moving and wanted the music to help keep the piece from drying up.

Now, regardless of the man’s profession, I had a hot subject and an idea for a snappy intro. I had music to help move the piece in a rhythmic narrative and a logic behind how I would represent his opinions visually.

And while I knew I had to film him writing or at the computer, I also knew I wanted to get him out of the context where we are used to seeing writers. When you get stuck shooting a “boring” person (or one who doesn’t do anything visually exciting) I think its a great exercise to find a new physical environment. Simply get them out of the physical environment where we expect to see them. It doesn’t matter where — just someplace else. I wanted to see him interacting with people and when I found out he was going out to dinner with some journalists and human rights lawyers, I was ecstatic when I got the invite to tag along.

This was the trickiest part of the video — both visually and narratively. How to link the home interviews, the writing visuals and a bunch of guys at dinner. With some thinking, it was easy enough to have narration lead the story into the restaurant, but shooting this was much more tricky.

There’s a Zoom H1 hidden on the table near the bear drinking, cigarette smoking intellectuals. I have a Canon 60D switching between a Gorilla Pod, a tripod and the in-table lazy susan. In addition, I had a 5D mkII on a shoulder rig. And while I didn’t leave a camera rolling the entire time, I did leave the audio rolling. When I got back, I synched all of the audio with the video clips I had. Although I had tons of great dialogue in the end I just grabbed one meaty quote that allowed me to jump from frame to frame anachronistically. Had I used multiple quotes or too much back and forth dialogue, I would have been forced into using more real time footage. Using just one quote allowed me to use some of my favorite visuals from the entire night.

With the intro set and multiple environments in the bank, I just needed to shoot the interviews. Knowing that I was at risk of having a boring video, I kept two cameras rolling continually during the interviews so when it came time to cut, I could keep all my frames short and bounce between a Canon 50mm f1.2 and a Canon 24mm f1.4.

With the credit roll, intro and title sequence, the video came out at 4 minutes and 20 seconds. Keeping voiceover out, adding music, using multiple environments and multiple cameras rolling during interviews, I hope I succeeded in making a visually “boring person” interesting.

And while I can’t answer that question for you, I can say the greater lesson I took away from this project are the potential assets we gain from simply researching what our subjects. What they have to say, have said and what they might want to say.

MORE ON MURONG XUECUN:
• Read Edward Wong’s story “Pushing China’s Limits on Web, if Not on Paper”
• An Excerpt from ‘Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu’
• More on Murong: Words We Can Use, and Those We Can Not

– 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.

By Jonah Kessel

On a recent assignment for the New York Times I was tasked with filming a filmmaker. 

It was the first time I’d done this, although I’d taken portraits of photographers before. It’s hard not to have a little bit of anxiety when you know the person you are filming not only knows what you are doing, but has their own opinion on how to do it.

The idea was to create a behind-the-scenes video describing how Chinese filmmaker Zhao Liang makes his films.

The first step was getting my hands on his films, which wasn’t the easiest thing, given his films are not available in China. Why not? If you get your hands on one of them, the reasons for their unavailability will become pretty clear. For the most part, the content of Zhao’s films is not exactly the type of material the Chinese government wants you to see.

I have said previously that I am not necessarily a documentarian, but as a visual journalist working with cinematic storytelling you can see the two fields are certainly not too far removed. Regardless of how you work with video, I believe Zhao’s films can teach you something.

On my first screenings, I thought Zhao’s films didn’t necessarily have “beautiful photography”. Even from the samples of the films I used for my video, you can tell most of his films are not multi-million dollar productions or maybe not even multi-thousand dollar productions. These are truly grassroots-style productions that often use guerrilla-style photographic techniques.

While the photography isn’t necessarily “beautiful”, it is in fact extremely powerful, which in itself, I would consider beautiful.

As an image maker, I spend so much of my time trying to compose beautiful images that I had to spend some time thinking about why I felt these images were so powerful. I think the answer comes in the relationship between your content and your images.

Zhao’s films show a truthful view of China, rarely seen. The raw video footage makes the truths and injustices he reveals even more real. Let’s say that Zhao was about to use jibs, dollies or even regular tripods while filming — the visuals would feel way more contrived. There is some tripod use, but a large majority of this footage is handheld and there’s quite a bit of shakiness to it.

These things are a bit counter-intuitive to a lot of us who spend half our day thinking about gear; however, the effect is one that should be applauded. Not only does Zhao let the footage speak for itself in a digital age, but the raw nature of the images actually reaffirms the stories he is telling.

I would describe Zhao’s films as having a slower pace. He’s not in a rush to tell his stories. You can tell this — even by the mere fact he spent 12 years filming his movie Petition. However, I believe the slow pace matches that of his characters’ realities. This pace creates the opportunity for the audience to actually experience the reality of his subjects.

To visualize this Zhao has left in some less-than-exciting images and scenes. However, these images are real. There are seemingly very few contrived scenes which many other filmmakers set up to help tell their story.

Videos with an interesting story, but that have boring or disconnected images, are clearly not good. Videos with amazing imagery but broken storylines are also not good. In video journalism and documentary filmmaking, the relationship between our images and stories is what separates great productions from the pack. Whether this means holding back on production level like Zhao has, or going the opposite direction, our videos become infinitely more powerful when our images and stories work together.

And in a world where gear means so much, it’s refreshing to see Zhao showing us that you don’t need a million dollars to make a film with a million dollar impact.

The New York Times, Ai Weiwei and Zhao Liang

While my portion of this project was a “behind the scenes” look at Zhao Liang’s productions, New York Times reporter Ed Wong’s lengthy profile shows a very different side to making films in China. Wong reveals how many believe Zhao has now “switched sides” in order to continue to make films here. While Zhao is still very respected, his cooperation with the Chinese government on his recent film Together and his decision to pull out his film Petition from the Melbourne film festival has cost him friends, including the controversial artist Ai Weiwei, who only recently was released from detention.

The Times included a video from Ai Weiwei along with mine as part of Ed’s story as well as photography by Beijing based photographers Chi Yinsim and Shiho Fukada.

For journalists, cinephiles, videographers, photographers and documentarians — the piece is very interesting and I encourage you to check it out here.
– To find Zhao Liang’s movie check out dGenerate films web site.
– To read a follow up to Ed’s story, check out New Yorker writer Richard Brody’s story “China’s cultural evolution“