Platypus Workshop

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending a training seminar called the Platypus Workshop in Rockport, Maine. 

 

Platypus was started nine years ago by veteran Time magazine photographer Dirck Halstead. For more than a decade, Halstead has predicted the eventual eclipse of still photography by video journalism, and many believe that the newspaper industry is near the tipping point where the ability to produce video for the web will become essential to the continued survival of the daily paper.

 

According to a report from the Pew Research Center, the number of Americans getting their news with some regularity from the Internet grew from 1 in 50 in 1996 to 1 in 3 in 2006. While online news is booming, readership of printed newspapers is quickly declining. News organizations need to recapture their readership. Many believe that to do this they need to use the web’s ability to deliver dynamic web content while still providing content to the print editions that provide the bulk of their income. Video can do this.    

 

The quality of high-definition video cameras has reached a point where some photo editors are happy to take still grabs from the footage for their print editions while using the video itself to draw users to their Web site. Newspapers like the San Jose Mercury News, the Dallas Morning News, and the Detroit Free Press have been using stills from video, some on the front page. Almost half of the photographers working for the Dallas Morning News shoot their assignments entirely in video. Most job openings currently posted for newspaper photographers either encourage or require multimedia experience. This is what the Platypus Workshop is all about. 

 

Dirck designed the workshop to teach still photographers and editors the art of video journalism. We covered the technical details of working with video cameras and sound equipment, lighting and conducting interviews, how to shoot video segments that can be crafted into packages with a visual rhythm that helps maintain a pace and narrative that propel the story forward, and then how to bring it all together through editing. 

 

As a photojournalist and an editor, I am always working to create and find the “decisive moment” – a single image that can convey the essence of the story or an emotion or a revelation that cannot adequately be communicated in words. One of the most difficult things for me to understand in the workshop was that in video, these moments fly by as quickly as any other. Even if you compose the most beautiful picture in video, it’s not going to linger on screen for more than a few seconds.  Individual shots lose some of their importance, but they are all essential for crafting the final story in the editing process.

 

Platypus Workshop attendees: (front) Charla Jones, Toronto Globe&Mail; Deborah Cannon, Austin American Statesman; Margaret Bowles, Freelance; Barbara Salisbury, Washington Times. (2nd row) Jeff Scheid, Las Vegas Review&Journal; Jayson Taylor, Toronto Globe&Mail; PF Bentley, Edit Instructor; Dirck Halstead, Director; Jeff Costello, AOL; Sarah Francis, Course Manager. (Top row) Ian Johnson, Course Manager; Richard Haddad,Western Newspapers; James Walker, NBC; Paul Lillagore, Freelance; John LaPinot, Palm Beach Post; Thomas Martinez

 

I had an amazing time at the workshop (that's me -- second from right in the second row in the above photo). It really didopen my eyes to a new technique of storytelling. I don’tknow that it will supplant my love of still photography for the time being, but I can’t wait to get out there and start producing some videos.

 

Check out some of the videos made by The Maine 2007 Platypus Class.  

 

Dirck Halstead runs a website about photojournalism in the digital age called The Digital Journalist. 

 

- Jeff Costello