Lo-Fi, Hi-Style in Prague: Kirk Mastin Speaks at FUTUROOM.CZ from Lo-Fi, Hi-Style on Vimeo.

Straight out of the program:

Futuroom Office

In the beginning, I thought that all a newspaper had to do to save itself was to embrace multimedia and video.  However, after being a proponent of this approach for over three years, I began to see that this was also not working. Newspapers were still dying and it seemed there wasn’t a heck of a lot anyone could do about it.

Newspapers were becoming obsolete because of the medium on which they are printed:

• Newspapers take a lot of capital to create. Think: printing presses, ink, trucks, man-power.
• Newspapers do not allow for comments, hyperlinks, video, or real-time updates. It’s a one-way conversation.
• Newspapers are out of date the minute they are delivered.

By all measures, the newspaper is inferior to the instant delivery of news over the Internet and mobile phones because the news is trapped in the inferior medium of PAPER.

Kirk Mastin in front of a Soviet era radio tower in Teplice, in the Czech republic.

A few weeks ago, I spoke at a conference in Prague called “Brave new world: media and businesses facing the crisis.” The conference was organized by Futuroom with support from Atex and Google.

(I was asked to speak about my ‘lo-fi’ approach to quickly making compelling video, using amateur equipment: cell phones, point and shoot cameras, Flip Video cameras etc. I believe that by focusing on the fundamentals of storytelling, planning, and technique, anyone can make a great video in a short amount of time.)

Images from the Futuroom Media Conference in Prague, in the Czech Republic.

Up to the moment I spoke in Prague, I really didn’t think I had much to say in terms of HOW the newspaper could be saved. In all honesty I had given up on newspapers at that point.  Instead, I was there to tell journalists how to keep up with prolific 18-year-old budding filmmakers and citizen journalists, who were beginning to change the way in which video is created, consumed, and monetized. I was there to tell journalists how to survive once they were laid-off.

I was there to show journalists a way to survive  the ‘newspocalypse.’

Maybe it was jet-lag, but at the time I spoke at the Futuroom conference I still didn’t understand onto what I had stumbled.  As the day wore on, I realized that the Futuroom project was actually DIFFERENT than any other approach I had heard of to save journalism.

The Futuroom approach did not rely on ever more byzantine ways of protecting and profiting from original content (such as the AP is attempting.) It also did not focus on crafting new ‘micro-payment’ or subscription based revenue models to create new revenue for relatively archaic traditional news services.

Nase Adresa journalists interview festival goers in Teplice.

Instead, Futuroom’s plan is to encourage hyper-local reporting, as well as genuine interaction between professional journalists and citizen journalists.

The bold claim of Futuroom is to have the most hyper-local news available, by combining forces between traditional journalists and citizen journalists at the most local level.  Futuroom understands that citizens are already participating in creating news stories.  Instead of pushing back against citizen journalism, Futuroom works WITH citizen journalists, creating a new hybrid newspaper model.  In light of this, Futuroom is building cafe/newsrooms where citizen journalists will collaborate with professional journalists to provide constant, hyper-local coverage.  (Futuroom will also train and equip citizen journalists…more on this in the next post.)

People reading the first edition of the hyper-local newspaper, Nase Adresa: Usti. Usti, Czech republic.

In return, small communities get extremely relevant and local news coverage.  Also, advertisers are able to target very specific customers.  And the national newspaper that Futuroom produces from these hyper-local branches, will be unparalleled in depth and national coverage, with only supplemental international news pulled from the wire (AP, Reuters, AFP, etc.)

It is too much to go into here, but suffice to say, I extended my trip to Prague.

During my time in Prague, I taught an impromptu documentary ‘lo-fi, hi-style’ video course, trained the first wave of Futuroom journalists, then stayed on an additional fours days to film a documentary about Futuroom.

I did this because I believe Futuroom may hold the key to the future of journalism.

They are taking truly bold steps in the Czech Republic. I was there to witness the very beginning of this project.  It is my goal to show you, and the world, what is happening there through my short film.  I want you to be the judge as to whether or not the Futuroom system makes sense.

To me it is the only thing new under the sun in terms of journalism and I can’t wait to share it with you.

-Kirk

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google launches Czech journalism project (guardian.co.uk)
• The changing media landscape, article round-up (thisisherd.com)
• A Latte With Journalism on the Side (nytimes.com)
• Hyper Local Journalism in the Czech Republic (prathambooks.org)
• Google Offering Training Services for Hyperlocal News in Europe (readwriteweb.com)
• Distributed Journalism: the Future of News? (horsesass.org)

So what did I do? I went ahead and printed this photo at 12×18 at 240dpi!
(The MAXIMUM size you can print at Costco, and it only cost me $2.50.)

The final result?

In one word: Stunning.

12×18 Noritsu Print from Costco.

…and I used to work as a printer at a professional camera lab!

Of course if you view the image closer than 2-3 ft you can see the grain in the image. However, most photos of this size are usually viewed at a distance of at least 4-6ft away. In this case, the photo looks amazing. The grain in an iPhone photo is irregular. iPhone photos have much smoother grain than many digital point and shoot cameras, which is a great thing: iPhone photo grain mimics analog film grain.

Detail of print showing grain.

So there you go.

Go and make gallery-ish sized prints with your iPhone without fear of humiliation from your art friends.

If they are so close that they are peeping the grain of the photo and complaining about that then I would say they missed the whole point of how cool this is and what possibilities this creates for lo-fi photography.

Have fun!

-Kirk

Step by step instructions:

1. Take a good iPhone photo (enough light, not blurry)
2. Apply a CameraBag filter, save photo at highest quality (look inside CameraBag settings)
3. Download photo to computer.
4. Email photo to Costco’s photo lab, or bring file in on CD.
5. Print photo at whatever size you want. A 12×18 print is $2.50. How can you beat that?
6. Enjoy! Impress your friends! Have an Art show!
7. Blog about this article or better yet, Tweet about it on Twitter

To learn more about the book go to RainCityFix.com !

That same day I received a phone call from Laila Ghambari, the fixed gear biker that I had filmed previously for my Flip Video vs. HD test. Laila informed me that the video test had come to the attention of David Pogue, technology writer for the New York Times.

Apparently the Flip Video camera has 13% of the camcorder market share and people are flocking to the Flip Video for its simple controls and self contained software.

Some of the comments about my test were nice and some very very critical. All I can say is that if you don’t get it, you don’t get it.

The reason the Flip Video is such an amazing camera is that it encourages you, by its very design, to go out and make something.

And that is all that matters.

Most video will never be transferred to film to be seen in a movie theatre or appear in HD on the Discovery channel. In fact, video quality is quickly becoming secondary or dare I say tertiary to content and style.

The same people that criticize the Flip Video for its standard resolution and lack of features are the same people that shoot test targets with their digital cameras and rate lenses according to their MTF score (lens resolution per line for non pixel-peepers.)

Anyone familiar with my work will note that I use everything from 2 year old disposable film cameras bought on sale at Rite Aid, to $30 medium format Holga cameras, to mid century Speed Graphic 4×5′s to the latest and greatest Canon 5D.

The equipment doesn’t really matter in the end. It’s the vision of the photographer/film maker/designer that matters, and you either have it or you don’t.

I think that in the next few years we will see an explosion in creativity as the general public starts using tools like the Flip Video and the power of content creation spreads to those who did not have the money or training previously to create. Eventually we will be in a world where creativity will not be hindered so much by access to training or equipment…

…it will be a wonderful thing.

I for one am very excited and not the least bit threatened by the amateur. By all means I hope I remain an amateur in spirit, for it is the amateur that can create with a fresh mind unhindered by the visual baggage of the past.

My next Flip Video project includes debunking the low-light crappiness myth circulating about the Flip Video as well as using the Flip Video in situations that would otherwise prohibit using a video camera (such as attaching a waterproofed Flip Video to a whitewater kayaker’s kayak.)

This summer I also plan to make a short film (a fiction, not a documentary) using only the Flip Video camera, a tripod, my iPod Nano with Mic and either a bicycle or skateboard as a dolly

It should be interesting!

-Kirk

When I was in the fledgling stages of photojournalism I would blame my equipment a lot.  If I only had this lens, or that camera body, or a certain tripod or whatever, I would be able to create photos like the big guys.

As I left full time photojournalism to live a more balanced life, I found myself drifting back to storytelling. Several years later here I am: a budding filmmaker/storyteller/content creator.  Now that my aim is film, that big question comes up again: how important is equipment?

16 hours later I have answered in part my eternal equipment question.

I have to say my results surprised even me.

As you can tell, I’ve been using the diminutive Flip Video camera. And just like the constraints that Lars von Trier created in 1995 with ‘Dogme 95′ to make film more creative and real, I am finding the constraints of the Flip Video camera have made me a better film maker.

Because I have limited technical choices I am forced to concentrate on using what I already have in a the most creative way possible.

Yesterday I set out to film the exact same mini-film using a Canon XH-A1 and a Flip Video camera. I actually taped the Flip Video to the side of the Canon XH A1 to ensure that each shot was exactly the same.  Both sets of identical footage were editied exactly the same way: down to the frame! I wanted no bias in this test.

Both cameras were set to auto everything (Flip Video is always this way) and only minimal color correction was applied in Final Cut Pro to make them both roughly the same tone. I even cropped out about 30% of the Flip Video footage to make it have a 16:9 aspect ratio like the Canon XH A1.