By Nanette Light
The Norman Transcript
Norman — Heather Eidson is a still photographer turned quasi videographer through default of the defunct traditional newsroom.
With no formal video training, she has grappled for the last two years with how to tell stories using moving pictures, as newsrooms’ boundaries — which previously separated words from photos and still pictures from moving — softened with the maturing of online media.
“We’re on the precipice of this great change in the media industry where people all of a sudden are having to do three jobs. It can be a trying time, but it’s also an exciting time because there’s so much to learn,” said Eidson, a Chicago-based photographer for The Times of Northwest Indiana while attending the National Press Photographers Association News Video Workshop at the University of Oklahoma.
The workshop, which ends Friday, is in its 50th year of operation, of which 48 have been at OU. It focuses — through week-long lectures, hands-on training and video critiques — on refining professionals’ skills of telling stories with moving pictures.
“People know that viewers gravitate toward video and sound that’s compelling, that touches their emotions,” said Sharon Levy Freed, event coordinator of the workshop and Denver-based freelance videographer. “Anybody can put a video camera on their shoulder and shoot video, but not everybody can tell that kind of story.”
Levy Freed, who has volunteered at the workshop since 1983, said the workshop was dubbed the Oklahoma Workshop after Ned Hockman, who established the Film and Video Studies program at OU in 1949, shifted the workshop’s locale to Norman two years after the workshop’s initiation in 1960.
“So it’ll probably be here forever,” she said, after a Wednesday morning session when she critiqued videos by Eidson and others.
About 100 videographers are attending the workshop, drawing from television stations, newspapers, non-profits and the military.
“People trying to start their career and people trying to save their career,” said Levy Freed, noting the change in the news environment with Web hits rivaling ground circulation.
Jeff Curtin, a documentation specialist for the Air Force, said focusing on the human aspect of video, rather than his hold on action and technical camera work, is a new approach for him, since he doesn’t come from a news-oriented career.
“This whole storytelling thing applies 100 percent, even though I’m not doing news,” said Curtin, a member of the 1st Combat Camera Squadron, which holds conferences across the United States, focusing on combat and humanitarian relief of the Air Force.
As technology has improved, Levy Freed said standards have to be raised to separate professionals from the digital effects and shaky camera work of YouTube and cell phone videos.
“I’m here not because I think photography is dying but because I want to be a better storyteller,” said Eidson, after her video on a culinary failure was critiqued in a roomful of her peers.
Nanette Light 366-3541 nlight@normantranscript.com
