Pat Younge, BBC Chief Creative Officer
We are here in Manchester, England, running a 4-day video bootcamp for BBC staffers.
This is not news.
These people are the producers and directors from BBC Drama and BBC Comedy
The same people who bring you The Office (or at least the British version), and many other popular shows.
They’re all here taking an intensive immersion program in how to shoot, edit, script and upload video on their own.
It’s part of a larger vision in which staffers at The BBC are empowered to start making their own product.
The BBC is a natural magnet for talented and creative people.
The buildings are quite literally filled with people who want to make television. That’s why they came here.
Not a very few years ago, the act of making television was both complex and expensive.
Before you would roll tape you would need a lot of ‘approvals’ because you were about to spend a lot of money
And spending a lot of money to make TV makes everyone nervous.
So the impact of a world in which TV making was both expensive and complicated made everyone nervous.
And that resulted in a lot of meetings, and paper submissions and approvals before anyone would start to roll tape.
And even then, once they did start to roll tape, the programs tended, for the most part, to be immitations of what had been successful before.
Television as an industry was very risk averse.
Now, the BBC has put itself on the cutting edge of the Digital Revolution.
By empowering their staff, by giving them cameras and laptops, by training them in how to shoot and edit and script and upload, they are, in effect, unleashing one of the greatest creative machines in the world.
But now they have the tools and the skills to make things.
And it doesn’t cost a thing.
They’re all out this morning shooting.
If there are a few failures, no problem
But if one of them turns out to be the next Ricky Gervais.
Well, that’s the whole idea.
Take a risk!
15 Comments
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Gary Eason January 14, 2011
Who on earth wrote the headline, “Why the BBC is training their staffs…” ? Has grammar been completely abandoned?
Michael Rosenblum January 15, 2011
Having written that myself, I am curious as to what is wrong with it.
The BBC is ‘the corporation’. It is both singular (as in The Corporation) yet it is inherently plural – as it comprises far more than one person.
So The Corporation is (as in the singular) training their (as there is more than one person within the corporation), staffs – because there is also more than one staff.
John D November 08, 2010
Why is the BBC trying to train so many people to be VJ’s?
I was stunned to see this article which may offer additional reasons for their efforts.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1327568/BBC-strike-threat-Christmas-repeats-usual-then.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Michael Rosenblum November 08, 2010
Hi John
The BBC, like pretty much everyone else, is feeling the effects of the economic crash.
Their first problem is their pension fund, which is now £1.2 billion in debt. As they must pay pensions, this is a very serious problem.
They’re trying to deal with it by cutting pension benefits, often by up to 20% which is a big whack when you’ve spent your whole career thinking your retirement was set. As well, the Beeb has got to find ways to cut costs. All this comes at a time in which the demands for content have exploded – not only the channels have to be fed, but now also a mass of websites (BBC.co.uk is the most popular destination in Europe). Now on top of this they have VOD, iPhones, iPads and God only know what else is coming. At the same time, their budgets are being slashed. Where is the video going to come from (and in volumes no one could have imagined only a few years ago). This represents a pretty good solution for part of the problem.
Larry Vaughn November 07, 2010
I’ve worked for Nino a few times and have read Mr. Rosenbloom’s manifesto thoroughly. I’m a firm believer in education and have a several college degrees and have attended many seminars in still photography and video production. Most of the information I’ve seen and heard about how to produce video is available online. Most is also free or nearly so.
There is a blog about newspaper video, the multitasking convergence of reporter and photographer. Just yesterday some of the comments were these:
“The problem with the transfer to video storytelling is that there are so MANY more things to get wrong.”
“I also do newsroom training for our reporters and it really does seem that only a small percentage wrap their head around it. Honestly, I think 90 percent of it is motivation. If the reporter really wants to learn and are enthused about the new medium, they will get there even if their visual and technical skills are zip. If they are unhappy about additional work, it doesn’t happen.”
“It’s really dropped off this year – there’s no one left in newsrooms to be taught anymore; there’s no time or money for training; and people have realized it won’t save their jobs. It’s too bad – I love giving people the power to tell their stories their own way.”
Here’s the best one, after I asked where these multitasking jobs are.
“journalismjobs.com is a good source, although many I see through my facebook and twitter accounts. Don’t get too excited, though. Many of those multi-platform/backpack MOJO jobs don’t pay enough for an adult to live on.” – Chuck Fadely, who is a wealth of information.
It is difficult to be a great photographer and a great reporter at the same time. There may be people who can do it, but can’t remember meeting any. After being a chief photographer at a small newspaper in Florida for a few years, I went back to school and picked up a degree in photography, and bumped my skill level way up.
I did get a low paying job in TV news and did get a low paying job in photojournalism. I got a much better paying job doing theatrical photography. I did get the feeling of “not invented here” when I showed my more commercial work to the newspaper crowd.
What Nino does for a living and what Rosenbloom claims to teach are different skills. Nino is at the top of his craft. Students who pay a lot of money to attend expensive seminars are usually beginners and at the bottom. I also got the impression that Rosenbloom was promising Dom Perignon jobs and delivering Budweiser training. I see no guarantee that graduates will even make enough money back to pay for the seminar and the equipment they buy.
It could be a different story for newsroom managers. They pay the price because newspapers hemmorage cash and need to have fewer people produce more work. So, WTF, train them to be shooters too. “Send out a camera, F-8 and be there.”
The seminar business is nothing new. People make money utilizing certain skills effectively. Others made money getting students to pay for seminars. They are different activities. Many so called pros make more money producing the seminars than they ever did working in their claimed profession. Remember Bill McCorkle and his expensive cars, planes, women? I recently talked to a guy who claims to have hired the models, ie, his “women” for one of those videos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._McCorkle. Bill and his wife went to prison.
The current info Rosenbloom has on-line is not expensive. It’s also beginner information. The latest rage is to make videos with digital still cameras that happen to shoot video also. There are many expensive seminars people can attend, and thousands of dollars to be wasted buying accessories to attempt to turn a still camera into a filmmaking powerhouse. Really, the hardware doesn’t have much to do with the quality of the final product, when used by people who really know how to use it.
Knowledge comes from many areas. The internet has made learning easy. For every pay site there are a million that are free. Remember that. Many of the major universities have free course material available online.
Nino has, or had anyways, a great lighting web site. He has a van load of gear. He has years of experience. He hires assistants. He knows what he is doing.
That is a big difference from someone taking a quick seminar and picking up a tiny digital video camera of some type and thinking they will somehow make a living using it. And in many cases the implication is that you will make money, a lot of money, doing that. It’s usually not true. Some of them tell you they will teach you how to do it using Y equipment. The X equipment they taught you how to use in their seminars 3 years ago is a dinosaur now, so you need this new seminar, and better get rid of the old gear. If you buy it, they will come. Not.
I used to edit some of that video for the news occasionally when someone would bring it in after taping some news event. Most of it looked like the operator was waving a can of Raid around trying to kill some bugs. And Michael advocates not using a tripod with these tiny cameras that weigh about the same as that bug spray can. FYI, Nino’s tripod costs more than Rosenbloom’s seminars.
I think it is true that more TV is online. But it will be produced by people who are professionals, with skills gained from years of training and experience. I worked with a guy once, Mike Sussman, who went on to produce some Star Trek type productions. He didn’t learn his skills from a hit and run photojo course.
There are a handful of production companies online that hire video producers. Most of them don’t pay much money for the work that a few people happen to do for them. There might be some people who have an “in†that get enough work to earn a living, but certainly not as many that graduate from the expensive seminars. Of course, the same goes for graduates from expensive film schools who might owe $100,000 before turning to flipping burgers. “Sir, would you like fries with that?”
Once I attended an introductory get to know us tour of Full Sail University in Florida. What a dog and pony show that was. They are great, fantastic even, at marketing their school. I bet their recruiters make more money than their film school graduates. Watch out, potential students, if one of their recruiters starts rubbing your back while behaving like, for the day at least, a new girlfriend.
The advantage I see for the internet is accessibility. If you can make something great, make it. Put it online. People will see it. Getting someone to pay for it is another, more difficult, problem.
Michael Rosenblum November 08, 2010
Dear Larry
Thanks for such thorough comments.
I would note, however, that I spell my name Rosenblum, not Rosenbloom.
best
m
Nino November 07, 2010
These “conversations†between Rosenblum and me (or Rosenblum and I) has been going on for about eight years. The argument has never been about the future of the web, although Rosenblum has always tried to railroad the conversation in that direction, the argument has always been about the effectiveness and earning potential of his methods of teaching and the deception that he uses to market himself, and that’s by blasting what I do for a living, and I take that very personal.
If you look at the opening video of his NYVS you’ll see exactly what I mean. He describes a full production as a thing of the past, this is to entice people to hand over their money for his new way of doing productions. The truth is that Rosenblum never even came close to those type of productions, as far as he know they never existed.
Those type of “full†productions as he has been calling a thing of the past are alive and well and the demand is higher than ever. I know because that’s what I do for a living, and in spite of Rosenblum predictions for the last eight yeas that I’ll be put out of business by his VJs, my business has doubled in the last 5 years.
The financial difference is that a shooter with the skills to work on those production makes on the average ten time the salary that an average employed VJ makes in a year.
You will never hear Rosenblum talk about this or numbers, Rosenblum has been making a fortune talking about potentials, but this is reality, you can’t go grocery shopping with potentials. You want to live in a world of fantasy you go right ahead.
The foundation of my argument is that whatever Rosenblum teaches is worthless. I told him that in five minutes and for nothing I can tell all of his students and clients how to get 10 times more instructions for a fraction of what they pay him, all it takes is a little intelligence.
We can spend days arguing about all this but as a businessman I always look at results. For the many years that Rosenblum claimed to have trained of 20,000 VJ, not a single one has ever come forward and prove that he is actually making any money with Rosenblum teaching. Most of them disappear. If you go back on this blog a few years you’ll see how many people were pro-Rosenblum and arguing with me about their future potentials, they are all gone and so are their web sites, along of all the potentials promises that Rosenblum made. Those VJs according to Rosenblum were the future of this business.
Let me tell you how confident even Rosenblum is about his own teaching. He hasn’t spoken much lately about his operation with Verizon Public access as Hyperlocal News, but with each operation he has a number, I believe 6, whose job is to go out and create one story a day, he pays them $30,000 per year. None of these shooters are graduates from Rosenblum bootcamps, they are all newly college graduates. The same level of education that he has said repeatedly in the past that it’s no longer necessary.
You draw your own conclusion.
Seven years ago I wrote that the future of the web and TV is integration. One day the remote control will be replaced by a keyboard. It is happening and the only stumbling block is quality and speed, the web isn’t there yet but slowly getting there. I know it because that’s how I make a good living and my increase in business comes from the expansion of television into the web. The additional platform and the program integration more than justify the hiring of better crews because revenue still comes from advertisers and the only way to get them to spend money is with quality work. This hasn’t and will not change.
You, Rosenblum, me and anyone can join this conversation, it will not make a damn difference, advertising dollars is what makes TV move and advertisers are those that will have the final say of what will happen in the future. Without their investment everything comes to a halt.
Every one of Rosenblum ventures that were supposed to include those who paid him to learn failed. I could give you the list but its too long. You can find it yourself by going back on all the posts on this very blog.
The last one was the Travel Channel Academy where him and his partner Pat Younge, former president of the Travel Channel, spent endless hours trying to convince those who handed them $2500 about the incredible need of TJs “Travel Journalistsâ€. And that they are the future of the Travel Channel and the travel industry. I estimate that they took in about $5 millions from aspiring TJs.
Try to find the Travel Channel Academy now, is gone. All those TJs who paid a lot of money are nowhere to be found. Not a single word as explanation from either Rosenblum or Younge.
Where’s Pat Younge now?
Working at the BBC
Where’s Rosenblum now?
Conducting bootcamps at the BBC
If anyone had ever any doubt about the old say in showbiz of:
“Is not what you know but who you know†this kinds of set it in concrete.
You are intelligent right? I gave you the facts, draw your own conclusions and do you homework if you care about your future.
Top Abbott November 06, 2010
Nino, heard of GOOGLE TV? Google is the world of the web, Sony is one of the first to create a TV based on what Google can provide. iJustine, Lisa Nova, FunnyorDie…as your saying, just the beginning. I’m entering the Sony TV show contest; submit a video for a TV series and do I care if it’s actually network TV? Even if I don’t win, my family and friends will be seeing it on a TV set.
http://nytvf.com/2010_sony.htm Sony seems to think “user made video” will be on TV very soon, that’s the purpose of their contest.
Familiar with Apple TV? NetFlix instant view? Interesting movie on NetFlix, Paranormal Activity, a user made feature created for under 12k that was released in theaters and now is available on my TV.
Do you watch CNN? Familiar with iReport? User made news on TV. Remember C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who landed his US Airways flight in the Hudson? AThe first place to report that was Twitter, with pictures from users cell phones and those pictures were on the news, TV news, Cable news.
Newspapers were doing just fine a few years ago, nothing to worry about from bloggers, then suddenly newspapers around the US were folding. The big ones are scrambling to provide video.
Michael may be off the actual time frame that user made video will compete directly with network TV, but the writing is on the wall. That is if you can read. iJustine, Lisa Nova, FunnyorDie, etc. Video killed the radio star, all over again.
Nino November 06, 2010
Michael, how many years ago you made the same projections about the web and TV? eight I believe, none came thru. So, please don’t try to predict the future because you have a really bad record of doing that.
Show me any program that was started or budgeted for the web and ended up on broadcasting television.
It’s a one way flow, I know it because I do it everyday and you don’t.
The web is an extension of television and not the other way around. Every programs that I work on also ends up on the web, but it was never created for the web alone, it was created and produced for television. The web is giving broadcasters an additional platform to distribute their programs. They do have programs created exclusively for the web but mostly are in form of blogs.
Show me any of your VJ that is currently or has produced programs for television by following your style of teaching.
Show me any of your VJ that is regularly hired to work on television programs.
TV and the web is already merged, show me any TV station that doesn’t have a web site too.
Nino November 06, 2010
Somehow this got left out from my previous reply.
Keeping into consideration your reply to me where you talk exclusively about the web. In your 3 posts from the BBC above you mentioned TV and television over ten times, but you didn’t mention the web at all, not a single time.
That’s DECEPTION in it’s purest form.
“PS. I have taken the liberty of posting this dialogue in its entirety on http://www.nyvs.com, along with your picture. I hope you don’t mind.”
I don’t mind it at all, providing that you also posts the replies of course.
But remember what happened last time that you took one of my posts and reposted here.
Remember, I don’t lose many arguments.
Michael Rosenblum November 06, 2010
What The BBC realizes (and so does pretty much everyone else in the industry) is that there is, in the end, no difference between the web and television. They are facing a convergence. Soon (very soon) you are going to get your television over the web (and web on your TV set. There will be no difference. None. You won’t be able to tell them apart. And that is why places like The BBC (and many others) are pouring billions (quite literally) into the online world. So to answer your question, no they are not ‘that’ stupid. They are, in fact, quite smart. But then again, so are the many other broadcasters (and newspaper and magazine publishers) who are positioning themselves in the same way.
Nino November 06, 2010
Michael, does anyone actually listen to what you are saying?
Do you listen to what you are saying.
I’m losing faith in humanity, is people really this stupid today.
Listen to yourself please.
“For all of its history, television has been both a complicated and expensive process.
Complicated to make.
Expensive to make.
As a result, people in the industry have been nervous and very cautious. Perhaps properly so. If you were about to commit to spending millions of pounds (or dollars) to green-light a series, then you had better be sure it will work.
The buildings are quite literally filled with people who want to make television. That’s why they came here.
Not a very few years ago, the act of making television was both complex and expensive.
Before you would roll tape you would need a lot of ‘approvals’ because you were about to spend a lot of money
And spending a lot of money to make TV makes everyone nervous.
So the impact of a world in which TV making was both expensive and complicated made everyone nervous.
And that resulted in a lot of meetings, and paper submissions and approvals before anyone would start to roll tape.
Television as an industry was very risk averse.â€
You have been talking television, a business that outside the screwed up news is doing very well, CBS just posted a 25% increase in profit. I then asked you where all these programs are on TV because I watch TV everyday and I don’t see any of the stuff that you are talking about it.
In your posts above you mentioned television and TV over ten times, and after I asked you where those programs are on TV, do you know how many times you mentioned television or TV in your reply?
NONE
Read it yourself
“You may find this massive amount of original programming being broadcast on the web.
At this moment there are at total of 28,123,542,000 videos on the web. That is, 28 billion and some change. 28 billion videos and Youtube has been in business for 5 years. We are only at the very beginning of this video revolution and already average people (because that’s where most of this stuff comes from) have created on their own and mounted more than 28 billion videos. 11 billion of these are on Youtube, the rest are spread out over Hulu, Vimeo, Yahoo and a host of other sites.
How much video material is 28 billion videos? Well, if we take a very conservative estimate of 2 minutes per video, then we are talking about 56 billion hours of material. That comes out to about just under 1 billion hours of video created in the past 5 years. And how much is 1 billion hours (because that is an almost incomprehensible number). One billion hours is just about 114,000 years. In other words, this ‘video revolution’ has, in the past 5 years created more than 114,000 years of continuous video. And I will remind you that we are still at the very beginning of this. Understand what is happening here.â€
You talk broadcast television to describe YOUTUBE potential?
I understand plenty what is happening here, you are showing apples to sell oranges.
You use the TV industry to make your pitch but all you have to show is web.
And they actually buying all this BS? All those BBC “talents†and nobody even questioned what you said.
And this is what you consider the best network in the world? Are they really this stupid not to see any of this. Or you’re not saying this in front of them and this BS just for your blog?
Nino November 05, 2010
WHERE IS IT?
Michael, you’ve been singing the same tune for over eight years now.
“The buildings are quite literally filled with people who want to make television. That’s why they came here.
Not a very few years ago, the act of making television was both complex and expensive.
Before you would roll tape you would need a lot of ‘approvals’ because you were about to spend a lot of money
And spending a lot of money to make TV makes everyone nervous.
So the impact of a world in which TV making was both expensive and complicated made everyone nervous.
And that resulted in a lot of meetings, and paper submissions and approvals before anyone would start to roll tape.
And even then, once they did start to roll tape, the programs tended, for the most part, to be immitations of what had been successful before.
Television as an industry was very risk averse.”
I watch TV every day, it’s my job, but after eight years and over 20,000 people that you claimed you trained where’s all this stuff that everybody supposely is doing, I don’t see it anywhere on TV.
Can you give us a list of where all these massive amount of programming that is being created is being broadcasted?
Michael Rosenblum November 06, 2010
You may find this massive amount of original programming being broadcast on the web.
At this moment there are at total of 28,123,542,000 videos on the web. That is, 28 billion and some change. 28 billion videos and Youtube has been in business for 5 years. We are only at the very beginning of this video revolution and already average people (because that’s where most of this stuff comes from) have created on their own and mounted more than 28 billion videos. 11 billion of these are on Youtube, the rest are spread out over Hulu, Vimeo, Yahoo and a host of other sites.
How much video material is 28 billion videos? Well, if we take a very conservative estimate of 2 minutes per video, then we are talking about 56 billion hours of material. That comes out to about just under 1 billion hours of video created in the past 5 years. And how much is 1 billion hours (because that is an almost incomprehensible number). One billion hours is just about 114,000 years. In other words, this ‘video revolution’ has, in the past 5 years created more than 114,000 years of continuous video. And I will remind you that we are still at the very beginning of this. Understand what is happening here.
Not more than a decade ago, the all the network and all the local stations and all the production companies and all the PBS stations were producing perhaps 50,000 hours a year.
If you wish to see where all this new material is begin broadcast, just look around you.
Is all of it brilliant? (Not to say that much of what is currently on TV is brilliant – far from it). Certainly not. Is a great deal of it cats in trees or worse? Probably. And so what? If only .0000001% is brilliant it is more than enough.
These billions of videos are like seedlings spread on a forest floor. The vast majority of them may come to nothing. But a small fraction will take root and grow to mighty pines. There is a wave of talent that has been unleashed by these new and very inexpensive technologies. They will take time to season and mature, but rest assured they will. This is what is going to change the world.
This is not new for us. It IS new for video.
When Gutenberg invented the printing press there were only a handful of books in all of Europe, and almost all of them were bibles.
A Generation after Gutenberg, there were more than 15 million titles in circulation – most of them also junk.
An explosion of content. The Youtube of its day.
The people who made the bibles were naturally both contemptuous and annoyed. Look at the pile of junk they said.
Want to see what became of that pile of junk? Go to Barnes and Nobles or your local library.
Lots of stuff made by millions of people.
Now video goes the same way.
Fortunately.
PS. I have taken the liberty of posting this dialogue in its entirety on http://www.nyvs.com, along with your picture. I hope you don’t mind.