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Well, jeez, who wouldn’t? Especially if at the end of a 12-hour day, you’d gotten a big fat thank-you from your boss in the form of a pink slip. And then on the way home, you were on the tail end of a four-car pileup, which killed your Japanese fighting fish. And shortly afterward, you broke up with your fiancé and now are sleeping on friends’ couches.
Given the grim synopsis of her recent past, why wouldn’t Sarah Dixon, 27, a former audiovisual technician, want to turn her love of travel into extra cash?
That irresistible pitch is what has lured Dixon and many of her 29 classmates to a fifth-floor conference room at the Travel Channel headquarters in suburban Washington. They’ve ponied up $2,000 to $2,500, plus travel and lodging expenses, to attend the Travel Channel Academy, billed as a four-day digital filmmaking boot camp for aspiring travel journalists.
In an era when traditional media (and the professionals who work for them) are thinning to a whisper, a cacophony is reverberating from cyberspace, where theoretically anyone can be a travel journalist. At the same time, a revolution is occurring in the video world, thanks to easy-to-use, relatively low-cost equipment that enables people to produce and edit their own videos. On YouTube alone, 13 hours of video are uploaded every minute.
Trouble is, most of it is “unusable and unwatchable,” Travel Channel president Patrick Younge tells the students on Day 1. And so, with new media’s insatiable appetite for content, the network launched this video course, in part to help mold an army of contributors. They call them “preditors” — shorthand for producer/editors.
Which is not to imply anyone here is likely to become the next Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Zimmern or Samantha Brown, the star triumvirate of the Travel Channel’s lineup. In a testament to shrinking attention spans in the YouTube/Twitter universe, the station is instead seeking 1½- to three-minute travel videos for distribution via its website and expanding mobile platforms. This crash course offers technical and storytelling instruction, plus grants alumni special access for future submissions and ongoing staff feedback.
“We’re trying to create a home for quality travel video with a point of view,” Younge says.
But whether more videos of spring-breakers getting drunk in Cancun or tourists eating pastrami on rye in a New York deli, or even a two-minute account of “my trip to Costa Rica by land and sea” (a current TCA alumni pick hit on the website) brings more clarity or just more clutter is debatable.
“We’re not doing investigative journalism. We’re doing show-me-the-best-restaurant-in-your-town journalism,” says course founder Michael Rosenblum.
The course was conceived by Rosenblum, a veteran television producer, and his wife, Lisa Lambden, a former BBC journalist, in partnership with the Travel Channel. Rosenblum is a wisecracking New Yorker in black Gucci glasses who paces the room and peppers his students with an f-word-punctuated rat-a-tat delivery, alternately heaping praise and good-humored humiliation. Sometimes he calls them “babe.”
“You can’t put a YouTube piece of crap up online and expect it to resonate,” Rosenblum says by way of introduction. “You’re entering an unforgiving industry.”
More accurately, they’d like to enter this unforgiving industry. About 80% of the hands shoot up when asked if they intend to sell their videos. The Travel Channel’s Lori Rothschild Ansaldi tells the class she’s on the lookout for short destination videos and background utility pieces. She spends about 25 hours a week weeding through submissions. Of the 953 graduates since the course began two years ago, about 350 of their videos have been bought by the Travel Channel, the vast majority for its website. Oddly, no one asks how much the station pays for these videos. (Anywhere from $50 to $2,000, depending on usage and quality.)
“People will work for free,” Rosenblum says later. “It’s a messed-up business.”
The attendees cut a broad demographic swath. They range in experience from Vincent Santo, a CNN still cameraman, to Violeta Balan, a Washington attorney who hefts her rented video camera on Day 1 and asks, “Where’s the start/stop?” There’s a former U.S. Senate aide, a federal mine-safety engineer, a Bulgaria-bound Peace Corps volunteer, an internist, some IT guys, a couple of airline pilots and a private chef.
More than a few are unemployed at the moment.
“Being laid off is an excellent reason to travel,” Lambden says brightly. “We get people who are at a nexus in their lives, people wanting to make a change.”
Indeed, some are treating this as groundwork for Plan B. Balan has just received a text message about layoffs at her firm, and though she believes her job is secure, it never hurts to learn a new skill. Still, she realizes chances are slim that she’ll ever sell her work. “The concept is awesome and they may have some success stories, but I think they’re the exception and not the rule,” she says.
On the other hand, Tom Matta, who is newly laid off from his alternative energy job in Pittsburgh, plans to drive around the country competing in — and filming — triathlons. Delta Airlines pilot John Roberts, whose seniority gives him plum international routes, simply wants to shoot decent videos in exotic locales.
And there’s Dixon, who says, “I’m just looking for an opportunity. I guess that’s what this is.”
Rosenblum notes that only about 25% of students actually milk the Travel Channel connections made via the course, but he insists, “The appetite for video-driven content is unlimited. It’s an explosive market. Anyone can play, and there’s a certain honesty and purity to that.”
There’s also a good deal of tedium, judging from the students’ first-day video-making efforts.
Rosenblum is amusingly blunt as he critiques the work. “It’s like high-functioning autism, what you shot!” he says, viewing footage taken at a bike repair shop. To a student who has filmed at a bakery: “Oh, you gave us real-time bread baking. If they ever start a bread channel, you’ll be great.”
By the end of Day 4, when it’s time to view students’ second and final videos, the efforts are more polished. Or maybe Rosenblum has just mellowed.
“Not bad,” he says approvingly after watching Santo’s one-minute short of a suburban horse farm.
Roberts, who has made a clever video about his own participation in the class, peers into the camera at the end and addresses Rosenblum, “Well, Mikey, babe, that’s it. Whaddaya think?”
“Fantastic!” Rosenblum responds.
Dixon’s piece featuring produce vendors at a Washington market rates a “good job” from the instructor and a sigh of relief from her.
In a typical class of 40 students, maybe 10 will produce a really good video, Rosenblum says.
Anything truly memorable from this one?
He considers a moment and says, “No. Not really.”
1 Comment
Dmitriuse August 23, 2009
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