Initially, I wasn’t sure how to tackle this issue. It started with the visit of the Chief Minister and then, handing over cheques from several parties to the bereaved parent. I find that issue not up my valley. I am not there to promote who is more generous.
Then, it followed with a sit down media briefing. That too I find too ‘dry’. We have seen, heard, read and know about dengue. Dengue kills. We know that but we have never really come face to face with those who suffered.
Finally, when I have packed my camera and was about to get out of the room, some veteran reporters approached the bereaved father and asked him a string of questions. I said veteran because only they can asked the poor man till he was on the verge of tears.
Newbies like me will have too much consideration and compassion and will choose to leave the poor man alone. But veteran reporters are seasoned to sadness. They asked question after question. So, I took out my video again and just shoved it to the father’s face because he was rather soft spoken and I can’t hear him.
I guess I have gotten a gist of the human side of the sufferings due to dengue. He lost two daughters. He is a very faithful man to Allah and it is something that we should admire. His faith is very humbling. Inspite of his sadness, he reminded other parents to be extra cautious if their children are ill.
We went to his house to get a photo of his daughters. We met his wife. She asked not to be filmed or have any photograph taken. And that’s the video I produced after thinking hard over it.
I think we do not need any more dry and cold reporting. We need to inject some emotions into our videos. And I hope parents who had watched it will be extra alert to their children’s health.
What used to be a landmark of Penang has turned into a stinky, ugly, messy stretch of mud. Gurney Drive is a tourist spot, a family favourite for evening walks, lovers haunt, senior citizens daily morning jog and a place to hang out with friends.
No thanks to the previous Barisan Nasional government, development was rampant and the sea and beach disappeared. What is left now is a row of high rise condos, shopping malls and hotels facing one of the stinkiest place in Penang.
The above video was made around June 18, 2009. Subsequently, CM Lim Guan Eng launched the One million apologies to Mother Earth on Saturday, 9 August 2009. The communities in Penang have come together to make one million EM Mud Balls to be thrown into rivers and the mud in Gurney Drive. These EM Mud Balls are supposed to help the environment.
CJ Chan Lilian wanted to find out why the sea off Gurney Drive has now been replaced by an ugly stretch of mud. The previous Barisan Nasional state government claimed it was due to global warming (as reported in the NST and quoted by Teng Chang Yeow).
YB Phee who is the Exco in charge of the environment smirked that if indeed it is due to global warming, then, the sea surrounding the Penang island will have mud as well. He said it was due to the reclamation in Tanjong Tokong where they (the previous Govt.) had carried sea bed sand mining, taking the sand for development and then, throw the slush and mud back.
Recently, it was reported that the Ministry of Tourism has funded a beautification project that cost RM500,000. CJ Lilian approached MPPP to find out more details on the landscaping upgrading.
The contract covers covers new planterbox, chairs, underground cabelling, new lamp post, concrete imprint, central divider, 6 unit blinker lights for OKU with ramps and replacement of old tiles.
According to MPPP Planning and Development Department acting director Khoo Boo Soon, the contract was awarded on 26 october 2009 till 25 january 2010. However, MPPP granted the contractor extension of time because of 6 days stop work during festive season.
Although a lot of money had been spent on the beautification project, she noted that the dirty habits of littering and usage of plastic bags and Styrofoam have marred the effort of making Gurney Drive attractive to tourists.
According to IR Khoo , MPPP outsource the sea cleaning to contractor. He said that sea cleaning is not an easy task as tide will bring every “rubbish” in from as far as Kedah and Butterworth. As Gurney Drive is a tourist area MPPP Urban Services Dept. has people on the ground to do monitoring.
Ir Khoo also informed CJ Lilian that there are CCTV installed along Gurney Drive. Hopefully, these will provide crime prevention and also deter people from littering the place.
CJ Lilian also noted that the new benches made of wood and metal frames are not much more attractive than the previous one made of tiles.
To make Gurney Drive beautiful again, everyone has to put in their efforts including the public. The hotels, restaurants and shopping malls too could play their part in stepping up their corporate social responsibilities to keep this stretch of road and sea clean. After all, their businesses rely on the beauty of the place.
As a citizen journalist who is a Catholic and hence, directly involved and interested in the ‘Allah’ issue, it is still not easy for me to feature the Christian side of things.
The below video is only four minutes but I had to take days to ponder over it. The whole prayer service was about one hour. I had to rewind the whole video clips over and over again to find just the right thing.
One can call this self-censorship. But I feel a heavy responsibility whenever I do a video in church. With things being so sensitive lately, a wrong clip can create a lot of problems.
I hope I have gotten the essence of the whole message. It is about unity of the Christian churches. Next, it is about our church leaders reminding us not to be afraid eventhough there are so many tribulations. And all we have to remember is the Risen Christ living amongst us. Peace is the ultimate message.
On Tuesday, 1st December 2009, I was feeling a bit bored and told my ‘boss’ Shuf that I will go to the Dewan Undangan Negeri. Usually, I need to sort of report what I am up to so that Malaysiakini has some ideas where I would be, just in case I got into trouble and need them to bail me out in the name citizen journalism.
I got there early and stumbled upon a group of women sitting, squatting and hanging around the Dewan Undangan Negeri perimeter. The compound is strictly guarded and only certain people are allowed.
So, I was wondering, “Hey, how come PKR employed these women to demo?” You see, I was told that there is going to be a protest of sort that morning by PKR Youth.
Well, it turned out to be yet another interesting citizen journalist type of video. It is about human rights. These women who were retrenched without being paid any benefits have their rights to voice out their grievances. They do not deserved to be treated so rudely by the Chief Minister’s staff. I told the CM’s staff he was rude and went ahead to make the video.
Interesting enough, some senior MTUC folks saw my video and related to me about something that happened 20 years ago. At that time, YB Lim Kit Siang was in the opposition. Tun Lim Chong Eu was the Chief Minister. A group of Mega Textile workers picketed outside the Dewan too. They wanted to see Tun Lim. Tun Lim who was in the assembly sitting refused to meet them. YB Lim Kit Siang who was alerted about the picketting workers staged a walkout with his opposition members to see the workers. Tun Lim also had to follow eventually.
Above are the screenshots of the archieved Rocket News dated 1986/87. Isn’t it marvelous how the internet has archieved history and today, my video has managed to bring a reminder to the ruling government the struggle their predecessors have gone through?
It wasn’t meant as a comparision but it certainly is a good wake-up call that citizen journalist like me will not tolerate bad treatment given to women. The CM’s staff who asked the police to disperse those women are totally rude and unbecoming of a representative of a Chief Minister who preached people-centric government.
The below is the Nine Emperor God video I took at a temple in Penang. I tried to adopt the ‘no zoom, no panning, no movement’ technique but I am still way behind in terms of quality.
Usually, I have to grab on to my tripod with the video camera attached and my DSLR camera. My video camera is rather cheap and I am never too careful with it. At times, I left the thing by a wall while I snap photos with my DSLR camera.
It is not easy balancing both equipment but in order to get better quality videos, I have no choice. So far, I manage quite ok.
The thing is, I am usually very critical of my own photos and videos. when I get home, I will be grumbling why I missed out certain shots or why I didn’t explore certain angles to shoot a photo or video.
One other rant is how my DSLR photos quality puts my video to the pits. My video is rather pale and dull while the photos taken with the Nikon D40 which I use vivid mode looks more alive. So, i interspersing them made the video kinda weird.
I guess self criticism will help to improve quality of the videos I edit. But too much of them made me want to just forget doing it when I cannot get the quality I want.
Occasionally…it is fun to check Youtube and hunt for our own videos. Normally, when we citizen journalists go for some public events, there are plenty of other video cameras around. So, the chances of us being in their shots are high.
I find it so fun to stumble upon other videos and find myself in their videos. Below is a video taken from Youtube. I didn’t know I looked so bored! (minute 1:20 and later one minute 2:10 onwards)
Meanwhile, this is the video from me at the same event. I have prepared my questions much earlier and had emailed to the Exco member because I demanded to know what happened to Gurney Drive. It is a good idea to let our subjects know in advance that we are going to ask ‘hard questions’ so that they are better prepared. Otherwise, they will give cliche and meaningless answers.
I have also changed the sequence of the event because my focus was the Q&A followed by the sight of children involved in environment conservation and I concluded with the CM’s speech (though it was the first item of the program).
I am happy to find the video from someone else because it gives me a glimpse of myself when I was concentrating on video filming. I had also found several videos on Kampung Buah Pala where I was in the thick of the action.
Remember, have some ’shiok sendiri’ (ego boosting) moments to make video journalism fun.
Usually, if a video includes background music, I find it very hard to edit. I do not like to cut off music in the middle. The other thing is to be mindful of putting a draggy clip. When we are at the scene, the musical show or concert or even religious event maybe interesting to us. However, if it is on video, it can be a bore to our viewers.
Through trial and error, I have adopted a way to deal with getting nice padding shots and a pleasant background music. Here are some of my tricks :
1) If the real audio is bad, do not use it. For example, let’s say you have a lousy choir singing some patriotic song and the audio of your video is really bad, just cut off the audio and replace with a better one. Patriotic songs are easily sourced online. Remember to give credit and mention that your original audio quality is not satisfactory and you have replaced them.
2) I never cut parts of a song or musical concert and join them unless the joints sound ’smooth’. What I do is to unlink the audio from the video. Take the best part of the song and leave it as it is. Then, I edit the video, taking only the most interesting scenes. Layer it on the audio and things look better that way.
3) Traditional music is rare. So, what I do is to record a whole song and keep them in my archieve. For example, I have some nice traditional Indian music which will be nice to put if I am making cultural or religious videos.
4) Bad lightings. Some event venues have really horrible lightings. I have been to the Komtar Dome and it looks greenish. No matter how I adjust the white balance, it still looks bad. What I do is to take photos because photos resolution is better. I add the photos after cutting off the video, leaving only the audio.
These are just some of the things I learned through trials and errors and hope others find it useful.
The above video is a drums festival I shot some weeks back. The stage lighting is truly bad for photographers and videographers. I was cursing them for switching on the green spotlight and then, change between bright lights and dark lights. The photographers around me too were grumbling.
A few months back, I went to a Teoh Beng Hock forum and the lights at Han Chiang were also very bad. I kept bugging the organiser to pull the curtains a bit to shield the direct spotlights shining at us. The final product I get was brown coloured faces. Doh….
(video from Facebook, not appearing here pulak. Original link here :http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=158229382577 )
This video is our citizen journalist very first citizen journalist project. It was made in March 8, 2009 and it took four citizen journalists to manage it.
Right after our course, Maran told us to go and get some vox-pop (people’s voices) on what they think of Pakatan Rakyat.
Being noobs, we didn’t get much because the place was too noisy, too dark and people are generally too afraid to criticise PR. All bodek-bodek only.
So, we got a bit ambitious and want to interview the CM. But we chicken mah, first day at CJ wor. Lucky, we saw Jeff Ooi and I told him my intention. He urged us to go ahead, chase the CM and asked him.
Now, six months later, heh…no need to say further, right?
I am putting this video here so that the new batch of CJs can see how freaking nervous we were plus all the lousy angles, lousy lightings, etc etc.
Go, Lina, Low, Carolyn, Jacklyn (and the others CJs from the new Penang batch)! Jump into the deep! Cepat-cepat get some videos up on cj.my!
