Lam Thuy Vo

2012-01-31T10:20:00.000-08:00

Another blogpost I did for ONA. Please see it here: http://journalists.org/2012/01/30/video-editing-a-skill-worth-fine-tuning/

Throughout my time at the Wall Street Journal I edited a lot of videos that were shot by other reporters, often print reporters new to the joy of filmmaking.

This has taught me two things:

How to become a better shooter (knowing what and how to shoot)
How important editing is in storytelling

A lot of people concentrate on shooting when they take their first steps as video reporters. Rightly so. The footage you shoot is literally the stuff that videos are made of. But I do think that fewer people put the same amount of effort into improving their editing skills. And if there’s one thing I learned from editing a lot of footage from video beginners, it’s that editing can be crucial to making a story work.

Here are a few things I’ve learned from colleagues, friends and readings that I hope will help others improve their editing:

SEQUENCES AND ACTIONS — WHY B-ROLL SUCKS

Someone said to me once that I should forget about the concept of b-roll. And I really took it to heart.

In visual storytelling, we often rely on our radio track — meaning the voice over and interview sound bites — to tell our stories. A voice tells us all the facts of the story, as do soundbites from subjects. Often our first instinct is to throw related b-roll on top of what is being said. The idea is that the footage we see should correspond entirely to what we hear. It’s an approach that seems more natural to print journalists, who might find it easier to work with written words than with three hours of footage.

In its worst iteration it could end up being something like this:

But sometimes it’s worth thinking of an alternative way of using visual material. What my colleagues instilled in me was that a visual story arc was just as important. I would encourage budding filmmakers to start thinking of visual information in sequences that add up to actions — a visual narrative that runs parallel to the radio track narrative. These actions, in turn, tell the story of a place or person.

In this video I tried to use sequences (shot of hands, close-up of faces, medium shot of them in the kitchen, etc.) to visually show the process of making dim sum, serving it and guests eating it to tell the visual narrative of a restaurant visit.

(Of course, editing sequential footage also requires you to shoot in sequences. If you’re interested in what that entails, here’s a lecture that USC Annenberg’s Andrew Lih and I used when we instructed a workshop for print journalists at Hong Kong University.)

RHYTHM

Something else I’ve learned to appreciate is pacing and rhythm. Articles and infographics allow for panning, scanning and skimming, but an audio-visual story is linear and has to be consumed in one go. Therefore, the editor dictates the pace at which a viewer consumes a story. Rhythm and pacing are essential to delivering information in a digestible way.

Pauses in your radio track can help let your video “breathe.” Don’t cut so tightly to the script. Shots with natural sound can be a nice, non-aural introduction, interlude or outro to an interview bite. You can also use pauses to emphasize moments: If your subject or narration has just presented the viewer with a complex idea or an emotional statement, it might help to give the viewer a second or two to digest what he or she just heard. It’s the short beat that the comedian waits for after the punchline; the moment you gasp right after you’ve been gripped by an emotional experience.

Another way in which rhythm is used is to express a certain atmosphere. Quick cuts can express anxiety, stress or excitement, while keeping a long shot can be very soothing.

Here’s a video that employs different styles of editing quite beautifully — first to show the fast-paced life in Hong Kong and then to show how bee-keeping brings serenity to the subject of the video:

THE GUYS IN HOLLYWOOD

Most of these thoughts were jump-started when I first read Walter Murch’s “In the Blink of an Eye.” He’s an Academy-Award-winning editor who’s cut Hollywood blockbusters such as The Godfather and The English Patient. He also is the only author I’ve read so far who’s written about his philosophical approach to editing, although there are a few other books I’m hoping to check out soon (On Film Editing, Towards a Theory of Montage).

It might also help to familiarize yourself with the vocabulary editors use. They can give you a concrete definition of cuts you might already be doing, but also provide a better understanding of why they work.

This is not to say that we should adopt Hollywood’s stylistic devices without thinking about how and why we use them. Using cinematic styles can be controversial in the world of journalism. But it’s still helpful to know what visual conventions are out there and when it’s good to employ them.

PRACTICE!

Getting better is, of course, always the result of hard work and practice. Cutting dozens and dozens of videos has not only made me a faster editor, but it also has helped me find different editing styles and methods that I can apply to different stories.

I would also highly recommend getting practice outside journalism. It’s healthy to break outside the mold to experiment with a project that doesn’t necessarily have to inform audiences. You could challenge yourself to make a video that employs no interviews and no voices — just visual information.

With that said I’d like to leave you with a short video I did for a film collective I’m part of. It’s a visual interpretation of William Carlos Williams’ poem “This Is Just to Say”:

No Hiding: A Simple Video Guide to How You're Being Spied on Right Now

2012-01-30T07:39:00.000-08:00

As published on Motherboard.tv. Read the article here.

Checklist for a multimedia — and multi-nation — reporting trip

2012-01-30T07:36:00.000-08:00

This is a blog entry I did for the Online News Association. It's a series on issues that young journalists might find helpful.

When I was asked to teach a workshop at Hong Kong University a year ago, I consulted a friend and colleague about what he thought would be the most useful advice for print reporters venturing into the wild territory of multimedia journalism. I was to instruct print freelancers from across Asia in multimedia storytelling, a craft that’s still in its nascence on that continent.

My friend gave me very practical advice. He said that many classes he took in graduate school were very theoretical, and few gave explicit instructions and checklists to students and reporters. When you’re juggling photography, video, data research and good old-fashioned print reporting, there’s nothing that will save your overloaded mind better than a good checklist.

So, I decided to do a case study in the form of a checklist of a multimedia project that took me to Vietnam, China and India. Hopefully, this will be useful to those who are figuring out how to approach extensive multimedia packages.

FOOD PRICE INFLATION IN ASIA — A CASE STUDY

This project was an attempt to take a look at volatile food prices across Asia with a specific focus on what drives food prices across the region. We wanted to give viewers an understanding of the subject — both in a broader context and through individual stories in three countries.

1. Pre-Production: Know Your Story

a.) Identify your story/subject:
Multimedia projects often are broad in scope, and at newspapers often are tied to an ongoing series of stories or recurring issues. Production usually takes quite a bit of time and the end product should have a shelf life longer than just a few days to make it worth the effort. Identifying the right subject matter is vital. Make sure you do a thorough Factiva, Lexis-Nexis and web search for earlier coverage of the subject to see whether you can add anything new to the story.

For this project, we wanted to tackle an issue that had crept up in our stories over and over in the past few years: volatile and sometimes frighteningly high food prices. This is a recurring issue for a region where income and population are on the rise. Even though food prices had peaked earlier and are on a downward trend, the United Nations predicted that volatile prices would be an issue for the next 10 years, warranting a closer look.

b.) Break it down:
Multimedia offers a number of avenues for telling a story. You need to understand the main issues before you start figuring out what medium you use to explain it. Sometimes it helps to structure a multimedia project in subjects the way Mediastorm’s Crisis Guides for the Council on Foreign Relations does. Sometimes chronology works, as in the case of the New York Times story “Held by the Taliban.” And sometimes it’s collecting stories from many people, as reporters for the Wall Street Journal did in its piece about health care in the U.S.

With our project, we wanted to provide a multi-faceted understanding of a complex and international problem. So, we started with a big-picture primer that introduced the audience to the subject and helped them understand why it was important.

Then, we provided three specific stories that identified problems in the food production and distribution chain (production issues caused by pollution and global warming and supply-chain issues, such as the lack of industrialization and supply for growing food demand). This provided concrete examples of how people were dealing with food-price inflation.

Finally, we wanted to show the larger context of these stories: How many countries in Asia were affected by general inflation, how much of their income people spend on food and how many people in those countries were undernourished.

2. Conceptualizing: Decide What to Report Before You Go

a.) Identify a medium for each part of the story:
This means that you should, as much as possible, get an idea of how the end product should look. Once you’ve broken down your project, you can concentrate on casting the right medium for each part of the story (I’ve written a lengthy breakdown of what I think the different strengths of different mediums should be).

For this project, a narrated and animated infographic worked well as an introduction:

^{The planning of an animation — from storyboarding, to production, to finished product.}

Watch the animation here.

Three video features displayed “on-the-ground” stories:

And an interactive graphic provided numerical context:

b.) Make a list of what you need
Once you know the types of story elements you need, you should put together a scavenger-hunt list of content you want to gather. Multimedia is not like print journalism: You can’t just call a source and ask for information and materials you forgot to request earlier. If you didn’t capture the information on video or get a photograph of someone, it can be very difficult to get what you need, especially when you are on deadline.

This is why checklists are essential. You might need to ask your sources for addresses so that you can create a map or to pose for a picture if you need images for a series of interviews.

For this project, I wanted to use a small, decorative collage to capture the entire process of the food chain — from production in the countryside, to the transportation, to the markets and, finally, to the selling of food. Part of my checklist was capturing images from the journey that food makes from the farmers to the markets that were later used for a collage that illustrated the journey.

See a breakdown of the collage here:

3. Production

Last, but not least, comes the task of production. If you’ve been organized about the entire reporting process, you can now start tackling the elements one by one. You might want to start with the individual elements (videos, infographics and animations) and then work your way toward curating these elements in a shell.

Production timeline:
Here’s a breakdown as to how long it took to create and produce this project:

July-August: Researching the project
September: Traveling and reporting
October: Production and testing
Early November: Launch

Recent Work: Dominique Ansel's Kouign Amann

2011-12-03T09:58:00.001-08:00

A short video I made for the very talented pastry chef Dominique Ansel, who just opened his first bakery in Soho. Seems that people REALLY love his buttery baked goods.

Dominique Ansel from Lam Thuy Vo on Vimeo.

Recent Work: Walking Through Singapore's Green Corridor

2011-12-03T09:54:00.001-08:00

A Malaysian train line used to connect Singapore's Southern tip to its North but was discontinued earlier this year. The tracks are now being dismantled, leaving behind a footpath that runs through the heart of the city. Here's a video I shot in September.

How we made our maps | Hacks/Hackers NYC

2011-11-09T12:44:00.000-08:00

From a blogpost I wrote for Hacks/Hackers:

When a story is best told through a visual representation of geography, maps are often the best way of telling it. Three journalists joined Hacks/Hackers NYC to explain how they approached mapmaking for their recent projects. Slides and code from their presentations are available in this link bundle.

Read the whole post here:
http://hackshackers.com/blog/2011/11/06/how-we-made-our-maps/

ONA Conference Recap

2011-10-20T16:31:00.000-07:00

A view from the Hotel where the ONA conference took place

In late September, I was one of three very lucky fellows to be sent to the Online News Association and having been in a small bureau for the past two years with

So here are some takeaways:

Computers Are Taking Over
Well, we're screwed. Computers are now starting to recognize our faces. And this is not just some technology that the CIA or the FBI use to crack down on con-artists and master thieves. It's now a highly commoditized feature: Facebook uses this technology to tag photos of your friends and an app called viewable employs it to sort your photo libraries.

This site uses it to gauge moods of people pictured on photographs on the Guardian (you can break down any other web site):

That's just one of the many technologies presented as a 'tech trend' by Amy Webb, CEO of the Webbmedia Group, in her lecture '10 Techier, Trendier Tech Trends' (you can watch her lecture here: http://bit.ly/o1B2Kz). There seem to be quite a few technologies that have now become an everyday commodity.

There are also electronic pens that transcribe and transfer your handwritten notes to paper and tools to visualize the 'future.' Social media network now allow you to find out who's currently in the
neighborhood, perhaps even in the same coffee shop as you are and itcan help you meet folks as you detect their electronic trail.

The future, as it was painted in movies in the 1980s and 1990s, is here and it's available in your app store or on Amazon: you can now track your friends through their GPS devices and computers can tell whether you look angry or sad in photos. I guess the biggest takeaway from this lecture is thatwe'll have to learn ever-more ways to interact with technology. It's got huge potential for storytelling: you can personalize news outputs to the point that it's geo-specific. You can read emotions on the faces of a number of facebook users and gauge the mood of facebook fiends in who like your news site. You can map out the future with pre-cognition reporting. Above all though, you probably should also create a new code of ethics when using this technology.

Visualization Is For Everyone!
Recently, more and more tools seemed to have cropped up to help even the technologically challenged to create visualizations.

I went to an intro session to fusion tables, Google's new API-based chart builder. It's accessibly everyone, can link up to maps and is changeable in style. The site helps you host your data tables, visualizes data in multiple formats (maps, pie charts, bar charts) and it certainly helps those without the money or skills to use the Adobe family's Illustrator, Flash and other software to build graphics.

Here's how WNYC used the tool:

Just recently I saw the sneak preview for a similar widget by datacollective.com, that enables you to make similarly shareable charts.

It's neat to see this democratization of visualization tools.

Crowdsourcing and Viewer Engagement

I have to admit that until recently I wasn't the biggest fan of twitter. I saw it as a purely promotional vehicle and as an oddly public forum for personal conversations. I also felt like it made me into a hyperactive wreck unable to focus.

But I've come around to it as a tool. And it'd be silly to deny its usefulness to gauge online opinions, for instance, or to understand the dynamics of grassroots movements in the digital age. At the conference and during talks with a bunch of media folks (speak potential employers), the same question has cropped up over and over again: how do you maximize user involvement?

Well, Al Jazeera's The Stream uses live twitter feeds to interact with their audience and have them actively mold their conversation. They have a dedicated producer sieving through tweets during the live show.

The Guardian's answer to user engagement was threefold: live blogs, user-submitted content and what I'll call 'participatory' data evaluation for now. They perfected the art of live blogging while experimenting with football/soccer coverage and used it really effectively during the Arab Spring, actively conversing with their commentators and figuring out ways to work with their content. They visualized user-submitted stories about personal experiences during September 11. And they used their audience to annotate and evaluate the thousands of Sarah Palin emails that were released a while back.

Overall, user-submitted content and crowdsourcing is definitely a bit scary to fact-conscious journalists, but there are ways to tell stories in such interesting ways with the deluge of information that social media provide us. There's also a huge potential in using the manpower of thousands. Exciting times.

Anyhooser. If you're interested there are more notes here and all panels available on video here.

Hacks/Hackers Demo Day 3 Recap

2011-10-16T12:18:00.000-07:00

At the third Hacks/Hackers NYC Demo Day, six speakers whizzed through their presentations covering several topics, from real-time data collection to content management systems.

Read the rest of my blog entry here.

Photography: Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-12T23:57:00.000-07:00

I went down to Zuccotti Park to photograph some of the protesters who are part of the 'Occupy Wall Street' demonstrations. The whole place is more or less like a self-sufficient ecosystem: there sleeping areas covered with blankets and inflatable mattresses; there's a food station with boxes for packaged foods, fresh goods and even compost. One strip of the side-walk is reserved for protest posters which are strewn across the floor for passers-by to ogle over.

As for the protesters themselves, they are a diverse bunch. And there seems to be little to unite them except for the common need for a platform. Even organizers aren't entirely sure what the movement stands for.

But demonstrating for the right to be heard just for the sake of being heard is not necessarily a 'non-thing.' NPR reporters at Planet Money argue that it's an interesting concept to fight for: the right for a platform for your voice. In the podcast, the reporters explore the idea of a participatory economy and how the movement itself functions like hyper-democratic little village. Listen to the here:
http://n.pr/oqkblB

As for the rest of the photos snapped on that day, please go here: http://bit.ly/pEv8mF

Ira Glass on Why Radiolab is Amazing

2011-10-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

Ira Glass put together a great analysis of why Radiolab has excited not just him but also hoard of youngens who've became to radio fiends thanks to the genius of Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. Genius... get it?

Anyhow, here's a really interesting point Mr. Glass made in his piece.

"Real journalism – and by that I mean fact-based reporting – is getting trounced by commentary and opinion in all its forms, from Fox News to the political blogs to Jon Stewart. Everyone knows newspapers are in horrible trouble. TV news continually loses ratings. And one way we broadcast journalists can fight back and hold our audience is to sound like human beings on the air. Not know-it-all stiffs. One way the opinion guys kick our ass and appeal to an audience is that they talk like normal people, not like news robots speaking their stentorian news-speak. So I wish more broadcast journalism had such human narrators at its center. I think that would help fact-based journalism survive."

It's definitely worth a read, even if you're specialized in video:
http://bit.ly/oeFznh

Carnival of Journalism Post: Workflow and Strategizing Video for a Print Newsroom

2011-09-30T14:56:00.000-07:00

This post was written for the Carnival of Journalism debate on the role of online video in journalism. I'm taking a very pragmatic approach, looking into the workflow within a print newsroom. Please feel free to give constructive criticism and tell me whether you've found better strategies in working with video.
When in a newsroom, editorial decisions are difficult, especially when you work for a daily newspaper and resources for video are tight. Having had to make those decisions while heading video operations for The Wall Street Journal in Asia, I’ve had to figure out ways to allocate resources. When does it make sense to really go all out on a story? What kind of video can add value in what kind of scenario? Here’s a thought.

Categories
To help one get an overview of how we could build out video operations at newspapers it might be good to look at the spectrum of videos newspapers do offer at this point in time. On some level, the Internet gave newcomers in video, such as newspapers, the opportunity to be experimental and break out of what had become a somewhat formulaic approach to video (See Charlie Brooker’s spoof news story as an example:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4). It liberated the format somewhat, giving videographers the chance to dabble in various genres and possibly modify them. Here are a few categories I’ve found online (click to enlarge):

Decision Making
It’s difficult to determine which kind of video to do when. Ideally, we’d all be spending weeks with a character at a time to produce a nice 15-minute first-person narrative, but that’s not always possible. And not every editor wants to pay for that.

The system below is one based on deadlines. Please note that some of the most important questions here -- how important is this story? How visual is this story? How much access do I have? -- need to be weighed with each story and are a bit harder to put into a ‘template’ like the one below (I will try to do a float chart one of these days detailing these decisions, somebody please kick my butt so I'll do it).

It’s an important story but when is it due?
1.) It’s due now!
The most value added at this point is quite possibly news analysis videos.
When the Japan earthquake happened, the ABC correspondent in Tokyo was on air for hours on end. Al-Jazeera was streaming footage and photos they could find with reporters talking about what they saw. We put out breaking news videos

2.) We have about a week to go before this publishes:
This answer might prompt more questions: how much access do we have? How many resources can we allocate to this story, i.e. how much money do we have available? Depending on the answers of those questions we could then opt for either a video package or a reporter-shot package.

3.) We have AGES til this publishes:
In this case it we could finally try to a first person package or a really extended package.

Proselytizing the Idea of Multi-platform Journalism
Perhaps crucial for this to work is to engage reporters in the print newsroom in multimedia storytelling, both as shooters themselves but also as people who start thinking about stories on various platforms. None of the above are really possible unless we know about stories in advance and can evaluate whether a story has ‘video potential’ or not. Small experiences a reporter has with doing his or her own video can lead to a change of mind that later translates into him or her calling a multimedia producer earlier to produce a story.

See Andrew Lih and my explorations of how to teach reporters video journalism here:
http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2011/10/01/fiveshotpattern/

Conclusion
Striking a balance between daily demands and enterprising journalism is hard, but both are needed and video can be a strong medium for both. I suppose until every newsroom has unlimited budgets for every form of journalism -- from videos to infographics to news applications and articles -- I suppose this could be a good interim strategy to determine when it's feasible and sensible to produce a video at a print organization. Print journalism is still the fastest -- and cheapest -- medium in which to produce and consume information and until we have the luxury of having the resources to train, equip and financially enable reporters to be multiplatform journalists, I think a model like this might be helpful.

Lessons Learned: I Need a Slideshow, a Video, an Infographic...

2011-09-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

As a multimedia reporter, it's important to familiarize yourself with the different kinds of media there are and what their strengths are. There are stories that are more visual, others that lend themselves more to graphics. Sometimes picking and choosing the right medium for the right story is a better approach than to have 'everything' for every story. Here's a short breakdown of what I gathered from lectures, readings and concluded from my own observations:

The categories:
Infographics:

One of their main strengths is that they can deliver an instantaneous understanding of large sets of data, i.e. convey the larger context of a story. A line graph can show rise in prices over time faster and more effectively than can a paragraph that describes numbers. A color-coded heat map that shows higher percentages of a certain ethnic population can be better at explaining racial diversity in New York than a paragraph detailing the breakdown of every neighborhood. How-It-Works float charts are probably better at showing the mechanics of a process than a lengthy essay.

Interactive graphics:

Interactive graphics give another dimension to infographics. Interactivity adds the ability to hide information until a user prompts it and to create a multi-layered experience of information consumption. It also allows for heightened user engagement, too: be it through user submissions, continuous linkage (allowing for users to continue exploring). So if a data and information-driven story is particularly complicated, interactivity allows the journalist to stagger the amount of information presented. It allows to show correlations and give detail only if a viewer wants it.

Video and slideshows:

Visual storytelling is best used for personable approach to a story and at its best can show a larger story through a characters’ story. If done well, characters are often emblematic of the larger issues at hand: it's a way of humanizing the consequences of a new law; of showing a trend story through a character that exemplifies that trend; or even just to show a component human nature through the ups and downs of the story of one or a few people. Also think about what would best be SEEN rather than DESCRIBED in words (these are often action-driven or event-driven pieces).

Interaction of those components:

These components can also interact with one another. Some have employed flash and javascript to lay out a story like an online magazine, except that the photos and graphics that punctuated the pages of a magazine now move. We are now able to use flash, javascript and other software/programming languages to curate our elements, adding another layer of information. An information graphic could be used as a navigation for a number of video components, for example.

I often use the 'template' of a print story to explain the examples above. In a written feature the formula goes like so:

1.) Anecdotal lede: starting with a person that exemplifies your story

2.) Nutgraf: What's the story about

3.) Context graf: This part often gives the numerical significance of the story, a la "she is one of thousands of people who have..."

And then it alters from going back and forth between characters, experts and analytical paragraphs.

One could look at a video as a drawn out anecdotal lede and data graphics as extensive context paragraphs. Just in a different medium.

From India's Countryside

2011-09-24T13:12:00.000-07:00

India

2011-09-16T05:04:00.000-07:00

Photos from a 4.30 am trip to New Delhi's Azadpur Subzi Mandi. It's tough working on a farmer's schedule but so worth it when you do kick your own butt out of bed to witness people truck in vegetables and fruit from across the country to sell here.

Singapore

2011-09-16T04:59:00.000-07:00

Snapshots from my recent reporting trip in Singapore-la!

Vietnam's Mekong Delta

2011-09-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

A few snaps from the Mekong Delta.

The Syzygium Malaccense

2011-09-09T05:13:00.000-07:00

I'm in Ho Chi Minh City on assignment for WSJ and will be traveling to Singapore and India for them. It's my last assignment in Asia, now that I've given up my position in Hong Kong, and I'm excited to be able to wrap up my tenure at this fine publication with a multimedia project on food inflation.

The switch from working full-time in an office to being a freelancer has been bizarre, but certainly pleasant. You go from being an integrated member of a corporate ecosystem to being a self-sufficient worker bee. I guess, the nicest thing is you get to be in charge of your own time. While that means you might work at odd hours, it also means you get to take random breaks to do random things, like plucking rose apples from a tree outside your auntie's house:

Recent Work: Domestic Helpers Fight Legal Battle for Equality

2011-09-01T03:46:00.000-07:00

A Filipina domestic worker is fighting for the right for permanent residency in Hong Kong's High Court. But the case strikes at the core of much more than just the right to abode.

Read our story here: http://on.wsj.com/oCxhVu

This Is Just To Say

2011-08-01T06:14:00.000-07:00

This was a film shot on a cloudy Hong Kong morning and edited on the hot afternoon that followed right after. It illustrates what has become a favorite poem of mine with scenes from my neighborhood and my apartment.

Thanks to Yvonne Young and Allison Morrow for their time, their help and their company.

Music by Onra
Poetry by William Carlos Williams

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

And in Chinese (translated by the lovely Isabella Steger):

我剛吃了
李子
它們在
冰箱裏

也是你
很可能
留下
當早餐的

原諒我
它們很好吃
又甜
也很涼

Recent WSJ Work: Living in Hong Kong's Tiny Apartment Units

2011-07-19T20:33:00.000-07:00

Hong Kong's home prices have skyrocketed in recent years, forcing residents like Yang Lianchun and her family to live in subdivided apartments. She talks to the WSJ about what it's like for a family of four to live in 150 square feet of space.

4th of July (shenanigans)

2011-07-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

Family Wedding

2011-07-14T08:42:00.001-07:00

Oh weddings... a day so stressful and yet full of joy (and food).

Hong Kong Vigil

2011-07-14T05:19:00.000-07:00

From early June.

Personal Statements

2011-05-30T10:39:00.000-07:00

Personal statements. I dread them. How should you write about yourself without gushing too much or sounding like a pompous ape?

Well, this one was required for a fellowship. "Tell us about yourself in a personal statement or multimedia presentation," they said. So I woke up last Sunday, set up my ancient studio lights, my DSLR and filmed myself. Sometimes it's good to force yourself to do something. It's a little less scary each time.

Borneo

2011-05-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

A short trip to the land of Orang Utans....

...and of beautiful beaches.

Bangkok

2011-05-12T07:12:00.000-07:00

Recent WSJ Work: Rikuzentakata, Japan

2011-04-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

Some 2,300 people are dead or missing in Rikuzentakata and many small businesses were obliterated by the March tsunami. Survivors must make a heart-wrenching choice: Should they rebuild their town - or abandon it?

Recent WSJ Work: RIkuzentakata, Japan

2011-04-09T18:24:00.000-07:00

Newly-minted Mayor Futoshi Toba was at work in City Hall when the tsunami devastated his community a month ago. Now he must find a way to balance his duty to his family and his town.

Here is the very moving story written up by two of my esteemed colleagues: http://on.wsj.com/eqSK6b

Some photos also made it into the slideshow and newspaper.

Some impressions from Japan

2011-03-30T07:22:00.000-07:00

I've been out reporting in Rikuzentakata for a few days and will be filing soon. But here a few random photos from the trip (Hong Kong > Tokyo > Kitakami > Rikuzentakata > Kitakami > Tokyo > Hong Kong).

Tokyo

I was shooting broll from the Tokyo tower and found this very scary looking view through a window in the floor.

Second time I'm in Tokyo for work during the cherry blossom season. They are truly beautiful, even more so thanks to their short life span.

Rikuzentakata

From a shelter in Rikuzentakata during a charity soccer match between the Japanese national team and an all-star team from the J-League:

From a pre-school graduation in Rikuzentakata:

Recent WSJ Work: Stanley Ho

2011-03-30T06:48:00.000-07:00

Here's a video we did in Macau about Stanley Ho, the man who has dominated Macau's casino industry for decades. Recently, the ailing billionaire has been caught up in a war with his family for control of his empire. And four wives, sixteen surviving children and a whole bunch of lawyers make for one very interesting story.

Recent WSJ Work: Japan Earthquake

2011-03-27T07:15:00.000-07:00

A woman carrying her baby around in the town of Ishinomaki, Northeastern Japan. She was looking for any supplies she could find in the rubble.

A day after a massive earthquake and tsunami hit Northeastern Japan, I hopped on a plane to Tokyo and then to Fukushima airport. From there we visited various areas: one where people were sleeping on the stage of an auditorium waiting to hear whether their hometown had been contaminated with radioactivity; one where rotten fish were strewn on the ground -- a reminder of an industry that used to feed the people in that neighborhood; another one where someone was wading through mud, headed towards their destroyed houses to find the dogs they had left behind. It was a three-day-long stay; three very full days.

There are many things I've learned.
Practical things, like 'don't wear sneakers when you're covering the aftermath of a tsunami'.

Don't save on little things, like 'utility belts' for lenses, extra batteries, a good wind jacket, etc. They make a big difference when you work on little sleep and in difficult environments.

But more importantly I learned that grilling a fish with your pals in a middle of the road after you've lost everything can be incredibly uplifting. So can 5 pieces of chewy candy that a stranger offers you, mumbling the word "candy" in broken English.

Anyhoo, here's a selection of the videos I produced from there (I'm on my second trip here now, so expect more to come):

A video about the economic repercussions of the tsunami for a town of ship building companies and food processing facilities:

A video about the reunion of a family after days of being disconnected:

A video about evacuees from near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant:

And some photographs:

Retracing Saigon - Episode 1 - Mom and Dad

2010-12-28T10:32:00.001-08:00

When Tam Thi Tang died in 2007, she left behind 13 children, 9 in-laws, 18 grandchildren and one emaciated, abandoned husband. As I revisited my grandfather six months after my grandmother died, I found a man in his seventies who repeatedly said he was waiting to pass away. And he finally did earlier this month.

The head of a family dies and its members fumble for reasons to gather. The nucleus family loses its core and it becomes easier to find excuses to stay in California, Chicago, Frankfurt, Marseille or countless other places where my family members have settled. But I suppose the remaining glue keeping them together are the memories they shared. So I made it my task to gather those.

I've mostly finished reporting on my family history and will be able to spend the weekends of 2011 putting together a video-driven flash piece. I've been working on this over the past three years and have finally gathered enough footage, information and personal accounts to start smaller video segments. With this project, I hope to explore how historical events intersect with individual lives.

On a purely selfish level it's a way of exploring identity -- mostly my own. Besides, this one turned out to be a great Christmas present for my parents:

Recent WSJ work: Yeonpyeong

2010-12-05T17:25:00.001-08:00

Recent WSJ Work: Uhm, yeah, bunnies and chihuahua cakes

2010-11-25T06:09:00.000-08:00

Recent WSJ work: A Date with A Hairy Crab

2010-11-17T19:50:00.000-08:00

We took out two Italian chefs for hairy crab. They were not impressed.

Recent WSJ Work: The G-20 Communique

2010-11-14T03:42:00.000-08:00

This was probably the closest I will ever get to President Barack Obama.

Video:

Recent WSJ Work: Light and Darkness and the 5D

2010-11-11T10:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it's really nice to be able to concentrate on the pretty things in life.

Two video admittedly short 'postcards' of things going on in Seoul:

The Lantern Festival

The G-20 Venue

Recent WSJ work: iPad wine list, sabering bottles and princes

2010-11-03T07:38:00.001-07:00

I forget these sometimes. When you become a machine, a fierce machine pumping out videos, THE machine at the office, you forget about them once they're out. I've been working a lot with a very prolific blogger of ours lately and here are some results:

Partying like a prince:

And video:

A piece about an ipad winelist:

This one includes Kieran's drawing:

Vietnam: Hanoi, Halong Bay and Ho Chi Minh City

2010-10-28T20:09:00.000-07:00

Hanoi:

Halong Bay:

Ho Chi Minh City:

Cheng Chau

2010-10-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

A trip from ages ago.

Filmshop Screening in Hong Kong

2010-09-07T09:14:00.000-07:00

Had a nice screening of the Filmshop short films.

B-roll sucks

2010-08-13T00:46:00.000-07:00

Someone said to me once that I should forget about the concept of b-roll. And I really took it to heart.

In visual storytelling we often rely on our radio track to tell our stories. A voice tells us all the facts of the story. The basic print story structure often applies:

We have an anecdotal lede, or in visual language the 'beauty shot,' the most gripping footage, the friggin money shot, whatever you want to call it. Then you launch into a voice over, telling me immediately what's going on and why I should care -- in print lingo a nutgraf. All that nicely done with some b-roll plastered on top of that vaguely illustrates what you're talking about. Then throw in the first quote, like you would in an article. Continue with some context, some transitions, a kicker at the end, ideally another quote and if you don't get that then throw in a nice concluding thought. Voila, you got your general news video, often done within a few hours after an event happened if you've had staffing at the place.

What my colleague though instilled in me though was that visual story arch was just as important. Sequence shots, processes and action shots are imperative in telling a visual story that runs parallel to your radio track (the voices of interviewees, the narrator's voice). It's a visual sense of understanding the processes that constitute the story that you see in every day life: the chronology of going to the beach.

A visual sequence tells this story: First the act of packing a bag to go out, putting the towel in, the sun lotion, the sunglasses. Sitting in a car, driving to the beach, the radio blasting, then getting out of the car. Sitting on the beach, drinking a soda, eating a popsicle. Then the beach emptying at night. That's one continuous story and after the radio track that tells me about the increase in people going to the beach, I've ended up also experiencing a trip to the beach. From beginning to end.

It's easy to forget that part of video. We concentrate on getting all the shots, the signage, the cut away shot of someone's hands, maybe a few atmosphere shots, people walking...and then we forget the bigger picture. The entire story. And true, some stories are more complex. You need to jump from one location and one interviewee to another.

But then there are chapters, each of which can be a little visual story in itself and you can play around with that, play with the rhythm of the video, work in short moments, in which you visually end one chapter and start another. It's time for the radio track to release the visual experience of something and for people to stop glueing some images to words that someone says. I don't like that one dictates the other, and while they are supposed to be interdependent, I figure you should give them a bit more play, too.

I tried to do that in this video:

I think I, like many who started in photography, often looked for a shot that could tell it all. But we're not staring at something for many seconds. Video is linear, continuous and as Walter Benjamin said, it leaves you almost no time to reflect, moments are gone so soon and only the most memorable shots remain. It's not just about stimulating someone.

I understand there's been a renaissance for the photograph, which now often employed in an audio-slideshow gives room to reflect. And that is one way of gripping someone emotionally. But I think there's still the power of visual sequencing and the continuity of video that I'd like to embrace.

Recent WSJ work: Japanese Employees Learning English

2010-08-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

Not the kind of stuff I would generally post, but a nice collaborative, long-distance production between a reporter, a shooter and me as a script and video editor.

Peng Chau Island

2010-08-05T21:01:00.000-07:00

'It's important to get out of Hong Kong sometimes,' multiple people have said to me.

'You'll see. You need to,' they echoed each other.

It's strange to have a collective experience of a place. People tell you how you will feel and what you will think about this place and you feel and think that way. There's the claustrophobia on the streets, the cliched pangs of gweilo loneliness, the amusement over the ridiculous details of life in this city.

Taking a ferry to one of the islands surrounding Hong Kong island can be a light version of 'getting out,' I guess. There were open spaces, there was less noise, there were dogs, big dogs, many of them and most of them weird ones. There was a family on the beach, bathing in their shorts and shirts and carving off mussels from a few rocks with a hammer and sickle. And there were old Chinese men, snotting and coughing while conversing in plastic chairs in public areas.

But you don't want to be stuck on an island where you have no place to stay. There's a hammock outside a French bar there with sniffing pugs and labradors swarm around its dozing users. But you couldn't really feel comfortable in there and the owners of the bar would probably have shooed you away soon after closing. So you have the ferry schedule in the back of your mind as it's getting darker and darker. You finish your water, your beer and your sandwich. You walk up to the pier.

The you beep your way through the railing with an electronic ticket, aptly named an octopus card, and walk onto the rocking, air-conditioned ferry. You can't decide whether to feel sick or sleepy.

Outside it was still hot. Humid, too, of course.

Getting there, we encountered the Maersk. Big ole ship.

An announcement

Crab... too small to eat.

80 billion guys

2010-08-03T02:20:00.000-07:00

Kieran made a film that will be shown on a rooftop in New York City. I'm sad we won't make it, but you should.

My Moleskin

2010-06-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

I was always a tedious note taker.

I like highlighters in different colors, red pens that I alternate with black pens. I like .75 ball pens because it's more fun to write with them than with the .50 ones.

Bullet points were a great way for me to think about subjects, even essays. I always called it my German urge for order.

It's kind of funny to think that that is how I process the death of first my grandmother and now the imminent exitus of my grandfather.

I'm making it into a project, a step-by-step visualization of what started out as an essay about my granny's funeral and is now a clumsy attempt to understand my identity via genealogy.

I've sent out an excel sheet for my family to fill out and it fills me with joy.

Shanghai

2010-05-25T01:52:00.000-07:00

A quick two-day trip to Shanghai. Had a chill day walking around and found this really colorful wet market.

Peaches concert in Beijing

2010-05-04T01:28:00.000-07:00

My last night in Beijing. Well spent.

Beijing

2010-05-04T01:19:00.000-07:00

Photos from a week-long trip to Beijing.

Tianjialing - on the outskirts of Beijing:

This one looks like a little adult, firing you for always being tardy.

Tokyo foods

2010-04-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

Kings of Convenience concert

2010-03-26T06:04:00.000-07:00

I almost didn't go, but the lovely lady in the second picture snuck me in.

Recent WSJ work: Dim Sum Masters at Work

2010-03-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

Grease under my feet as I'm stumbling through a slippery kitchen, 3000 USD worth of equipment in my hands.

Houston Rodeo Gorging

2010-03-23T19:48:00.000-07:00

So my brother, two of my cousins and I spent a night at the Rodeo... though we ended missing most of the actual rodeo show because we were too busy eating batter-fried bacon and other goodies soaked in fat.

We also saw a lot of life stock, which exposed me to all sorts of bacteria and potential diseases a few days before a transatlantic flight... something I'm sure border control in Hong Kong wouldn't have been too thrilled about had they known. But how can you resist an Alpaca in a petting zoo when it creeps up behind you for a cuddle or a hard push?

It's been so long since I've been to the Rodeo. The last time I went I saw a dangly Bob Dylan croak country songs, strumming his guitar on a stage where a few moments before a man rode a bull. At the time, I felt very misplaced -- I had no idea who ZZ Top was. I pronounced the number π (pi) as "pee" because that's how you said it in German. I was a European teenager who was used to having all the freedom in the world and who was suddenly confronted with cops grazing highways after midnight for underaged kids. It took a while but in time I learned to appreciate Texan life: the enormity of everything from houses and people to food portions, the way that Texans always found a way to butcher my name and the long drives at night.

Texas will always have a special place in my heart - even if just in form of hardened gew in my arteries.

The fair:

The life stock:

Beer Brewing in Brooklyn

2010-03-22T20:21:00.000-07:00

What better way to spend your vacation than to witness the birth of a beer? Two days after my arrival in the US of A, Kieran and I strolled through Sunset Park to pay 'brothers' Mark and Jay a visit who were busy sullying a linoleum kitchen floor with brown, sweet liquid for a video. Kieran drew some sexually explicit comic versions of the two on the chalkboard cupboards while I was using my factory-perfect, little hands to cap a few dozen bottles at almost Chinese speed.

Despite my Germanness -- the passport and the 15 years spent munching on sausage and 'Bauernbrot' for breakfast -- I wouldn't really call myself an expert on beer or any liquors for that sake. But heck, even though not yet carbonated it was quite a delicious brew and made me want to damn my genes for making my body go berserk every time I drink.

In any case, the video of Mark and Jay brewing beer will soon be featured here: http://brothermarksbbq.com/

Recent WSJ work: double-decker tram through Hong Kong

2010-03-02T00:52:00.000-08:00

Featuring my visiting friend Emily looking bored and holding my tripod while I try to stay steady, shooting on the double-decker tram.

Of gangsters, haircuts and 80 billion guys

2010-02-28T22:14:00.000-08:00

It's been a while but mainly cause I've been slaving over the film below. It was shown together with some other films from New York and Hong Kong at the Filmshop's screening event at the Music Hall of Williamsburg!

The 3-and-a-half-minute-long bugger took two weekends to produce, two weekends to shoot and one weekend to cut. Altogether it was an interesting experience to me because I'm used to working with what I can get with the access, time and characters I'm provided as a video journalist. But when it comes to film, you gotta be one meticulous dictator. Storyboarding, acting, a lot of that is in a director's hands and takes a long time to plan out... very different from turning around a piece within a day or two. Well, in any case. Tadaa!

Bluffing from Lam Thuy Vo on Vimeo.

Cameras: 2 x Canon 5d Mark ii
Audio: Marantz PMD660

ACTORS:
Son: Joshua Wolper
Father: Andrew Ng
Gangster 1: Reggie Ho
Gangster 2: Jackie Chow
Gangster 3: Anna Li
Father's Girlfriend: Sompor Wannapat Suranant

CREW:
Directors of Photography: Darren Hayward, Nora Tejada
Sound Design: Tristan Ahtone, Emile Denichaud
Stylist and location scout: Catherine Tai
Editing: Lam Thuy Vo
Director: Lam Thuy Vo
Writers: Kieran O'Hare and Lam Thuy Vo
Producers: Lam Thuy Vo and Catherine Tai
Music: Onra
Production Assistants Thomas Derpinghaus; Steven Case
Special Thanks: Tim O'Roarke; David Chan

Please also watch some of the films and a trailer that were part of the screening and I could find on the web:

From the Hong Kong chapter:
Canned by Julian Harley, Thomas Derpinghaus, Nora Tejada and Tammie Rhee

From the New York chapter:
The Williamsburg Hair by Matt Rivera and Zachary Timm:

The Williamsburg Hair from Aligned Creative LLC on Vimeo.

A film produced by Zach Timm and Matt Rivera for the Filmshop Presents Unprotected screening about Gawker's infamous Williamsburg Hair (Chris Lancaster).

more info about the Filmshop got to: http://thefilmshop.org/

Giant Orange Head by Sean Yeaton:

"Untitled" Giant Orange Head from Sean Yeaton on Vimeo.

A short film. hi 8. based on a joke I heard and loved.

80 Billion Guys Trailer from Kieran Michael O'Hare on Vimeo.

Recent WSJ work: from banker to thespian and from engineer to photographer

2010-02-19T02:44:00.000-08:00

A multimedia project on three people who changed their jobs (Shout out goes to Tom DiFonzo for tackling the video project in London and Nan Wu for patiently watching me fumble around with flash templates):
http://bit.ly/aaaepd

lion came to our offices!

2010-02-19T02:42:00.000-08:00

Lion came to our office for CNY from Lam Thuy Vo on Vimeo.

It was fun

Recent WSJ Work: Lunar New Year FOODS!

2010-02-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

It's lunar new year soon. Yay! So we'll be going out to see dragon dances and fill our bellies with lotsa food that's bad for us.

My Mother's Korean Mandu Recipe

For Korean-American author Min Jin Lee, you can't celebrate New Year's without a steaming bowl of tteok mandu guk. She shows WSJ's Makiko Segawa how to make her mother's special recipe of the dumpling and rice-cake soup.
http://bit.ly/cgMgJh

Splurging on Lunar New Year Food

Turtle stew is one of many pricey dishes that Chinese restaurant diners feast on at lunar new year. WSJ's Jason Chow gives a rundown of the most expensive, festive treats.
http://bit.ly/cNRjfy

Recent WSJ work: an Audi named Mr. Bean and amphibian love

2010-02-10T02:14:00.000-08:00

Vanity License Plates: How Much Would You Pay?

Hong Kong car enthusiast Jackie Rain paid about 1,300 USD for a license plate that says: "Mr. Bean." It's a costly purchase, but in this city, he's just one of many drivers willing to pay for a vanity license plate. WSJ's Laura Santini reports.

The Hedge Fund Manager and His Frog

Hedge fund manager Robert Appleby has a longtime passion for amphibians. His philanthropic funding for the study of frogs has resulted in the discovery of a new species named after him, Lam Thuy Vo reports.

The best stories are done for an audience of one

2010-01-11T06:49:00.000-08:00

Kieran said that to me recently, quoting an author. It was good to hear that when peers in my industry encourage me to garner an audience and gather clicks by the bucketload, even for my personal projects. It's disenchanting to see so many blogs I used to like drain their content of any charm, any individualism in favor for lists and instructions. Bloggers who want to be useful trade in genuine curiosity for a compulsion to gather links. Their time aggregating this information for your collective strength to lift them into temporary web stardom.

It's made me think about this blog. My memory box went from collecting personal experiences to being a platform for long rants about aesthetic theories. It now has morphed into photoblog that is punctuated with occasional musings. Maybe I'm not constructive and too introverted to be worthy of any publication space on the web. Maybe I'm not useful enough to really justify the existence of this blog. And yes, I do go to those other blogs after all, contribute to their 'popularity' in a purely numerical sense.

But I don't want to be one of these aggregators cause I suck at crawling the web like a google spider for content. I don't want to be a search engine with a half-baked opinion. I'd much rather spent my time offline making something that will be 'crawled upon' one day.

New Year's

2010-01-04T10:37:00.000-08:00

Rural India Project

2010-01-02T21:31:00.000-08:00

A multimedia project we spent a lot of time on:

Temple Street

2009-12-26T11:25:00.000-08:00

emile and keiko

Hong Kong snapshots with Emily

2009-12-22T09:47:00.001-08:00

Doing touristy things with a friend who sang with me when I was 17.

Singapore

2009-12-22T09:45:00.001-08:00

Went to Singapore to conduct training and worked for most of the day. Got to see the city at night though.

Wine collecting in Hong Kong

2009-12-06T20:12:00.000-08:00

Emily makes music

2009-11-26T10:05:00.001-08:00

emily from Lam Thuy Vo on Vimeo.

eva and sid:
your little emily making music with an iphone app. Taking after her composer dad, huh?
greetings to berlin,
Lam

music courtesy of emily corbett

Wedding Aquatic with Stokely Baksh and Sean Crowley

2009-11-26T09:59:00.001-08:00

Wedding Aquatic with Stokely Baksh and Sean Crowley from Lam Thuy Vo

Stokely and Sean,

Much love from far away lands. May you have a wonderful life together!

Sorry bout the wonky footage and the grain at night. I hope it won't get you too dizzy.

Music from Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and the lovely married couple themselves

Clockenflap festival

2009-11-09T19:48:00.000-08:00

Aberdeen, Hong Kong

2009-11-07T10:48:00.000-08:00

Hong Kong

2009-10-14T08:06:00.000-07:00

First impressions:

Baltimore, Maryland

2009-10-14T07:22:00.001-07:00

Our friend's wedding in Baltimore (at the National Aquarium)...

Marseille - Part 2

2009-10-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

My aunt's greenhouses in Marseille.

Marseille - Part 1

2009-10-06T19:36:00.001-07:00

Saw my aunt for the first time in 12 years and she took us around Southern France, from one beach to another.

The first photo below shows her as a child with my grandparents, my dad (as a baby), my great uncles and my great grandparents. More photos to come.

Berlin

2009-10-06T18:44:00.000-07:00

Went to Berlin. Good people, familiar city.

Beacon

2009-10-06T18:37:00.000-07:00

Went to Beacon, upstate New York.

More here.

Wish You Were Here

2009-10-04T17:48:00.000-07:00

Mets Game, September 4, 2009

2009-09-30T17:37:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow onwards

2009-09-26T09:00:00.001-07:00

2009-09-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

In two weeks I will have to have packed up my life in a few suit cases.

Behind the Door - A Documentary about Robert Seng's "Knock Knock" Mural

2009-09-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

Drawing inspiration from artist Robert Seng’s India Street mural "Knock Knock", this mockumentary explores the concept of ‘space and spectator’ through the story of one crazy fish-come-man.

Robert Seng was commissioned to paint a mural on a wall on India Street and decided to paint the image of a bricked up door on top of the existing door. Little did he know that he thereby attracted a lot of attention to an inverse merman, Steve Hook, who had set up another apartment behind that door. Bitter and rejected Hook wasn't thrilled about all this seeing that he had moved into the apartment behind the door to find solitude and peace and quiet behind it.

Directed and written by the amazing 14-year-old Josh Carrero and me
Starring Robert Seng and Andrew Russell Thomas
With music by Oc/crp (Phonocake) and Andrew Russell Thomas
With help from papier-mâché consultants Catherine Chao, Max Goodman and Hannah Karwatowska

Commissioned by Moviehouse and the North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition for the Moviehouse screening on September 8, 2009 on the walls of the India Street mural in Greenpoint

Angus Beef Burger, evil cat

2009-09-02T15:39:00.000-07:00

Conquest of Union Square - submission for the Disposable Film Festival

2009-08-30T11:48:00.001-07:00

Conquest of Union Square - DFF submission from Lam Thuy Vo on Vimeo.

This is a short for the Disposable Film Festival, all shot on a Flip Mino HD.

Thanks to Chris King, Zachary Timm and Catherine Chao for their collaboration!

Music: "Funkind" by Vincenzo/Disco Ninjaz netlabel

A money tree, a barbie doll on a cake and a naughty man in a suit

2009-08-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

A money tree, a barbie doll on a cake and a naughty man in a suit from Lam Thuy Vo on Vimeo.

Nadia's bridal shower. Wonderful food, wonderful people, one very interesting gentleman.

Thanks to Bibi, Fareeda and Anna-Lisa for putting this on!
Thanks to Radha for manning second camera!
And congrats to Stokely (Nadia) and Sean!
Woot, woot!

Music: Jaan Pehechaan Ho by Mohammed Rafi
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyEnG_DEB1I)

Moving to Hong Kong in October for Work

2009-08-26T15:53:00.001-07:00

Now it's official.

Webcam used differently

2009-08-20T10:50:00.000-07:00

Video art that a virtual acquaintance sent over. VERY inspirational in its use of video!

Midtown Games

2009-08-17T08:16:00.000-07:00

Shooting a 90-second-long event...makes you scramble for broll!

Did it for the Speakeasy blog:

Economics of the net

2009-08-11T07:55:00.001-07:00

“Services are not offered for free at all. There is an exchange of value between users, the creators of the raw material - data, content, and meta-data, and the network where that data is converted into insight. This exchange is still governed by the basic laws of economics but the currency is not dollars, it’s attention.”

Brad Burnham, Union Square Ventures

Chris and Malcolm are both wrong

(via fred-wilson)

Manhattan

2009-08-09T22:49:00.000-07:00

The power of data and the need for aggregation

2009-08-06T09:56:00.000-07:00

The New York Times published an article yesterday about how statisticians are quite hot (i.e. in demand) these days. That's cause the almighty organism called Internet and other machinery help us gather a ton of data. And now we're not quite sure how to deal with it. This calls for the aggregation, visualization and compartmentalization of an ocean of figures, numerics and letters:

“We’re rapidly entering a world where everything can be monitored and measured,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Digital Business. “But the big problem is going to be the ability of humans to use, analyze and make sense of the data.”

Why this gets me so giddy, I don't know. But I feel as if it opens up a whole other realm of playfulness with conveying information, using spiders, graphical imagery and interactivity.

I guess, some webby folks have already understood and found a way of visualizing the power of data. Jonathan Harris, one very inspiring net artist, has done so in various of his projects, one of my favorite being We Feel Fine.

The project does this:

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling".

It's a small supernova of colorful dots that signify emotions. You can sort them. You can look at the individual entries. It's a lovely way of gauging moods on the internet.

Here a video lecture by the artist on TED:

Now I just need to learn programming.

"Total personalization will require total transparency"

2009-08-05T03:57:00.000-07:00

The above-mentioned quote is from an inspirational TED talk by Kevin Kelly about the first and next 5000 days of the Internet. He likens the web to a global, reliable machine, even an organism to which we respond and with which we interact. Watch it!

I am. Online

2009-07-30T01:42:00.000-07:00

My neighbor, Mr. Casuccio from downstairs, said to me once that he opted out of buying a digital SLR because he'd start taking too many pictures. "I don't want to document my life the way many people do."

I do. So do an astounding and ever-growing number of people on the Interweb, from grandparents competing to have the best-documented infant on facebook to the Western European and American brigade that populates the realms of vimeo.com or blip.tv.

In an environment of instantaneous publication and feedback, artistic progress is collective. Community comments encourage, give technical advice, infuriate, drive towards change or development. With technology simplifying what used to be tied to hardware, editing and distribution are easy to navigate. And recording material - on your commute, on Sundays playing soccer in the park, before a concert - becomes a pass-time activity for people with access to intimate moments. Insights into their own lives.

Of course there are no rules in video publishing these days. A lot of people post videos in every stage (and here I'm talking about aspiring filmmakers from all backgrounds). Many videos are experiments, short-term projects, some thought out more or less. This gives insight into the artistic process. It's educational. Tricks are unveiled or the used equipment listed. Storytelling structures become apparent. You school your eye and emotional sensitivity.

Most importantly:

Life becomes one progressively more beautifully shot movie.

But are we missing something here?

California Roadtrip II

2009-07-23T22:44:00.000-07:00

A stop motion video I shot in California.

California Road Trip - Travel Log #2 from Lam Thuy Vo on Vimeo.

Mohanee, Mandana and John: thanks for the laughs!

Merci Beaucoup pour la musique!
"Walls" by Bottlesmoker (Netlabel: disconinjaz)
Licensed under the Creative Commons License

Is There a Cure For Cankles?

2009-07-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

A video I produced about...uh...well, cankles.

This summer, women have a new body part to worry about: cankles. WSJ's Amy Chozick consults a personal trainer to find out whether you can do anything to reduce stubby ankles that run right into the calf.

Trip to California

2009-07-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

More images on my flickr page

Brooklyn Filmmaker's Collective: video piece

2009-07-15T08:42:00.000-07:00

BFC short from Lam Thuy Vo on Vimeo.

Not sure if I pulled this one off but this is supposed to be about the re-emergence of a person post break-up.

This will be screened at our collective's event "The End" at the Music Hall of Williamsburg:

http://www.bfctheend.com/

Day at the beach

2009-07-06T03:22:00.000-07:00

Make Music New York

2009-06-25T08:28:00.000-07:00

Photos taken before a gig we had. We were supposed to be outside but then it started raining.

My brother's wedding

2009-06-17T09:24:00.000-07:00

Yay!

More images on my flickr page.