A documentary project on the consequences of global climate change shows one way to maintain high journalistic standards: pay for them yourself.
When stories generated by amateurs and professionals are lumped together under the category of “content,” consumers of online media can easily become accustomed to a low common denominator. But sometimes we come upon personal projects created by storytellers working at the highest levels of their craft, and the difference is astounding. “Consequences by NOOR” is one of these projects.
Operating on a compressed, three-month production schedule, nine photographers from the Amsterdam-based NOOR photo agency created the exhibition for the United Nations Copenhagen environmental summit in December 2009. On a planet dominated by YouTube videos and Flickr photo streams, their documentaries almost exist in a different solar system. Images, animation, language and rhythm make them rise to the level of poetry.
The agency Design for Social Good built a blog to showcase the work of NOOR photographers and produced nine video portfolios that were shown online and around the clock in an exhibition hall at the Copenhagen summit. The online gallery continues to attract thousands of visitors each month, now coming from more than 160 countries. Debbie Mitchell Price wrote and produced the documentaries, working with Najlah Feanny Hicks, a former Newsweek contract photographer and founder of D4SG, and Doris Yee and Pasquale Chieffalo, also of D4SG.
Support for the project was assembled from a mixture of companies, agencies and non-governmental organizations. Important because of changes in the business model for photojournalists, they include Nikon Europe, Oxfam International, Greenpeace International, Russian Reporter Magazine, and several Danish organizations: the news Web site “Information,” Dask Gallery, the Reputation advertising agency, and the Press Photographers Association of Denmark.
Debbie recently described the project.
Q. These are powerful stories. How did the experience of creating them affect you?
Debbie Mitchell Price
I am proud and happy to have a small role in showcasing them. They made me and my husband, Larry C. Price, long for the days when we were doing this kind of journalism. What we were doing in the ’80s and early ’90s is now being carried forward by freelancers paying their own way or subsisting on grant money. With the exception of The New York Times and The Washington Post, traditional newspapers are no longer doing these very expensive and important stories. And that is a tragedy.
Q. How did you approach the assignment? Your own voice appears to be deliberately understated.
I saw myself as a conduit and facilitator. Essentially, these weren’t my stories. I was just helping each photographer present his or her work to its best advantage. I tried to bring some form and logic to the storytelling and emphasize the drama while using photographs, audio interviews and a few strategic text frames to present the main points.
The photographers submitted raw portfolios — somewhere between 60 and 200 images each — in no particular order. My job was to organize and sequence the photographs to tell the story and explain the issue.
With help from a former colleague at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Libby Afflerbach, a really great editor, we researched the subjects. Then I storyboarded the photographs, edited the audio interviews and filled in the narratives with key text frames. The video production team, headed by Pasquale Chieffalo, did the brilliant work of putting the audio and photographs into seamless videos — working under an incredibly intense deadline.
For example, with Kadir Van Lohuizen’s portfolio, “Brazil’s Range War: Assault on the Amazon,” we had a vast number of photographs to work with. I started with overview shots and haunting opening images of a denuded and destroyed Amazon for immediate impact and shock value. When we think of the Amazonian forest, we think of lush, green trees — not this burning, barren wasteland. Kadir’s audio also was excellent. He was a really good interview, knew his subject inside and out and had prepared his points. That made the job easy.
From overviews of the barren land, we moved quickly to shots of people and cattle — the causative factors. We went from macro to micro to bring the issue into sharp focus. Then I backed away again to develop the three basic points or sections — the deforestation, the burning of the cut wood to make charcoal, and the ranching.
I used text frames to present facts that people really need to know to understand the seriousness of the issue. For example, “The Amazon rainforest produces 20 percent of the Earth’s oxygen.” The text frames also break the video into discreet sections. The section on ranching starts with a frame telling viewers that the Brazilian cattle industry is responsible for 70 percent of current deforestation.
And of course, I sequenced Kadir’s comments with pertinent photographs, so that when he is talking about burning, we see burning, cattle, we see cattle. That’s pretty basic. We ended the video with a call to action. Kadir reminds viewers that pollution and deforestation are a result of global consumption. That point brings the video full circle and reminds us of our role in this drama.
Q. Consequences by NOOR has contributions from many continents. How did a globally distributed project team affect the work process?
Most of the contributors are in Europe, Africa and Asia. The manager of NOOR, Claudia Hinterseer, is in Amsterdam, as was one of the photographers, Kadir van Lohuizen. Most of the photographers were traveling and a few were still completing their stories. Stanley Green (who photographed Greenland) was in France. Jan Grarup was moving between Denmark and Africa where he was working on another story. Yuri Kozyrev was in Russia. Philip Blenkinsop was in Thailand. Nina Berman and Jon Lowenstein were in the U.S. Francesco Zizola, who photographed the Maldives, was traveling between Italy and other assignments. Pep Bonet was also traveling between the U.S., Spain and Africa. (Bonet, Grarup and Lowenstein are now in Haiti.)
We used Skype to interview and record the audio, which worked very well. Because of the time differences, I was working around the clock to reach people for the project. We also had some difficulty with Internet and phone connections, particularly with Jan Grarup in Africa.
Yuri, whose English really is very good, was insecure about giving an interview and so he taped his first interview and sent it in. The audio, however, was really poor quality, so at the 11th hour, we had to re-do the entire thing. I was interviewing him on Skype at 5 a.m. here in Ohio. It actually turned out a lot better. His video is one of my favorites, and it contains two stories.
We transferred the photo files (which were enormous) using FTP servers. I had to upgrade my personal Internet connection to handle the files. And I learned how to use Photo Mechanic to edit and arrange the portfolios into stories — with a lot of help from Larry, I have to say.
Our deadlines were almost impossible. We had less than 30 days to produce everything — and we had a great deal of difficulty getting the material on schedule from the photographers, largely because most of them were still in the field. It was an around-the-clock, crazy operation. We did most of our communication by email. When it was over, I had more than 3,000 NOOR-related emails in my inbox.
Q. You started as a print journalist, writer and editor, and came to video production later in your career. How do you view the differences of working in audio and visual imagery?
As a writer, I always look for the good parts — what’s interesting, what will get people’s attention, what’s important, what catches my eye, what do we need to tell the story. After being married to Larry for almost 30 years, I’ve learned a little about photography by osmosis and have his eye also to guide me.
Words need to be kept to a minimum when you’re working with great pictures. Also, as a writer and editor, I’ve learned to organize and edit, avoid repetition, develop transitions, etc. and those skills come into play whether you’re working with words or pictures.
With video, you’re writing for the ear and not the page. So the words must be to the point and memorable. There’s no time for blah, blah, blah, beautiful description, blah, blah, blah, more beautiful description, big word, big word, blah, blah.
You also don’t want to waste time telling people what they’re seeing. It’s important to look for information that supplements the image and provides context or background.
I still have a whole lot to learn about video production and am interested in acquiring more technical skills.
Q. What’s it like to be the minority writer in a sea of photographers?
The elements of good story telling don’t really change, even though the medium may be drastically different. As a writer, it was my job to look for a logical progression and present the issues cogently and with maximum drama. Libby Afflerbach and I did a lot of research to find the right nuggets of information. I also looked for strong material that we could attribute to recognized and reliable sources. I applied the same standards to single-sentence text frames as I do to long magazine articles — meticulous sourcing, fact-checking, etc.
We also knew that the exhibition hall would be loud, making it difficult for viewers to hear the audio. So, we wanted to include strategic text frames that gave the essence of each story. We were also limited by time — each video was supposed to be three to four minutes, although a couple ran a bit longer.
Above: Yuri Kozyrev photograph of a reindeer herder from ‘The Yamal Peninsula: A Land and People Threatened,’ one documentary in the ‘Consequences by NOOR’ exhibition.
