Judging from the vast amount of hits I have received on this topic, I thought I would put all the information I can find together, in one place.

This post contains information about the encryption levels, the possibility of hacking the encrypted messages and laws relating to this area.

As you may have heard, the New Zealand police have indeed started to go digital with their radio communications. This is in direct response to the increasing use of radio scanners to monitor police activites for criminal or otherwise dodgy activity.

They are slowly changing over, but as there are thousands of cars and handheld units to upgrade, this will take a while. When I turned on my scanner today (October 4 2009), I could still pick up units around Wellington. The changeover is expected to happen by the end of 2010 in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch. Other districts will be added afterwards.

Specialist groups such as the Armed Offenders Squad have been using digital radio for some time.

If you are looking for a way to listen to encrypted radio, I’m afraid I have some bad news:

The government awarded the tender for equipment to Tait Electronics in 2007. Tait uses P25 Encryption (info here from their site and also a definition from Wikipedia here).

P25 uses not only a DES 56 bit algorithm, but also a whopping 256-bit AES algorithm which is extremely secure.

To give you an idea of how secure this algorithm is, most banks in New Zealand use a 128-bit algorithm to encrypt their internet banking services.

Here is some more background on DES (Data Encryption Standard) and AES (Advanced Encyption Standard) from Wikipedia. Interestingly, Wikipedia states that DES is no longer considered secure due to the small 56-bit block size, and is vulnerable to a ‘brute force attack’.

The bottom line is that your hand-held, car-mounted or AC powered ‘legacy’ equipment will no longer be able to pick up police communications once they switch over. End of story. That’s why they changed over.

I’m not saying that no-one will ever find a way to crack the encryption digitally, they probably thought 56-bit was un-crackable when it was created, and with the exponential rise of technology and the power of hardware ever-increasing, I’m sure it won’t be long before a ‘brute-force attack’ will be feasible to break the 256-bit. But at the moment, the computing power required for such an attack is unavailable, unless you have a spare 1000 super-computers and a couple of hundred years.

In the mean-time, if you are listening to analogue police communications, you’ll need some knowledge of the police callsign codes etc. to understand what they are saying.  Click HERE to download a .doc file containing most of the codes you will need for reference.

If you are looking for New Zealand services’ radio frequencies, I advise you have a look at Radio Wiki.

As for the law in New Zealand in this area, under the Telecommunications Act 1989 Section 133A (1) subsection (a) it is illegal to act on any information you hear over a scanner if it was not intended for you:

“Every person commits an offence against this Act who receives a radiocommunication and who, knowing that the radiocommunication was not intended for that person,

“(a) makes use of the radiocommunication or any information derived from that radiocommunication,

“(b) reproduces or causes or permits to be reproduced the radiocommunication or information derived from that radiocommunication,”

“(c) discloses the existence of the radiocommunication.“

In terms of infringement fees, the Act stipulates in Section 134:

“(1) The Governor-General may from time to time, by Order in Council, make regulations for all or any of the following purposes:

“(jb) prescribing the infringement fee (not exceeding $2,000) for each infringement offence:

“(1A) Different fees and different forms may be prescribed for different infringement offences.”

So basically, the maximum fine is $2000, but if you do something seriously dodgy the governor general can basically name thier price.

DEBATE on the future of journalism is rife on the internet, and the talk has never been fiercer, more competitive, more verbose or harder to understand.

It strikes me that some people are simply talking the walk, as opposed to the vica-versa. Are you a social/new-media scene queen/king? How many social-media sites do you belong to? Do you use them all often and productively? How many new services do we need? Is this an efficient use of our efforts?

First up, let me start off by saying that I am not a journalism academic, far from it. I’m much more of a practical person and therefore I teach in this way also. Don’t get me wrong, there will always be a need for people to formulate new ideas and provide context for journalism – this is true – but what I am at times concerned about is the lack of people putting these ideas into practical use on a reasonable scale, and the vast number of people simply formulating new ideas and niche services.

As I monitor articles, discussion and tweets on the subject, it strikes me that a number of people simply enjoy talking about journalism more than actually producing stories and putting these new theories into practice. It’s not everyone, but it is rather common.

There comes a point where one has to say “OK, we have a huge range of ideas here, how much time do we devote to discussing these ideas before we actually muck in and start using a few?”

There seem to be a whole lot of ‘future of journalism’ and ‘journalism is dying’ conferences going on recently and I can’t help but find myself wondering what the real point is? What kind of results are actually generated from such conferences? I’m sure there are consequences from such conferences, and the sharing of ideas is great, but I just see so much discussion and theory and re-discussion and it just seems like we are going in circles.

The best way to learn, in my opinion, is trial and error. There’s only so much theory and speculation that you can do before it simply becomes boring, to everyone except you and other journalism-futurists.

So my plea to you is this (if you are in the field of journalism or journalism education):

Make sure you are focused on an end result with your discussion, and not just enjoying the ride. It’s really about finding a balance, talk is good, but so are results. Don’t get caught up in the hype.

I have been a journalism tutor for a relatively short amount of time compared with the industry heavyweights in little old New Zealand. I have been teaching web journalism, video for the web, audio reporting and digital photography at Whitireia J-School since April 2009, and have loved every minute. We have developed an excellent student news-site, which is now a go-to for local news in our region, and Google rankings and unique visitors are on the rise. We are producing graduates comfortable with reporting in more than one medium.

To further my understanding and effectiveness, I have also chosen to start a BA in Communications in October this year, as I realise that my National Diploma in Journalism (Multi-Media) is a great starting point in my education, and has given me the practical skills, but a BA will further enhance my understanding of the ‘Why’ we do this as well as the ‘How’ I got from the Diploma.

This year, I will be attending and presenting on this subject at the 2009 JEANZ (Journalism Education Association of New Zealand) ‘Walking the Talk’ conference in Rotorua in December. I intend for my presentation to be concise, easy to understand, productive, helpful and non-pretentious.

Comments on this discussion are most welcome, please do drop me a line or two here.. But please don’t write me a thesis

WELCOME to another edition of Luke’s top ten tips – this time I’m focusing on recording audio for journalistic purposes, and the best tricks for editing and using the stuff.

If your chosen field is that of a TV reporter, radio reporter, filming enthusiast, citizen reporter or a just general all-round multimedia journo for web and what-have-you, you will quickly identify the need to collect good quality audio for broadcast. There are a few pitfalls for young players, so I’m going to give you a few tips on what to do, and what not to do.

1.) The wind is your worst enemy. Collecting audio or interviewing people in the wind is one of the most commonly-made mistakes of the novice reporter. Unless you have a directional microphone and some pretty serious wind-muffling equipment (such as one of those big, furry things known within industry as the ‘dead cat’). If you can avoid it at all, DO NOT interview or try to collect audio in the wind. You may get only one shot at the interview, and if you get back to the office and listen and its full of wind, there’s not a lot you can do. Some noise can be edited out, but wind noise is persistent and almost impossible to remove. Take a subject somewhere sheltered for a couple of minutes to get your quotes, schedule a meeting indoors, ask them for a number to call when they get back to their office, or, at the very worst and as a last resort, try taking along something to cover the microphone such as a piece of cheese-cloth to wrap around the microphone, or some sort of stiff plastic to shield the microphone while you record the audio. I would recommend a large ice-cream container lid, which would give enough calm air to position the microphone and gather half-decent audio. This should be a last resort only.

2.) Good equipment makes all the difference. A decent microphone might set you back a couple of hundred NZD, but the results are oh-so-worth it. If you plan on doing a lot of interviews in the field, I would recommend a good directional or ’shotgun’ microphone, such as the Rode NTG-2, with a wind-shield. No, I am not affiliated, that’s just what I use. For general recording, a nice omni-directional mic is fine, and will pick up ambient noise such as traffic, waves, birds etc. The thing to note about these more-professional types of mics is that they require a 48V or ‘phantom’ power supply to work effectively. But, these particular mics also run pretty well when you pop in a NiMH battery. The connector is an XLR type, as opposed to the most common that you probably see on every other microphone, the 3.5mm or the 1/4 inch jack. You can purchase adapters from any sound or music shop pretty cheaply. Now yes, this type of equipment is for the professional, and similar, less expensive gear will also do a pretty decent job. The bottom line is – if you spend a little bit of time and money on your equipment you will likely yield better results in the end.

3.) Ask open-ended questions, and encourage one-sentence answers. If you are producing an audio bulletin, the last thing you want is a bunch of yes/no answers, which are difficult to cut in to audio, as they require a lot of voice over from the reporter to explain, and sound rather stupid. Example: Reporter: “The minister agreed with the statement that the money should have been spent elsewhere”, Minister: “Yes, I agree with that.” It is understandable that many times you won’t have the luxury of asking the subject to talk in complete sentences, but most media-savvy people (such as ministers) will instinctively talk in statement-like sentences, because they know that is what the reporter wants. Some people, though, do not know this, and may also be shy and wary of media attention. If you start getting yes/no answers, either you are asking the wrong questions, or subject doesn’t really want to talk, or they are just generally bad talent for interviewing. Considering finding another source, modifying your line of questioning, or at the worst, asking them to repeat something in a complete sentence.

4.) Don’t be afraid to ask someone to repeat or try something again. If someone you are interviewing makes a mistake, mumbles their words, mis-pronounces something, coughs, sneezes or otherwise makes a mistake during their grab, it is wise to ask them to repeat that part of the statement, so you can later cut out the mistake. Don’t be afraid, because if you hesitate, you may lose the moment, and it’s difficult to go back once they continue into the next part of their topic. Jump on them when the make a mistake, and ask them to take a moment, relax, and start from the beginning of the last sentence. Re-assure them that you need to do this in order for them to sound better on tape. They will almost always understand where you are coming from. Make them feel like they are part of the process, and that you are not just pointing a microphone at a blabbering mouth. Include them – until you leave, that is.

5.) Make sure your equipment is set up correctly. Nothing is more frustrating than getting back to the office and realising that the last hour you spent sitting through that speech was all in vain because either the recorder wasn’t switched on, was too far from the subject, was covered or muffled by something, was right next to the guy getting over a cold and sniffing every five seconds or had the recording level set too high and peaked out with every syllable more than a whisper. It is important to experiment with your recording gear and get used to the settings and levels required for each occasion. ALWAYS take headphones along, and if possible, record a few seconds of normal conversation, then listen to it back through the headphones. If you hear distortion or pops and clicks, make the adjustments to the levels and repeat. Other things to watch out for include the battery-life (take spares, and watch it like a hawk), people tapping on a desk which the recording is sitting on, or otherwise making noise other than their speech (politely ask them to put down the pen, stop kicking/thumping the table, or drumming their fingers nervously).

6.) Perfect your hand-held microphone interviewing technique. While interviewing someone with a hand-held microphone, you are granted a certain amount of power to control the conversation. The number one rule of reporting with a hand-held microphone is DO NOT LET SOMEONE ELSE TAKE IT OR HOLD IT! This takes all the power out of your hands, and you may find it difficult to get it back before the source has had a good rant and played TV reporter for a while. This is likely to be expensive equipment also, which you should only trust yourself with, not some random at a protest march. Hold on tight, do not let go, and tell them in no uncertain terms, “I’ll hold the mic, thanks”. Keep the microphone a comfortable distance from both yourself and the subject, and keep the distances uniform, for example, two feet exactly from the microphone to their mouth, and yours. Swivel the microphone back and forth with a gentle flick of the wrist. This also serves as a pointer to the subject that it is your turn to talk. If they go off on a tangent about something, swivel the mic away from them, back to you, and watch as they almost instantly shut up, then you ask your next (directed) question. Also, avoid clicking or tapping on the microphone, especially with jewellery such as rings. A very light tap with a ring will resonate through the mic and come out loud on tape. Hold the mic steady, with a firm grip, and don’t shuffle it around in your hand, or brush it against anything.

7.) Use decent headphones while editing or playing the audio back. Your audio will sound completely different when heard through earbuds compared with full-frequency headphones. You will always want to use the latter, so as to hear the full spectrum of sound, from bassy tones to treble clicks and also light background noise. Always assume that the audio will be heard in full, with all of these elements present. Listening back to audio on a dictaphone will replay only a small range of the complete recording, and will sound completely different through headphones. Invest in a nice set of Sennheiser headphones (again, not affiliated, but I like them), and you will hear every minute in full quality.

8.) Get to know your audio editing software. There are many audio editing programs out there, but within them all are often common features and effects which you should be familiar with to edit effectively. You should get to know how to use the following: Fade in/out – at the start and end of grabs to gently fade the sound in and out. Normalise – increases the volume of a piece of sound to the point where it is as loud as possible, without clipping (distorting). Equaliser – used to increase/decrease certain portions of the sound spectrum within a piece of sound, such as when too much bass is present, or the recording is tinny (too much treble). This takes some practice, and good headphones are essential. A good piece of free audio software (freeware) is Audacity, it basically has all the functions you will need, is completely free, and (I think) can be used from a USB stick. Perfect.

9.) Listen up and take some ambient sound. Background noise can be a curse, but also a blessing. To add colour and life to your interview, you should listen out for good audio in your surroundings, such as the sound of a protest chant, the ocean waves lapping at the shore, traffic noise, and take a good chunk of that with you when you head back to the editing booth. If your interview is likely to be perhaps two or three minutes long, have a seat with your recorder in hand, and record five minutes of ambient noise, which can later be edited in (at a low level) underneath the audio of your interview. Sounds nice, huh? Much better than the normal, stale silence behind most interviews, although that’s fine if you want to go with a more serious, no-nonsense tone.

10.) Produce audio for a format which is suitable to the medium. Different sound formats have differing quality, sizes and compatibility. Investigate which formats are best suited for delivered to your intended audience, for example, if you wish to produce a podcast (or syndicated audio) for a web audience, a good choice will be the MP3 format, which is compact in size, decent quality and playable on many of todays portable devices and almost any computer. If you are producing audio for a film production, or radio bulletin, you will want to stick with a full-quality, lossless (saving it doesn’t make it sound worse) format like WAV. Although this format will produce a significantly larger file, if size is a constraint you don’t need to account for, then go for full quality if possible. WAV is also playable by most computers and many portable devices, and is the general standard for radio broadcast.

IT’S amazing what you can produce with common toys these days, even if you’re just playing around.

On a recent trip from Wellington to Auckland, I decided to take along my Panasonic DMC-FZ8 camera (now effectively replaced by my Canon EOS 1000D DSLR) and shoot some video of the journey, the destination and a bit of activity.

I’m loving the 16:9 widescreen resolution, gives everything a nice look for some reason. Also, Please note that this is a small, light, handheld still camera with a video mode, and I was using it at full zoom pretty often, so excuse the less-than-still images.

Here are the results, do give it a chance, and I hope you enjoy.

Let me first start by saying that I am not normally one to point out the flaws of media outlets, there is plenty of that on the web, but technology is a specialty of mine and I just couldn’t go past the dodgy journalism in this article, published by The Press and on stuff.co.nz on Tuesday, September 8.

The article, “Sick of Facebook? You’re not alone“, was possibly the most unbalanced, ill-researched story I have ever read (in my limited experience).

And that’s honest opinion, based on fact.

The article appeared with no by-line, and did not allow commenting.

Basically, the thrust of the article is to point out all of the flaws of Facebook and to say how superior other social-networking sites, such as MySpace, Bebo and Twitter, are.

Now, I’m not here to kiss Facebook’s rear-end, this is simply a matter of unbalanced and lazy journalism. Whoever wrote this obviously doesn’t really know how to use Facebook, and has not taken the time to actually look in to what they are writing about.

I’d like to rebut a couple of the points made against Facebook in the article. Hopefully my distribution and keywords will bring it to the attention of a few of the people within stuff.co.nz and The Press, and I invite them to leave a comment and reply to my points, or flick me an email via my ‘About‘ page.

The first section goes into how terrible Facebook has become:

“On logging onto Facebook to see what my friends were up to this morning, I learned that one of them was playing Facebook Scrabble, one had taken a “How Manly Are You” quiz, and that another “Found a lost cow on their farm” on the application Farmville.”

- Anyone who has half a brain has figured out that you can turn off alerts from specific Facebook apps from the main news feed using a dropdown menu at the top right of the item. You do it once and they never appear again.

“Facebook also makes friend suggestions of everyone you have ever emailed. Ever. I don’t consider people that I made a TradeMe purchase from a good suggestion of “People I May Know”, but somehow Facebook seems to think we’d make good buddies”

- The people you may know box is a tiny portion of the screen to the top-right of the home page, does it really irritate you that badly? It changes every time you refresh the page anyway. Sometimes, it actually makes some decent suggestions, also.

“The Facebook interface just gets messier and messier.”

- OK, well, that’s pretty subjective. I personally think the new Facebook layout looks cleaner, smoother and flows better.

“The September 2008 update spawned hundreds of groups in opposition to what was branded New Facebook, some with over a million members. Just months later in March 2009 the company did it again – with 94 per cent of users polling against another updated Facebook layout.”

- Facebook is not a democracy. If you don’t like what they are doing, you have the option to not use the site. Period. We pay nothing to use it. They can do with their site as they choose, and they have done. I very seriously doubt that those millions who crowed so violently at the thought of a few minor changes (some might say improvements) have left Facebook due to those changes.

“Some might find targeting ads useful, but for most of us they are too Big Brother.”

- Would you prefer ads which you had no interest in whatsoever? Or ads which have a slight chance to be from a company or product you may actually wish to use or buy? Google uses targeted ads within search results, are you going to stop using Google? If you don’t want targeted ads, don’t enter your interests, plain and simple. They have to make money somehow, or there would be no Facebook.

“Facebook’s privacy issues of late have tainted its reputation. In particular the revelation than even upon deletion of one’s account, Facebook keeps copies of all information including emails and other private user data.”

- Again, if you don’t like the service, and are not comfortable with this, don’t use it. It’s in the terms and conditions, which the author of this article has probably never read.

From there onwards, the next section is all about the merits of MySpace, Bebo and Twitter. You will note that the language used reads like many an advertorial:

“Facebook focuses on efficient one-on-one communication while MySpace and Bebo offer something broader – a way to encompass culture, creativity and expression through full-scale blogs and multimedia”

- Facebook has a multitude of ways to communicate to a large group – groups, fan pages, status updates with shared links/images/video, events.. What can Myspace and Bebo do that Facebook can’t?

“MySpace and Bebo one-up Facebook’s basic capabilities, while both offering the one-on-one features as well.”

- Do I need to say anything here? Is this an ad? Where are the specifics?

“One significant difference between Facebook and its competitors is its lack of personalisation; users are limited to just one stale format and plain text. While Bebo enables the use of personalised skins (backgrounds), MySpace goes one better to allow users to format their profiles using HTML and CSS.”

- Oh boo hoo. You can’t put a tacky picture of a sunset behind your profile page. Is that a big deal? Some might argue that keeping everything uniform gives the site a nice, clean look, as do the layout colours and fonts. If you want to put backgrounds on your profile and write everything in Comic Sans then please, be my guest and delete your Facebook account. Also, opening up the site to HTML and CSS paves the way for popups, ads, annoying music and, at worst, malicious software, worms and adware.

“MySpace is also an invaluable resource for discovering, listening to, sharing and promoting music.”

- I think you’ll find that many of those bands also have a presence on Facebook. I agree, Myspace is generally touted as the place for unsigned bands to trawl for a record deal. That’s not to say that it can’t be done on Facebook. There are several music-related applications available to use on Facebook which allow you to share music files and clips from external sources.

“Bebo offers one of the web’s premier examples of social aggregation: Lifestream. In an aesthetically pleasing manner, Bebo bands together all of your social networking accounts into one news feed in a clean, automated way. Lifestream means you can view activity on your Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube pages in one go, plus use your Gmail or Yahoo Mail accounts. As a bonus, you don’t even need your own Bebo page to use it.”

- This should have been at the top of the article. This is the news. From what I can see, this is the one informative and useful fact from the entire article. This fairly new, aggregate service would have been a much more interesting angle. From what I can see, this service has not yet taken off in NZ, but I could certainly see it doing so. If I was looking for a story angle, this would have been it.

“Unlike Facebook Mobile, Bebo Mobile doesn’t need to be accessed via a web-capable phone. The Bebo Open Mobile Network, available through Telecom, lets users send and receive updates by text message, and even post photos by MMS.”

- Note the subtle pat on Telecom’s back here. OK, they really need to check facts here. You can update your Facebook status via any SMS phone, any network, and receive txt messages. The blurb on the Facebook Mobile portion reads:

“Activating allows Facebook Mobile to send text messages to your phone. You can receive notifications for friend requests, messages, wall posts, and status updates from your friends.“

Indeed, this doesn’t include uploading pictures via MMS, but with current mobile data rates, who would want to, anyway?

“Twitter, on the other hand, offers a whole world of benefits that Facebook can’t trump. For starters, Twitter’s potential for brand building is enormous. It is a very powerful tool for advertising promotions and events, and is particularly good for instant opinions on anything – market research by the use of polls has never been easier.”

- I don’t think Facebook is really trying to compete with Twitter.  Facebook’s potential for brand building is also enormous as are promotion possibilities. I fail to see how the reporter can say one is better than the other, and they don’t state why the make that statement. Twitter is a great tool, provided that people are following your tweets.

“News is also broken on Twitter before anywhere else on the web. When you’ve only got 140 characters to spread the word, you can update the world much faster than even the savviest online journalists.”

- Ummmmm… the savviest online journalists ARE USING TWITTER.

“MySpace, Bebo and Twitter can far more effectively be used for business purposes, as they don’t rely on personal information. Your Facebook page is too personal to let your boss, clients and colleagues see, especially as you have no immediate control over others’ photo tagging. Its competitors, conversely, can be tailored for promotional purposes – and nothing else.”

- Here’s another unsubstantiated claim. How are they more effective? It’s quite easy to set up a page on Facebook for a business, band or celebrity, and you give out as much or as little information as you want.

That’s all there is.

Hopefully, if you have read this far you can see my point. I don’t think I have to say any more, except perhaps that you should look more closely at what your tech writers are actually putting out before you go publishing one-sided, slanted, ill-researched guess-work advertorials like this.

If you wrote this, I apologise for poking holes in your story, but it reads like Swiss cheese to start with.

And again, if you disagree, please leave me a comment, I’m all ears.

During my time at journalism school, I shot, produced and edited a fair number of story-supplement and news videos, something I am now teaching to students of the next course.

So, I decided to share some of what I learned in ten reasonably easy steps, hopefully this will give you a rough guide on shooting video, or at least a few ideas.

1.) Hold the camera as still as possible.

The number one sign of an amateur camera-person is a shaky hand. Use a tripod whenever possible, if there is not one available plant your feet firmly, hold the camera with both hands with your elbows against your sides, try to avoid walking while shooting and be careful of your breathing and body movements. Also, be careful not to talk, laugh, cough or make any sound (it will come out super-loud on the footage). Try steadying yourself on a chair, a wall, a ledge or someones shoulders – whatever you need to get that steady shot.

2.) Good sound comes from good microphones and positioning.

If you do an interview in wind (even light wind) you might as well forget about using that footage, unless you have a directional microphone and a wind-muffler. Those big, fluffy, sock-looking things that fit over external microphones (sometimes called ‘dead cats’) are a good addition to an external microphone if you plan to shoot outdoors. Otherwise, politely ask your subject to come and say a few words in a more wind-sheltered area. When hand-holding a microphone towards a subject, keep it a polite distance (about 30cm) from their mouth, and the same distance from yours, switching back and forth when you ask a question and they reply. Another tip – don’t ever allow the subject to take hold of the microphone – you may never get it back, and be forced to be rude.

3.) Look for different shots.

Try to get angles which are unusual, interesting, fascinating and original. High angles are always useful for big events, and low angles can prove useful as well. When composing a shot remember the rule of thirds – divide the shot into three equal thirds horizontally and vertically and then compose with dominant features (for example the eyes or face) on one of those third-lines. Don’t be afraid to turn an interviewee around and film them from a different angle. Take shots of them saying nothing, just looking at the camera (great for voice overs). Film them doing something natural, tell them to just ignore the camera for a few seconds and go about whatever they were doing.

4.) Take cut-scene footage and establishing shots.

Cut-scene footage becomes useful during editing when you need a link-shot between two quotes, but don’t want to dodgy looking chop between the two sentences. When arriving on a news scene, always shoot a general establishing shot, up to 20 seconds worth, as this may be ideal for putting an opening voice-over on to. Look for people and things which are out-of-the-ordinary, visually appealing or in action. Take shots from a distance, and take extreme close-ups.

5.) Be wary of zooming and panning.

Zooming should only rarely be considered when shooting video. Many cameras use digital zoom which basically cuts off the edges of your shot, reducing quality, as opposed to optical zoom which actually magnifies the image using a lens. The only zoom shots which you should really consider are an extremely slow zoom-in during a ‘piece to camera’ (where the reporter talks in front of the camera), a long, slow zoom in on a distant object, or a zoom out from a small detail to the bigger picture. As for panning (moving side-to-side, up-and-down), this should only be attempted with a very steady hand, or with the use of a tripod. For the most part, your shots should consist of still shots, where the subject or the action does the moving.

6.) Listen out for good audio, as well as looking for good visuals.

Sometimes, a camera is just a glorified dictaphone. You may use the audio you gather from an interview under other shots you have taken. The important thing is making sure the audio is recorded at the highest possible quality. Be aware of the sounds which are surrounding you, like waves breaking, singing, birds chirping, people laughing, cars accelerating etc and learn to implement these into your end product. Natural sound will introduce a nice, realistic element to a video.

7.) Talk to people and get in close.

Don’t be afraid to walk straight up to the big boss at an opportune moment to introduce yourself and ask for a few words on camera. Once they say yes, don’t feel rushed, but quickly and competently set up a shot using rule-of-thirds and choosing a suitable background. Also, don’t be afraid to ask them to answer again if they mess it up, or something interrupts the shot (such as a loud truck going past etc). Once everyone has gone home, there’s no second chances. Get right up the front at events, don’t worry about getting in people’s way or embarrassing yourself. Just get in, set up, take your shots, and get out of the road once you’ve done your job. Also, remember to talk to a whole spectrum of people at an event – age, ethnicity, job, attitude etc.

8.) Form an effective team.

A good video reporting team consists of three elements – each of them has EQUAL importance and all need to briefed on the story angle and the game plan. The first member is obviously the camera-person. They are in charge of keeping the camera steady, filming the shots, keeping an eye on the equipment (plus the memory and battery remaining) and possibly suggesting cut-scenes and artistic shots for editing purposes. The second member is the reporter. The reporter is the person who asks the questions, helps to tee up the interview and keeps an eye out for likely interviewees. The reporter also does the piece to camera and the voice over recordings during editing. The third member is the producer. The producer is responsible for making a list of shots they want taken, and expressing that to the camera-person during shooting. They can also help with spotting interviewees, teeing up subjects and generally helping with making things run smoothly. The producer should also watch out of the camera-person, as they are all but blind and very preoccupied while looking through the lens so the producer needs to watch that they do not trip over/get hit by a car/get attacked or assaulted etc. The producer has a general outline of how the story will look even before the team leaves the newsroom, and sticks to that outline, within reason. This team of three is also sometimes complimented by a sound operator, responsible for recording the audio during filming and holding the boom mic just out of shot.

9.) Get to know the equipment, and test it out.

Make sure all of the equipment is charged, has plenty of battery and is working fine before you take it out on a job. A flat battery will easily ruin any chance you have of getting anything. It is also important to know the controls and tricks of your equipment – how to work the audio levels, zoom speed, recording quality, focus etc. Do this before you go out. Don’t forget to put the battery on to charge when you get back from shooting, possible while you do the editing, so it is ready to go when you need it again. Get to know the limitations of the equipment – are there any conditions in particular in which it doesn’t perform well? Take care of it with a little bit of maintenance and cleaning.

10.) Catalogue your shots, and don’t overshoot.

Cataloging shots is a job normally given to the producer of the story. Have a set list of shots you want before you go out, and make sure you get those. Other shots may become apparent later. A good technique to use is to write down a brief list of the shots which are taken by the camera-person, numbered, for reference during editing, maybe including a few good quotes from the source in the shot, so you can jump straight to it when you need to edit it in. Don’t take too much footage – stick to your shot-list, and keep the shots short, sharp and well-planned, perhaps no more than 10 seconds of footage each, except of course for interviews, performances etc which should be recorded in full. Be wary of running out of storage space before you have everything you need, or you will end up having to go through shots (hopefully listed and described correctly) and delete those which are not absolutely necessary. When you get back to the editing room, if you have over-shot a story you will have hours of footage to look over, and it will take more time to do the editing.

IT WOULD seem (from this Stuff article) that the police are getting rather frustrated with laws which are not harsh enough to punish boy racers effectively.

Boy racers seem to be exploiting the fact that Police will break off a high speed chase once it goes above a certain speed, employing a catch-me-if-you-can attitude, to which police have no answer.

The reality is that many boy racers have cars well-capable of exceeding the anecdotal limit of 160km/h at which police will call off a chase.

Mr Erasmus said boy racers are basically “laughing in our faces” – and why wouldn’t they? The enforcement isn’t working…

Inspector Derek Erasmus (pictured) of the Police Association told Parliament’s transport select committee that while a fine of $10,000 (which could soon be doubled) was the maximum for a driver who failed to stop for police, the reality is that most courts give out fines of $100 or $200 which were simply thrown on to the pile.

I will be pretty surprised if this law doesn’t get a bit of re-shuffling. It sure looks like it needs it. To be honest, the penalties need to be much more harsh, or nothing is going to happen.

I highly doubt that boy racers are scared of ‘Crusher’ Collins, and her threats of car destruction.

A 19-year-old in a high-performance car is a terrifying thing – the skills to operate the machine, but no experience, limited common sense and an often less-than-rational attitude (especially with a bunch of their mates in the car).

I’ve got nothing against people cruising around in cars, RESPONSIBLY. I used to do it myself – but when you start racing on city streets or otherwise doing stupid things like speeding in crowded areas, showing off or trying to drift, you are just asking for it. Even good drivers crash – there’s a first time for everything. If you want to push your speed, go to a race-track.

QUESTIONS: Are we treating the symptoms and not the cause?

1. Why are high-powered cars being sold to, or operated by inexperienced and immature drivers?

2. How did such irresponsible people gets licences in the first place? Are we testing for the right things?

3. Are we not doing enough driver education work in schools?

4. Is this a problem that can even be stopped? Have any other countries had success?

5. Is there any technology which could more effectively end high-speed chases?

In this digital age, is it still possible to completely avoid juror bias on the big cases?

***Update: Clayston Weatherston has been found guilty of murdering Sophie Elliot. The jury has spoken.***

During the course of the Clayton Weatherston murder/manslaughter trial, public interest and discussion has been driven by an immense amount of media coverage. We, the public, have seen all the juicy bits on our 6pm news, day in, day out – all the best scenes, comments, questions and answers, almost as much as the people in the courtroom.

Surely, those 11 jurors – whom are not sequestered (cooped up), and could be reading this right now, and anything else they like – have been influenced by SOME form of personal opinion outside of the courtroom.

Everywhere you go on the net, people are giving their opinions on this case – Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, whatever. You can’t really avoid it.

If one of the big media outlets did happen to accidentally publish something sub-judicial, it is made 100x worse by bloggers and commentators keen for a scoop posting readily available screen-shots and links to the material, even after it is removed.

Inquisitive jurors may not have found the cached versions of the prejudicial material, had bloggers and twitterers not found, extracted, and re-published it in a readily available form. How many people even know how to find a cached file? Or would think to do so?

So what can we do about it?

Hell, not much. We have freedom of information and opinion, and that means the media can cover what they want, and people are curious by nature, so they will more than likely listen and watch. So possibly, the only way it could be achieved would be to keep the jurors in seclusion for the entire course of the case.

Internet name suppression has been tried, notably by Judge David Harvey in 2008, it didn’t work. People just openly defied the suppression, and nothing happened to them.

So at the moment, on the big cases, it’s like the whole of New Zealand is the jury. Good thing? We hear and see what the media reports, which might not always be the whole picture.

When are the laws going to catch up with the Internet? Thoughts?

WRITING stories is the bread and butter of the working journalist, but you may find yourself sent out with a camera to take the photo as well all too often.

In my experience, the ability to capture a good photo can sometimes be the difference between your story being the lead, or a page three.

We all know how to point and shoot (hopefully!), but I want to give you my top ten tips and tricks which will help you make those shots count…

1.) Know your camera. Every camera has different settings, which need to be explored BEFORE you are out there trying to use the device under pressure. Look through the manual, play around with it, get comfortable with it.

2.) Practice with Photoshop. A good photo-editing program has the ability to change a mediocre, washed-out shot into something usable. Play around with levels, colour balance and canvas rotation, along with the crop and marquee tool. Refer to the online help centres and stick with it.

3.) Ready, Steady, GO. Before you take a shot, monitor your body for trembling/shaking or any other hand movement like wind impacting on the camera/your hands, shaking from an unstable surface or even breathing. Get yourself on firm, even ground, stand steadily and perhaps hold your arms against the side of your body to steady the camera. Take a couple of seconds, exhale, calm down a bit and as you exhale fully, take the shot, like you were shooting a gun. You can also consider propping your camera up with your arms (ideally a tripod) in a bipod-style triangle on top of a sturdy object (a ledge, wall or chair). Less camera shake makes for excellent, sharp shots.

4.) A little maintenance. Keep your camera clean, and clear from dirt, especially around the lens. A small smudge on the lens will affect your image, and often make it un-usable. Check your camera often for dirt and grime, and keep it away from sea spray, rain and other liquids, as well as dust blown by heavy winds. Be conscious of the fragile nature of the camera – it’s not a toy, it’s a precision instrument – a costly one at that.

5.) Get in close. Don’t ever be timid or scared of getting too close to a subject, or asking someone if you can take their photo. A major problem with many images is that they were taken from too far away, and there is a lot of wasted space around the edges, which is cropped out, thus reducing the overall pixel count. Don’t be frightened of getting RIGHT UP THE FRONT of that school assembly, the diplomat visit or the press conference. It is expected of you as a journalist, and a photographer. Never try to rely on the zoom, as involuntary hand trembling often corrupts a long range shot.

6.) Tell the subject what to do. You are the photographer, and they are the subject, so it’s up to YOU to tell them how it’s going to go. Don’t be rushed by a hasty subject, take some time and find a good spot and a good angle. Ask your subject to come with you to a fitting place for the background, or an uncluttered, plain background for a portrait shot. Use props – subject a designer? Shoot them next to their designs! A fireman? Shoot them with the hose! (not literally of course) Protester? Shoot them protesting angrily! You get the idea.

7.) Light is everything. Try to avoid shooting a subject in direct sunlight. The resulting image will have harsh, bright patches on one side of their face, and shadows all over the place. Instead, walk them into a spot with nice, even light and shoot there. One idea is to take the subject to a place where the light filters through something – a white mesh curtain,under a tree or at the worst, in the shade. The ideal condition for shooting is daylight when the light is filtering through a layer of cloud. See my post on light diffusion for more ideas on creating flattering light.

8.) Aim, Focus, Compose, Shoot. The four steps of taking a shot should go like this: 1) Decide your setting and shooting angle. Take aim through the viewfinder or on the LCD screen. 2) Choose your focal point – for a portrait target the eyes, but the focus can vary depending on your desired subject – press the shutter button softly HALF WAY DOWN and the camera will normally focus on what is covered by the reticule (the aiming thing in the middle of the screen) 3) Now you have the focus (you are still holding the shutter half-way), compose the shot – perhaps including some of the background, some context, or evening up the spaces between the people and the edge of the frame. One important thing to note is that if the subject or you moves too much the focal length will change, and throw your focus out. Aim at the eyes again and re-focus. 4) Take the shot by softly squeezing the shutter button (like a trigger) so as to avoid too much hand movement. Check the shot on the viewfinder for good focus (use the zoom to go in on the eyes and check them).

9.) Take more than one shot. Don’t be afraid to try a few different styles of shot – this also gives your editor more options when it comes to layout – and make sure you take BOTH landscape (horizontal) and portrait (vertical) shots. More often than not, a subject will blink, ruining the shot – this can be overcome by asking them to close their eyes (and trust you), for a second or two while you focus and steady yourself, then when you give them the cue the open their eyes and you snap the shot. This is especially useful in large groups.

10.) Look for something different. A high vantage point, a reflection in a pane of glass, symmetry or lines, ironic context, unscripted and unprompted action, something no-one else would get. Make your shots unique by taking the subject somewhere different or by asking them to hold something or do something. Don’t always just take those same old ‘person looking at the camera’ shots. Be creative.

AND A FINAL BONUS TIP: Use both eyes. If you have a camera with a viewfinder (not the LCD screen, the part you look through), put one eye to the viewfinder, and use your other eye to watch the subject. This certainly takes some practice and multi-tasking ability, but drastically improves your reflex if shooting a moving subject. This is the best way to ensure your timing is at its best – to catch that smile, miss that blink, shoot that bus properly-framed. Try it out – practice will make you faster and produce better, well-timed shots.

In a press conference today (May 26) Police Minister Judith Collins along with Transport Minister Steven Joyce announced that much tougher anti-boy racer laws would be introduced in New Zealand – including the crushing of repeat offender’s cars involved in street racing.

New penalties also included the confiscation and sale of cars from owners with overdue fines to pay those debts.

It’s no secret that boy-racers are often a problem on NZ roads. There have been a number of high-profile cases in which people have been hurt or killed due to stupid behaviour. But what I’m wondering is, will these sorts of changes actually work, or are they a futile measure, enacted due to public discourse?

If a young person is stupid enough to get behind the wheel of a high performance car and accelerate at excessive speeds on often crowded urban streets, often with drugs or alcohol in their system, how likely is it that they will take into account these new penalties before making the decision to go cruising?

On the topic of  ’cruising’, local authorities will gain new powers to create bylaws specifically targeting vehicles who are thought to be ‘cruising’. So what defines this? Cruising seems a very broad term. Is there such a thing as ‘cruising’ responsibly? I would think that if you were driving at normal, legal speeds, cruising around on a Friday or Saturday would be a legitimate form of entertainment, right?

And as for the crushing of cars – I personally think thats a complete waste of money and property and is more a symbolic punishment to satisfy to public angst toward boy-racers.

For the cost of having a car crushed into a shiny, turbo-charged cube police could take said car to a muffler shop and have a quiet exhaust fitted before re-selling the car for tens of thousands of dollars to a more responsible owner.

OK, so lets look at the problems here. Boy-racers (read: not car enthusiasts, completely different group) cause the following problems in society:

Excessive noise from mufflers: Why are muffler shops not being targeted for continuing to sell these blaring mufflers, and installing them on obvious boy-racer cars? If all boy-racers had normal, quiet exhausts, would this be far less of a problem? I believe the current noise decibel limit in NZ is 90dB to get a WOF. Is that number too high? Perhaps we are targeting the symptoms instead of the cause here.

Anti-social or aggressive behaviour: This is not a problem which is caused by ALL boy-racers. It is a huge generalisation to say that all boy-racers are anti-social, aggressive or intimidating, although I’m sure there are some. Young people in groups can be intimidating to some people, yes,  but not all young people out for a drive on Friday or Saturday are out to scare old ladies.

Accidents through illegal street racing: First up, is there such a thing as legal street racing? Lets just refer to it as street-racing. Yes, street-racing is a problem, as it has caused accidents many times in the past. This does stem for irresponsible behaviour on the vehicle-owner’s part and I support the impounding of vehicles caught doing this. There are (limited) facilities scattered around New Zealand where people wanting to compete with other vehicle-owners can go to do so safely.

I think these new laws are intended to act as a deterrent. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see who is actually deterred by them, or if this will be an empty threat.

One comment on Stuff ’s article on the subject reads: “Last resort, now catch me if you can. If this is what you are doing for us that have our cars as a hobbie (not christchurch boyracers)I speak on behalf of most car admirers of Wellington when I say, next time I see your red and blues, be prepared for 350kw of 4wd power, also keep in mind you have to pull off at 160km/h, i dont, i wont.”