The Easter Rising, (Éirí Amach na Cáscaone), of the most significant events in Irelands long march to independence from British rule, occurred on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916 and lasted for six days. The British army responded with crushing force, ultimately ending the uprising. The Irish received full independence three years later.
At that time, one of the significant pieces of technology that helped the Irish Republicans coordinate their efforts was the printing press.
Sharon Gaffney, a reporter for RTE, the national service public broadcaster for Ireland, shot and produced the above piece using her iPhone (the siginificant piece of techonlogy that allows us to coordinate our efforts today).
She put some of the clips through the 8mm app for the effects and edited on Avid.
You can see from the astonishing quality fo the images that the iPhone is clearly crossing the boundary of ‘broadcast quality’, even for a national public broadcaster like RTE, which holds to the highest standards.
The advantages of the iPhone for video are manifold, but perhaps the most signfiicant is that it is a simple tool that every reporter (and everyone else) keeps with them pretty much 24 hours a day.
When you look at Sharon’s piece, you have to ask yourself if it would not be an intelligent move on the part of RTE to equip everyone who works for them with iPhones (and the necessary training), so that everyone in the newsroom might be able to produce content for the broadcast and the website? I have to assume that everyone who works for the Irish Independent or the Irish Times has a laptop or a computer or a tablet, and that everyone in those newsrooms is what we might call print literate. That is, they all know how to write copy and have the tools to do it.
Networks like RTE are magnets for people who want to be journalists, who want to report stories. That is why they go to work there. It is crazy not to empower them with the tools and the skills to be able to do what they wnat to do – and for next to no cost.
If the Irish Republicans had to have gotten corporate permission to print their leaflets informing the public of the Easter Rising, my guess is that nothing would have ever been printed. But they didn’t have to. Access to print for everyone has been a long tradition in Ireland (and the rest of the west).
We no longer live in a world of print (ask anyone who works for a newspaper). We live in a world of video.
And clearly, the tools to make great video, perfect video I would say, are in everyone’s hands already.
All we need do is start using them.
I don’t know how many cameras RTE puts on the streets of Ireland every day, but I am willing to bet it is far lower than the number of iPhones in their newsroom at any given moment. Time to turn them on.*
I am indebted to @philipbromwell for turning me on to this story
* ADDITIONAL INFORMATION courtesy of @GlenBMulcahy – He has personally trained more than 140 iPhone equipped journos for RTE, which, to my mind, makes RTE the world’s #1 iPhone based television news broadcaster. He is also speaking at EBU about RTE’s efforts. That is a talk every broadcaster should attend!
Copyright Michael Rosenblum 2014
3 Comments
Dr. Michael Kissane October 28, 2014
Michael, I hope nobody at RTE was your source for Irish history as your statement that “The Irish received full independence three years later” (after the Easter Rising) is wildly innacurate and incorrect. In 1919 the first Dáil re-affirmed the 1916 proclamation, but that was not accepted by the British, leading to the War of Independence and subsequently the Civil War, which in turn resulted in partition of the island and a limited Independence for 26 counties in the Irish Free State, with Dominion status in the British Commonwealth. Independence was attained and the sovereign State of Ireland only came about in December 1937 after a referendum adopting a new constitution and change of status.
Jan Metzger October 10, 2014
Hi, Michael, just today met some of the RTE-people together with Mark Egan and colleagues from Norway at an EBU conference. Most impressive mojo-stuff! The norwegeans even go further and give iPhones to their complete staff: “You never know where breaking news happens.” Hundreds of cameras on the street. Seems we are in for a new, even bigger adventure like some ten years ago … same talk … this time VJs saying this is no “real TV”. Best, Jan.
Michael Rosenblum October 12, 2014
Hi Jan.
How delightful to hear from you!
Hope we can meet up some time.
Best as always!!
M