Video Free Europe

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AVNCiAbd14[/youtube]

Driving democracy through video….

A few months ago, we were in Prague, where we ran a pilot bootcamp for Radio Free Europe.

When I was young, I remember TV ads for Radio Free Europe. Eastern Europe was then behind the Iron Curtain, and since then I have met many people who grew up in those repressive dictatorships and who, along with their families, would indeed huddle around the radio and listen to RFE for honest news and information from ther set of the world.

While we may take access to free information as a given, one need look no further than China this week, as the Chinese government shut down Google, Twitter, The BBC and many other media on the 20th anniversary of Tienanmen Square.

Radio Free Europe, (now RFE/RL), is still working hard, but they have moved the locus of their work further east, to places like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and so on.

A few months ago, they also began a transition from radio to video.

Television and video are now pretty ubiquitous in most of the world, and RFE decided to move to that platform, in addition to radio, and they asked our help.

By taking their highly accomplished radio journalists and in effect replacing their tape recorders with HDV cameras, we were able to capture their journalistic abilities and their sheer courage, and marry them to video, both for broadcast and for online.

The piece above is the product of their work, just 3 months from bootcamp.

We think it’s pretty good.

They do too. As we are going back to Prague for another round.

Michael Rosenblum

For more than 30 years, Michael Rosenblum has been on the cutting edge of the digital video journalism revolution. During this time, he has lead a drive for video literacy, and the complete rethinking of how television is made and controlled. His work has included: The complete transitioning of The BBC's national network (UK) to a VJ-driven model, starting in 2002. The complete conversion of The Voice of America, the United State's Government's broadcasting agency, (and the largest broadcaster in the world), from short wave radio to television broadcasting and webcasting using the VJ paradigm (1998-present). The construction of NYT Television, a New York Times Company, and the largest producer of non-fiction television in the US. Rosenblum was both the founder and President of NYT TV, (all based on this paradigm (1996-1998). The President and Founder of Video News International, a global VJ-driven newsgathering company, with more than 100 journalists around the world. (1993-1996). Other clients include Spectrum News, Verizon and CBS News.

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