Washington Post Video

whitneyshefte:

She first insisted she was a boy at the age of 2. “I am a boy” became a constant theme in struggles over clothing, bathing, swimming, eating, playing. Eventually, a psychologist diagnosed gender identity disorder. Now Tyler’s parents allow him to live as a boy, and the 5-year-old is reveling in his new identity. I produced this video that tells their story.
I actually completed a different version of this story several weeks ago that included interview shots with Tyler’s parents and b-roll shots of the family interacting together. I was really happy with what I had put together. But at the last minute, The Post decided we should think more carefully about protecting the identity of this family. Being transgender, especially as a child, is still a really controversial issue in our society. This is evident in the back-and-forth comments we got in reaction to the story after we published it yesterday. We decided to use the name his parents would have given him if he had been born a boy, which is Tyler. And in the written story, we used the parents’ middle names. We also decided to remove any images of Tyler’s parents and sister.
As a result, this re-edit was really complicated. I always lean on interview shots and other characters’ faces to transition between scenes. There wasn’t time to go back and shoot more, so I had to utilize cutaway shots to avoid jump cuts and unsettling scene changes. Luckily I had just enough cutaways to make this work. It doesn’t flow perfectly, but I think it turned out fairly well given the limitations.

She first insisted she was a boy at the age of 2. “I am a boy” became a constant theme in struggles over clothing, bathing, swimming, eating, playing. Eventually, a psychologist diagnosed gender identity disorder. Now Tyler’s parents allow him to live as a boy, and the 5-year-old is reveling in his new identity. I produced this video that tells their story.

I actually completed a different version of this story several weeks ago that included interview shots with Tyler’s parents and b-roll shots of the family interacting together. I was really happy with what I had put together. But at the last minute, The Post decided we should think more carefully about protecting the identity of this family. Being transgender, especially as a child, is still a really controversial issue in our society. This is evident in the back-and-forth comments we got in reaction to the story after we published it yesterday. We decided to use the name his parents would have given him if he had been born a boy, which is Tyler. And in the written story, we used the parents’ middle names. We also decided to remove any images of Tyler’s parents and sister.

As a result, this re-edit was really complicated. I always lean on interview shots and other characters’ faces to transition between scenes. There wasn’t time to go back and shoot more, so I had to utilize cutaway shots to avoid jump cuts and unsettling scene changes. Luckily I had just enough cutaways to make this work. It doesn’t flow perfectly, but I think it turned out fairly well given the limitations.

"I died at 4. Since then I have been a fare-dodger of life. A gleaner of time."

— Michel Navratil, the last male survivor of Titanic, which he boarded as a 4-year-old; he died in Jan. 2001. Read why Titanic still fascinates us. (via washingtonpoststyle)

Peeps are kind of a big deal this time of year at the Post newsroom.

That’s right, this year finalists for the ever-popular Peeps Diorama contest were finally announced. The winner, Occupeep DC, is above, and you can see all five finalists here.

I was assigned to shoot the video of the winning dioramas, and two of our video producers, Jayne Orenstein and Kristen Boghosian (who, by the way, are often the voices behind the @postvideo twitter handle) took care of editing the footage into something beautiful. Its always interesting to see how another editor handles your work. My edit probably would have been entirely different!

I spent about four hours in our video studio filming the different dioramas, and then chose the best clips to hand off to Kristen and Jayne to work from. The nice thing about working in the studio is that I could reshoot each scene as often as I needed… the bad thing was that then I had to edit through all of those takes! But in the end, with a little help from some fancy camera supports I was able to add in some movement to the static details in the dioramas.

All of the finalists put together great scenes using the popular marshmallow peeps, but my favorite remains the winner—Occupeep DC. Maybe its because I spent so much time covering the occupation in Macpherson square myself.

-AJ Chavar

Sisi Wei, Alberto Cuadra and Videojournalist Ben de la Cruz recently collaborated on this wonderful graphic and video presentation that explains how the Hirshhorn Museum and Doug Aitken brought SONG1 to life. The exhibit really needs to be experienced, but if you aren’t in DC, this graphic is the next best thing. Also, don’t miss a great review by our culture critic Philip Kennicott.

washingtonpoststyle:

Last week a piano composition by Mozart — written when he was 10 or 11 — was found in an attic in Austria. Here is that piece’s world premiere, performed by Florian Birsak on a piano that belonged to Mozart, in Mozart’s childhood home.

Knight News Challenge: Truth Teller

newschallenge:

1. What do you propose to do? [20 words]

Truth Teller — a mobile and desktop news application that captures, analyzes and fact checks events and speeches as they happen.

2. Is anyone doing something like this now and how is your project different? [30 words]

Crowd-sourcing…

Reblog this great project submission by our colleagues here at the Post. Click through to learn more about Truth Teller, and spread the word by reblogging the News Challenge tumblr post.

For our Cherry Blossom guide this year I wanted to do something a little different, after all, its been a century now that we’ve had them in DC.

So I teamed up with awesome Washington Post information designer and illustrator Patterson Clark to create an illustrated, animated guide to the science behind the blossoms.

So often we create infographics via After Effects or Photoshop or Illustrator, I felt the urge to work with Clark to make something tangible. Plus, now we have some sweet art hanging around our cubicles!

Also of note, the beautiful artwork drawn through the video is actually Patterson Clarks’s first attempt at using soft pastels (he normally works digitally, with a Wacom pad and stylus, directly into Photoshop). Of course, he didn’t tell me this until we were done, and if he hadn’t I would have assumed he’d been sketching with pastels for years. Hope you enjoy!

-AJ Chavar

Whitney Shefte was in the studio this morning working on a project involving video portraits. The video project won’t be going live for a bit, but in the meantime I’ll give you a hint: It has nothing to do with yoga

-AJ

Camera: iPhone 4
Aperture: f/2.8
Exposure: 1/15th
Focal Length: 3mm

Joe Paterno: ‘We’ve got a problem, I think’ (2:19)

The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins discusses her exclusive interview with Penn State legend Joe Paterno, in which the former head football coach spoke at length about the child sexual abuse scandal involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. (Jan. 14) (Sally Jenkins and Alexandra Garcia/Photo: John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

Video | Story | Reaction | Photos | Graphic

CES 2012 and New Hampshire Primary Timelapses

Post Videojournalists AJ Chavar and Whitney Shefte both chose to use timelapses as a way to tell a story last week. Timelapse photography is a pretty popular trend in current video production, but it is not just a fad. By speeding up our perception of time, the technique actually serves to make the passage of time more tangible.

In the case of Whitney’s video from New Hampshire, it condenses a day at the polls into a one minute vignette about GOP voters in the state, whereas AJ’s longer video drives home the massive scope of the Consumer Electronics show.

Have you ever done a timelapse video? Share it with us by tweeting @ajchavar.