Washington Post Video

Wanderlust & Awakening: Reporting on "In D.C., another measure of gun violence: Men in wheelchairs"

Post videojournalist Whitney Shefte recently undertook a very large project on gun violence in D.C. The video is above, and below, you can click through to hear about the work in her words.

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Several years ago I noticed what seemed like a tragic trend happening in Washington, D.C. I saw numerous young men riding around town in wheelchairs and guessed that most of them were not put there because of car accidents or disease, but because of violence. I wanted to find out if this was…

Source: whitneyshefte

Keystone XL Pipeline: Washington Post Special Report

The Post has launched a new visual-heavy blog, documenting a trip along the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Videojournalist Whitney Shefte was part of the coverage kickoff with the beautiful video you can see above.

Some background on the video:

Jul. 1, 2012 - In northern Alberta, Canada, tons of oil sands are being extracted from the ground every day to produce a thick, gooey form of petroleum. Fort McMurray, the city at the center of oil sands mining, has seen a huge influx of people moving to the area for jobs in or related to the oil sands industry. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would create an easier way for this oil to be transported from Alberta to refineries on Texas’s Gulf Coast. However, many environmental groups oppose oil sands production because of the high amount of greenhouse gases the production creates, and the U.S. Government has yet to approve the pipeline. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)

Check out all the reporting being done on the blog, featuring more of Whitney’s videos, as well as photos by Michael Williamson and writing by Steven Mufson.

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

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.

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Iowa’s economy on voters’ minds

With an unemployment rate hovering around six percent, Iowa’s economy has fared better than most states’, but the economy is still the issue that most concerns voters in the Hawkeye State. While the farming industry is booming, the manufacturing industry there has faced significant challenges as Iowa heads into the caucuses on Jan. 3. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)

Whitney Shefte is in Iowa right now to cover the first caucuses. She’ll have coverage coming from New Hampshire as well. Meanwhile, get some insight into what matters to Iowans in Whitney’s video above.

Be sure not to miss the rest of the 2012 election and caucus coverage on washingtonpost.com/politics. And follow @postvideo or go washingtonpost.com/video for the latest video updates.

Check out the entire Seat Pleasant project on washingtonpost.com, including written stories, video, text, photo and interactives.

From Post Videojournalist Whitney Shefte:

When I first learned about the 59 fifth-graders from Seat Pleasant Elementary School in Seat Pleasant, Md., who in 1988, received the offer of free college tuition if they graduated from high school, the story possibilities seemed endless. How many made the most of the incredible gift they were given just for being at the right place at the right time? How many squandered it, perhaps due to the circumstances of living in a crime-ridden and poverty-stricken neighborhood? Twenty-three years later these people surely have found themselves in very different places in life from one another. But when I started making phone calls, I quickly learned that reaching these individuals and getting them to talk to me would be a formidable challenge. With only 11 of these students graduating from a four-year college, many felt they had failed by not taking advantage of the offer. And who wants to tell the world about their failures? But after getting some of the “Dreamers,” as they were called in school, to talk with me, I learned that success means different things to different people. While I was unable to get most of the “Dreamers” to go on camera, I was able to find enough of them who could offer a varying picture of how life turned out for different people.

William Smith and Jeffery Norris are two of the “Dreamers” I spent the most time with. They are two men who were good friends in school and have similar stories but have ultimately found themselves along divergent paths. William dropped out of high school just four credits shy of graduating. Only several weeks later he suffered a violent attack at a nightclub that left him unable to walk again. Without a high school diploma, Smith says he makes his money as a “hustler,” selling whatever he can on the streets. In June, police found 77 grams of crack cocaine in William’s apartment. Jeffery graduated from high school but soon began a lucrative drug-dealing business. Only after he suffered a terrible car accident and barely escaped a decades-long prison sentence did Jeffery say he chose to live differently. He now plays the organ in his church choir and cuts hair for a living. He says he brings home about $50,000 a year and now owns and lives in the house his grandparents lived in when he was growing up. Neither of these men graduated from college but both say they gained a lot from being part of the “I have a dream” program.

One of the other challenges I grappled with was how to tell a story about something that happened so long ago. Talking head videos generally bore me silly and I wanted to be sure this video did not end up only as a mash-up of different interviews. I tried to track down television footage from the announcement in 1988 but failed at every attempt. Luckily The Post has a good archiving system and I was able to get hold of the photos our staff photographers made that day. I relied on general b-roll of the school and the town that I shot to fill other gaps. In some of the sidebar personality profile stories I worked on, I was able to gather b-roll of the characters living their lives now.

Ultimately this project took a significant amount of time to complete due to the challenges mentioned and the sheer number of characters we had to account for in one way or another. But it is a story that asks a lot of questions and explains a great deal about education, class, race, crime and other social issues. For those reasons, we think such in-depth reporting and production is of great value to our viewers and readers. We hope you agree.

Check out the entire Seat Pleasant project on washingtonpost.com, including written stories, video, text, photo and interactives.

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Best of Post Video Week: Uniquely Washington

This week we’re highlighting the best video created by our VJs and producers in 2011. Each day we’ll be posting one video from each and all of our talented staff. Consider it a holiday gift from us to you! We’re kicking it off with stories uniquely Washingtonian—U Street, Arlington Cemetery, Mambo Sauce and even a trip to a Washington outside of the District, watch it all below:

Night lives: Bob Taylor, nighttime photographer (by Evelio Contreras)

Bob Taylor, 81, carries a Polaroid camera near Adams Morgan and U Street bars on weekend nights. He does portrait shots for $5 and tells people why it’s important to “get a picture.”

Chess grandmaster plays 30 games simultaneously (by Ben de la Cruz and Puja Bhalerao)

Thirty students from the District, Maryland and Virginia played against Maurice Ashley, the first African-American chess grandmaster, at the same time. The exhibition was part of a fundraiser for the U.S. Chess Center in D.C.

The city’s sauce (by Whitney Shefte)

Mumbo sauce, also known as mambo sauce, can be found in carryout restaurants throughout Washington. It is a staple for many residents in D.C. and part of a completely unknown subculture to others.

A private car, with a private view (Produced by Kristen Boghosian)

Chuck Jensen is one of only a handful of people that own their own train car. He rents out the nearly century-old heavyweight Pullman observation car for private trips, but mostly uses it to vacation across the country with his family.

A catalog of grieving at Arlington Cemetery (by AJ Chavar)

The U.S. Army Center of Military History collects and catalogs items of interest left at graves in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery where soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried. For the past two years, a team of U.S. Military curators visits the section every Wednesday to archive the mementos left on graves.

Shutdown averted (Produced by Jayne Orenstein)

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein talks about how the GOP and Democrats came to an agreement despite contentious rhetoric on both sides of the debt ceiling debate and how the United States was able to avoid default.

The View from Washington, Ga. (By Alexandra Garcia and Ben de la Cruz)

In Washington, a town of 4,000 in rural Georgia, the 2011 campaign for mayor became a contest rife with tension. (Photos)

A different campaign in Iowa

The Washington Post’s Dan Balz examines the changing political landscape in Iowa, where GOP presidential candidates are spending less time meeting caucus voters in intimate settings and more time at debates and on social media. (Whitney Shefte and Dan Balz)

Washington Post VJ Whitney Shefte spent last week in Iowa, reporting in the state whose caucuses mark the opening of the presidential nomination process. Whitney, along with national political correspondent Dan Balz, learned that things are changing in Iowa, as they change across the country. From Dan’s story:

DES MOINES — Four years ago, Iowa was awash in presidential candidates crisscrossing the state. Campaign headquarters were packed with staffers and volunteers. The airwaves were clogged with political commercials. Excitement was palpable. Today, everything seems different.

Iowa still holds its coveted position as the state whose caucuses will mark the opening of the Republican presidential nomination process. What happens here Jan. 3 will still have a major impact on the Republican race. But at least for this presidential cycle, Iowa has lost much of the unique character that has marked previous campaigns.

Read the rest of Dan’s story here. And check out our interactive primary graphic here, and our presidential campaign ad tracker here.