Some Issues with Gizmos and Gadgets

Time for just a quickie now, and as it seems the first one to become part of our slowly developing roll. Well, my steadily growing experience in making videographic work seems to lend itself to certain abuses. I, and I have to admit the true causes elude me, have become increasingly interested in the technological side of video production also. Me, a nerd, never. IDDQD.

For our ongoing 'Pushing the Scene' project we bought another camera to record video with, in order to get more dynamic footage from interviews with two simultaneous angles. And, as seems to be the hip and pop fashion, it was not a videocam, but an DSLR capable of HD video recording. Now, don't get me wrong (in what follows), the luxury of shooting footage with exchangeable lenses is unparallel. However, DSLRs are certainly not ready to be (at least in terms of my limited experience) the sole recorders of video (and audio) for video projects. For now, they take wonderfully pristine footage with the correct lens choices. However, in terms of reliability and audio recording there seem to still be some unresolvable obstacles in the way. By the way, our DSLR is the Canon EOS 550D with a Sigma fisheye lens (especially suitable for low-light shooting) and another Sigma lens for more all-around applications.

Our JVC video-cam.

Some of the usual gear of a contemporary ethnographer.

First, a gripe about reliability. The 550D overheats if the shot takes over circa 20 minutes (and most interview settings obviously do). Secondly, the audio capturing capability is practically zero (with the internal mic). This naturally did not come as a surprise, as we knew we were going to use our videocam's (JVC GY-HM100U) audio capturing capabilities for most of our recording. However, as the Finns say, the hunger increases as you munch away, and therefore I have become increasingly interested in building a presentable rig out of our Canon DSLR for video use.

So, (after days of internet scowring) what do I need? Well, a decent microphone for starters. I went through a whole set of directional test mics (Rode Videomic, Azden SGM-X / SMX-10 etc). Directional meaning to have the ability to capture audio from a certain direction, i.e. the voices of interviewees in otherwise loud surroundings. However, as I learned, this was not the only qualm. As our Canon 550D is not primarily intended for video shooting, there is one rather gargantuan concern. This would be the AGC ('automatic gain control') 'feature' that basically, for the lack of better wording and excuse my French, absolutely f***s up your recorded audio. Thankfully, Canon seems to have no interest in rectifying this problem, and there are open source micro-projects that tackle this issue for the 5D Mark II model, but not, to date, for the 550D. So yes, indeed, thanks a whole bunch Canon. The 'methodology' of videography work certainly lunges the researcher in a whole new realm of 'what you need to know', and this just after I thought to have acquired a decent baseline knowledge of editing in terms of all the various video formats and codec issues.

How to go about this, then? How to (preferably) brutalize the AGC out of our 550D. As it turns out, this in itself will not be the ultimate salvation. As I know from my dabblings with music production, I need to be able to monitor the sound entering my camera also (as in 'not too loud, not too soft'), and of course, a DSLR not dedicated to video shooting lacks all such capabilities. Well, I found at least two options. The rather bulky Beachtech DXA-5DA and the Juicedlink DT454 4-CH. These are basically boxes of audio electronics to attach to your camera that give you the capability to monitor the recorded sound that is being fed to the DSLR.

And here's the twist and the crux and the help-me-I've-had-enough part of this post. I tested two Beachtech DXA-5DA today with 3 different mics, and neither Beachtech DXA-5DA device showed any decent graphical representation of the sound going in. This would be the device to use as it provides a way to circumnavigate the whole AGC issue by fooling the cameras electronics (but that, I have to say, is another whole matter in and of itself). This, in practice, rendered the whole monitoring feature unusable without constant headphone monitoring. With our preference for unobstrusiveness and 'going in light' in our ethnographic video work, it would seem kind of peculiar for me to rock a camera rig the Ghostbusters would be envious of with the humble addition of having wires hanging out of my ears. Very subtle, indeed.

So, the outcome. I'll wait for something else. And we'll continue to use audio by relying on our JVC video-cam only. It may not take as spectacular footage (especially in the dark), but it is a full-fledged video recorder. To date, it seems, a DSLR is not. Finally, a normative recommendation. If this is your game, use both. Always. And simultaneously.

Project: Brothers in Paint (vol. 2) - Some crossroads and middle points

Wind the tape forward a little over six months and you see us returning from the annual pinnacle of tournament paintball, the World Cup in Orlando. It was now the time to figure out how to actually put our 40+ hours of material to work (you can probably imagine what it takes to merely go through such a mountain of video, let alone 1) choose the bits we felt would best support our argument, and 2) cut and edit them to a videography work). This is what we set out to do, but there was a catch. To edit video one must actually know how to use the relevant software – admittedly, another skill I, at the time, knew embarrassingly little about.

Fortunately I had two things going my way, 1) a relatively intimate relationship with Photoshop and a background of having been involved in electronic music producing, and 2) a friend and a team member, Raffe, who already knew many of the tricks of video editing. Thus I picked the same software (Premiere) and pleaded him at his doorstep long enough to soften his heart. Finally letting me in, he discovered his mistake. When it comes to software, I’m of the trial-and-error type, that is, trying and erring at a considerably fast and sloppy pace. You probably guessed it, he was of the more organized type. Yet, he managed to ram the fundamentals into my head with admirable grace (though I think the reason why he went to the restroom so often was, rather than relieve himself, to swear at my incompetence while muffling his voice with a towel). Our videography crew was now definitely in business.

I remember that self-learning Photoshop at quite a young age was a tedious and frustrating exercise. It seemed that there was an excess of unfathomable things that ‘you were just supposed to know’. Oh, how the memory of these days of yore returned when I strarted to dig deeper into editing with Premiere. The basic editing tools themselves were quite straightforward, it was the bottomless abyss of video formats that got me. Never before have I read through so many user forums (and called Raffe when all else failed) and help files. Somehow however, we started to have a rudimentary skeleton of a piecemeal of a frame of a videography. We were on our way.

And on that way we certainly did collide with the ACR 2009 Film submission deadline with quite a momentum. The ACR 2009 Pittsburgh had been our ultimate aim. To get a film accepted there was the goal, and this goal we had to achieve. What we did not anticipate, however, was how poorly we were prepared to finalize our material into something that could bear, even in passing, a resemblance to real videography. With multiple problems encountered with adding graphics, choosing acceptable target formats, and even fighting with the ‘credits’ tool, recording and mixing in a commentary seemed easy enough. And indeed, after two uncooperative audio interfaces and one broken laptop, we finally managed to squeeze my shaky voice on the film (at this point it was 5:30 in the morning, after all).

The outcome was still clunky and quite unfinished (and today I certainly wonder if anything will ever really be anything else), but after two work-oriented nights, the deadline was upon us. We actually had to finally ship the finished submission DVDs in double-triple express mode (or alternatively the post office just decided to play a joke on us, you decide). Feeling a little dazed and incomplete (perhaps somewhat nauseous too – well I had been up for close to 48 hours), it was done however, and we felt comforted by the opportunity to rework some of the film if an ‘accepted’ with revision’ were to be upon us.

The cover of the DVD we shipped off to ACR

And that was what we came to receive. The comments were brief, pretty much only suggesting us to shorten the overall length of the video. This was hardly surprising, as the original DVD we shipped out was a massive hour+ long. The final version came out to be a somewhat more manageable 47 minutes (still quite a mouthful). Yet, for us, it seemed difficult to cut parts away, as our study was intended to be a descriptive visual account of the social practices of tournament paintball culture. Ethnographic description (as anyone familiar with CCT ethnographies in JCR knows) needs substantial amounts of material to show as much as possible of the cultural practice, and we simply felt that every piece sliced off decreased the descriptive power of our argument.

Anyhow, then we were off to Pittsburg to present our video at ACR 2009.

How it all started: 3rd Video Ethnography Workshop at York University

My inspiration for video research was spurred by a few occurrences that took place in 2006-7. Firstly, I had just jumped on to my doctoral studies at the Helsinki School of Economics the previous year and was anxiously looking for new potential topics for my thesis work. I soon discovered that I needed to look outside of Finland to be able to find something interesting.

As it happened, I found myself first on an intensive course on Consumer Culture Theory (Odense, Denmark) headed by some of the most renowned figures in cultural consumer research, including Eric Arnould and Craig Thompson. The course instantly set the tone for my future work: I was caught to study the cultural aspects of consumption and consumer society from emerging approaches that stem largely from cultural anthropology and sociology.

Not long after, I took part in my first research congress: the 2nd Consumer Culture Theory Conference 2007 (at York University). This annual conference was organized for researchers employing qualitative, interpretive, ethnographic, videographic, netnographic and phenomenological approaches, in other words, in many ways emerging, if not completely novel approaches considering the dominant corpus of work within consumer and marketing research.

CCT conference was a success in many ways, not least because it also offered conjoined workshops designed for new students entering the field. I took part in the Video Ethnography Workshop, which was held for the third time. The purpose of this two-day workshop was to experience videographic research in a hands-on manner, guided by experts. After opening lectures on video-based research production, student teams were given camcorders and editing software as well as professional assistance for designing a small-scale video study in practice. By the end of the workshop we also presented our videos and received feedback.

Pics from the workshop

During the assignment I ran into my future co-author, Kristine de Valck from HEC Paris. We conducted a video study in a local shopping mall interviewing and observing consumers about their personal styles. We got to experience some on-field action and stumbled upon a number of challenges typical for video research including 1) the difficulty of gaining access to people in such public environments and 2) the trouble of presenting camera in interview settings without scaring people away instantly. Despite of these, we managed to shoot some footage that we could edit and produce into a short film – my first videographic experiment.

 The videography event was organized by Russell Belk and Robert Kozinets who have written several articles and book chapters about video research (see Belk and Kozinets 2005; Kozinets and Belk 2006). They have also founded the Association for Consumer Research Film Festival. Held annually in the North American ACR conference and in rotating years in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific, the film festival has spawned considerable interest among consumer researchers now for over 9 years.

As soon as the workshop was behind, I began to ponder how video research could work out for me. What is it good for? What makes it so compelling? Why hasn’t it been used previously? What new avenues could be opened up? Soon Kristine asked, if I could join her in Paris and to come up with a brand new video project. I knew this would be the perfect chance, so I was in…

References:

Belk, R.W. & Kozinets, R.V. (2005) Videography in Marketing and Consumer Research. Qualitative Market Research, 8, 128-141.

Kozinets, R.V. & Belk, R.W. (2006). Camcorder Society: Quality Videography in Consumer and Marketing Research. In Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Marketing, R.W. Belk (ed), Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.