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Murong Xuecun is one of the least boring people I have ever met.

He is energetic. He is dynamic. He is impressively clever. And in the last year, he has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of censorship in China.

However, he is a writer.

And when New York Times’ correspondent Edward Wong first mentioned he was writing an in-depth feature on Murong, I initially doubted an accompanying video component would help add much value to the package. I did some background research and found articles with pictures of the young writer. Nearly every single one showed the author looking at a computer in some form or another, 3 out of 4 being a silhouetted picture of the back of his head with the computer out of focus or him at an internet café.

The still images I saw were far from inspiring. I imagined a video full of talking heads, with sequences of static imagery that would inevitably go on for too long and drive viewers to click away.

But right before I decided it wasn’t worth making the video, I read this speech Murong had recently given. Words started jumping off the page:

This is castrated writing. I am a proactive eunuch, I castrate myself even before the surgeon raises his scalpel. Our language has been cut into two parts: one safe, and the other risky. Some words are revolutionary, and others are reactionary; some words we may use, and others belong to our enemies.

And just like that, I was hooked. This person was clearly an outspoken agent calling for change and reform in his society. All of a sudden Murong turned from a writer into an incendiary subject on a hot topic. I jumped on board and got to thinking — how do I make a person who is visually boring interesting? And my first inspiration came directly from the same speech. Toward the top of his speech, Murong said:

From my many years’ experience in writing and publishing, I could compile a Sensitive Words Glossary, in which you would certainly find the words “system,” “law,” “government,” as well as a large number of other nouns, several verbs, quite a few adjectives, and even a few special numbers. The glossary would also include all names of religions, all names of important people, all countries, including of course China, and also the phrase “Chinese people.”

On the backend of the speech, the author continued:

If there really were a Sensitive Words Glossary, I hope that it could be published; in this way at least we could all save a lot of time, and reduce the possibility of unwittingly committing “word crimes.”

Sitting in a small airport in Burlington, Vermont on my way back to China I thought — maybe I can help him publish this list of sensitive words. I dreamed up a bunch of scenarios of how I could visualize a list of words and eventually came to the conclusion that I should let this man say the words that ordinarily he can’t say.

This train of thought continued to a greater concept on voiceovers vs subtitles. While most international news videos get a voiceover treatment, I started thinking it would be completely ironic to mute the man, when he is in fact, talking about words which he can not use. I decided subtitles were more appropriate which then opened up more doors for cinematic storytelling and made it a little easier to justify adding music to a news piece. Although I was excited to make the piece, I was still a bit worried about keeping it moving and wanted the music to keep the piece from drying up.

Now, regardless of the man’s profession, I had a hot subject and an idea for a snappy intro. I had music to help move the piece in a rhythmic narrative and a logic behind how I would represent his opinions visually.

And while I knew I had to shoot him writing or at the computer, I also knew I wanted to get him out of the context where we are used to seeing writers. When you get stuck shooting a “boring” person (or one, who doesn’t do anything visually exciting) I think this is a great exercise to find a new physical environment. Simply, get them out of the physical environment where they normal are or where we expect to see them. It doesn’t matter where — just someplace else. I wanted to see him interacting with people, and when I found out he was going out to dinner with some journalists and human rights lawyers, I was ecstatic when I got the invite to tag along.

This was the trickiest part of the video — both visually and narratively. How to link the home interviews, the writing visuals and a bunch of guys at dinner. With some thinking, it was easy enough to have narration lead the story into the restaurant, but shooting this was much more tricky.

There’s a Zoom H1 hidden on the table near the bear drinking, cigarette-smoking intellectuals. I have a 60D switching between a Gorilla Pod, a tripod and the in-table lazy susan. In addition, I had a 5DMII on a shoulder rig. And while I didn’t leave a camera rolling the entire time, I did leave the audio rolling. When I got back, I synched all of the audio with the video clips I had, and although I had tons of great dialogue, in the end I just grabbed one meaty quote that allowed me to jump from frame to frame anachronistically. Had I used multiple quotes or too much back and forth dialogue, I would have been forced into using more real time footage. Using just one quote allowed me to use some of my favorite visuals from the entire night.

With the intro set and multiple environments in the bank, I just needed to shoot the interviews. Knowing that I was at risk of having a boring video, I kept two cameras rolling continually during the interviews so when it came time to cut, I could keep all my frames short and bounce between a Canon 50mm f/1.2 and a Canon 24mm f/1.4.

With the credit roll, intro and title sequence, the video came out at 4 minutes and 20 seconds. Keeping voiceover out, adding music, using multiple environments and multiple cameras rolling during interviews, I hope I succeeded in making a visually “boring” person interesting.

And while I can’t answer that question for you, I can say the greater lesson I took away from this project was the potential assets we gain from simply researching what our subjects have to say, have said and what they might want to say.

MORE ON MURONG XUECUN:

• Read Edward Wong’s story “Pushing China’s Limits on Web, if Not on Paper”
• An Excerpt from ‘Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu’
• More on Murong: Words We Can Use, and Those We Can Not

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In the summer of 2011, New York Times reporter Edward Wong bought a cap in the North Korean special economic zone of Rason. A month later this cap ended up in my office. Today, that cap is on The New York Times’ home page.

So what is significant about this cap?

While I don’t believe the video (or hat) are anything groundbreaking, from a visual journalist’s point of view there’s a little bit more to it than what you might first see.

First, let me clarify: this video was shot in North Korea by Ed Wong. When it appeared on my plate, I was asked to edit Ed’s video for the New York Times.

I edit (almost) all of my own work. However, relatively rarely do I take on an editing job that I didn’t shoot. This footage, out of North Korea was of enough interest to get me out of bed. However, what I thought would be a fairly easy exercise actually turned into a good learning lesson.

Ed, known in the Twittersphere as @comradewong, is a reporter — not a visual journalist. After sorting through all of Ed’s footage I had a big think of how I could make his hand held footage shot with a consumer video camera, tell the best story possible, to supplement his written story, while also offering another view of the area. Often in this situation, I go look at what other people have done first. Looking at wire stories to find the basic model and then looking further to what other people have done.

Our initial plan was to mix Ed’s footage with AP, Reuters and AFP footage to create a basic news report on North Korea’s nascent capitalism. But after looking at what had been done — it didn’t seem very possible to make something different than what had already been done. After talking to Ed about his experience, we decided that his experience might actually be more interesting to the average viewer than the actual news item, given the context of what media on the subject already existed.

Reporter’s Notebook

This form of journalism is often referred to as a reporter’s notebook: a personal account of reporting on a subject. Telling the story, through the eyes of the reporter, rather than the pen. The audience receives the news item (in this case, DPRK trying out capatalism) but with a literal more human emotion in it to add flavor. Normally, you see broll of the story with a voice over from the reporter explaining the story. However, I wanted to take it a step further and actually added Ed into the film.

I did this in attempt to create a visual dichotomy between Ed’s footage of North Korea and my in-studio footage, making two unique visual environments that are about as opposite as you can get. One in the studio, shot with HDDSLR and the other in the secretive, authoritarian state with a shaky consumer grade camera. I thought this would emphasize the unique environment the reporter found himself in. To highlight the intrinsic, yet subtle weirdness of the area.

A landscape with no commerce, a road with very few cars on it or a scary children’s performance — I hoped these would all seem more weird after the visual comparison of the dry, calm and normal studio interview with Ed.

Direct to Camera?

One question came up whether Ed should be talking direct to camera or not. There are two cameras rolling (a Canon 5DMII and a Canon 7D) in the studio, lit with two softboxes and a red fill on the black backdrop. In a basic news report, the reporter would be talking direct to camera. In a documentary, the subject would be speaking off camera — to the unseen documentarian.

In a small way, I felt like we were making a mini-documentary about Ed’s experience in North Korea. Ergo, he would be talking to the documentarian (me) off camera. I’ve received some feedback that people think this is strange and he should be talking direct to camera. I still haven’t made up my mind which would be more interesting and what the appropriate thing to do is; however, I do feel like we have expended on the traditional, reporter’s notebook model by removing the viewer one step back to where the post production is actually being done. An additional environment — physically and mentally.

The Cap

About four minutes into the video, Ed puts a stereotypical communist cap on.

Ed had the idea of showing the audience a cap he had purchased in a store that would not allow him to film or even bring a notebook in. When I thought about the idea I was initially against it because I thought it would just simply be cheezy. However, its always good to let an idea play out and see what happens before quashing it. So I filmed it and looked at the result. While I had a bit of anxiety about the idea, in the end I actually thought the result added something significant to the piece.

The result is definitely weird and (I hope) definitely a bit out of left field. Something that viewers aren’t expecting. We change camera angles as Ed puts the cap on (direct-to-camera), and we hold the frame for a couple awkward seconds in dead silence. I hope these couple of seconds denote the reporter’s sense of humor in this situation; however, I’m not sure if people will get the tongue and cheek bit or simply watch it and say — “that was stupid.”

I do hope it will make people grin a bit and help transport some of the oddity of North Korea and into people’s homes.

Fin

In the end we hopefully have created something a little more out of the ordinary, that may have otherwise been dry. We expanded a bit on the reporter’s notebook model, added a bit of humor into the piece while hopefully still giving the audience the information from the actual news item.

To read Edward Wong’s print article “Tending a Small Patch of Capitalism in North Korea” click here.

To see our video “North Korea Opens for Business” on the New York Time’s web site click here.

UPDATE: Here’s the link to this image on the NYT Lens blog.

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If you don’t remember, somebody else probably does — and there’s a photo to show you. The photo above, that’s where I was Sunday, May 2, at 15:00 hours U.T.C. The photo is taken over 243 seconds at f/10, ISO 50 with my Canon EOS-1D Mark II and Canon EF 14mm f/2.8 L II USM.

On Sunday the New York Time’s Lens Blog launched a project called “A Moment in Time” where they asked photographers, both amateur and pro, all around the world to take a photo at the exact same moment to create a “timely global mosaic.” From there:

Our plan — emphasis, “plan” — is to post almost every picture we receive. So your work will almost certainly be included, unless it fails any of the tests mentioned above or is more graphic than news photographs we would customarily publish.

The interactive gallery that will appear next week takes the form of a globe on which you can find your location, or those of other photographers. It was designed by Zach Wise of The Times and is, to use highly technical professional vernacular, too cool for school.

Although I was ready to take a picture at work that night, thinking I might still be working at the design desk of China Daily, I managed to run home and take a picture from my terrace which overlooks Beijing’s old city. I live on the edge of Beijing’s second ring road — and much of the property right in front of me has restrictions on building heights. This gives me a great view down onto the hutong life that thrives directly below me. And like any overly energetic, apparently geeky photographer, 1 moment was not enough, so I had two cameras setup shot with my remotes to synch them to 15:00 hours.

Although a hutong 胡同 in Chinese literally means “small alley” and specifically refers to the streets of Beijing, the word has much more meaning than that here. It refers to a lifestyle, home style and community unique to China. Like the structures you see above, homes are built directly into each other. An intricate network of small alleys allows people to get to their houses — but from above, sometimes the alleys are small enough they are completely unseen — blocked by shared roofs. Many of these homes don’t have kitchens or plumbing. People use communal bathrooms and showers in the alleys. As space is very precious, people either socialize in the streets or in their courtyards. A defining characteristic of the hutong architecture are homes called siheyuans 四合院, or traditional courtyard residences. In the photos above you can see small outdoor spaces dotting the landscape. These are people’s ‘outdoor living rooms’ and often even recreation space. The streets are lined with xiao chi, or “small eats” — tiny little hole-in-wall (literally) restaurants that serve noodles, dumplings, meat-on-a-stick and an enormous variety of unidentifiable foods that might actually eat you.

A lot of these alleys are too small to drive down, and I walk through them everyday to go to work and return. Sadly, these traditional living areas are being knocked down in the name of progress everyday. With the fall of the walls, comes the evaporation of this lifestyle. Fellow Saint Michael’s graduate and new media photographer Tim Wagner has a great photo essay on this threatened culture called “Beijing’s Hutongs: The Last Days of the Courtyards.”

Although this is where I was Sunday, May 2 at 15:00 hours U.T.C., this is where I am right now in life as well: Living in (and above) a hutong in Beijing. I thought this was the appropriate photo to share for the Len’s blog’s project.

As I said above, I did take two photos. The one I didn’t use is right here — of Beijing’s ancient Bell Tower. This tower is directly across form the Drum Tower (see photo of drum tower here) which I can see directly from my living room and terrace.

The Time’s photo blog says readers will be able to:

The photos will appear quickly on the Lens blog and on NYTimes.com, and — if you’d like — you’ll be able to arrange them by country, by topic or by how they were ranked by other readers. Or you can just view them randomly. Some will almost certainly be spotlighted on the Lens blog.

You can see some of the early arrivals from the photographic experiment in their post “From Many Instants, a Moment.” According to the National Press Photographer’s Association the “response was overwhelming” with over 10,000 entries on the morning of May 3 in New York. This will surely be a site to check out when it is finished sometime after Friday, May 7 at 15:00 hours.

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Updates: from NYT

• An Exhilarating (and Frustrating) Mom
• From Many Instants, a Moment
• A Few More Moments, Please
• Patience

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Just to give you an idea of what this view from my terrace looks like during the day, during sunset, during polluted days and during a sand storm — here’s some of the scenes I have seen in my first two months of living in this apartment over Beijing’s hutongs.

… and at last, a relatively silly video almost completely shot during a sandstorm from the terrace.