Comrade Wong Buys a Cap
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.
