ÌìÃÀÓ°ÊÓ

The one-day seminar Storytelling in Journalism aims to serve as a guide into the world of visual storytelling, helping storytellers produce compelling narratives.

It seems an easy task to tell a story – all one needs to do is convey events in words, sounds or images. However, the amount of information available and the number of players involved in any given story of the contemporary world, be it a financial crisis, a wave of refugees or a hybrid war, is extraordinary. It is easy for a journalist to get swamped by figures, sources and interpretations and lose the sight of a human story behind it. And, once the human aspect has been lost, the power of the story to find its audience, to make us pause and think has been diminished.

Organiser

The Baltic Centre for Media Excellence (BCME), founded in November, 2015 by several leading Baltic media organisations and academic institutions including BFM and ERR, is a non-profit organisation aimed to contribute to quality journalism in the Baltics by means of needs-based training modules for media professionals, as well as by promoting professional conversation, media literacy and research of media trends.

Course outline

The aim of the seminar is to equip participants with the following skills:

• how to transform the complex reality into a sharp storyline
• how to sort through potentially thousands of hours of research, information and reportage and choose
• the importance of finding an interesting main character with a quest
• how to create a feeling of "here and now" in a story dealing with yesterday’s events
• the importance of seeking access to the right people, locations and footage
• the power of chronological storytelling and how to use dramatic tools from the fictional realm in current affairs.

Structure

The seminar is divided in to two parts. The first part will focus on the theory of good storytelling.

The participants will watch Armadillo, a notable one-hour documentary about the Danish soldiers on a mission to Afghanistan, directed by Janus Metz Pedersen. The film will then be analysed in detail focusing on particular learning points.

Part two will be a hands-on exercise – working with the relevant current affairs issues that the journalists and filmmakers have brought to the table and developing them into story ideas. The tangible outcome of the course is a list of potential and well developed stories in a variety of genres – from a news and current affairs report to a short documentary.

Trainer

Jacob Fenger is an experienced and award-winning television producer from Denmark who has also been teaching visual storytelling to journalists and documentary producers. He started as a news reporter 25 years ago, advancing to documentary productions and the editor-in-chief of a flagship current affairs program on DR. He is currently a freelance executive producer of factual entertainment for both commercial and public service TV stations in Denmark.

Fee and location

Participation in the seminar is free of charge. The venue is BFM Film Pavilion N-113, Tallinn University, Narva mnt 25, Tallinn.

Who should apply

Broadcast journalists and filmmakers interested in visual storytelling.

NB! For registration send email to Katrin Kuusik katrin.kuusik@tlu.ee 

More information

Rita Ruduša, executive director, Baltic Centre for Media Excellence

The seminar is supported by the Danish Cultural Institute in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

rita.rudusa@bcme.org.lv , +371-29805039