Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnghhhhhhhhh.

That’s the sound of me groaning at the NCTJ’s new training film for trainee journalists on how to video journalism.

Eight minutes of advice on composition, continuity, sound, graphics…

But – you guessed it – no mention of the web whatsoever.

Now, let me think for a moment as to the reasons why the NCTJ have begun to include video in its exams…

Ah yes, that will be because newspapers want to produce video ON THE WEB.

And video ON THE WEB is not broadcast television. 

This eight minutes of video training could have been made in 1990, so rooted is it in polished broadcast production practices: the biggest message here seems to be to use a tripod (God forbid we have shaky pictures), and I particularly smiled at the advice that video has to have a beginning, middle and end. 

No, that’s television.

Andy Dickinson has more on the video’s flaws: it’s not broken up into chunks; and there’s no supporting material. 

I would have shown it to you here, but it won’t surprise you to learn that the video is neither on YouTube nor embeddable. Watch out NCTJ, Cleland Thom is stealing your business.

Anyway, take a look at the video and let me know what you think.