Lu-Hai Liang

thoughts from a freelance foreign correspondent

Posts Tagged ‘youtube

VIDEO: Travel + Journalism in Burma

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This video is the story of the time I spent in Burma. I went there in February 2015. I went there to travel and to do journalism. I wanted to see if I could combine the experience of traveling with the challenge of trying to find stories. As a freelancer, trying to travel and hunt down stories while you do so is a fun challenge. This was my first experiment trying to do that.

The benefits of traveling in this way are many. One of these is that you travel in a different way, as you try to get beneath the surface and look deeper than you might normally do. You also meet people, from locals to intrepid expats. The other big benefit of course is financial, as stories you find and sell helps to offset the money you spent traveling.

The video was shot using a Canon S120 and edited in Windows Movie Maker.

Related:

The CNN article mentioned in the video is here.

The previous video I made is: A Year In The Life of a Freelance Journalist Abroad

How to make a name for yourself pt. 5: what can we learn from Jerome Jarre

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If you don’t know who Jerome Jarre is, he’s a French 25-year-old entertainer who rose to fame using mobile apps Vine and Snapchat. Here is an example of his work:

He has over 8 million followers on Vine, 1.2 million followers on Snapchat, the same again for Twitter, and over 900,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel.

That’s a lot of people who enjoy what he does, and a large audience he has unmediated access to. This has, of course, made him a huge attraction to advertisers and brands.

Last year, he was offered $1 million to spend a year in NYC, working for an advertising campaign. He turned down the offer, saying that money was not his priority, and he made an inspiring video from his decision.

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Written by Lu-Hai Liang

July 11, 2015 at 3:17 pm

VIDEO: A year in the life of a freelance journalist abroad

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In early 2014, I decided to buy a new camera. With it I started to take short videos that captured how life unfolded. I would record at dinners, while I was commuting, when I’d travel and so on. It wasn’t every day, but over a year I’d collected enough footage to make a short film about my life as a freelance journalist.

The video shows what Beijing is like, my horribly cramped former living quarters, what I get up to on my off-hours, and includes footage from my North Korea reporting trip and other travels. I hope to make more videos for my YouTube channel this year, so please consider subscribing.

This blog is a guide on becoming a roving freelancer, as well as a chronicle of my journey. The above video, I hope, fills in some of the blanks: a visual record. A written round-up of 2014 can be found here: Freelancing in Beijing: One Year On.

The video was shot on a Canon S120 and edited in Windows Movie Maker. These are the tools I currently have, and I intend to make the most of them. For more on this, see these posts: 6 journalism resolutions for the new year, and getting into video storytelling: using a cheap compact camera.