VIDEO: An easy snow hike close to Seattle – Frozen Franklin Falls

One thing I’m always impressed with is how folks around Seattle and the Pacific Northwest get outdoors with their families. Our first Christmas in Seattle — which we spent just the two of us in our little apartment before going to visit family in North Carolina — we decided to get out to Rattlesnake Ledge for a short, little 3-mile Christmas day hike. We got out there really early and there were already some folks on the trail. And on our way back down, we encountered droves of families of all kinds, like whole extended families of like 15 people. Despite the busy trail, it was really nice to see so many people choose to get outdoors for a little while on a holiday otherwise spent indoors.

Last week, Erika Schultz (my photo/video colleague at The Seattle Times) and I were able to get out to make a little feature story and short film about one of the most popular local hikes: Franklin Falls.

In the summer, this is an easy 1-mile jaunt to a pretty impressive waterfall (though it does reside under an I-90 overpass). It’s also a nice little walk to add onto an excursion along the Denny Creek trail which is close by.

But in winter months, the road to the Franklin Falls trailhead is blocked off by snow which adds almost a mile, making it more like a 4-mile roundtrip hike. But it’s a lovely little winter wonderland kind of trail that is accessible for kids and casual (i.e., not intense or overly prepared) hikers.

There are some steep inclines on the trail, so I would definitely recommend microspikes (YakTrax were insufficient), but snowshoes are not necessary because the busy trail is well packed down. As you can see in the video, a lot of people wearing inadequate footwear (i.e., running shoes) are slipping around and having to slide down the last hill on their butts, or forgo that part entirely.

It also feels about 10 degrees colder in the area around the foot of the waterfall, so make sure to have gloves, a hat, and even a waterproof outer layer to battle the icy mist (which gets even colder when the wind blows). We hung around down there for about two hours as we were filming and photographing and I got sort of dangerously cold and had to retreat up-trail a bit.

Overall, a lovely little hike, especially in winter. Great for the non-intense hikers among your family and friends and pretty good payoff for not too much work.

Enjoy!

Powerful, Strong & Beautiful | The Seattle Times


After moving to Seattle in 2013 to study medicine, painter Aramis Hamer was inspired to dive full-time into her art. Now she is finding her path in an art scene driven by women. (Lauren Frohne / The Seattle Times, additional video by Myisa Plancq-Graham/TheUncode.com).

  • My role:
    • Cinematographer
    • Editor

See full story on seattletimes.com

VIDEO: Connected Through Loss

Visual journalist Erika Schultz found the incredible story of two military widows and their sons who have bonded over a shared sense of loss, and we published it for Memorial Day. I filmed it along with Erika Schultz and Corinne Chin, and I edited the story.

Two young military widows find strength in their shared stories as they struggle to keep the memory of their husbands alive for their 8-year-old sons. (Erika Schultz, Lauren Frohne and Corinne Chin / The Seattle Times)
See full story with text by Jack Broom on seattletimes.com

Open Society: Bringing Justice to Health

“Bringing Justice to Health” is a series of four films for the Open Society Foundations addressing the need for legal access and empowerment in the health sector. Increased access to legal aid can often lead to better health outcomes for patients, especially those in vulnerable communities. This series looks at four aspects: Palliative Care in Kenya, HIV and AIDS in Uganda, Roma in Macedonia, and Drug users in Russia. Each story was shot by a Panos Pictures photographer and edited by independent producer Andrew Hida.

My role:
Producer, director: Finding and pre-interviewing characters, writing story treatments, planning itineraries and travel, writing interview questions, giving direction during filming, working closely with editor to iterate and finalize stories.


Mercy Owiti is a palliative care nurse in Nyeri, Kenya. But caring for patients at the end of life often means more than just pain relief. That’s why the Kenya Hospices and Palliative Care Association began training health care providers, like Mercy, to become paralegals.

FULL CREDITS:
Camera and sound: Sven Torfinn/Panos Pictures
Editing: Andrew Hida
Produced by Lauren Frohne and Sebastian Krueger


William Mulindwa is a teacher by profession. He is living with HIV. He also works as a paralegal for UGANET, a grantee of the Open Society Foundations that has trained more than 100 paralegals on basic principles of law enforcement, case assessment, conflict resolution, mediation, and negotiation. Paralegals like Mulindwa are informing people living with HIV about their rights, empowering people to engage in community activism and performing simple legal acts like preparing a will. They are essential to improving outcomes for people living with HIV and AIDS.

FULL CREDITS:
Camera and sound: Sven Torfinn/Panos Pictures
Editing: Andrew Hida
Produced by Lauren Frohne and Sebastian Krueger


Romina is a paralegal providing her community in Macedonia with legal advice to help access better health care. Today Roma are the largest—around 12 million people—and most disadvantaged ethnic minority in Europe. In 2003, a United Nations report provided, for the first time, robust statistical evidence on the extent of the challenges faced by Roma, including illiteracy, infant mortality, unemployment and segregation in education. Hunger and malnutrition, squalid housing without plumbing or sanitation, substandard health care, and other factors mean Roma have the shortest life expectancy in Europe. Paralegals like Romina are helping to improve the conditions and health of their communities.

FULL CREDITS:
Photography: Björn Steinz/Panos Pictures
Sound recording: Dragan Milojevic
Video editing: Andrew Hida
Produced by Lauren Frohne and Sebastian Krueger


Russia is home to the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemic. Driven by injection drug use, it is now becoming generalized. A zero-tolerance policy toward drug use in the country bans harm reduction tools and treatment. For many drug users, the only choice is to quit drugs entirely or go to prison. Outreach workers like Max supply clean needles and health information. Now, with the help of an online network, Max, a former intravenous drug user, also provides legal advice to help people access treatment and overcome abuses in the justice system.

FULL CREDITS:
Camera and sound: Piotr Malecki/Panos Pictures
Additional camera: Guy Martin/Panos Pictures
Editing: Andrew Hida
Produced by Lauren Frohne and Sebastian Krueger

Coaching NPPA Multimedia Immersion 2014

UPDATE!
Check out this nice article Seth Gitner wrote in the current issue of NPPA’s NewsPhotographer magazine about Al Tielemans’ experience at this year’s workshop. Al was one of my students this year and it was such a pleasure to work with him.

I was fortunate enough to be invited back to coach at the NPPA Multimedia Immersion workshop again this year, now my second time coaching the workshop, May 11-18. I really love this workshop for a lot of reasons, but mostly because of the amazing kinship and bond everyone develops by the end of the week. The workshop is all about opening yourself up to learn new skills, being vulnerable, and supporting one another. It’s also a crazy busy week full of seminars and practice and shooting and editing and staying up all night to finish on Friday night, in time for the community screening on Saturday. That lack of sleep and delirium might also contribute to the overwhelming gratefulness and positivity at the end of the week.

The interesting, and probably most challenging, part of Immersion is that everyone starts from zero. People come in with varying experience with video (from a lot to never using a camera before except for their iPhone), so we start at the very beginning. And by the end of the week, every single one of the 40 participants publishes a story. So we see some major transformations over the week. It’s incredible. And exhausting. But so worth it.

This year, I was paired up to coach with Jeff Bradbury from SUNY-Oswego in upstate New York. We had four students: a commercial photographer who specializes in hospitality and food, a former magazine director of photography who recently launched his own production business, a web editor for the Newhouse School website, and a longtime shooter for Sports Illustrated. It was a group with varying skill sets and experience. And yes, I did stay up until 4am again helping the last of them finish.

While we typically don’t come out with award-winning masterpieces from this workshop, I can say that the skills and experience the participants gain and the amazing network of new colleagues and friends we all build — coaches and participants alike — throughout the week is really worth it.

Here are their stories as they premiered at the end of the workshop:

Open Society: Voices from Europe’s Working Class

Western Europe has undergone significant transformation over the past 40 years. Major manufacturing has given way to service industries, while the provisions of the welfare state have been rolled back. Debates about marginalization or inequality in Europe tend to center on its minority populations. But research by Open Society found that the majority in an economically deprived community could also be marginalized and victims of inequality -— in different ways, but with many of the same results.

ROLE:

  • Producer, story development, pre-production
  • Video editor for a total of 12 videos including an explainer on the issue

This multimedia project aimed to capture the voices of those in marginalized native or white working class communities in Manchester and Amsterdam who grapple with inequality, disenfranchisement and stereotypes in their daily lives.

Because of the sensitive nature of the project and the often negative portrayal of these communities in local media, access to the subjects was tough and limited. To solve this, we aimed to capture “video portraits” — short videos under two minutes that captured a sense of the person and focused on only one or two issues, rather than telling the subject’s entire story. The video portraits were filmed by Adam Patterson of Panos Pictures based out of Belfast, Ireland. Adam worked hard to find subjects in the communities, interview and make portraits of each participant. Below is a selection from the series.

Higher Blackley, Manchester: Hayley Courtney

Blauwe Zand, Amsterdam: Hennier Brouwer

Higher Blackley, Manchester: Jo Courtney

OVERVIEW EXPLAINER

See the rest of the Manchester portraits here
See the rest of the Amsterdam portraits here.

At Open Society: An Interview Series

“At Open Society” is a video series highlighting the people and ideas that are inspiring Open Society’s work and changing the world. Seeking to make the most of the myriad leaders, influencers, researchers and advocates who come through our building in New York, I worked with my colleagues in the Communications office to develop an interview series with a look and feel of its own. In it, we aimed to explore new ideas and perspectives in a highly shareable package. It provides a platform for a diversity of voices and topics as well as a constant flow of video content for Open Society Voices posts. For each video in the series, we work through how to package, write headlines and provide content for optimal shareability on social media platforms.

ROLE:
Series development, interviewer, videographer, sound recordist, and editor.
I also work with our lead copywriter to write accompanying blog posts for most of the videos in the series.


Why Do People Stereotype Black Men? Ask Your Brain. – Alexis McGill Johnson At Open Society


Torture: It Can Happen Anywhere – Juan Mendez At Open Society


A Young Filmmaker Shares His Past to Overcome It – Richard Memminger At Open Society


A Freedom You Can’t Take for Granted – Novelist A.M. Homes At Open Society


For Roma Families, a Racist Myth Returns with a Vengeance – Jim Goldston At Open Society

MORE:
A Modern-Day Robin Hood Takes Aim at Poverty – David Hillman At Open Society
The Tool for Success Every Student Should Have – Jake Hayman At Open Society

Spilling Over: The Documentary

An ongoing documentary project following a Louisiana commercial fishing family as they cope with the longterm effects of the BP oil spill on their lives and livelihood. See the project website for more information.

2015 Trailer:

This project began as a summer fellowship exploring the social, political and economic tensions around energy in the United State for Powering A Nation. Here is the original project, published in July 2010….

Summer 2010: Venice, La., is facing extinction. The small fishing community, located just 50 miles away from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, is in jeopardy, as the BP oil spill has put the livelihood of the residents in danger. The people of Venice are now left with a difficult choice. Do they stay and risk their health for the sake of their history and culture? Or do they give up their jobs, their community and their heritage in an effort to flee the lasting effects of the oil spill?

MY ROLE:

  • Videographer/Photographer
  • Reporter
  • Embedded with the community for about three weeks during the height of the disaster, summer 2010

FULL CREDITS:
Camera and Sound by Jessey Dearing and Lauren Frohne
Additional footage by Elena Rue
Edited by Jessey Dearing
Graphics by Amanda Loy
Interviews by Jessey Dearing and Lauren Frohne

Jessey and I have continued working on this story and are currently in production on a longer film. You can find out more about the ongoing project and the 2013 updates at http://spillingoverthefilm.org.

Featured on:

Recognition:

The Roma and Open Society

This is an explainer video for the Open Society Foundations which describes the issues and work we do within Roma communities throughout Europe. I traveled to two different Roma settlements in Slovakia in November 2012 to shoot the documentary-style video used in this film.

ROLE:
(Slovakia footage only) Videographer, field producer and interviewer

FULL CREIDTS:
In-field camera and sound: Lauren Frohne
Studio interviews: Wondros
Editing: Wondros

(If interested, contact me for a longer, not-yet-published video story about the Roma community in Modava nad Bodvou, Slovakia)

National Geographic: 101-year-old Weather Observer

Richard Hendrickson began recording weather observations for the National Weather Service when he was 18 years old. That was 84 years ago. Honored as the longest-serving weather observer for the United States, Hendrickson says, “It’s what I do for my country.”
Full story on NationalGeographic.com

Our fellow UNC alumna, Eileen Mignoni, hired Jessey and me to film for National Geographic with the amazing Richard Hendrickson as he received this award for his service as a weather observer. We traveled out on Long Island to the National Weather Service station in Upton, NY, and spent the day filming the festivities, the award ceremony, with Richard and his family, and also conducted an interview with Tim Morrin, the observation program leader. Eileen and Nacho edited the final piece, which offers an uplifting glimpse into Richard’s life and the meaning behind his service.

The Boston Globe: Bus 19 – The Way Up

(Boston Globe) Bus 19: Life on the Line – George and Johnny Huynh want a better life – and they believe they can get it through school. They have to. It’s the only thing in their control. Part of The Boston Globe’s Bus 19: Life on the Line series, in which a team of Globe reporters and photographers is traveling the route of Bus 19, chronicling the little-known rhythms of life in a part of the city that engages in the struggle each day.

ROLE:
Videographer, editor, reporter

MORE FROM THE BUS19 SERIES…

(Boston Globe) Iris Soares visits up to five food pantries a week to get enough food to feed her family. After falling at her job in a meat processing factory five years ago, Iris can no longer work and does not receive food stamps. Video by Lauren Frohne / Boston Globe Staff; Edited by Dina Rudick and Lauren Frohne / Boston Globe Staff

SERIES PACKAGE

The Boston Globe: A Place to Grow

From her home in Newton, Mass., Filis Casey has traveled the world, lifting children out of the shadows and into adoptive homes. She has never seen anything like the problems plaguing Haiti, where the overwhelming misery can easily make an orphan’s plight invisible. But in the town of Kenscoff, buoyed by money from Casey’s foundation, a new orphanage is rising a few hundred yards from where children dwell amid a cluster of dusty buildings with leaking roofs and unfinished walls.

FULL CREDITS:
Camera and sound: Lauren Frohne
Photography and reporting: Suzanne Kreiter
Reporting: Brian MacQuarrie

Featured on The Boston Globe June 24, 2012.

Converse: In the studio with Flatbush Zombies & Trash Talk

Converse hired Jessey Dearing and me to take over a series of short “In the Studio” films to accompany the release of the “CONS EP VOL. 1” compilation, which pairs different Converse Rubber Tracks artists to collaborate on songs for the album. We produced the shoot from beginning to end. The song in this video “97.92” is produced by Garrett Stevenson of Trash Talk, with lyrics and vocals by Flatbush Zombies. The track was recorded at Converse Rubber Tracks in Brooklyn, NY, and we interviewed the artists and filmed with them in the studio while they made it. Published 2/17/2014

MY ROLE:
Producer, pre-production, interviewer, studio videographer, editor, animations assistant

FULL CREDITS:
Producers: Lauren Frohne and Jessey Dearing
Director of photography and animator: Jessey Dearing
Videographer and editor: Lauren Frohne
Sound recordist: Chris Schneider
Production assistant: Andrew Hida
Illustrator: Benamin

Similarly for Converse Rubber Tracks, this music video was commissioned by Converse for their Rubber Tracks series and produced by my friend and fellow tar heel Sarah Riazati. Our friend Ali Cengiz, also a UNC alum, ran the main camera — a Red Epic — and I was secondary camera angles throughout, shooting with the Canon 5D MarkIII. We shot the whole video in various areas of the amazing former church/current art space Bushwick Church, all in one day very long day. The whole crew was comprised mostly of UNC graduates and was an amazing opportunity for us all to collaborate. I worked with the small pre-production crew to plan out the scense, lighting and camera work in advance of the shoot.

ROLE:
Second camera operator, Pre-production crew

FULL CREDITS:
Director: Sarah Riazati
Producer: KFBproductions (Kimberly Sanchez)
Editor: Caitlyn Greene
Effects & Animations: Sarah Riazati
Graphic Designer: Suede Jury
Assistant Director: Anna Feagan
Director of Photography: Ali Cengiz
Additional Camera: Lauren Frohne
Gaffer: Nick Perron-Siegel
Grips: Jessey Dearing, Cath Spangler
Makeup & Styling: Micah Piven
Production Assistants: Blair Mikels, Gabe Turner
Cast: Alaysia Graves, Kendra Schafyya, Corey Washington, Vanessa Williams

Getting memed, upworthied, buzzfed, going viral… two years later…

The year 2013 was a definite reminder that stories published on the internet never die. It’s a new era in how news stories are seen and shared. Social capital is everything. Sometimes stories make the moderate, immediate splash within their newscycle. Sometimes the internet only catches on months, or even years, after it was originally published — typically because of new socially-amped sites like Upworthy and ViralNova. Sometimes, because of an update and real-time sharing tools, they resurge two years later to the open arms of the inspiration-hungry Twitter masses and a whole new audience is born.

The latter happened in the case of a story I worked on with reporter Billy Baker for The Boston Globe in December 2011 called Bus 19: The Way Up. It documents the experience of two teenaged brothers. Born to Vietnamese refugees, they were not only surviving in deep poverty and in a dangerous neighborhood, but also thriving in the top high school in Boston. They were steadfast on a path to success because of their own willpower and the help of some dedicated friends and mentors.

A few weeks ago on December 16, I got a text message from Billy: “George just got accepted into Yale. I can’t stop crying.” Tears. Lots of them.

On Twitter, he started rehashing his experience with the story and where it went once he published it. It was an open, genuine and moving account of just selfless human interest. Billy had a lot of followers then (he is known for finding the most interesting, bizarre, extreme and fringe stories in the newsroom), and he gained a lot more as his series of tweets was retweeted, favorited and Storified by thousands of people.

He linked to the story and the video. It was incredible how much it spread over the course of one evening.

The original story, when it was published two years ago, was met with an outpouring of support and donations to the boys and the youth center from the community in Boston. If I remember correctly, it only ran in its entirety on the subscription-based BostonGlobe.com, rather than the freely accessible Boston.com, so the audience was local and small. We thought it made a huge splash. The video had about 500-600 views, which was good in terms of our typical numbers.

By the middle of that week — December 18 or so — two years after the story was originally published on YouTube, the video had more than 80,000 views.

It’s really exciting. Their update and an interview, along with pieces from my video story, ran on the NBC Nightly News. People around the world learned their story, congratulated them, felt inspired and wanted to help them even more. It was amazing and humbling and I’m glad I was able to make a cameo in their lives so I could share in the joy of this moment with them.

But the other half of all this — as a content creator/filmmaker/journalist — is a humbling confrontation with the fact that every bit of content you put out there will live on forever. So you better be proud of every molecule of it. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you should feel confident that you put everything you could into it. No regrets.

I will admit that I am slightly self-conscious about this video being so widely watched two years after I made it. Two years is a lot of time in an industry undergoing such rapid change. I was also the rookie at The Globe (I feel like I’m a rookie still now). It was a tough story that I had two weeks to work on (which was, in fact, a luxury at the time, the blessing of TWO FULL WEEKS in the world of a daily newspaper!). The reporter spent two months reporting it. There are parts I definitely could have shot better. Maybe I should have spent more time, could I have probed in the interview more, could I have dug deeper? I know I tiptoed a little through the documentation because these were high school kids, grappling with big issues, and trying desperately not to draw attention to themselves while they got through it. And there I was following them with a camera to school. About to publish their hardships and hope in a major metro newspaper.

I think I learned then, and again now, that the sacrifice of a few minutes of mutual discomfort and self-consciousness is worth it to do the thing right. Each scene you shoot builds a story, which portrays a message (intended or not), adds to a conversation or visual dialogue that affects the way people think about things and how they act toward others. And it’s not over the day it comes off the front page. So you better have worked your ass off to do it right. Because it is about real people with real lives to lead, it has your name on it, and it will live a lot longer than you.

Make it good. And then make it better.

And then let it go.

Powering a Nation

News21 is a 10-week summer fellowship program sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation and Knight Foundation. The goal of the national initiative, which is led by 12 of America’s leading research universities, is to advance the U.S. news business by helping revitalize schools of journalism.

Powering a Nation is the project created by UNC-Chapel Hill journalism students and combines the content of the 2009 team with the 2010 content. I was a part of the team 2010 project team. As of 2013, three additional project have been added to the site.

MY ROLE:

  • Managing editor – student leader with primary responsibilities in conceptualizing stories and leading the content gathering team, collecting photo, video and audio content.
  • Reporter – interviewed subjects and found subjects for stories

TRAILER:

RECOGNITION:
2nd Prize, World Press Photo 2011 multimedia contest, Interactive production
Gold, 65th College Photographer of the Year Awards, Large Group Multimedia, Powering a Nation
Silver Award, SND Best of Digital Design 2010, Section/Topic Presentation, Powering a Nation
Student Award, SND Best of Digital Design 2010, Use of Multimedia, Powering a Nation
2nd Place, NPPA Monthly Multimedia – Multimedia Project (8/2010), Powering a Nation

Up For Debate: Debate league steers students on a path to success

SUMMARY
Deverick knows how his life could have turned out if he hadn’t stuck with his studies: prison, drugs, or even death. Instead, he became a star on the Baltimore Urban Debate League team and went on to college. Now he coaches students like Kaela, who often come from complicated lives but are striving to be successful academically.

Many students, especially those in areas with a high degree of crime, like Baltimore, are pushed out of the classroom by “zero-tolerance” policies and into the juvenile justice system. These approaches harm all students, particularly children of color, students with disabilities and students identifying as LGBT.

Research shows that creating safe, nurturing learning environments where students can succeed helps divert the path away from negative outcomes. The Baltimore Urban Debate League helps students develop meaningful interactions with adults in their schools in addition to finding their own voice and expressing themselves.

FULL CREDITS:
Camera and sound: Errol Webber
Editing: Lauren Frohne
Music: Getty
Producers: Lauren Frohne and Maria Archuleta

– – – – – – –

This week, I declare victory on a long-fought battle. Getting this video published was among the greatest challenges so far in my time here at OSF. I won’t get into the details, but I’ll say that I’m proud of how it turned out. It’s come a long way.

Check out the post on the Open Society site : Is Harsh School Discipline Necessary? That’s Up for Debate

It was filmed by Baltimore-based cinematographer Errol Webber (www.cinnamontography.com), who did a nice job capturing moments as well as compelling scenes and well-composed interview set-ups. I edited it over the course of a couple months. The end result was a great indirect collaboration.

Unexpected stories in unlikely places

A few weeks ago, I helped out on a shoot with Talking Eyes Media. A client had asked them shoot an interview to be used in a video for their annual fundraising gala.

On the surface, that doesn’t seem like the most exciting thing in the world, but it’s always fun to get out of the routine and work with other people. Then I learned it was an NBA basketball player, which for someone who appreciates the stories within sports but does not at all follow professional sports, isn’t crazy exciting either.

It turned out to be Metta World Peace, otherwise previously known as Ron Artest. I had heard about him in the past, because he had some notorious encounters earlier in his career that you just hear about even if you don’t follow professional sports. But, I had no idea of how deeply his personal story ran or how much he’s worked to help young people who are growing up in circumstances like he did or his dedication to the issue of mental health.

That’s a really cool part of working on stuff like this, you stumble into some of the most surprising stories.

Here’s the video that the nonprofit made from the interview we filmed: