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.

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.

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.

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:

Sometimes, it’s just really nice to indulge in a real touristy destination. We don’t do this a lot. But Jessey and I recently took a long weekend and drove the 7 hours up to Niagara Falls.

Niagara Falls is a strange place. The actual waterfalls are amazing. Like you’re staring at a edge of the world. You can’t help but think of what the people who found that place thought, what it looked like before a city and attractions were built around it. Then the area around the falls is totally packed with soaring hotels, casinos and a huge version of every chain restaurant you can think of. A stark contrast with the natural beauty of the area that gives it a bit of a Las Vegas tinge. We brought our bikes (which is probably the best way to see any place in the world), so we rode around, seeking places to eat and drink off the main strip. We found dilapidated shuttered hotels and restaurants and a ghost town of a Main Street on an early Saturday night. Overall, it was a creepy combination to be housed all in one town: bustling tourism, natural wonder, abandoned and degraded town; I found it completely captivating.

It was so overwhelmingly visually, especially from certain angles, that I was compelled to film it (stills couldn’t capture it fully) and make a short film about it. It’s 3 minutes, but worth the indulgence.

See more images on my Tumblr.

Before I began working for the Open Society Foundations, I had never really heard of the Roma people. Not many Americans have, from what I’ve gathered. Over the past year, in my capacity as a videographer and producer for OSF, I’ve had the opportunity to visit a few Roma settlements in Europe. The experience has changed my perspective drastically. My whole idea of poverty, of modern-day discrimination, of cyclical deprivation, all of it, has been completely altered. It’s a topic I’ve become deeply interested in, in hopes of contributing to a changing narrative for these extremely marginalized people in Europe.

I was able to write an article for the OSF website about the experience of documenting in such extreme situations, based on an interview with Bjorn Steinz who has photographed these communities with me. Check it out on the OSF homepage while it’s still up. Or click on the image below to be taken to the article on the OSF site…

More images (a combination of mobile and DSLR photography) from the settlements I’ve documented…

Two dogs in the Roma settlement outside Moldava nad Bodvou, Slovakia. November 16, 2012.

Man in the neighborhood in Moldava nad Bodvou, Slovakia. November 16, 2012.

Children in a settlement outside of Moldava nad Bodvou, Slovakia. November 16, 2012.

A house in a Roma village in Frumușani, Romania. May 9, 2013.

Bjorn photographs a girl at home in Frumușani, Romania. May 9, 2013.

Villagers with their horses in Frumușani, Romania. May 9, 2013.

A housing project for Roma in Stara Tehelna, Slovakia. November 15, 2012.

A housing project for Roma in Stara Tehelna, Slovakia. November 15, 2012.

The settlement in Moldava nad Bodvou, Slovakia. November 16, 2012.

To learn more about the Roma people, check out Open Society’s explainer on the issue.

One of the best things about my job is that it challenges me to think differently about how I approach society, people and life generally. It’s easy for us to accept things the way they are or not even realize that we marginalize people. Over the past few months, I’ve produced a series of interviews about disability rights in the framework of human rights, a space in civil society that persons with disabilities are often left out of.

This is a video I produced (with still images by Andrew Testa of Panos Pictures) about Elizabeth Kamundia, a lawyer in Kenya who decided to tackle the challenge of advocating for persons with disabilities in her own country by becoming an expert on the issue through one of the Open Society Foundations scholarship programs:

See also:
Boaz Muhumuza: I Am Not a Problem to Be Solved
Lawrence Mute: A Question of Rights, Not Charity
Gerard Quinn: Disability Rights: An Important Test for Open Society

My partner Jessey Dearing and I just returned from another filming trip for our ongoing documentary project Spilling Over. As often as we can, we travel down to Buras, Louisiana to spend time with the Arnesens, the central characters of the film. Check out the post on our Spilling Over blog for more details.

Kindra and little David look out into the marshes from the top of the boat as they return from offshore fishing all day with David. (Image by Lauren Frohne)

Film Synopsis:
SPILLING OVER is the story of a family losing control. The Arnesens are a commercial fishing family in Venice, Louisiana. After the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico struck their community in April 2010, their future took a drastic turn. As years pass after the disaster, we journey with the Arnesens through intimate moments and difficult changes as they struggle to redefine their future and take back control over their lives.

SPILLING OVER is not a film about the BP oil spill. It’s not about fishing or the environment. It’s not about lawsuits, claim checks, cover-ups or health impacts. SPILLING OVER is about family, and what happens when a family is pushed beyond their limits.

Back in May, I had the opportunity to coach at the NPPA Multimedia Immersion Workshop at Syracuse University. It’s an intensive, week-long workshop during which professional coaches from all sorts of outlets and organizations come together to teach sessions and do one-on-one story production with students.

From what I’ve gathered, the workshop was historically attended by a lot of newspaper and magazine photojournalists looking to gain some skills in producing multimedia. But this year’s batch of students ranged from picture editors at USA Today and Getty, to newspaper photojournalists, freelance documentary photographers, deans of business schools, MIT media lab, college students, educators, marketing types. It was a very diverse group of people, all looking to either learn video from scratch or get better with the gear they have.

The incredible part of this workshop is the ratio of students to coaches. Each pair of coaches (one Immersion veteran paired with one newbie coach, like me) had four students they worked with all week. I had the pleasure of working with Wes Pope, an innovative educator and super creative storyteller (and all-around awesome dude). I personally learned a lot from coaching with him the whole week. And our students were Kellen Deam (a student at Ball State University), Sara Wood (a rep for Nikon), Andy Wallace (a teacher turning toward video), and Andrea Bruce (amazing documentary photographer). Everyone was familiar with video to some degree, or at least visual production in some way, and a couple of them had edited with Final Cut Pro X before. Most importantly, everyone was super motivated to make something great within the tight timeframe of the workshop.

The one thing I tried to distill down with my students was what the heart of the story is. Most of their “story ideas,” which they chose out of a hat, were really just people or places of business. That’s not a story, it’s a jumping off point. For example, Sara Wood pulled out a tattoo shop as her story idea from the hat. It’s really easy to do a profile of a tattoo shop. They are usually vibrant and visual places full of interesting looking people, with the signature audio of the buzzing needle. But she really didn’t want to make the tattoo shop profile that’s been made a hundred times before. The first day she went out, she spent a bit of time there and then called me to check in. She seemed bummed that there wasn’t anything particularly dynamic going on. I asked about clients coming in. She said that day there was a guy coming in to get a cowboy tattoo. Okay hmmm… what about tomorrow? She said there was another client coming in to get a memorial type of tattoo. Oh yeah? Of what? HIS DOG. Immediately I knew that was her story, if she could get the access. She worked really hard to produce it, and really whittled down this big theme of “TATTOO SHOP” to a small, but very moving little story. It was less about telling the whole big picture story, and more about drilling into one little facet of it. Check out “Belle’s Strawberries”…

The only real hang up we had the whole week was one of those situations where a student’s first story fell through… and then stories kept falling through. It’s the worst situation for a workshop setting. You have a limited amount of time that you are trying so hard to maximize, you’re stressed, and things aren’t working out. That’s what happened with Kellen Deam. He was first assigned the nearby Ronald McDonald House, which is a great place to find really important and compelling stories to tell. But it’s also sensitive and relies on who is around that particular day. On Kellen’s particular day, there weren’t many people, and the ones who were there wouldn’t grant the access. So we went to a backup plan: go to the local farmers/artisan market and fine someone who makes or sells something there and has a great visual story, if not more. Kellen shot a little the next morning, but came back without a story. It was Thursday night, our Friday night deadline was rapidly approaching. Seth Gitner recommended maybe going to this local diner called Nicky’s Quick Cup and seeing if the family who owns it would share their story. So the next morning Wes went out to shoot with Kellen, providing some additional support as we were on our last option. They mic’ed up the current owner and her grandmother (the original owner) as a conversational scene in which the audience would feel like they were eavesdropping on a family conversation between them. You get a great sense of place and character, and overall it turned out to be a fun, quick-turn (thanks to some tag-team, intensive edit coaching between Wes and me) little story. Here’s “A Family Business”…

I won’t go into the production timelines of the rest of our team’s films, but overall it was an amazing experience working through these stories with Andy and Andrea. They really wanted to learn and create something perfect. That’s a tall order under such extreme circumstances, but I think we all got close. I’m just glad everyone came away happy, albiet slightly exhausted after finishing the export of all the videos at 4am Friday night/Saturday morning.

Probably my biggest personal challenge for the week was that we were teaching the students to edit with the new Final Cut Pro X, and I had never so much as opened the application before the first day of Immersion. I’ve been using FCP 7 (and previous iterations) for a long time now, and while some aspects of the new version are similar, just in terms of how all nonlinear editing systems work, it’s pretty much an entirely different piece of software. But by the end of the week, I was soaring through it with hot keys and shortcuts, and learning the pros and cons, mostly thanks so Joe Blum‘s amazingly thorough instructional packet. It was a really great way to buckle down and really learn something quick. The pressure always helps with that, too. Overall, I would recommend this workshop to anyone interested in learning multimedia video, or any professionals who have been thinking of taking time to coach it. It’s worth it.

So a big thank you to Seth Gitner and Will Sullivan for inviting me to be a part of the workshop.

Check out Andy Wallace’s “Release Skills” and Andrea Bruce’s “Empty Nest” below…

And see all of the NPPA Multimedia Immersion 2013 videos on the Vimeo channel.

When I came on board at the Open Society Foundations, there were a bunch of projects in the works that I sort of had to dive right into. One of those is a series on stop and search and its many iterations throughout Europe, which we recently published.

Stop and search is like our stop-and-frisk here in New York. It means that a police officer can basically come up to you and search your bags and your person with little cause. They are supposed to have “reasonable suspicion” that you are holding or doing something illegal, but often it comes down to racial profiling. They hassle young men of color the most.

The video interviews and portraits were shot by the great Ed Kashi last year: 10 interviews in all from the UK, about an hour long each. My job was to whittle all of this down into a quick-paced video trailer type of film to accompany the report about stop and search in England and Whales. It was a tough undertaking because it was all interviews with no b-roll except for portraits of each person, but I think it ends up painting an interesting portrait of the impact of stop and search. See the whole project on the Open Society website

As many of you who follow me on various social media platforms might have noticed, Jessey and I went on vacation to California in late November. We did an epic roadtrip from San Francisco, up through Napa Valley, over to Lake Tahoe, down highway 395, over to Big Sur, and then back up to San Francisco. Altogether, ten days of beauty and majesty and largess.

And — arguably one of the neatest aspects of it — I basically took my friends and family with us through the viewfinder of Instagram. When we returned to the east coast, our friends didn’t need a digest of our adventures, they could just comment freely on the epic images we brought them over the previous week and a half. It was great. Nobody asked “Oh, how was your vacation?” Everyone already knew: IT WAS AWESOME.

Then I had this great idea: Since I had accumulated all of these easy-to-access images, already uploaded to the interwebs, and since many services exist now that connect directly to Instagram and boast their skills at printing high-quality versions of those digital artifacts, why not make a book of it?

So I did.

I highly recommend blurb.com for all of your self-publishing needs. For around $70 with shipping, I was able to design, print, give and adore this high-quality keepsake of our journey. It took me a couple of hours to figure it out and get everything just right. I received the book in under two weeks (even though it was only a couple weeks before Christmas). And it was perfect. Such good quality, the prints look so nice, and it was so easy that I actually just did it and I am not still just talking about doing it.

And you can embed your photobook or share it via social networks. Here’s mine. Feel free to vicariously enjoy our California roadtrip vacation!

We lucked out in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Hurricane Sandy’s raucous winds and flooding barely affected us. Aside from being kind of stuck in Brooklyn for a week while the transit system was repaired, the direct impact on us was minimal. And Jessey and I definitely appreciate all the friends and family who checked in on us throughout it all.

The damage elsewhere was, and still is, debilitating. Friends in the East Village were displaced due to flooding in their buildings and an extended loss of power, water, heat and other utilities, half of the island of Manhattan was without power for days, some of our friends in New Jersey and outer areas of New York still don’t have access to transit, electricity or heat. Most of all, many of the coastal communities were all but destroyed.

This includes my Aunt Betty and Uncle Artie’s town, Broad Channel, a tiny sliver of land that connects Howard Beach and the Rockaways, with the bay on one side and the ocean on the other, both of which surged to heights never seen before.

My aunt and uncle are okay. Their house is raised above the ground and so it got about one and a half or two feet of water. They will have to gut the downstairs, but most of their possessions besides furniture and appliances are salvageable. A boat slammed into their back deck, destroying much of the backyard, but they are safe and sound, and that is all that matters.

Their backyard, post-hurricane.

The edge of their backyard, covered with debris.

Aunty Betty and Uncle Artie talk with neighbors as they pass by in front of their house, which sustained minimal damage comparatively.

Aunt Betty looks through damaged keepsakes.

My cousin’s high school diploma, damaged by floodwaters.

Some of their neighbors were not so lucky. When I arrived there on Friday afternoon with my brother and our friend Brian, people were busy throwing everything they owned onto the street. It was like a war zone in Broad Channel, boats strewn all over the road, flooded out cars piled up on the median where people thought they would be safe from the floodwaters. City trucks and earth movers collected the refuse, people picked through coats and other warm clothing that had been donated to their community, some people walked around in disbelief at the havoc that had been wrought on their small, tight-knit community, several days after the flood.

All of the boats from the yacht club piled up in someone’s front yard.

My aunt and a neighbor check out the local yacht club, whose boats piled up in the yard next door.

My aunt and her friend, who lives a few houses down the block, look out at the damage from her ruined house.

A neighbor who is helping my aunt and uncle clean out their house takes a break to eat pizza and gaze out at the damage through the back door.

It will take a long time to rebuild, both the houses and infrastructure, but also people’s whole lives. Everyone seems confident, though, that the community will eventually be back to way it was.

If you have anything clothing or supplies you would like to donate to the people in Broad Channel, let me know and I can arrange a pick-up, or connect you with people who definitely need it.

See the whole set of images on Flickr.

It’s been a while since I last updated, and a lot has happened and changed in the life of Lauren.

First, I travelled to Haiti back in April/beginning of May to cover a story for The Boston Globe. We were in a little town called Kenscoff, up on a mountain, near the city of Petion-Ville. It was my first time visiting the country and it was an amazing experience. And I had the opportunity to travel with veteran Globe photographer Suzanne Kreiter to shoot this story, and while the story was difficult and emotional, I think we both learned a lot from working with each other.

A truck travels up the mountain in Petion-Ville on the way to Kenscoff

Check out the video story I produced below. These kids have been through a lot in their little lives, and they are still full of joy and excitement, although life is often punctuated with utter boredom, lack of a suitable education and not enough interaction with caring adults. But watch the story, and you’ll see what the future might hold for the kids.

I feel content with how the story turned out. Shooting it posed a lot of challenges, mostly because — as is typical with places like Haiti — the story wasn’t exactly what we thought it would be when we got there. But I think we made it work. It doesn’t have a tidy storyline, but I think it successfully sets you down into their lives and makes you see their situation in a personal way.

Country side and farm land seen from a vista off the road up to Kenscoff

Haiti is a tough place to exist in. The daily things we tend to take for granted — running water, electricity and waste management — are either nonexistent (which is the case for most people) or unreliable for those lucky few with access to such luxuries. It really offers some perspective on these constant debates we have about taxes and big government here in the U.S. Go to a place like Haiti, and you’ll better understand the impact of your tax dollars, the safety nets we have in place, and the role of government when you return home.

Okay, off my soapbox…

The other major thing that’s happened is that I left my position at The Boston Globe at the end of May for a post at the Open Society Foundations. It’s nonprofit that advocates for human rights around the globe. My job is to produce and commission multimedia projects and films that tell the story of issues we are working in and work that our programs are doing all over the world. I’m excited to take on this challenge and see what happens.

So that also means that I’ve moved from Boston to New York. I was born here, lived here for 9 months of my life, and now I’ve returned 26 years later. I love New York, I have people that I love in New York, and I’m excited to see what I can do here.

The view of Manhattan from a rooftop on Wall Street

That’s all the updates for now. I’ll be posting new work soon, hopefully, so check back!

Before this assignment, I haven’t found myself transcoding video in the backseat of my car while driving a long distance since grad school. A lesson in how a light feature can quickly turn into ‘breaking news’…

I started shooting this story a few weeks ago by visiting a class at MassArt called “Toys for Elephants.” It’s a semester-long course in which this class of about 15 students research elephant behavior, get to know the two elephants at the Buttonwood Park Zoo in New Bedford, and then design, pitch and fabricate large toys for these two elephants. I visited them while they were working on their toys in the metalworking and woodworking studios at MassArt.

Fast forward to the morning of the hand-off day — the day at the end of the semester in which they bring the toys to the zoo, install them, and let the elephants have at them. The reporter and I arrive to find several other local news outlets also in attendance, unexpectedly. Of course, we had to sound the alarm to our editors and they decide that the story I thought I would have most of the next week to work on for a Sunday feature, was going to run the next day (so as to beat our competitors).

With about five interviews and a lot of footage, plus the delayed installation of the toys, time contraints of ingesting and transcoding the video, traffic, editing time, compressing and uploading, I realized that finishing this particular video story for the next day would be pretty much impossible.

I told them I would try my best not to stay up all night and still have it ready. I ended up processing the video as I drove to New York (which was previously planned weekend trip), slept when I got to New York, then woke up at 6am, edited until noon, compressed, uploaded and had it ready by 1pm for a centerpiece on BostonGlobe.com. Oh, the adventures of newspaper video!

I would say it was near-record time for producing this story. It has a couple of bumpy parts that I would have taken time to smooth out if I had more time, but I’m happy how it turned out considering the circumstances.

After last year’s pioneering foray into iPhone video shooting, editing and filing, I was relieved this year to have the assignment of shooting a sights and sounds video the morning of the Boston Marathon at the Athletes’ Village where runners rest, eat and prepare for their 26.2-mile jaunt.

My task was to shoot b-roll of the goings-on, interview some runners and — because it was so hot — talk someone about the tips they were giving the runners for dealing with temperatures in the 80’s. Then, I had to edit and file it by around 10am. The best part was that I put my new 5D MarkIII to use for the first time on assignment! Here’s the outcome…

The audio editing is a bit rough, but I was on a mega deadline with my editor checking in every 20 minutes or so. Needless to say, perfection was not an option. The 5DMIII did really well with the audio. I was traveling light so I just had the Rode Videomic in the hot shoe and got close to my subjects. The lack of auto-gain alone made the audio infinitely better. The only major mistake I made was first plugging the mic into the headphone jack instead of the mic jack. It’s in the same place that the mic jack is on the 7D!

By the end of the day, my colleague Scott LaPierre combined my footage with video from our other staffers along the course and at the finish (shooting with lots of different kinds of cameras, including iPhones) and it turned out to be a really fun montage of the day:

No time to shoot pictures this year, unfortunately, but check out my post from (a much colder day) last year if you’re interested!

Shooting video for a newspaper can be really exciting. You never know what the next day has in store for you, and I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) that I always need to be prepared to drop what I’m doing or react to news that is happening right in front of me, even outside of work hours.

One thing, though, that is and always will be a challenge is parachuting into a story for a couple of hours, hoping the person its about wants to share the intimate details of his or her life with you… in front of a camera, no less…. and after he’s already told his story to a reporter and photographer. That was the case for this story I shot for the Globe a couple of weeks ago: “Wounded But Winning”.

Mike, a retired Army staff sergeant, has an incredible story, although if you ask him about it, he’ll probably tell you it’s old news. He lost both of his legs during his second tour in Afghanistan when his vehicle was hit with an IED. However, on that particular Tuesday evening when I met up with him before his sled hockey practice in Dover, N.H., he didn’t really feel like talking about it so much. This is definitely understandable; we were in a public space, surrounded by friends and strangers, he was gearing up to have fun. But it can be a bit frustrating as a reporter who is sent to capture that information for a day-turn video. I only had that evening to gather all the content I would need to edit together a short, compelling, complete video story for the next day.

Luckily, though, the action of the sled hockey practice and the insight Mike offered about the benefits of sled hockey, particularly to amputees, worked on its own. While I felt a bit disappointed in myself that I failed at collecting those dramatic details, I realized in the edit that the details about how he was disabled were less relevant in this piece, which focused on the present instead of the past. You can only do your best with the time and resources you have. Don’t make excuses, just be resourceful.

While in no way perfect, the video ended up being short, simple and fun. Also check out the written story by Brian MacQuarrie here.

Last week I was assigned to shoot with Olympic Judo athlete Kayla Harrison. This girl is amazing. She’s been doing Judo since she was a little kid and quickly became a national and international contender. She’s 21 now, and has two world medals, winning gold and bronze in consecutive World Judo Championships. This was my first glimpse of the sport of Judo and it’s really interesting visually. It’s really a full-contact sport, almost more like wrestling than martial arts. Also, she can throw full-grown men over her shoulder.

But her story, while inspiring, is complicated. She’s dealt with challenges that are becoming more and more familiar in youth sports: sexual abuse by a coach. She is not just physically strong, but also emotionally and mentally. Now, having left all that pain behind, she is looking forward to the 2012 Olympic games in London, and on August 2, plans to be the first American to ever win the gold medal in Judo.

Check out her story here….

I shot this with the Canon 7D. The only lenses available to me were a 16-35mm and a 55mm (old Nikon with a Canon mount). I definitely wish I had had a longer lens because shooting details of such intense physical action was difficult. Getting too close proved to be dangerous several times. Having never shot martial arts of any kind, it was a steep learning curve. My strategy ended up being to just let the match unfold, rather than think in sequences. Greater shot variety and more voices would have made this piece better all-around.

Last week, I got a day-turn assignment to shoot with a 9-year-old girl at Children’s Hospital who had six organs transplanted at once. After a rare, non-malignant tumor encased her esophagus and abdominal organs, this major transplant — and first esophagus transplant ever in the region — was the only way to save her life. They waited more than a year for donor organs. She has been sick, in and out of hospitals, since she was 4-years-old.

I shot and edited this video with Alannah and her grandmother the day before they were heading home after three months in the hospital recovering. The doctors say she will have a normal life, which is really incredible.

I had the privilege of working on this story for The Boston Globe with writer Billy Baker and photographer Yoon S. Byun. These kids are amazing. They’ve had every obstacle thrown in their path — poverty, familial language barriers, abuse, their father’s suicide, living in a rough neighborhood, and much more than you could ever imagine — and yet they are top students at one of the best exam high schools in Boston.

Please, take some time to watch this video and then go read the article to go more in depth. The boys, their family, their mentor and their teen center have received an outpouring of support from the school, friends, and strangers. It’s an amazing experience as a journalist to see a story make such an impact…

A couple of my friends who got married recently had one of those endlessly fun photobooth studios at their reception. Of course, it yielded this, the best family portrait ever…

L-R: Nadine (my brother’s girlfriend), my brother Charlie, my mother Jane, me, and my dad Charlie.

(Please read this thorough and accurate article about the raid of Occupy Boston from The Boston Globe. The following is just my account of it and I was doing some serious multitasking, shooting mobile videos, plus pictures and b-roll. All images © Copyright 2011 by Lauren Frohne and/or The Boston Globe, please do not reproduce these images without permission.)

After Occupy Boston lost a court hearing on Wednesday that removed the temporary restraining order barring their eviction, the Mayor strongly urged the protestors to leave Dewey Square. On Thursday morning, December 8, the city issued a mandate that all occupiers leave the park, which is part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston’s financial district, by midnight.

The movement’s newest slogan was emblazoned on the wall of a building adjacent to Dewey Square around 10 p.m. Thursday.

Instead, thousands of supporters showed up. When the police announced just before 3 a.m. on Friday morning that they would not clear the park, the crowd swelled into Atlantic Avenue shutting down the street. The protestors even moved tents and lawn chairs into the street. Eventually, around 3:30 a.m., two protestors were arrested for refusing to move their tent (with them in it) out of the street.

As midnight approached, a protestor held his ground in the park.

Protestors took over Atlantic Avenue in downtown Boston early Friday morning.

Throughout the day on Friday, protestors and supporters trickled from the park, and by early Saturday morning only approximately 75 remained, despite reports that police would clear the park in the early morning hours. A few exhausted protestors were even seen holding signs asking to just be evicted already.

At exactly 5 a.m., police vans arrived swiftly and the park was soon surrounded by 250 Boston Police officers. They were not dressed in riot gear, and they began to quickly dismantle the remaining tents and structures in the park. Afterward, around 5:45 a.m. Saturday, the remaining protestors were arrested in the park without violence. Few images of the arrests exist because police pushed all the credentialed media into a small space on the sidewalk, threatening arrest to anyone who moved from the area, and blocked the view of what was going in the park with police vans and about two dozen officers.

Within a half hour, police had cleared most of the tents from the park and piled the refuse onto the sidewalk, ready to be placed in garbage trucks waiting at the curb on Atlantic Ave.

A small group of approximately 40 protestors waited to be arrested as police pushed media back to the sidewalk and later obstructed the media’s view with police vehicles and officers.

A sign at an entrance to the park remained as police began to arrest protestors and police officers filled the newly emptied park.

After clearing the park, police moved protestors, and media alike, away from the park to the sidewalk in front of South Station and remained in formation for several hours.

The remaining protestors taunted police, asking them why they became police officers and how they sleep at night. Some officers responded but did not engage the protestors.

It was a long couple of days for everyone at Occupy Boston — protestors, media and police. By the time police arrived, it seemed that many of the protestors were relieved that the eviction was finally happening and were ready to be either arrested peacefully or to the leave the park willingly. And although it was sad and frustrating (and maybe infuriating) for some of the occupiers, many seemed ready to move on to the next phase of their movement — whatever that may be.

Media, protestors and police stayed through the morning and the “re-beautification” of Dewey Square began swiftly after garbage and other refuse was removed from the park.

My final picture, taken (with Instagram) from the 12th floor of the Intercontinental Hotel on Atlantic Ave. at around 7:30 a.m.

If you have time, check out some of our Boston Globe videos from the past couple of days at Occupy Boston, including this:

The Globe has been covering Whitey Bulger for more than a decade — from his time as a petty criminal in the Southie projects to the discovery of his role as an FBI informant and alleged murderer, charged with 19 murders, and beyond.

When he was caught in Santa Monica after 16 years on the run in June, Globe reporters Shelley Murphy and Maria Cramer began the gruesome task of piecing together what his life with his girlfriend Catherine Greig was like through the years. Three photographers shot video along the way, many people were interviewed, and lots of b-roll was gathered.

At the beginning of October, I was given all of this content in order to make a video story with it. I interviewed the reporters in a documentary style, transcribed everything, built a script, and eventually came out with this:

A hefty undertaking, but with the inspiration of hundreds of documentaries that address events and people in the past, I’m stoked with how it came out.

I made my way down to Occupy Wall Street this past Saturday. They were participating in a day of worldwide action protesting the state of the global economic system, and marched from Wall Street to Washington Square Park.

Later that night, I watched the General Assembly debate the possibility of expanding their occupation to Washington Square. It was pretty incredible to watch thousands of people have a rational conversation — using the people’s microphone — about the costs and benefits of staying in the park after it closed at midnight. Police had already begun to gather and threatened the arrest of anyone who stayed past close. Some people gave good reasons for beginning the expanded occupation, despite the possibility of arrest, while other believed they didn’t have the numbers on that particular night. At around 11:45 P.M. the assembly decided to table the discussion for the next day and left the park peacefully. I guess that’s what they call ‘direct democracy’.

I think what struck me the most was the diversity — racial, ethnic, age, socio-economic, gender, everything. Like a seemingly grungy young kid in a tie-dyed tank top linked arms with a mother pushing a stroller. It was incredible.

Here are some pictures from the march:

The evening’s General Assembly in the drained fountain in Washington Square Park.

A couple of weeks ago, I was sent out to Brockton, Mass., to shoot the installation of photographer Mary Beth Meehan‘s work from her project “City of Champions.” The project looks deeply into the character of Brockton — where Meehan grew up — which has changed drastically in the past 20 years from a suburban haven to a town plagued by drugs, crime, and unemployment.

Her images have been blown up and printed on banners — some of which are up to 20-feet wide — and hung on buildings in downtown Brockton. It was a cool sight to see the installation, and the images are intricate and thoughtful.

And, I had to pull double-duty on the shoot: pictures for the print paper and a video for bostonglobe.com.

Andrea LeBlanc, the widow of a 9/11 victim, believes that revenge is not the answer. The first in The Boston Globe’s 8-part series on the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. Camera, interview and editing by Lauren Frohne/Globe Staff.

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

Below are a couple more videos I edited for The Boston Globe’s 9/11 anniversary package:

For many young Americans, the 9/11 terrorist attacks sparked a desire to serve their country. Video by David Filipov/Globe Staff and Shawn Baldwin for The Boston Globe; Edited by Lauren Frohne/Globe Staff.

10 years later, Globe reporter David Filipov, who lost his father in the terrorist attacks of 9/11, returns to Afghanistan. The second in The Boston Globe’s 8-part series on the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. Video by David Filipov/Globe Staff and Shawn Baldwin for The Globe; Graphics by Patrick Garvin & Javier Zarracine, Globe Staff; Edited by Lauren Frohne/Globe Staff

September 11th has a special meaning to Boston because two of those fatal flights left from Boston Logan Airport. Personally, before moving here and working at the Globe, I didn’t give much thought to that because of my own personal ties to New York City. We have some really compelling stories in the works from people who have experienced a lot of change or who have never told their story before.

In the meanwhile, we’ve been running other related stories leading up to our big 9/11 package that runs for 8 days beginning next Sunday, Sept. 4.

This story, which was shot by staff photographer Joanne Rathe (while also shooting beautiful stills) and I edited, offers a look into America’s Camp, a youth summer camp in Massachusetts that caters to kids who lost their parents on September 11, 2001. This is the 10th and last year for the camp, so the kids — many of whom were only about 5 or 8 years old at the time — are dealing with the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 and the end of the camp that helped them through so much emotional duress. These kids are so articulate and reflective about what they’ve gone through and how they’ve coped with their tragic losses at such young ages, it was really tough to whittle down.

(Larger version here)

In the Globe video department, we’ve been pretty deeply immersed in preparing stories for our 9/11 10th anniversary package that launches next week. But, I was able to take a lighthearted break from some solemn storytelling to shoot this awesome Red Bull event at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

World-renowned cliff divers competing in the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series dove off the rood of the ICA building into the Boston Harbor. Pretty epic, to say the least!

Check out the video!

(Larger size here)

I went to Spain at the end of April to visit my dear friend Emily Yount. She has been living in southern Spain since September, teaching English in a small farming community outside of Sevilla. I chose the week before Easter because, more than anything, I wanted to photograph Semana Santa in Sevilla:

“During Holy Week, the city is crowded with residents and visitors, drawn by the spectacle and atmosphere. The impact is particularly strong for the Catholic community. The processions are organized by hermandades and cofradías, religious brotherhoods. During the processions, members precede the pasos (of which there are up to three in each procession) dressed in penitential robes, and, with few exceptions, hoods. They may also be accompanied by brass bands.”

Unfortunately, it rained throughout the week. According to this article, no one can remember a year when this many pasos have been canceled in one Easter week.

A sad sight: chairs all set up and no paso to watch.

We spent a lot of the week hunting Nazarenos — the hermanos from the brotherhoods who act as the penitents wearing robes and masks — and documenting how they are “just like us”!

They find safety in numbers.

They wait for the bus.

They wait out the rain under a bridge.

But, with Easter Sunday also came the sun — if I were a religious person, I might say it was appropriate, or make some kind of pun (Son/sun?) — and we were able to watch a pretty epic, and crowed, paso. You could tell that everyone had a bit of “paso fever” since they had waited all week to attend one!

Pictures:

You can check out the whole set of images from the Domingo de Resurreccíon paso HERE!.

In between the time I was waiting for iPhone videos to compress, export and upload, I was able to shoot some stills during the start and finish of the 2011 Boston Marathon.

Here are some scenes from Hopkinton and everyone looking cold but spritely that morning…

When I got to the finish in Copley Square, I posted up just past the finish line, where people walk off the race and seek sustenance and loved ones, some more successfully than others. The general sentiment was a combination of relief, pain and pure joy…

My first experience covering the Boston Marathon for The Globe, and my challenge was to use only an iPhone. I shot, edited and posted videos from the field using only that device, while also tweeting pictures (when I could remember to). My synopsis: It brings multitasking to a new, almost debilitating, extreme.

Here are some of the videos that made it to Boston.com:

The athletes arrive
http://bcove.me/x82919q8

A windy start for 2011 Boston Marathon
http://bcove.me/fm62zari

(I edited and posted the above video within the hour it took for us to get from Hopkinton to Copley Square.)

Runners welcomed back in Boston
http://bcove.me/cbf84qnv

In general, it was a great learning experience. The iPhone is the perfect tool for event coverage because you can do so much with just one device while you’re in the field. Slow 3G mobile service was an issue, as well as battery life. I wasn’t able to publish from the athlete’s village because of poor service and then I almost missed the start of the women’s elite race because I needed to charge the battery.

The editing software could also be a bit less clunky. I really take pride in the polish of each video I produce and you just can’t polish with the available software for the iPhone. But really, making highly produced videos isn’t what the iPhone is for. It’s for getting decent content up fast, so it helped to remind myself of that when shooting. I used an app called ReelDirector, which I hear is better than iMovie, but it is very basic, requires several steps of processing and compression to select and trim clips (so, lots of waiting, relative to clip length, so keep your recording time short!). I really just wish it would allow for more precise trimming — it only lets you cut on each second, which in video can be an eternity. Adding titles and lower thirds couldn’t be easier, though, and they look pretty slick.

I found the best use for the iPhone was to shoot one thing, like the start of one of the race waves, put a Globe bumper on it, export, and have it posted to the website within 5 minutes. Attempting to edit interviews and build a story can feel as taxing as shooting with my 7D, transcoding, editing and publishing, but condensed into one little stress block. It’s good for one quote or one piece of action. Maybe 3 clips, simply strung together with iMovie or ReelDirector, and then move on.

Content gathering with the iPhone can also be very difficult because you can’t compartmentalize: I’m shooting video right now, I’m shooting pictures right now, then I’m going somewhere and will just edit everything. Instead it was: I’m shooting video, while editing video, while taking pictures, while tweeting pictures, while attempting to make a pano and decide if the quality is good enough to post, while answering emails and text messages (I was carrying 3 types of phones), while keeping track of failed uploads, etc. As much as I tried to shoot then edit then post, there was just too much and not enough going on at the same time. I think this is where keeping it simple really comes in. DON’T COLLECT. I think that was my downfall, because the content becomes just too hard to keep track of. Just create and post, create and post.

What helped enormously, in a technical way, was this:

An iPhone audio rig by OWLE. It is made of metal which adds weight and reduces shake while hand-holding the iPhone. It also creates a mount for a microphone or light, adds a wide-angle adapter for the camera lens and provides a place for a tripod cleat. Lots of people were interested in what I had going on there (including this guy, who came up to me to see the rig and I got all flustered. He was running the race.).

But honestly, because it was a sunny and cold morning, I just found it challenging to review and edit my clips, to use the touch screen with cold hands, and also to use other features like shooting panoramic pictures. It was just too hard to see the screen in bright daylight!

All in all, it was a decent experience. I learned a lot about how to best use the device, its strengths and weaknesses, and I look forward to the next opportunity to use the iPhone to its full potential.

This was my first really fun project since starting at the Globe. I collaborated with staff photographer Yoon Byun to create this video about the Celtics super fans, who have become famous at the TD Garden for their antics on the megatron. Yoon shot portraits of each and I shot interviews and b-roll to put together this feature.

Although this is the kind of project that I would love to spend a couple weeks on to perfect and really let the creative juices flow, I was on deadline. Shot and transcoded Wednesday night, done by Friday afternoon. Newspapers, right!

I shot all of the video on a Canon 7D (for the interviews I used my Nikon 55mm macro that I love). Audio was a challenge because we had to set up the 9-foot green backdrop right in the middle of the concourse in the TD Garden. It was loud. I used a wired lav connected to my Zoom H4N, synced in post using Pluraleyes (aka: the greatest app ever created), and the audio ended up being not only usable but really high quality. Yoon and I needed different light set-ups, so we alternated: portraits, interview, interview, portraits. Pretty flawless.

Eric Moskowitz also wrote a great story that tied everything together. Hoo-rah, multimedia teams, bridging the gap between print and online!

FULL CREDITS:
Camera and sound: Lauren Frohne
Additional camera: Sopan Deb
Portraits: Yoon S. Byun
Editing: Lauren Frohne

As part of a worldwide plot to hold giant pillow fights in public spaces, hundreds (maybe a thousand) people gathered at the Cambridge Common in Cambridge, Mass., to promote camaraderie through pillow fighting.

One of the “Banditos Misteriosos,” the Boston event organizers, who would only identify himself as “Bandito E” said that the event is a part the “urban playground movement”, which promotes the idea that there is “more to a city than bars and restaurants,” and encourages people to use outdoor spaces to interact in new and unique ways.

This was a difficult event to photograph, with so much going on and so many people, but after a few minutes, I decided my goal was simply to capture the pure joy that was happening all around me.

Here are some moments from Saturday’s event (and a video at the bottom)…

See the whole set HERE!

Saturday afternoon, a group of Libyans living in Boston gathered in Copley Square to show their support for the U.S. and other foreign countries intervening in Libya. I talked to several of the demonstrators who said they would prefer there not to be bombs dropped at all, but if it is going to happen, they would rather the target be Colonel Qaddafi’s forces and not civilians. Many of the demonstrators were young Libyans whose families and relatives are still living in Libya.

A lot has happened since the last time I updated my blog. Namely, I was hired as a multimedia producer for The Boston Globe and moved to New England.

I’ve been busy getting my feet wet in the world of a major metro with a budding video department, but I found time to go to a crucial Boston event this weekend: the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Southie. South Boston is kind of rough neighborhood, but families flock to the little town to celebrate the deep-seeded Irish tradition of drinking in the early afternoon.

Crowds pouring onto the Red Line

Irish storm trooper

A festive Darth Vader

“Falun Dafa is good”

Public servants

Green beads

Creative drinking