For any storyteller, there’s an immense benefit to serving on both sides of the lens.

Sgt. Matthew Callahan is one of those storytellers, a Marine who was deployed in Afghanistan and then returned as a combat correspondent with the Public Affairs office for the Department of Defense. For his work covering military operations in the field, Callahan was named both 2017 Military Photographer and Military Videographer of the Year, the first time both awards have been awarded to the same individual.

After breaking his leg during his deployment to Afghanistan in 2010 and recovering alongside other members of his Wounded Warrior detachment, Callahan had a camera placed in his hands. Callahan, who spoke with Susan Ashworth of Government Video about his experience, will give a Government Video Expo keynote discussion titled “Persistence of Vision” on Wednesday, Nov. 28 at 3 p.m. in the Government Video Theater.

GV:Tell us a little about your background as a service member and as a photographer/videographer? Were you taking photographs before you entered the military?

Sgt. Matthew Callahan: I enlisted in the Marine Corps as infantry member and had my first deployment to Afghanistan in 2010 where I broke my leg in Helmand Province. I snapped it jumping a wadi, or canal, while on patrol in 2010. I was the first of many people who hurt themselves [in that same location].

I was transferred to the Wounded Warrior detachment. It took a year to get recovered and in that time I started to do on-the-job training with Public Affairs. I had no experience with photography at that point. I learned the craft when they put a camera in my hands.

I did not return to Afghanistan after my injury, but since I became a photographer [and] videographer, I travelled to several countries. Most notably, in 2017 I deployed on a Marine Expeditionary Unit and spent five months in Syria with an artillery battery as they supported Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve in the destruction of ISIS. Specifically, we supported the Syrian Democratic Force's taking of Raqqa, Syria, ISIS’ de facto capital.

GV:What do you think it is about your still images and videos that resonate with viewers?

Callahan: I think when you think about any kind of profession, there’s the wave tops — people’s perception of that profession. But when you dig beyond that and you find, no matter what you’re doing, there are these little idiosyncrasies, this little bit of culture you take from everywhere all around you.

What I’ve tried to do with my images for the Marine Corps is to take those little things you take for granted: the 5 pounds of crap in your pocket or you sleeping on a dirt floor. The things that people generally don’t think about.

I’ve been fortunate to be able to shed a light on the smaller moments. There’s a place for the big rah-rah moments as well. But there’s a need for the human moments too.

GV:What are some of the challenges you faced in the field?

Callahan: Let me talk about what worked well first. What’s easy in a garrison environment is that you have more control over what you’re doing. You can go back and shoot it again. [In comparison] when you’re in a deployment, what you have is what you’ve got, so you better be ready. You’ve got to be able to carry 40 to 50 pounds of gear and a tripod and a weapon and other things. That was challenging.

It’s about learning along the way and adapting to the situation you’re in. You do your job, maintain the gear, make sure it’s clean. That’s all you have with you.

GV:What was your reaction to being named the first service member awarded with both Military Photographer and Videographer of the Year honors?

Callahan: It was really exciting and humbling to win both. And I think on a bigger scale it’s almost a proof of concept in a lot of ways. [Winning both the photography and videography award] illustrates the possibility that not only can you dip into multiple disciplines but you can excel at them and do them simultaneously.

GV:Is there a favorite photo or video segment that you feel tells the story just the way you wanted to?

Callahan: When it comes to stills, some of my favorites images are the ones we talked about: those quiet, silly, stupid moments that you take for granted or are asleep for; the day-to-day or the in-between. That resonates with me and also captures what these folks were going through. It lets people see what they are seeing. It takes you out of the world of two dimensions and into the realm of three dimensions. It humanizes them.

GV:What kind of camera do you use in your work?

Callahan: I use a DSLR for both still and video work. The drone I used was a DJI Phantom 4 Pro Plus on deployment. It was one of two systems used for a counter-UAS system we had.

GV:What do you hope attendees will walk away with from your GV Expo session?

Callahan: One theme has to do with telling stories and making content. The best thing you can do is to consider the perspective of someone who has no idea of what story you are trying to tell. Try to step into a stranger’s shoes who has no experience with [the situation you’re photographing].

The other is learning the technical stuff, the storytelling stuff, the billions of elements that come into telling a story. It’s incremental for anyone who has had any success: there’s no single workshop, no single person to teach you. Instead it’s keeping your mind open and taking little, tiny bits of info into your toolbox.

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Even as NASA’s InSight Lander is hard at work 33.9 million miles way on Mars, members of its imaging and educational team will be working just as hard a bit closer to home.

A group of NASA engineers, imaging specialists and distance learning leaders will descend on the Government Video Expo this year to talk about the kind of work the space and aeronautical agency is doing when it comes to advances and experiments in imaging.

Sessions and keynote addresses delivered by experts from NASA are sprinkled across the agenda at this week’s show, including an insider’s look at the agency’s most recent high-definition challenge: recording and broadcasting video in 8K from the International Space Station.

[Read: Space Station Goes 8K]

At the Wednesday morning session titled “NASA’s Imaging Experiments and Advances,” NASA Imagery Experts Program Manager Rodney Grubbs will discuss how astronauts from NASA and the European Space Agency are recording in 8K their efforts to advance DNA sequencing, study space-grown vs Earth-grown plants, and shoot off indoor water jets. Video is being shot via a Helium 8K camera by digital camera company Red. Viewers are taken on a guided tour of the space station — as it orbits the planet at 17,000 mph — and get a glimpse of the station’s subzero space freezer and giant robotic outdoor arm.

“This new footage showcases the story of human spaceflight in more vivid detail than ever before,” said Dylan Mathis, communications manager for the International Space Station Program when the first 8K video was released in November. “The world of camera technology continues to progress, and seeing our planet in high fidelity is always welcome.”

NASA continues the conversation when the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Office of Education shares insider knowledge on how the agency uses instructional design models and different distance-learning technologies to facilitate virtual learning.

In the Wednesday session “NASA Goddard Distance Learning Models,” leaders of the agency’s distance learning and educational arm will give a preview of ADDIE, a framework for instructional design that NASA uses. Members of the Goddard team will talk about how ADDIE is implemented at NASA and how it is being paired with other learning models — such as webinar platforms, learning management system and videoconferencing — and how this helps the agency facilitate meaningful learning.

On Thursday, NASA will offer attendees a closer look at how it connects with its viewership in the session “Digital Engagement: How NASA Does Video.” The agency has 21 million followers on its digital platforms and retains their interest with a constantly updated series of videos, images, profiles and interviews.

Take the recent Mars landing, for example, where the world watched along with NASA engineers as they endured the so-called seven minutes of terror — the seven minutes that would determine whether the InSight Mars lander would land successfully on the Red Planet and send back images to Earth. After a journey of more than six months, the NASA InSight lander returned its first image from the surface of Mars. NASA gave viewers a 360-degree minute-by-minute view of the Mission Control Center as NASA engineers watched for word and showed viewers the first images via an instrument context camera mounted on the lander.

At this Thursday afternoon session at the GV Expo, NASA representatives will look at how the agency engages its digital audience into science and engineering topics — including live video, replays, 360-degree views, high-res illustrations, and recorded video and audio from the International Space Station.

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WASHINGTON--While private and public sector organizations are rightfully enamored with the distribution potential of social media, the number of eyeballs that can see a production featuring a government agency is much higher still with television distribution.

At the 2018 Government Video Expo, Nov. 28-29 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., Russ Hodge, President of 3 Roads Communications in Frederick, Md., will reveal his production company’s success stories and best practices in partnering government agencies with television production companies. His presentation takes place in the GV Expo Theater, Thursday, Nov. 29 at 10:40 a.m.

Government Video editor Tom Butts recently talked with Russ about his company and what he will discuss at the event.

Government Video:What do you plan on covering in your presentation?

Russ Hodge: I want to talk about how organizations communicate their message to the general public through television. A lot of government agencies produce a lot of content and have great stories to tell. Several years ago we thought about how we could help government agencies tell their message on TV.

Even though there is such a huge focus on social media now, in terms of sheer eyeballs, the number of people that you reach through television is still far superior. And of course all that material can then be repurposed online too. So the thrust of my presentation is, how agencies can use TV as kind of a message enhancer. And I'm not even talking about controlling the editorial, or anything else. but if there are stories from different agencies that would fit on Lifetime or History Channel, for example, I think that's to the agency's benefit.

GV:Are you talking about ads, PSAs, narrative programming, actual 30 minute, 60 minute drama, documentaries? What type of formats are you talking about?

RH: All of the above. Right now a lot of agencies do PSAs, which we produce--as a matter of fact, we have one out right now with Gary Sinise for the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. That's certainly an effective way to reach people, but I'm also talking more about the narrative programs as well as--and I hate to use the term “reality TV”--but more “unscripted programming,” as it’s called.

For instance, if you were the TSA, why couldn't you be doing a series, “Tales From The TSA,” about the various things that they discover in the airport security lines.?

GV: Can you give me examples of this type of programming that's going on right now?

RH: There really isn’t much. We are currently producing a piece on the Centennial of Fort Benning (Ga.) that will be distributed as a documentary, probably through public TV. It's nothing that's earth shattering, but it would certainly appeal to all of the millions of history and military buffs out there. So, that does have an audience.

A lot of these organizations don't even realize the kind of great stories that they have, and what it is they do. People tend to get bogged down so much in the day-to-day, and the kind of back and forth in terms of what to do, and messaging, and everything else. They don't realize that they themselves may be sitting on kind of a treasure trove of stories to tell.

GV:Do these agencies have budgets set aside for this? Have you found that they're increasing their budgets? Where does the money come from?

RH: It's a great question, Unfortunately, in my life I never find anybody who is increasing their budget to spend on me. But I don't think they necessarily even have to. I think they can develop partnerships with production companies and with cable networks, for example.

Look, all programming, all movies, it's all story driven, it's all human driven. And a lot of these places have really good stories to tell, if they are presented in the right way. Remember the phrase, “there are a million stories in the naked city?” Well, it's kind of funny to say, but there are a million stories in each of these agencies.

And maybe it's not right for everybody, but for instance, for the Army to produce a documentary about Fort Benning's Centennial is a perfectly legitimate thing. And to do it in documentary style, following broadcast documentary, public TV standards, is great for the product itself, and for the distribution because then you're not just talking to the internal audience. You're getting that out to millions of people to see.

GV:What channels, networks is your content being shown on at this point?

RH: Our first line usually is to distribute through public TV, and there are a lot of reasons for that, not the least of which is the demographics of the public TV viewer are really the type of audience that people want to hit. They are high income, high education, they are decision makers. They are the best demographic watching television, with the possible exception of CNBC.

The public TV viewer is the type of person particularly if you're an agency head, you want to influence decision makers.

Also, editorially, you know the program about your agency will be in good company. It's not going to be out there with “Keeping Up With The Kardashians,” or “Jersey Shore,” for example.

GV:Do you find that the political environment has any effect on whether agencies feel the need to do more of this type of thing?

RH: Not overtly, in the sense that, "Gee, this is happening right now. We need to do this."

But I do think these agencies have realized the impact that television--including reality TV--has had on electing the President. And the day-to-day drama that is going on in Washington, that is covered breathlessly by all the cable networks. I think they should be realizing that it's a very viable medium to get their message out too.

GV:Well, there are federal agencies that continue to do their mission and everything regardless of who is in power, right? They have a message to get out, and it doesn't really matter who's in charge, unless it has high impact. But for the most part, these agencies just continue on, for better or worse, regardless of which party is in power, would you say?

RH: That is correct. Yeah. So, that's why I don't think it's necessarily like, "Oh, Trump is President, or whatever. We need to be doing a TV show."

GV:Right.

RH: However, I think that you can certainly see the power of television on this administration.

GV:Do budget cuts ever come into effect, where an agency feels like “we need to get a message out there, so we can continue to show how relevant we are to the public?”

RH: In my experience, no one has ever said to me, "Hey, they're about ready to cut our budget. We need to do a TV show." However, I think it's very much a prophylactic. They're not gonna cut the budget of an agency that they're seeing on TV, who's doing great work saving lives week in and week out.

GV:Do you find that a lot of agencies have their own crew that are doing their own productions? Or is it mainly the agencies that don't have those types of facilities that recruit your services?

RH: It's kind of a combination of the two. Frankly, government is not set up to produce TV programming. You really need an outside entity that can act as kind of the arbiter, and who has the final say on things, just because the messaging points will bog down what the program is at a certain point. But having said that, a lot of them do have in-house [video production], but a lot of times it's contracted out. We do a lot of that stuff too.

And some of the people are very competent, some of them do come from the networks. But it's a little bit of a different way of thinking. I would say almost flip it on its ear. Do the TV show, and you'll have plenty of content for your social media, and everything else--and very well produced professional content, rather than producing things perhaps for social media, that might fit your message points, but might be unwatchable for the vast majority of the public.

GV:How does the process pan out? For example, an agency will say, "We have a certain message we want to provide." And you basically are assigned to execute it, and give them ideas? Story ideas, and things like that?

RH: It can be, but it almost works better the other way. If the agency says, "Hey, you know what, we have a lot of stories here. We've compiled 8-10 stories here, and we were thinking... “would there be any interest in terms of a cable network doing a series about us?" And the producer says, "Well, what are the stories?" And then if they outline the stories, and you can see that there is kind of a treasure trove, and there is something there, that's a good way for the agencies to get started.

And again the point about messaging... unfortunately, agencies tend to get bogged down into the minutia of message points. I’ll go back to my example about the TSA: We're not doing anything with TSA, or Homeland Security. But if you are TSA, and you have managed to foil half a dozen hijackings, that's the message you want to get out. It's the headline message, not all the 30-some messages that the agency wants.

So, it can be a bit intimidating for the agencies because they probably would have to give up some control over the final product and the final message, which of course everyone is loathe to do. But I think that it serves a much greater goal, which is to make a much larger audience aware of what it is that they do.

GV:Tell us a little bit about 3 Roads, its history, its background, and how it evolved into this particular sector, this market sector.

RH: We’re celebrating our 25th anniversary this year.

GV:Congratulations.

RH: Thank you. I used to produce a lot of the political shows in Washington, including the McLaughlin Group and a bunch of other shows like that. I won an Emmy Award for a political show called “Off the Record” I was doing for Fox at the time, and they canceled the show a month before we received the award. So I decided that I wanted to be out on my own, kind of controlling my own content, and my own destiny.

So, I started 3 Roads. My first client was “Politically Incorrect” with Bill Maher. And then we kind of built it from there, getting into the corporate, non-profit, government sector as well. We're not like any other production company, certainly in the Washington area, and probably even nationally because we do series and documentaries for TV but we also do corporate work, government work. We just got a new contract from Department of Interior.

It all kind of works hand in hand. And as the media kind of all comes together, the story telling techniques that you use in television are very similar to what you use online, and corporately, in government, and everything else. One really plays off the other very well. They work as a very good balance.

And as we're very fond of putting in our proposals, we use the same equipment, and staff in the production of our government videos, as we do in the production of our TV shows, and documentaries.

GV:Do you shoot in 4K?

RH: Actually, we do everything in 4K now. We've been in 4K for about three years now. The first project we did in 4K was for the Army Corp of Engineers on a project about coho salmon out in California.

Shooting in 4K gives our content a longer lifespan, as the world makes a transition to 4K.

GV:You also have to understand that some of your material is not still gonna be shown on television. It may be shown on larger screens.

RH: Exactly, so, it's helpful for that. Frankly, there is another benefit which most people don't even realize, which is you can push (zoom) in about 75%. So, we can just do wide shots even on interviews.

What's interesting to me is over the years, is that post production has become more important than production now. And I don't think most people realize that.

GV:Why is that?

RH: It's just because post production can do so much more than it used to.And it's like everything else, the technology has enabled this. And I don't pretend to understand the technology, but I can tell you the implications. It's funny we were doing a documentary in conjunction with the Society of Motion Picture Television and Engineers.

GV:What other advice would you give to government agencies aspiring to use TV?

RH: Even if the agency just needs a five minute explainer video about what they do, I think they would be better served by hiring a consultant to help them draft the RFP, and to figure out what it is exactly that they do, or want to do.

We do this with corporate clients all the time, and non-profits, where you go in there, and you say, "Okay, we'll spend X amount of time." And it's almost like a therapy session. And you get everybody together, and they decide what they want to do, so, that when they put out a bid, they understand what it is that they will be getting, and what it is that they're after.

And sometimes the consultant might say, "Hey, you know, it's a great idea to the five minute video. Or to do a weekly two minute social media video. But did you ever think that maybe for a little bit more money maybe you could do it, and we could have a TV show that gets nationally distributed, and then be able to repurpose the media from that anyway?

What I'm saying is it's anathema to government because they like to just put out the contract, and everybody responds. But unfortunately most of the people in contracting don't know what it is that we actually do, and they're buying paper clips one week, and computers the next, and then all of a sudden video, and/or TV programs, and they don't necessarily know. So, I guess, what I'm saying is it's the old “measure it twice, cut once” type of thing.

Top photo: A scene from a PSA for the Library of Congress' Veterans History Project, produced by 3 Roads Communications. 

Click here to register for Government Video Expo, Nov. 28-29 in Washington, D.C.

Editors note: Updated, Nov. 7.

WASHINGTON--Government Video Expo, the Mid-Atlantic’s largest video trade show, is partnering with SMPTE for an all-day series of tutorials on the basics of IP for media, including a look at SMPTE-2110, the new standard for video transport over IP. 

“SMPTE in DC: Essential Technology Advances for Media Pros” will take place Wednesday, Nov. 28., and you can register to attend here. For more information on the show, visit www.gvexpo.com. 

Here is the agenda:

9–9:30 a.m.

• Open, Welcome and an Introduction to Professional Video Over IP

Video over IP networks and the internet has existed for more than two decades. Why is SMPTE developing Studio Video over IP (SVIP) — a new set of standards for video over IP? Why are they needed? What is the difference between streaming video and SVIP?

Peter Wharton, President, Happy Robotz

9:30-10:30 

• High Dynamic Range: The Best TV Picture You’ve Ever Seen

This HDR presentation will introduce HDR and discuss HDR standards, terminology and the history of dynamic range. The advanced part of the presentation will cover HDR transfer curves and comparing HDR profiles, as well as compatibility with SDR displays and the consumer adoption of UHD HDR TVs. Although Ultra HD and HDR are usually mentioned together, high-dynamic range is not limited to UHD. HDTV can also benefit from a dramatic improvement in picture quality. HDR offers a more realistic picture, similar to the way we see things in real life. In the future, it’s likely that multiple HDR profiles, optimized for either live TV or post-produced movies, will be utilized.

John Humphrey, Vice President Business Development, Hitachi

11:00-Noon

• Building Scalable Facilities Using SMPTE 2110

The new set of SMPTE standards (ST 2110) provides a technical underpinning for building large-scale media facilities with uncompromised picture quality and low latency, with scalability to large image formats (4K, 8K and beyond) and advanced color depths and spaces. This talk is an overview of the new standards, and also covers the practical details of implementing large-scale systems including control APIs and network topology.

John Mailhot, Systems Architect for IP Convergence, Imagine Communications

Noon–1:00 p.m.

• How Smooth Are Your Packets? Implementation Realities and Best Practices of IP and PTP

This session is a tutorial on the what you need to know to understand the challenges we face in the process of making the transition to IP-based transport for video, audio and data. This move toward infrastructure efficiency has brought new technical challenges requiring broadcast engineers to gain an understanding of the technology and the latest techniques needed to monitor these signals.

The development of SMPTE ST 2110 is a suite of standards that provide encapsulation of uncompressed video within IP packets and for live IP production carrying separate streams of video, audio and data packets. This new standard also allows for SMPTE ST 2022-6 that provides encapsulation of uncompressed SDI as well as ST 2059 for system timing.

This session will take a look at the basic structure of the packets for ST 2022 and ST 2110, how variable delay across the network introduces jitter at the receiver and how measurements can be made on the stream. Latency in the network can produce out-of-order packets or corruption of the data causing packets to be dropped. Therefore, it is important to monitor the stream to ensure an error-free network to ensure transmission of the high bit rate media and how these errors affect the actual video and audio signal. For redundancy in the media network, SMPTE ST 2022-7 can be used to provide a Path One and a Path Two stream so that the downstream device can determine which path is the most appropriate to use. Measurement of the integrity of both paths is important and we will look at ways of monitoring the signal paths.

Karl Kuhn, Sr. Field Video Application Engineer, Tektronix

1–2 p.m.
LUNCH

2:00–3:00

Myths and Realities of Security of Professional Media Over Managed IP Networks

It seems that nearly every day there is another story about an IP network breach. Now "they" want to build professional media creation facilities with IP at the core? What are the risks? And, are the risks as bad as "they" say? Find out the facts about IP network security in this must-see SMPTE session at Government Video Expo!

Thomas Bause Mason, Director Standards Development, SMPTE

3:00–4:00

• The People Side: Managing Change and Skills Transition

The accelerating pace of technological change requires an increased focus on an organization's top resource — its people. This presentation will provide insights, practical approaches and tools for managing change, building and retaining a diverse and inclusive workforce.

John McCoskey, Industry Executive, Eagle Hill Consulting - Technology, Media & Entertainment

For more information and to register for GV Expo, visit www.gvexpo.com.