Don’t forget we’re journalists
Posted on June 18, 2007
“The publishers have sighted gold in them thar video player hills. All the newspaper people have piled into the wagons and are heading west toward Video, in the hopes of striking it rich. Imagine! Those pre-roll ads get higher rates than banners! Let’s do video!!!! The rush is on!”
Sound familiar??
Chuck Fadely’s all riled up about the push for video, any kind of video, on newspaper Web sites. Get a cheap camera, throw it in the reporter’s hands, post it on the Internet, and sit back and watch the page views climb, right?
Not so fast, says Fadely:
“Here’s the bottom line: to get good narrative video, with clean audio, that is engaging to the viewer, requires a full time video person, who has spent a year learning all the technical stuff about audio, cameras, and video editing programs. It takes about $10,000 in video and audio gear and another $10k in computer and software.”
Yeah, I know, we’ve heard this debate before. I don’t think they necessarily need “expensive” gear, but his point, I think, is that if management wants video, they have to invest in it, too.
What struck me most, however, was this quote BEFORE he got to the bottom line:
“Video is an emotional medium that grabs the viewers by the throat and makes ‘em weep, laugh, and scream. … Does your reporter video fit into that “magic” category? Does your ‘random’ video make you weep? (It makes me weep, but not because of the story…)”
Sure, an expensive camera and editing software will help make your video polished, but it’s your skills at a journalist that will turn that video clip into a story. (And using the audio tips below that outline what makes a great story apply perfectly here.)
Filling up your sites with talking heads or VOSOTs can be done quickly and easily (and expensively, too!). But these videos become shovelware that readers will eat up voraciously during breaking news but only casually on a daily basis.
It’s the power of the STORIES (even short user-submitted ones like this) that can differentiate newspaper Web sites from YouTube clips of a Panda sneezing.
Tell the story so you can see it
Posted on June 18, 2007
In Al Tompkin’s latest Poynter Centerpiece, he interviews Valerie Geller about how to write visually — an essential component to good audio storytelling. Geller should know; she’s worked with more than 500 radio stations in 27 countries and teaches radio journalists about visual writing. Here’s what I see as some of the highlights that we can apply to audio podcasts, slideshows and online video:
Says Geller:
“Many people do not think of radio as a visual medium. But a talented storyteller who writes with dazzling detail can tap into all of the imagery and emotion stored in the listener’s brain and make him feel that he really is “seeing” the story. While telling a story in just a few words is key in writing powerful news copy, the visual element is important to keep listeners engaged.”
What makes a great “story”?
“WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHY, WHEN, HOW, but also:
>> HOW does this story affect my listener?
>> HOW can I describe things more visually?
>> HOW can I make someone care about this?
>> HOW, or in what way, do I care about this?
>> HOW come I am putting this story on the air?
>> If a problem is presented, HOW can it be solved; what are the solutions?
>> HOW did this happen; could it have been prevented?
>> HOW else can I tell this story?
>> HOW would I tell it to a friend?
>> HOW can I make it better?
>> HOW would I tell it if my very life depended on not losing a listener?
>> and HOW would I put this on a demo to get another job if I needed one?”
And men and women don’t hear the story the same way, she explains:
“Visual descriptions are especially important to men. Brain research shows that men are more stimulated by visual details, and language that describes events with accurate visual elements tends to make them pay closer attention to a story.
Women, on the other hand, are emotive. If a woman can “feel” an emotional connection to a story, she is more likely to listen closely and take in the information. For a story to appeal to both men and women, it should deliver information using both visual and emotional language.”
‘Deja vu,’ I’ve seen this before
Posted on June 15, 2007
In the film Deja Vu with Denzel Washington, the government found a way to use many different satellite video images to pull together a 3-D image that took place exactly four days in the past.
One of those movies that requires you to ’suspend reality’ for a few hours, right?
Well, maybe not. Blaise Aguera y Arcas has co-created an application called Photosynth, which grafts together a variety of images into a multidimensional space that can be viewed from different angles and magnifications (minus the time travel portal … for now).
Search for commonly shot things such as Notre Dame, and the application builds it for you based on all the photos found on the Web.
Says Arcas:
“We can do things with the social environment; this is now taking data from everybody from the entire collective data, link them together and create something emergent that’s greater than the sum of its parts.”
Check out this video demo at TED and this one via Microsoft Live Labs to see it for yourself.
So you’ve seen how cool it is for photos. Do the same thing with video, and we’ve just made a seemingly far-fetched sci-fi movie a reality.
(TED link found via MultimediaShooter)
NPPA Multimedia Immersion Summit
Posted on June 5, 2007
These videos will give you goosebumps — they’re well done (I love the style of the first one), and they’re so inspiring.
I didn’t get to go to this — I’m not a professional photographer, so that limits my participation, I suppose. But you bet I’m going to share these overviews and anything else I can find about the NPPA summit (that link has a lot of good stuff) with the photo staff at my paper.
Thank you to Multimedia Shooter for posting these videos, a podcast and a list of new, cool and old tools.
Speaking of video …
Posted on June 5, 2007
I just realized I hadn’t blogged about this before. Silly me.
I’ve been up to my eyebrows in work the past couple months. And one of my major projects was working with Dayport to create a new video player for heraldtribune.com.
Other New York Times Regional Media Group papers are using Brightcove, a smart application to be sure. But one advantage this company gives us is that it integrates nicely with our content management system Publicus. And we custom-built a player to our specifications.
A couple of features I love:
>> Embed code for bloggers
>> Videos sorted by content
>> Related stories box will bring in both video and text content
>> Click the “latest headlines” button in the screen on the right side and you’ll get a list text headlines (I don’t know how much this is used, but I think it’s nice as a reader to move between media.)
Herald-Tribune Media Group includes the print paper, heraldtribune.com, and SNN News 6 — a 24-hour cable news channel. So we’re quite lucky to have a lot of short video reports without much extra work (just the Web posting production time). This will give us time, hopefully, to start producing some online-only content.
Video skills are in demand
Posted on June 5, 2007
I think it’s interesting to see what job postings are out there to keep an eye on the direction the industry is moving, and a friend pointed me to this one at the Florida Sun-Sentinel:
Online Visuals Producer - The South Florida Sun-Sentinel is seeking a journalist to join our multimedia newsroom in this newly created position. Recognized nationally for our print visuals and online graphics, we’re looking for someone who can help bring that success to video and multimedia at Sun-Sentinel.com. The ideal candidate will be experienced in video newsgathering and storytelling, and be able to develop skills in photographers and reporters. He/she will be responsible for the execution and programming of video, photography and multimedia on our site, our relationship with our TV partners, and the oversight of our five-member multimedia staff. We’re looking for someone with at least five years of experience in visual production, including deadline experience. Experience in television news is highly valued. Previous management experience is preferred. Demonstrated experience with AVID, Final Cut Pro or equivalent system is required. Photoshop and Flash experience are a plus. Candidates should submit a letter of interest, resume and a demo reel of no more than five work samples of different content and styles of presentation. Samples should be emailed as zip files, easily found on web pages or mailed on CD/DVD. Please send to: Kathy Pellegrino, Recruitment Editor, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 200 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301 or to kpellegrino@sun-sentinel.com. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Sun-Sentinel.com cover South Florida, a highly competitive media environment and a region with some of the country’s most exciting news events. Sun-Sentinel is part of Tribune Co., which has newspaper, online and television news operations in markets around the country including Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.
Again, it’s amazing how quickly these multimedia jobs are changing. It seems like video production at newspaper Web sites just started, although I guess it HAS been about 2 years or so already that it’s become more commonplace.
I don’t know anyone over at the Sun-Sentinel so I can’t really recommend this job, but it certainly does seem like a great opportunity for someone to move from a video producer to a management level position — while continuing to concentrate on the storytelling aspects of the project. And interesting, I think, that Flash (coding, etc.) and Photoshop experience are listed as “a plus.” Used to be a requirement for multimedia work. :)
What in the world?
Posted on May 4, 2007
Since I was sick this week, I missed most of the popular “Where in the world is Matt Lauer?” series on the Today Show.
So I headed over to today.msnbc.com to catch up.
And I was disappointed with this interactive, the first link I found off their homefront.
Firstly, the location markers on the interactive graphic are hard to see. Clicking on one, brings up a horizontal bar of video links. Click on one of those and grab your knitting needles. You’ll have time to make a sweater while you wait for the video to open in MSNBC.com’s beta video player. (Other videos on the site open up much faster, so I don’t know why these take so long.)
Yay! for it being in Flash, but Boo! for it being in a pop-up window that is divorced from the thoughtful design of the original package.
And I don’t get any other resources about these places? Just video reports from Matt’s TV appearances?
Then I scrolled to the last link on the page and found the series’ section front.
Aha … more information. Almost too much. This page is crammed full.
And now I’m confused. What’s the point of a separate interactive that showcases video when all the video already is listed on the section front?
Then I stumbled upon this interactive that has some fun games and such. But why isn’t it in the “interactive” box with the other graphic?
Text stories are a mess of information, too. I think it could have been better organized as blog entries, such as USATODAY.com’s Bly on the fly series.
Hmpf. If I’m having a hard time figuring this out and putting together pages like this is my full-time job, what’s a reader to think?
News videographer
Posted on May 1, 2007
Angela Grant has moved her blog from InTheCircle (via Blogger) to News Videographer (via WordPress).
“News Videographer is meant to fill the gap in training and provide a robust feedback forum. The main service of this blog is to provide honest critiques of online news videos and related multimedia content.”
Congrats, Angela. Looks great.
Free video tutorials
Posted on April 19, 2007
Don’t have a couple grand to spend on learning video? (I sure don’t.)
Check out this tutorial set I found via Bob Stepno’s del.icio.us links
Happy now, Beau? ;)
Travel Channel Academy
Posted on April 13, 2007
I found this a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t have time to blog it: The Travel Channel is offering a four-day video class, May 10–13, 2007, in Miami that looks amazing. It’s quite pricey, though — $2,250.
But, alas, I just saw that the class is full.
“The Miami session (May 10–13, 2007) is full. To get on a waiting list for the Miami session OR to inquire about other sessions, please email us at travelchannelacademy@discovery.com.”
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