I have been shooting video for my newspapers online edition for about a month now. I have to say it's been fun. I must admit I wasn't sold on using video to get stills for the print edition and to post the video online. But so far it's working out.You can see all the videos I have shot for the newspaper HERE. You might have to sit through a short ad before the first video starts.
Send me your critiques. (And yes, I see the misspelling of protest. I'll have to get that fixed.) I'd love to read what you thought could of been better with each video. This is a new medium for me and for newspaper reporting the closest I can compare this to is documentary films. Only that my videos are less than 2 minutes long. With the exception of the Brave Combo video.
One of the problems I am running into is how time consuming putting together a short 2 min. piece is. The most video I shoot is about 20 mins. on average. The snow day video video took me 5 hours to shoot and edit for 8 minutes of video shot. So I am slow at this. In my defense there are so many variables. Like how are you going to show the story and what audio will you use and then when you finish you go back and clean up all the mistakes in editing.
I've been told that you get faster the more often you shoot and edit.
I was lucky enough to sit on a week long workshop put on by David Leeson on how to shoot and edit video. And five key points I have applied to how I shoot is:
1. Audio - You can have really bad video but if your audio is good and you have an audio base to build on whether it be natural sound (which I learned goes by nat sound in video lingo) or some type of music (royalty free of course) then you can salvage poor video.
2. Don't over shoot - As I said early I am averaging 20-25 mins. of shot video. I think that may be too much. The key is to shoot 6 to 8 seconds of one scene and no more. Also shoot wide, medium and tight. This helps when editing. You can use the tight shots to transition to those other two shots. And if your clips are 20 minutes long you have to sit through that when importing video to computer and then you have to go back through that video to see what you want to use. So keep the video clips short.
3. Don't follow the action - It will make it harder to edit later. I'm sure there are some exceptions. But generally don't do it, let things enter and exit the frame.
4. Avoid jump cuts - This is when you have one scene say for example a person is juggling and then the next scene is that same person juggling on a bike. There needs to be a transition of why or how that person got on the bike.
5. Show me don't tell me - This is not television video and there are some good TV videographers out there. But often times the reporter tells you the story and thats a different type of journalism. The readers doesn't care what I or the reporter thinks about whats going on. Let the subject tell the story.
Frame grabs from the video I shoot are not bad. The newer HD video cameras that are coming out have improved on that technology and therefore give you better frame grabs. Rather than give my poor explanation of what the two differences are here are the links to a wikipedia explanation of interlace which is what I get now I use and progressive what the newer cameras are using. Needless to say the progressive is the better of the two when wanting to get a frame grab. Or at least from what I can tell and have been told.
This is just the basics of what I know about video and editing. And I hope this a little in explaining video. I sincerely believe this is the future of journalism for print media. And only that future can prove me wrong.
