Video #1: Let's Look At Some Vids!

Okay, so here's the video recap, posted in the order in which they were received. I ask that you please look at EACH video (by clicking on the hyperlinks placed over the author's names) and read my comments for EACH video (not just your own!), so we can learn like we've learned from each other throughout this semester.

(These vids aren't long; just 1 to 2 minutes each. That means it should take you no more than a half-hour to watch all of 'em. Please do, because by looking at how others did the exact same assignment we did we can glean good ideas and best practices that we can later incorporate in our own work.) 
 
Overall, I thought we did very, very well on this assignment, especially considering it was a first-time video in this class. Lots of good B-roll, good story flows, ect. Certainly some things that can be tweaked, but that's to be expected.
 
Like the first blog/tweet assignment, unless I emailed you saying otherwise then you got an automatic 4.0 equal to a practice story assignment on this as long as you met all the technical parameters of staying within 1 and 2 minutes, using two videotaped sources, including B-roll, etc. (Future assignments will be graded harder than this one, though.)  
 
Let's look for what worked and what didn't and what we could borrow for the next time and what we need to avoid doing again. Here we go:
 

Liam T.: Overall solid; a nice mix of interviews and narration and B-roll and captions so we can see what is being talked about and who's doing the talking.

Amanda B.: Nice structure, but three things: first, no matter how still you THINK you can hold a camera, you're gonna get shake if you don't use a tripod. So, use a tripod or some other steady surface from which to shoot. Second, just like stories need attribution, video needs attributive captions so we can see who is being interviewed.

Third, we needed more B-roll, especially inside of the audio interview segments. The whole advantage of video story-telling is to show people what is being reported on; something we can't do as well in print for obvious reasons. With video, it's not enough to have speakers tell us what they're doing; we need to show the audience what they're doing, literally. Not having B-roll in video is equivalent to not having any supporting evidence for your lede in print. It is the factual foundation for everything we conclude. We don't just tell people the news; we show them the proof as well.

Plus, when we don't have B-roll, look at how long those interview segments seem, when we're essentially locked into the same talking-head shot for extended periods of time. What we should do is start with the head shot of the interview subject; while they are still talking put B-roll over the sound; and then return to the head shot toward the end of the interview.

Courtney K.: LOTS of B-roll here; the problem is, very little of the B-roll shows the interview subjects doing what they are talking about! B-roll should be specific to what the subject is saying, and the best B-roll shows them actually doing it (like, laying out by the beach, or riding a Jet-Ski) rather than generic shots showing the activity, but minus the subject. Still, nice job of letting the audience see a lot, which is what a video should do: show activity and animation and offer sound.

Plus, did we have written permission to use the copyrighted song for background music? If not, congrats: you have committed your first federal crime, as noted by the Student Press Law Center's Web site:

—Can I use a recent pop song as background music for a feature story on our school TV station?

Not without permission or purchase of the appropriate license. While you could use a short clip of the song, for example, as part of a bona fide music review of the CD from which it comes, using the song solely as background music would not qualify as fair use. For more information, see the SPLC’s Guide to Music Licensing for Broadcasting and Webcasting.

It's not enough to give credit; you must have permission.

Kenedi R.: We didn't follow directions here. First, we were off-topic; we did crime in Detroit when the topic was what people were doing this summer. Second, we lack captions or any attribution; who are we interviewing? The viewer has no idea. We need to carry over our habits from how we put together a journalism story in writing and use it in video, like using attribution. Plus, there's hardly any B-roll showing what people are talking about.

Be sure that you follow directions, and that you apply the journalism habits of print to a video story structure.

Sakiya D.: One thing that I found redundant was having a caption naming the speaker, and the speaker saying their own name. Ideally, just let the caption do the identifying, and save air time for the substance of what the person is actually talking about.

Also, ideally we want B-roll while the person is still talking. That means letting sound run through a segment, but changing the shot while the sound is still going. Please see some of the other videos for examples.  

Please note in the closing captions the reference to royalty-free music. That's music that's okay to use without permission, for free. If we use music or art or clips or whatever, let's make sure it's royalty-free or under a creative commons license, which means it's free to use. Otherwise, it's intellectual property theft. It's not enough to give credit if you don't have permission to use it.

Shannon K.: One thing to remember when shooting video with your phone: you will end up playing video on a horizontal screen, so shoot horizontally and not vertically. When we shoot vertically -- the camera phone facing up-t0-down, instead of sideways -- we end up getting those black "bookmarks" on either end of the image, which we don't want. 

Kevyn R.: We need to come up with a caption headline that actually says what the story is about: "JRN 200 Interviews" is like having a written story lede that says, "This is a JRN 200 story." What we needed was a caption hed that addressed the topic: "What are people doing this summer?"

Plus, we can leave the identification to the caption, and save audio time for the actual substance of what the person has to say rather than repeating that ID. And we sorely needed B-roll here; don't just have people tell me what they are doing; show me what they are doing, too. If they're talking about their summer job, show them working, too.

Meghan C.: Again: one thing to remember when shooting video with your phone: you will end up playing video on a horizontal screen, so shoot horizontally and not vertically. When we shoot vertically -- the camera phone facing up-t0-down, instead of sideways -- we end up getting those black "bookmarks" on either end of the image, which we don't want.

In the good news department, we have B-roll embedded in the interview shots: when someone is talking about spending time at the beach, we start with the head shot, then as the person keeps talking we show a beach shot, and then we return to the head shot. That's good use of B-roll to show while telling, and to break up that static, boring head shot for a bit.

Look at how the first interview compares to the second, where we desperately needed B-roll sooner to break up that head shot. We also could have used a variety of B-roll, as opposed to just one shot. 

Kamen K.: Great use of video and still photos as B-roll here. See how the images are used to break up the interview segments and show and tell simultaneously? This is the video story structure we all should be aiming for.

Rachel F.: Let's not wait for attribution; we need it right whenever we introduce a speaker, so that the viewer knows who you're talking to.

Aundreanna J.-P.: One more time: one thing to remember when shooting video with your phone: you will end up playing video on a horizontal screen, so shoot horizontally and not vertically. When we shoot vertically -- the camera phone facing up-t0-down, instead of sideways -- we end up getting those black "bookmarks" on either end of the image, which we don't want.

But we have a nice variety of B-roll showing while the interview subject is telling.

Penelope S.:  In this vid, interview subjects each answer two questions. And see how it's broken down: instead of having interview 1 answer questions 1 and 2, then interview 2 answer questions 1 and 2 and so on, we have interview 1 answer question 1, then 2 answer 1, then 3 answer 1. Only then do we go to question 2, and get answers from interviews 1, 2 and 3.

It makes more sense to structure the story by question rather than by interview subject, since it allows a variety of answers to any single question at the same time. We needed more B-roll, as we showed very little of what was being told.

Natasha B.: We have a bit of shaky camera here (tripod, please!) and we cut through some of the B-roll too quickly where it's hard to see and retain what is being shown, but generally a good mix of B-roll here, both using video and still photographs (but slow it down just a tad!).

Nadia L.: We're missing a lede caption (which is like missing a lede in a print story; people won't know what you're about to get into without one) and attribution captions (so people will know who is being interviewed; this is like having a print story with no attribution) and we didn't fully follow instructions (the minimum video length was 1 minute, and 2 sources were required).

But what was done was done nicely: we see B-roll showing while we're telling.

Hallie A.: This isn't really a story; it's just unattributed quotes being offered. There's no B-roll. There's no captions to identify the speakers. There's no editing; it's just a raw tape, done on one take. This would be like turning in just a bunch of quotes instead of a developed written story. We can't just shoot raw tape; we need to structure a story and use elements like attribution and B-roll to best organize information.