MM #3: What You Did

Please take a look at these examples and see what ideas you can get for furthering your new media and multimedia story-telling skills:


Samantha: Pet cemetery blog posts and video:

The video had some good B-roll (pets hanging out) and some that made no sense (an exterior shot of a school; what does that have to do with a pet cemetery proposal?). Still, overall good framing of shots and interspersing of B-roll.

Amy: schools blog posts and video:

The video was nicely-structured, but we needed B-roll to break up the talking head segments. What we want to do is start with the talking head shot, then while the talking head keeps talking change the shot to one showing what they are talking about (in this case, classroom video or still pics) and then we return to the head shot before the segment ends. 

That way, people see what the talking head is talking about while they are talking about it, and it breaks up that boring static shot of someone just talking.

Patricia: film festival blog posts and video:

Very nice use of hyperlinks on the blog posts, allowing people to further explore the subject and get background if they wish. If not, you didn't clutter the post with background text.

Here, we use still pics as B-roll, which is fine. The problem is, where did these pics come from? Unless we shot them ourselves or had expressed written permission from the photo owner to do so, it's a violation of federal copyright law to use these pics! You can't just take pics from the Internet and legally use them in your own media.

Even if you would credit where these pics came from, unless you have actual permission from the user to use it, it's still a violation of federal law. Let's work on getting our own B-roll, or at least getting permission and noting it in a caption.

Simone: health care blog posts and video:

We need to be sure to be following AP Style rules with captions; that means first and last names in captions, not just a title and last name. Plus, why no B-roll here? It's not like it would be hard for us to shoot a hospital or clinic; they are everywhere.

Just like with print reporting where we need to do the hard work of going out and actually talking to people (and not just relying on what we find online), for video we need to do the hard work of going out there and shooting what we are reporting on (and not strip stuff from the Web). 

Just watching someone talk is not video journalism, in the same way just getting a transcript of an interview is not print journalism.

Plus, DO NOT SHOOT WITH YOUR PHONE IN THE VERTICAL POSITION! Shoot with your phone in a horizontal position, so that the frame matches that of a TV or laptop screen (and does t result in those black bars on each side of the shot).

And the blog is missing hyperlinks. The whole point of making online text journalism different and better than print journalism is using the second dimension of a hyperlink to give the audience a gateway to more information on your subject, without the post itself becoming cluttered with background text.

If we're not doing hyperlinks, we're not really doing online journalism. We're just doing print journalism on a screen.

Carina: breastfeeding blog posts and video:

If you want to see how helpful hyperlinks can be, look at the posts here.

The video is missing a lede caption or narration; just like with a print story, we need to share the point of the story right from the start, so people know what they are about to start learning about.

Plus, we needed the b-roll of a mom interacting with her kid IN the talking head segment, as noted earlier. We want to show what the person is talking about while they are talking; otherwise, we're just unnecessarily making this video longer than it needs to be.

And again, DO NOT SHOOT WITH YOUR PHONE IN THE VERTICAL POSITION! Shoot with your phone in a horizontal position, so that the frame matches that of a TV or laptop screen (and doesn't result in those black bars on each side of the shot).

Hannah: women's longue blog posts and video:

Again, nice hyperlinks with the blog. And the video is nicely-shot and well-organized, with the talking heads nicely framed tightly within the shots.

Hussein: voting blog posts and video:

For the video, we really need to shoot with tripods or a some sort of steady shooting surface; we need to frame the person's head closely in the frame like we do with the second source; and one more time -- DO NOT SHOOT WITH YOUR PHONE IN THE VERTICAL POSITION! Shoot with your phone in a horizontal position, so that the frame matches that of a TV or laptop screen (and doesn't result in those black bars on each side of the shot).

The blog posts are fine EXCEPT they are missing hyperlinks, which is a big no-no with online journalism.