Jason Whong: Renaissance Man-in-Training

Give your viewers a reason to watch your video all the way to the end.

It’s a simple principle. Chances are, a large chunk of your viewers may be stumbling onto your video from a story they read. Maybe you wrote it, or maybe a reporter wrote it.

If you are lucky enough to go out to shoot a video with the reporter, try to see if your report can have a different angle than the reporter’s story. Or maybe see if your video can just support the story (which is a lot easier than trying to tell the story yourself.)

If your report when it’s all done tells the exact same story with the exact same quotes as what your viewers just read, most of them will probably not be nice enough to watch the entire thing. (That is, unless you promise lots of explosions or something else that makes the video extraordinary.) If the video feels redundant after reading the story, you’re probably wasting your time.

Pick different quotes. Explore different angles.

I don’t think that goes the same way for photo galleries. People can look at image after image and still see your video and it won’t be redundant because video adds the elements of motion and real-time sequence.

But if there’s a story involved, try to make sure your video piece accentuates rather than duplicates the story.

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So, I’m not writing these bits and pieces in any specific order. When it’s time to make this into a book, I’ll put them in a better order. But right now, this goes after all that general stuff.

I titled this chapter “It’s my report” because it’s something I want you to say. “It’s my report.” Add a “darn it!” at the end, if it makes you feel better.

OK, now here’s where things get esoteric. But try to follow along.

If you read that Zettl book I referred to earlier, you know about index vectors. These are vectors (or, invisible arrows) created when someone points or looks.

When you interview a subject, you don’t want them to look at your camera. Why? Because they’re looking at your viewers and talking to them directly when they do that. That’s not something you want them to do (unless they’re making a plea for the return of their lost kitten, and are asking for your viewers to help.)

Video journalism for the last fifty years or so has been about letting viewers see pieces of the conversations a reporter had with a source. This is much like when a print journalist quotes a source in a story, because they’re also letting readers see a bit about what the source said to them. If you look closely (at least in good markets), you’ll notice that in news, you rarely see a source looking directly at the viewers (unless it’s a press conference and someone is reading a prepared statement and looking at various cameras for a few seconds. The other exception is interviews by satellite). If you watch a week’s worth of newscasts, you will notice there are only a few people who regularly get to address the viewers directly by looking into the camera: reporters and anchors. Anchors read the readers and the VO portion of the VO/SOT pieces (which you probably can’t do unless you have an anchor), and reporters do what you’re trying to do (at least, I hope that’s what you’re trying to do - tell a story.)

This doesn’t mean that you have to do a standup in your story. (A standup is when you address the camera directly, usually to say a few things that add to the report. It gets you some face time, but it’s not all that necessary. I remember watching lots of packages from Jeannie Moos on CNN and wondering what she looked like, because she rarely did standups when I was watching in the early 1990s.) But if you do, be sure to look into the camera, not off-screen at some cue card.

This is very much a “control” thing. Subconsciously, viewers pick up on the fact that people who look into the camera are reporters and anchors, and are speaking to them with some authority. So if your interviewee tries to look into the camera, politely ask them to look at you. Don’t give them that authority. If they are authoritative, they already have enough authority…

You may also notice who else looks into the camera: car dealers, carpet dealers, and anyone else trying to make a pitch. Readers notice this subconsciously as well. Possibly, the person trying to look into the camera against your wishes probably knows this, too. Don’t let this person take advantage of you. Tell him or her to buy a pre-stream if they want to address your viewers directly.

There is another “It’s mine” factor to think about: The handheld microphone.

Phallic jokes aside, it’s a very powerful icon on the screen. It indicates who is in control. It tells viewers who has the power.

Watch any show and see who has a hand-held microphone: Emcees. Hosts. Reporters. Vocalists. Preachers. Leaders. And that’s about it.

NEVER let your interviewee hold the microphone. Or, if you do, make sure nobody can tell they are holding it. They don’t get the power. You do. If people can see an off-camera person is holding the mic, subconsciously they can tell that the person being interviewed is not powerful enough in the context of that show to hold their own microphone. Not a host. Not a reporter.

You’re the only one who gets to hold your mic.

The other benefit of this arrangement is if someone is trying to waste your time you can just walk away if you hold your mic. Otherwise, you’re just tethered to the person that just told you his name was “Oliver Closeophe.”

It’s my report, darn it. You’re not holding my mic, and you’re not talking to my viewers. You’re talking to me.

(That’s a good principled position, but you can be more tactful than this when trying to explain why you feel this way.)

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This is basic business 101, Sun Tzu’s Art of War type advice, but it applies.

Watch your competitors once in a while. What kinds of stories do they include? What kinds of stories do they tend not to do? In a way, they are defining the medium for your market by their decision of what is and isn’t worthy to be included in the local newscast. Maybe they focus on the easy stuff: The same old car accidents and crime stories. Your newspaper probably already does these without video. Maybe you can do these as video, but can you do it better than a TV station staffed with more video professionals and stocked with better equipment? That would be like the TV station trying to shoot art for its print publication with anything but a DSLR. Maybe they can do it, but it will take great skill.

I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t compete on spot news. If there is a plane crash or some other catastrophe, take that video camera. Spot news will drive viewership, especially if you have an exclusive.

It’s hard to beat anyone at their own game. Take your competition’s web site, for example. Odds are, they are posting their broadcast scripts to their website, which shows they don’t respect your medium. The result is that most of their stories read like newsbriefs, but with dumber words because they aren’t about to hire someone to rewrite their stuff for the web. Their web site will never beat yours on written content (but it probably will on video.) You update at the same speed they do (or faster), and you write more naturally for the medium than they do.

But look also at what kinds of stories the local broadcast journalism places stay away from. You can easily do better than they can if they aren’t offering a certain kind of story at all. If you focus on telling the story that they can’t, you offer viewers something unique instead of the same boring stuff.

You may also notice that local stations don’t produce much in the way of long form journalism. All of their packages are tight, generally under two minutes. That doesn’t mean you can’t go longer. Just don’t make it boring. You’ve sat through documentaries that are an hour long, and for some reason you didn’t feel bored. You can do the same thing online. Just break it up into sections in case people feel bored.

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Here’s another thought to ponder as you begin your journey into doing video news for the Web:

Just because you have respect for the medium doesn’t mean you should be unwilling to try something new.

If you’re at a newspaper, and you are reading this site, you probably already have a web site where you break all your news. Then you update the news for the print product. If your workflow allows, your photos probably make it online with the stories. Either way, there’s one thing about newspapers and web sites that TV stations can’t do as well with their TV station.

You provide news to people on their terms. TV provides it on TV’s terms.

There are some exceptions. But in general, the TV people provide news in their newscasts, occasionally breaking in to other programming for the really big stories. But if someone wants to watch a different story, they generally have to wait until the TV people decide it’s time for them to see the story, or whether they should see the story at all.

Suppose there’s a press conference that your competition attends to grab a soundbite or two, then shoot a quick interview to have to voiceovers for their VO/SOT. If the story is big enough, and the press conference is not too repetitive, maybe you can take the C-Span approach, and offer the whole press conference on your web site. I realize this is boring, as storytelling goes. But it’s no less legitimate than other ways of telling the story; rather, it allows your readers and viewers unfettered access to someplace they otherwise wouldn’t get to go.

Lots of TV stations won’t show entire press conferences because they are too slow-moving for the masses; anything they put in their newscast forces their viewers to either keep watching or change the channel (or stop paying attention). That’s not the same as offering video on demand, which allows people that are really interested to watch it. (Your competition can also do this by offering the video on their site, and if they already are, you probably need to do this just to play catch-up.)

Consider also that you can have some pieces of video that don’t make sense on their own, but that do make sense in the context of being linked from a story. In the broadcast world, they would turn this sort of video into a VO/SOT or VO, in which the anchor reads a script to provide context for the video while the tape plays underneath. Ideally, you would want to replicate the VO/SOT by writing a script and voicing it. But if you can’t do that for some reason, you can provide context with a text story on your web site. It’s not preferable, but it is better than nothing. In a way, it even shows a certain disrespect for the medium, so try not to do it too often.

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This is a short thought to ponder as you begin your journey into doing video news for the Web:

Video journalism is not a new movement. The availability of cheap video gear, nonlinear editing systems and the decentralization of the Internet is new, but what you’re doing with these cheap tools is almost the same thing that professionals have been doing with expensive tools for four or five decades.

Respect the medium. If you don’t understand how it works, read up on it. (That Zettl book I linked earlier is a good place to start.) Watch network news, or local news in a good market. Study it. Look at their techniques.

This is a medium that has probably been around for longer than your professional career. Treat it as such.

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This is an explanation of the third phase of production outlined in my video production motto. For more details on the motto, start there and work your way here.

Post-production is the phase of videomaking that takes all of your raw footage and sequences it into a story. If you have already planned like a producer and shot like an editor, then you will probably be able to finish your video without serious frustration.

That’s the catch: you may be tempted to hand in a passable, “good enough” video because you’re on easy street already. Or you may be on a deadline, and you really just want to finish the video. If “making a video” is your only goal, you may end up producing some mediocre stuff.

If you’re noticing that the story just isn’t flowing (or that it’s not much of a story at all, or raises more questions to viewers than it answers), you have to make some tough decisions in order to rescue your video from mediocrity. Maybe the sequence is all wrong. Maybe it needs a reporter’s voice before it will make sense. Be the director. Make it happen.

If you spent too much time shooting video and stills to figure out what the heck was going on at that fire, and you had to leave before the chief would give you an interview, ask the reporter who was there for a copy of their story (if it isn’t posted online already.) Write a voiceover based on that report, and use that to tell your story. Talk about the video that you shot, and illustrate with the video.

If you’re noticing that a part of the video seems to be slow-moving, cut it out. If you interviewed a person who talks really slowly, with gaps between the words, edit out the gaps, the umms, the uhhs, and repeated phrases. (Your friends in broadcast have been doing this for years, and reporters on the print side don’t usually express unnecessary pauses in quotes. Just don’t change the meaning of the quote.)

Be ruthless. Don’t be afraid to cut out that shot you love if it doesn’t fit in the sequence. Remember, you’re on deadline, and your goal should be “any high-quality sequence that tells the story effectively.” So if you can’t use your favorite shot, but you still have a polished sequence, you have already reached the goal. (A director knows that he or she answers to a producer, so at some point the production must be completed, whether or not it is the production the director envisioned.)

Of course, a good director is already familiar with the conventions of media aesthetics, so he or she already knows what is good and what is awkward. So if you don’t feel like media aesthetics are your strong suit yet, pick up a book by Herbert Zettl at San Francisco State University called Sight, Sound, Motion: Applied Media Aesthetics. I read my first book by Herbert Zettl back in the 1980s, and while the reading can be dry and academic at times, it really covers everything you need to know about what he calls “Media Aesthetics”. (I prefer to call it “Video Grammar” when all three elements are used together, but Mr. Zettl has had many more words published than I have on the subject, which is why I used his terminology.)

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This is an explanation of the second phase of production outlined in my video production motto. For more details on the motto, start there and work your way here.

I realize there is a lot more to production than shooting (getting clean audio comes to mind). But it’s a simple motto. It would probably be a lot harder to remember “The production phase should be shot with an editor’s mindset, with input from the audio engineer who will mix the project later, as well as the producer who determines what shots are worth shooting, and which will surely not be used.”

OK, so getting back to the motto: Shooting like an editor doesn’t mean you shoot video like your boss at the newspaper. Editors in video-speak are much different. They don’t assign work to other people. They’re the people who arrange the audio and video into a logical sequence that respects the conventions of media aesthetics.

Shooting like an editor means that you should have significant experience as a video editor before you begin shooting, otherwise editing will probably not be very efficient, rewarding, or fun. (Additionally, you should understand the rules of media aesthetics as they pertain to framing, sequence, etc.)

If you don’t have experience as an editor, you will quickly get it, because you will have to make a good sequence out of the stuff you shot. Suppose you have an idea of what shot you’d like next in a sequence, but you didn’t shoot it (or worse, you shot it, but only for a few seconds. Then you’ll have to decide some other way to tell the story, and fume at yourself for not shooting like an editor. (Or, if you are unfamiliar with media aesthetics, you may turn in some video that breaks the rules. You may be proud of it, but many broadcast outlets would refuse to air it. So learn those rules, even if it means you’ll be frustrated as an editor.)

Understanding the frustration a video editor feels when there’s not enough footage to work with will make you a better shooter. You’re going to shoot to avoid headaches. You’re going to shoot for a little more video than you need (but not way too much.)

You should understand the value of b-roll. (I’ll write about this later). And you should shoot them for at least ten seconds to give yourself something to work with.

Don’t go into the edit suite thinking “if only I had held this shot…” or “I regret not walking three or four steps to the left to get a better angle.” Walk in confidently, with at least twenty shots of b-roll to choose from for a two-minute piece. (I made that number up, but it is a good number.)

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This is an explanation of the first phase of production outlined in my video production motto. For more details on the motto, start there and work your way here.

Someone needs to be wearing the producer’s hat. Pre-production is the phase where all the kinks are worked out before you shoot, and most of it involves asking questions. The producer is the person who makes sure the video happens.

These may seem basic, but here are some good ones I like to start with: To whom will you speak? How much of their time can you take? Where will you speak to them? Are electrical outlets nearby? How many amps can you pull through the socket before you blow a fuse? Is the area quiet? Is there enough space to set up a tripod and lights? Can everything be done safely and efficiently with the crew allotted? What video can be shot to illustrate what your subject is talking about? What sounds can help tell the story?

The last two questions are a big deal, though all of them are important (though, not always knowable before every assignment, especially in the case of breaking news). Suppose you are sent to interview someone about how they dive for treasure off the Atlantic coast, but they’re not diving that day, and have no videos to lend you that illustrate the diving. Preproduction could mean the shoot is canceled altogether, or that the deadline is pushed back so you can accompany them on an expedition¹. Or maybe you end up shooting shots of navigational maps and a classic license plate they found because you need to have a story sooner. Whoever is wearing the producer’s hat makes this decision.

Personally, I don’t mind being the producer (as I am a lot more results-oriented than I was ten years ago); the problem is that I can’t always schedule time for pre-production before a shoot begins because of my work schedule. If you have the same problem, you should try to suggest that someone be the producer of a given segment. The alternative is to figure all of this stuff out when you get there, which is not very efficient.

Planning doesn’t end when the production particulars are worked out: post-production (that is, time to edit the video) also has to be scheduled. If it can’t be scheduled between the time of production and the deadline, the video should never enter the production phase.

footnote 1: If the production leaves land, good pre-production will also probably require that you make sure your insurance policy covers workers and company equipment on the boat. Think CYA.)

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I have been doing video for about nineteen years, which is close to two thirds of my life. Over three years ago, I started working at a newspaper which was not doing video. After I started working there, we eventually added video to our online offerings.

Now that a lot of newspapers are throwing more resources at video, I figured it was timely and topical (OK, well, a year or two overdue) to write about what sorts of things you need to think of as a still photographer working at a newspaper. (Now that I am also a still photographer, I have some perspective.)

My first bit of advice is a motto I came up with back in the 1990s after I graduated and was thinking of writing something for notharvard.com. (I think I still have a t-shirt of theirs somewhere.) The motto covers every phase of production:

Plan like a producer.
Shoot like an editor.
Edit like a director.

I came up with this motto about 10 years before I considered myself a still photographer, so it has no specific bearing on people that work at newspapers. I think it’s useful to everyone who makes video.

Follow the links above to see explanations of the motto.

Next: Plan like a producer

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