in god we fuss

It’s a done deal.

With some fanfare and much confusion, the Kern High School District board of trustees finally voted to post a medley of our founding documents including the constitution, bill of rights, declaration of independence and our old and new mottos: "e pluribus unum and in god we trust."

So, how does a newspaper go about covering these stories with video, more often than not, on deadline?

Last night, the vote was finally held.

This entire saga started out when a pastor on the board brought up the idea to post the national motto on a poster with an American flag behind it. Needless to say, folks came out of the woods to debate the proposal. We called the first salvo, "in god we fuss."

Then there was a public forum/debate of sorts that one of our AMEs participated in.

And then last night…

Setting aside the political chicanery, dubious arguments, hair rending and gnashing of teeth, the pictures of democracy in action emerged. It is messy, and unless leaders work very diligently and hard to moderate the proceedings, both sides can emerge feeling bruised.

Shooting on tape slowed us down on the second night. We used out point and shoot Casios on the first and third nights, and supplemented all three with stills. Used Windowsmoviemaker for 1st and 3rd and Final Cut Pro for the second. We also learned NOT to let our writers use the camera/files to get their quotes until AFTER we pulled the files into our editing programs (cuts down on time.)

As always, your feedback and thoughts are welcome.

Links to stories…

Story #1

Story #2

ken burns and his effect

Today I found out that our most popular video this week has been a 'video' about an attempted carjacking that was not actually shot on video, but instead were stills assembled in Final Cut Pro. There is some debate as to why the 'video' is so popular, including if the word carjacking caught people’s attention, if it was a good story, if the video worked well despite a disconnect between the audio and visuals.

Secondly, I offer up a soundslides pro project that we did the 'old fashioned way,' called 'No Place To Heal.'

I would make the argument that the Ken Burns effect has its place in both still and video, that being said, I think it can be overused. The trick is finding that fine line, utilizing movement when needed and not becoming a 'one trick pony.'

I am not arguing that either of these are successful, well, I think 'No Place' is much stronger, there are some problems…but for a shoot in one day, grab some audio and put together a solid daily piece it works very well.

daily video

Part of my new job is the editing of daily video.

I won't bore you with trial details, and the first minute or so if a recap; but the second half of the video is where I get to do something fun.

Usually daily court video is a dull voice over with grainy video, medium shots and some stills thrown in when we have them, and yes, that is the first part of this. I edited this with the idea that the audience either does not remember all the details, has not followed the case or this is their first time learning about the trial.

Then I get into what I call dueling lawyers or what our web video guy calls a 'quote train.'

The basic and essential idea is to move the narrative forward with tight audio clips that inform and play off of each other. Generally in video, you use 'B roll' to hide your cuts in the narrative interview so that it does not appear that you have edited the audio. Here the quick cuts help move things along in what is otherwise a fairly static video.

For those of you not yet into video, 'B roll' is all that stuff, detail shots, action shots, long shots, essentially the cutaway shots that help keep video interesting. It is all that boring stuff TV shoots to put on the box when the talent is talking.

Yes, the quality of the video capture is not great, yes, it was assembled on Windows Movie Maker, and yes, there are some other issues, but for an on deadline web piece it works surprisingly well.

Next up will be the Ken Burns effect in Final Cut Pro and Soundslides Plus.

operation first casualty

Sorry for the delay…

I have been meaning to blog about this video for a while.

I am not sure if it was the mood I was in that day or a great video, but I really like the Iraqi Veterans Against the War's Operation First Casualty video.

The surreal aspect of these guys patrolling the streets of America really brought home the futility of war and the sacrifices soldiers make on our behalf. There are a number of strong storytelling aspects to this video, including a strong narrative through interviews, there is a little 'shaky cam' action but it is shot fairly cleanly.

I can vouch that the way they hold their hands is often how they do 'glass house' drills and is authentic. Some of the soldiers talk about how reenacting these moments helps them.

Check it out; let me know what you think. Check them out too.

video

Now that I have entered the 21-century here in CA, we do video for our newspaper.

We primarily work on three different editing programs, Windows Movie Maker, iMovie and Final Cut Pro. As you can guess, the only PC’s in our Mac building have WMM, the photogs and web team have Macs and two higher end Macs have FCP.

Reporters shoot much of the daily work while they are covering events, the web team shoots some of the daily video and the photo department does some video. (Side note: we are averaging about a soundslides show a week this summer.) The daily work covered by reporters is often done in WMM, the web team and photogs use iMovie and the higher end, longer, better produced packages are edited in FCP.

As with anything so varied the standards vary from reporter to reporter, editor to editor and content from story to story.

Next entry…how to raise the quality level.

plus

We finally had a chance to give Soundslides Plus a real run through this week with Casey Christie’s new package A Soldier’s Homecoming.

bill pickett rodeo

Just finished my first video that I shot and edited. I have been editing a fair amount but this is my first.

Check out the Bill Pickett Rodeo at TBC Video.

Let me know what you think.