Going Solo: Doing Videojournalism in the 21st Century

Chapter 4: Shoot with Your Eyes and Ears

42 Chapter 4 Shoot with Your Eyes and Ears After the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the Associated Press distributed a photo of a fireman carrying a baby injured in the attack. The infant’s bloodied head is nestled against the fireman’s right shoulder, her battered legs hang over his other arm. The fireman looks down despairingly at the limp, battered body as he rushes her to triage. Baby Baylee later died from her injuries; the photographer, Charles Porter, won a Pulitzer Prize for the shot. Virtually everyone who sees the picture gets a sinking feeling, a sadness that brings back the shock and horror of that day. The picture has an impact on every person who views it. No journalist wants to be thrust into a situation as horrific as the Oklahoma City bombing, yet that photographer did his job well, bringing the reality of that day home. It is a memorable snapshot of an infamous day, a piece of work that can’t be thrust aside without feeling something about the victims of the tragedy. Seek Shots That Have Impact That is what videojournalists should strive to do in each of their stories as well. Every story should seek to have an impact on viewers—not just something that is sad, but information, images, and sound that will evoke a response or a feeling from viewers after the story is over. It could be a tearful response,butitcouldjustaswellbeahappyandjoyfulfeelingif thatiswhatthe story warrants. Shoot with Your Eyes and Ears 43 The point is that VJs should make their stories memorable instead of making their viewers feel that they wasted their time watching meaningless video and information. To have that kind of impact, the reporter side of the equation must seek characters and information that bring the story to life, the videographer side must look for ways to keep the story visually appealing and stimulating. The effort to create a story that has impact should be easier for VJs than it was to snap the picture of Baby Baylee. Think about it: Porter’s shot was just one frame, less than a second in time.VJs have thirty frames per second of video , so when they tell a minute-and-a-half story, they have 2,700 opportunities to make their stories memorable with individual pictures. Each of those splitsecond frames has a new chance to have an impact on the audience. Sounds easy, right? Not so fast. The danger is that novice VJs especially will have the wrong kind of impact on the audience—the kind of impact where people will be talking about how bad the sound is, how fuzzy the pictures were, or how the video is so dark that they couldn’t see anything. To get shots with impact, VJs often need to seek perspectives that people normally don’t see while standing or sitting. 44 Going Solo So, how does a VJ achieve the desired impact in which people will be talking about the feelings left by the story instead of the unwatchable video? Every VJ must correctly perform the techniques of videography. That means mastering the production values of clear sound, steady shots, focused subject matter, good composition, and correct exposure. Dirck Halstead, the award-winning photojournalist-turned-videojournalist, says discipline and story planning are the keys to becoming a good VJ. He believes still photographers often make the best videojournalist converts. Yet he says they have to learn to approach a story differently.“Still photography is a linear form and it’s about reacting emotionally to stimulus and capturing an image ,” says the Platypus trainer. “Video on the other hand is totally intellectual. Video, it’s not your heart, it’s your brain, because everything must be planned.”1 Yet people from reporting backgrounds learn to master the production techniques to be successful solo videojournalists as well. Backpack journalist Janie Porter says that working alone requires being resourceful: “Use those sometimes annoying, curious bystanders to your advantage. Instead of shooing them away, enlist their help in recruiting interviews, getting directions, etc.”2 If there were a checklist of things to do as aVJ, the reporting side of the equation could put the list in any order: D, B, A, C or B, A, C, D. The reporter can jot down a sentence for a story before doing an interview; she can look up file tape before making a...