Dangerous: believing you have it in hand

Creating the above video story was a trial.

My initial idea was to show my students’ journey to our annual Journalism Awards Day at the University of Missouri. It was going to concentrate on the student experience of getting to school very early, riding a rickety school bus, going to educational sessions, then the ride back.

I didn’t consider the fact that I had meetings I had to attend, so I never got any shots of students attending sessions. I got three interviews, but only one use useable. It was very windy that day, and my interviews were outside; so the audio was washed out. I should have considered that ahead of time, and you can be sure I will consider that next time.

So, with my initial idea in shambles, I had to move on to something else. The idea presented itself after a request from one of my co-editors. He asked me if I would be on his panel for his Gold Medallion presentation. It was the perfect “A-ha!” moment.

One of the honors diplomas at our high school requires that students spend an entire year researching an open-ended essential question surrounding a topic of their choice, and creating a 45-minute presentation over it. What better option than to show the fruits of that labor?

I shot video of students entering the exhibition, of a student giving the exhibition, and then interview video of that student, her teacher, and then another student all talking about the presentation. I thought I had everything in hand.

I was wrong.

The technical side of editing video wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. The combination of watching it done in class and watching tutorials online made it pretty straightforward. The biggest problems I had were the technical aspects of shooting video, and a failure to actually tell a story.

As you watch my video, a few things stand out.

The first is that the clips of Natalea giving her presentation have her over exposed. I had played around with different settings, and eventually just switched to auto. Big mistake. You can see the darker areas of the auditorium just fine, but Natalea looks like she belongs in a Twilight movie. It would have been better to use a manual setting and avoid the over exposure.

Next, for every interview clip, every subject is out of focus. I couldn’t tell that they were out of focus as I was shooting the video. I don’t know if I need a stronger prescription on my glasses, or if the display on my camera isn’t very good. Either way, it is distracting to have the background in focus, and the subject out of focus.

But the biggest failing is that, at the end of it all, the video doesn’t tell the story of putting the presentation together over the year, or even the story of setting it up that day. I think spending more time on the conception of the story would have fixed that problem. Also, not having the ability to provide narration hurt me. I can tell stories when I write, but apparently I have a lot to learn about telling a story with visual media.

I think I got a little overconfident on this assignment. It burned me. Lesson learned.