Basketball Hall of Famer David Robinson’s torso signs an autograph for a fan at a visit to Baystate Medical Center’s Children’s Hospital. Not pictured: Basketball Hall of Famer David Robinson’s head.
On Friday I went down to Baystate Children’s Hospital to produce a story package about some Naismith Basketball Hall of Famers visiting sick kids.
While I normally don’t like these types of “canned” stories, I saw very little self-promotion on the part of Baystate and the hoops stars, and a lot of genuine concern for the kids’ welfare, so I actually had a lot of fun putting the package together.
The problem with these events, though, is that they’re more or less designed for the boilerplate needs of TV news: Get in, get some shots of the kids, get a soundbite from the players and get out. And that’s fine if you just need a spot for the 6 p.m. broadcast, but not so much if you’re trying to shoot photo and video and tie it up with some copy.
I try to depart as much as possible from the TV news formula when I shoot video – because the Web is the Web, and not TV, and so you can’t expect the same formula to work. I don’t do stand-ups. I try to avoid narration. Lately I’ve been trying to get away from talking-head interviews (though not on this one).
Basically, I try to steal more from the documentary video style, keeping in mind that video on the Web does not exist in a vacuum – that it will be surrounded with a headline and some photos and a few hundred words of text filling in the boring details that in a television broadcast would have to be wedged in there because there is no accompanying text.
You can find the finished package at MassLive.com, but here’s the video portion:
It’s not perfect. I tend to get an inferiority complex when covering an event with real TV news guys, with their big cameras, sturdy tripods and shoulder mounts. Conventional wisdom says only take your shots from a steady tripod, but I find that’s just not possible when you work like I do: with only as much gear as you can fit in a backpack.
You’ll notice during David Robinsons speech there, the camera is bouncing all over the place. That speaks to another challenge this story presented: David Robinson is really tall. Seven foot one. When the players walked in the door, I had to adjust my shot to get him in the frame. When he started talking I was still fiddling with things, so I just braced the tripod against my torso and tried to keep things steady.
After editing the video, I also encountered some serious problems preserving picture quality when exporting it, which made me realize just how much I need to work on the more technical aspects of post-production.
By now I can cut up a video package pretty quick, but anytime I encounter a glitch, I’ve got to call up Rosie or see which of my friends who are better at this stuff than me are on GChat. Not a great solution on deadline.
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