Writing for Visual Media

I have watched my boss make television news packages once a week for almost two years now. With many years behind him, he makes it look so easy. The radio story was relatively easy, but knowing what kind of b-roll you have determines your voiceover. My personal take on making a package is that the reporter's main purpose is to flow the piece together and provide factual information to supplement the appropriate sound bites. So the bites that you take from people are the ones that bring emotion and opinion to the story that the objective journalist cannot. Bites of statistics or the like shouldn't be used unless they are the main focus of the story. Otherwise, the reporter can make reference to them to connect the dots. When it comes to choosing correlating video clips, it's very subjective I think, with the various creative choices available making it more difficult. In terms of my particular story topic, my main challenge is keeping up with the action. The dogs move so fast I have to make an extra effort to catch them on camera in nice tight shots. Definitely good practice. I feel like by the time I graduate, I will be very well-prepared for the broadcast arena.