Writing for Visuals

When reading Chapter 9 about how to actually write a package, I began to feel more comfortable with the video-taping and editing process for our next 1:30-2:00 assignment. This Chapter was INCREDIBLY helpful! I have such a better understanding of how to effectively communicate a story through a combination of two particular methods. On one hand, I've realized it is best to allow the images and sound bites to tell the story itself, while on the other, it is necessary to have a reporter closely narrate a piece in order to bring the viewers understanding and insight. A combination of these two methods can also be extremely powerful and really bring the viewers into the story.

I feel the most important information I took away from this particular article is that, in order to save myself a lot of time, chaos and indecisiveness, it's essential to storyboard the piece even before actually going out to do interviews. One of the key elements in this storyboard is the focus and how the different soundbites and images used (especially the closing shot) can sustain that focus. In doing this though, it is necessary to keep in mind the ethics of good, true journalism, and not simply feed the source lines to say because it would support our story. Overall, this concept of storyboarding is something I am definitely going to put into practice.

Now that I've read these articles -particularly Chapter 9- and have learned more about the style of shooting video tape, I almost want to go out and re-shoot my whole story! I actually really like the footage I have so far, but I do want to go out again to collect better video tape, now that I have a better understanding of how to structure a TV package. I think this last part of our individual projects will be challenging, but a great learning experience. I'm definitely looking forward to our group projects because of the learning experiences I've had thus far.