Convergence killed the video star

Eric Durban

Writing for a visual medium differs from newswriting on a number of levels. First of all, you have to be much more succinct. That would seem to be the toughest challenge. For someone who is so used to writing for a paper or the internet, using short, powerful sentences could be a challenge. When the images are coming quick, the writing must be short and engaging. Another challange is syncing your writing and the video so that the story flows. For the average person, it would seem easier to pick out mistakes in images, rather than a newspaper story. Good writing for the visual medium can help ground a story if the video isn't particularly special. Another hard part is making sure that your writing not only reflects, but builds off of the images. As we saw in the pollution video it can be tempting to just write on the images.