Writing for a visual medium

Suekyoung Kim

The half of the semester slipped past, and now I know how much time and effort are needed to make a 1 or 2 minutes of outcome. I expected things will get easier as time goes by, but I was wrong. It’s getting harder and tougher to get an assignment done, not because I didn’t take an assignment seriously before, but because now I know way more than before and realized there are still many things to learn and think about. Writing for a visual medium requires thorough preparation. Efficient reporters first create a blueprint or structure for their packages. Ideal thought process is to concentrate on the main story idea first, then on images, and finally on words. To tell the story effectively, one must first understand one’s story. This sounds pretty obvious, but I know it’s not as easy as it might sound to me. In the assigned articles, there were many valuable tips for writing for a visual medium, but “know the story yourself first” part was the most compelling to me. In class, I learned that I needed to be able to name in one sentence what my story is. It would be too late to think about what the main point of my story is after shooting videos and interviewing sources first. With this in mind, I’m going to work on my TV story. :D