Rob Roberts showed us a film, "Dwayne Dail's Story," here pictured behind him.
Today marked the beginning of the third and final week of AU’s School of Communication Boot Camp. It also signaled the first day that we would begin shooting video. In the morning, Rob Roberts, the senior video editor at USA Today came to show us how it’s done.
Roberts told us about the five rules of video, which I will repeat here:
- “Video isn’t that hard.” Roberts said people think video is very technical, but “some of the best filmmakers I know can’t send email.”
- Video is time consuming. Roberts said that even for a one minute piece, a filmmaker will need to shoot at least 25 minutes of video… and then edit it.
- The same skills that go into good journalism go into good video. Roberts said that what makes a good video good is good reporting skills, not technical know-how.
- People will forgive faulty video… but not audio. Video can be shaky and people will continue to watch, but that audio better be perfect, he said, or people will think the video is poorly done overall.
- “It’s all about the story.” The quality of the story matters. If it’s a badly researched story, it’ll make for a bad video, too.
After the lecture, we went to the lab to split into teams and check out video cameras. We’re using Canon video cameras which have intuitive features that make them surprisingly easy to use. My partner today was Alex and our assignment was to interview chess players in Dupont Circle and ask how they’re beating the heat.
Today couldn’t have been a more relevant day for the topic; it was over 100 degrees by the time we arrived at Dupont Circle! We interviewed several chess players, got lots of B-roll, and over all more than a half hour of film. Looks like we’ll have more than enough to edit into a two minute clip tomorrow. I’m looking forward to going through it and becoming familiar with Final Cut Pro.
