But there’s no better way to learn it than by doing it, so we’re going to practice together today.
Cut together the basic five-shot sequence you shot last week, upload it to YouTube or Vimeo, and post in on the blog. These are the export settings you’ll want to use.
For practice editing with a narration, open the Journalism Share folder (should pop up in spotlight search) and open the file that says EVA system video. That’s the raw footage and sound for a project I’ve been working on recently that will be useful for you guys to use as editing practice. Create a new file and practice editing the B-roll with the narration.
How did you gravitate towards Donna as the main patient you focus on?
The overall strategy was to round with an ICU attending physician and then find appropriate moments to introduce myself and explain what I was doing in the ICU and have a conversation with some of the patients that were confronting some of these questions that I was hoping to capture. It was actually a different physician that I was rounding with that day that introduced me [to Donna] – Dr. [Monica] Bhargava, the Indian-American physician that you see in the film. During rounds, she said there’s a family here that you might want to talk to because they’re dealing with these questions and they’re very thoughtful about it. I went and spoke to Donna’s brother Gordon and immediately, he understood the value of the film. I didn’t have to convince him of anything. He instantly saw this was a way to connect with other people and that other people could derive value from understanding what they were going through.
When something like that happens as a documentary filmmaker, you just fall to your knees and thank whatever documentary gods you think are watching over you because it’s such a gift to be able to find someone who in the midst of such pain and hardship can understand the value of capturing the experience to share with other people. And even though [Donna] couldn’t talk, she was completely conscious. There were times when her family wasn’t there when she would just wave me in with her hand and we’d have a one-sided conversation because obviously she couldn’t respond to me, but she could nod and she was completely onboard with it from the very second I walked in the room. They were actually the first family that I really spent a lot of time with and that was very encouraging to me early in the process. You have to understand I am approaching people on what may be the worst day of their lives and asking to film them. It’s not an easy ask and to find someone like Donna and Gordon, who instantly understood the value of the film and were willing to make themselves vulnerable in order to share their story, that was a huge, huge gift.
While it’s a situation you instantly empathize with, you also are able to present everyone on camera in multidimensional terms, though you resist doing traditional sit-down interviews or asking about anyone’s backstory on camera. Was it difficult to achieve that?
Yeah, it was a question as I continued filming how much backstory I would present — would I go home with some of the patients’ families and capture that dimension of who they are and their life? It’s hard to explain creative impulses sometimes, but I just had the very strong feeling that the film wanted to live in the ICU, that it wanted to be present tense and it really wanted to focus on the process of decision making. The humanity of the patients and their families would be so strongly represented in those moments that their backstory would feel superfluous in a way.
What we are seeing is people who are confronting the most fundamental human questions in the moment and in my opinion, that tells you everything you need to know about a person. Part of the reason this is a short film is because what we infer about all these people, even when we see them in just short pieces only in the ICU, has more dimension, more humanity, more beauty than we would see if we spent an hour of screen time with them at home because what we’re capturing in those moments is really who they are at their core.
We will have a screening and workshop class for your latest cuts next week on Monday the 8th. This will give you another week and a half to complete final cuts. We will also look at any websites-in-progress on that day if you’d like feedback on those as well.
The New York Times made waves with its award-winning VR short doc series “The Displaced.” Now Huffington Post, The Guardian, TIME and CNN all have their own VR production teams.
Using 360 video as part of a big video feature story:
What are the challenges of storytelling in 360? What are the benefits? In what ways are these videos really utilizing the potential of the format? Are they missing any opportunities? What kinds of assignments would 360 work best for, and where would it be ineffective?
Our journalist Ben C. Solomon is reporting from Mosul, Iraq. What's it like on the ground there today? Watch his Instagram Story, from instagram.com/nytimes.
What medium (or media) are you going to be featuring prominently? Keep that in mind when choosing a template.
A portfolio website is basically an online resume. You’re selling yourself, so make sure you’re putting your best foot forward. Link to your various social media profiles, Vimeo/YouTube accounts, etc. You can even post your resume on there if your like. And write a good bio for your About page.
Requirements for Final Portfolio
You need at least two main pages on your site in addition to an optional Home landing page that showcases your best work: a Video page where we can view your projects and an About page, where you describe yourself and your work (names/sections can vary, but that’s the general idea). Those of you who are doing photo stories for your breaking news assignment will need a Photography page as well.
You might want to consider getting a nice professional-looking headshot taken for your bio page as long as you have your cameras. And make sure you proofread! I want to see a sentence or short paragraph introducing each of your projects, on the portfolio site if the template allows space for it as well as on the Vimeo page where the video is hosted.
It is recommended but not required for you to link the website to your own domain name. Most of the site builders listed above have basic options that will allow you to host your site for free if you have a ____.wordpress.com or a ____.weebly.com address; often your site will show up with advertisements unless you upgrade (the monthly fee varies). It’s up to you whether or not it’s worth it at this stage to pay for the more polished, professional-looking website that a personalized domain will give you. A domain name will usually run you about $10 a year and it’s fairly simple to link your portfolio site to it by going into the settings and making a few changes. Let me know if you run into any difficulty here and I’ll be happy to help you.
On a related note…
Also, recommended for those of you who are trying to get into the freelance journalism game: http://storyhunter.com/
Rough cut of story #2 will be due by end of class Monday, April 3 (or beginning of class Wednesday April 5 if you’re editing at home). This will give us a chance to screen them on Wednesday so you can take some feedback with you as you continue working on them over spring break.
This means that our classes from today through to spring break will be devoted to production and feedback. So for the most part, the structure will be fairly flexible, and it’s up to you guys to determine how to best manage your time. If you want to do most of your editing at home or somewhere else, or use class time to get in some additional filming, that’s fine. But I will be here to help with editing and give you ongoing critiques and suggestions each day during class time until then. The one day I will require you all to be there, however, is April 5th, so everyone can take part in screening the final cuts of video #1.
For those of you still looking for inspiration for a breaking news story to cover, here are some more upcoming events:
DSLR cameras shoot gorgeous video, but they are pretty terrible when it comes to audio. They’re not built for capturing high-quality audio; even when you capture it with a decent mic and feed it directly into the camera, it will be compressed and not nearly as good as audio recorded separately on a Zoom, or some other sort of handheld mic, or with a lavalier mic. Which creates a whole other set of issues when it comes to syncing the audio in post. Fun times! Fortunately, there are a lot of creative solutions out there available at not TOO high of a price.
The Rode Videomic
One thing to be aware of with the Rode Videomic is that most Canon DSLRs with video capability register a pretty audible hiss if you use them with an external microphone in Auto and with the default settings in a quiet environment. This is because the camera has an automatic feature that increases the audio gain in a quiet setting because it’s essentially looking for sound.
With the Videomic Pro, there are recommended settings you can change manually to eliminate this hiss. Unfortunately, we have the Videomic Go, so this doesn’t apply to our equipment, but I still mention it because the Pro is an affordable and very common mic for videographers who are starting out.
By setting the Rode Videomic Pro’s dB switch to +20 and adjusting the manual sound level setting on the camera to about 20%, you can achieve a virtually hiss-free recording if you’re recording in Manual.
Still, don’t worry about the hiss too much. It’s great for low-fuss recording in situations where there might be a low level of background noise (outside with birds chirping, etc., on a street with a bit of traffic noise, etc.) and if you’re in a totally silent environment there’s a good chance you’re in a controlled environment like an office where it’ll be easier to use the lav mic anyway.
Using the Tascam
The Tascam allows you to record audio from multiple mics/sources at once. You can record that audio separately to be synced later or feed it directly into your camera to avoid having to sync it. There are good reasons why you may or may not want to do that.
If you’re feeding audio from multiple mics into the Tascam, it will record them separately which can help you in editing later, but when you’re monitoring it on your headphones each mono (single-channel) track will be combined into a stereo (multichannel) sound. The same goes for how the sound will appear in your camera if you feed it directly into the camera (and at a lower, more compressed quality to boot) meaning you will lose the ability to mix those multiple sources separately in post.
It will, however, allow you to avoid the often time-consuming process of syncing your high-quality audio with the clips filmed on your camera that are paired with the low-quality built-in audio.
You can sync audio within Premiere Pro using the Merge Clips feature (demonstrated below) which is a lot easier than trying to do it manually.
But even still, it can be a pain, especially when you consider that DSLR interviews are by necessity often broken into shorter clips than you might find with other video cameras (they can only record for about 12 minutes before they will stop recording automatically and you will need to begin a new clip).
So whether or not you decide to input the Tascam audio into the camera will depend on your individual needs for your project.
In-class exercise
Set up your cameras for an interview with the lavalier mic. Take turns interviewing each other about what you did on your snow day, first with the Tascam recording the audio separately and then with the Tascam feeding the audio into the camera. Make sure to start a new video clip when you switch recording methods. It only needs to be a minute or two. Upload your footage and your audio into a new Premiere Pro project and take a look at it. Sync the audio that was recorded separately using Merge Clips.
For next class (Monday 6/13), please bring your cameras in for our audio workshop. We’ll be using them for an in-class assignment.
Pitches for story #2, a video profile, will be due next week, Wednesday 6/15.
Final cut of story #1 will be due Monday 3/27.
Rough cut of story #2 will be due Monday, April 3. This will allow us to workshop them before spring break, giving you time to keep shooting/editing with feedback in mind over the break.
There won’t be a hard deadline for a second draft of story #1; instead, it will be an ongoing feedback process until then. We will have more in-class production days over the second half of this month where you’ll have time to either wrap work on story #1 or begin production on #2.
Remember that your quick turnaround news feature story has a rolling deadline, but I recommend doing it sooner rather than later. The Holi/Phagwah parade in Queens is this Sunday. If anyone would like to cover that as their breaking story, I will plan to come in Sunday afternoon and open the classroom so you can cut together your video file and send me your dopesheet (or photos with detailed captions in the metadata) within the three hour turnaround time from when you finish filming.
Some examples of great video profiles:
