THE ONE MAN BAND REPORTER

NEW STORY: Gypsy Jazz Invades America

2009-12-19T00:37:00.001-05:00

Some musicians in the United States are bringing a unique style of French music to American audiences. Gypsy jazz, also known by its French name, jazz manouche, dates back to before the Second World War. While already popular in many European countries,diehard American fans can now hear the distinctive sound at specialist clubs in cities across the U.S. Steve Mort reports for VOA from Florida.

NEW STORY: War Weary British Seek An End in Afghanistan

2009-12-11T17:08:00.001-05:00

Margaret Warner travels to the tiny English village of Wootton Bassett and finds growing unease about British involvement in Afghanistan. I shot several elements of this story alongside my colleague Denis Lefkovich.

Covering the United Nations for the PBS Newshour

2009-12-11T17:03:00.004-05:00

Here is a selection of stories I helped shoot recently at the UN General Assembly for the PBS Newshour:

NEW STORY: Increased Number of Snakes Heightens Fears In Florida

2009-12-11T16:59:00.000-05:00

The strangling death of a two-year-old girl by a pet Burmese python in the U.S. state of Florida earlier this year has sparked public concern about the increasing number of large reptiles in the state. But as Steve Mort reports, one reptile expert is trying to quell the public's fear by bringing people and snakes together.

NEW STORY: Elderly Americans Learn How to Whack Attackers

2009-12-11T16:56:00.001-05:00

Thousands of elderly Americans are learning a form of self-defense that uses a tool many of them already carry - a walking cane. According to some martial arts instructors, Cane Fu is growing in popularity among retirees.

NEW STORY: Snake Invasion In Florida

2009-11-03T19:38:00.005-05:00

Previously unknown in Florida, many species of snakes -- such as boa constrictors and pythons -- are so well adapted to the State's subtropical climate that it's not unusual to see them in the streets of Miami.

American scientists say these invasive species could endanger native wildlife in parts of the United States.

Click here to view this story I produced for AFP-TV.

Here I use a series of close-up shots to really illustrate these creatures to the viewer. This piece is taylor-made for tight shots. The interview with the snake handler was tough. The light source was behind him, so I over-exposed the shot to guard against silhouetting. I then corrected the picture in post-production. Over-exposing using the aperture also allowed for a very shallow depth-of-field for the interview.

Interview with President Bill Clinton

2009-11-02T18:15:00.002-05:00

Here is an interview with former President Bill Clinton that I filmed for Newsmax TV in New York with my colleague Brad Zerivitz.

The former president expounds on a variety of topics, including the current heated political debate, the Clinton Global Initiative, an upcoming book about Clinton, and Jimmy Carter's recent comment about racism.

A clip from this interview was used on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report:

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Mixing up shots in stage discussion events

2009-11-02T18:04:00.002-05:00

Recently I was asked to edit a couple of highlights packages for The Atlantic magazine's website. The pieces were daily round-ups of a two day discussion event at the Newseum in Washington, DC called "The First Draft of History."

These packages, narrated by Nathan King, were to be a maximum of four minutes long featuring the top soundbites from each day's speakers. The pictures I had to work with were from four Sony EX3 XDCAM cameras: two located in fixed positions facing the stage, another fixed position for audience cutaways, and another roaming camera to gather shots from around the event as a whole.

Here is the first day's package

As you can see, the trick to editing these kinds of pieces is to make sure you try to keep the video interesting despite having a limited range of shots to work with. Cutaways of audience members, interviewers and so on are very important. Also important are the shots from the fourth roving camera which really help break up the sequence of shots from the debate hall.

Here is the second day's package

These packages were edited using Final Cut Studio HD and XDCAM Transfer. Footage from this event was used on several networks including MSNBC

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Some tips for when you're pushed for time

2009-11-02T17:44:00.002-05:00

Here is an example of how I conducted and shot a short interview with the Foreign Minister of India. I was only given a couple of minutes to speak with the minister, so in this kind of case it is important to carefully select the questions you are going to ask.

This interview slot included no time for set-up, so I used no lights - just a lamp across the room to prevent silhouetting again the window behind the minister. There is also very little depth to the shot, but placing the subject in front of a window with a net curtain sometimes makes the shot look a little bit deeper if the light outside is right - ie. not too bright and not too dark.

In house, Times Now cropped the shot so b-roll could be included on screen during in the segment. This also helped make the interview look tidier.

Basically, if you are very rushed, consider what is really necessary - the basics you need to create a broadcastable picture. If you know you only have to fill a short on-air slot, and you are covering breaking news for immediate transmission, you can sometimes get away with a slightly lower production value.

NEW STORY: America's workers getting grayer

2009-10-31T11:33:00.002-04:00

The American workforce is getting grayer. And the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the number of workers between 65 and 74 years old will grow by more than 80 percent between 2006 and 2016.

As Steve Mort reports from Florida, economic hard-times are causing members of the so-called 'baby-boomer' generation to postpone their retirement plans.

How to shoot public hearings

2009-10-13T15:25:00.006-04:00

Over recent days I have been shooting a series of videos for a non-profit organization called Broadband for America.

These videos are essentially highlights of public meetings held by the FCC into how to bring broadband for far-flung corners of the country.

The key to producing a three minute video from a public hearing is to get interesting bites of as many compelling speakers as possible into the piece. I also interspersed one-on-one interviews with the interviewee looking straight into the camera as if doing a location remote.

Cutaways are also critical in pieces like this, not only in order to avoid jump cuts, but also to illustrate the types of people that show up for these hearings and are directly impacted by the subject in question - in this case, a lack of high-speed internet.

Because there is no script and no narration, the editing of the video needs to tell the story. The upsounds, bites and graphics alone should be able to illustrate what is going on without the need for a voicetrack.

This video was shot in HDV 1080 interlaced format, but then compressed into an H.264 codec HDV 720 progressive video format. The graphics utilize a simple slate and Final Cut Pro machine fonts.

You can view all the videos here.

NEW STORY: 12-year-old broadcaster

2009-10-13T15:15:00.002-04:00

The news on television and radio sometimes can be dominated by wars and global economic troubles. But one U.S. school student from is trying to change that.

As we hear from Steve Mort in Orlando, Florida, Max Jones is making a difference by reporting positive stories on his Internet newscast.

NEW STORY: Defibrillator Vests

2009-10-13T15:12:00.002-04:00

In the United states, an estimated 300,000 people die every year of sudden cardiac arrest although internationally, it's unclear how many are at risk.

Many patients have a device called a defibrillator implanted that delivers a shock to restart the heart. Now, some doctors are prescribing the device in a vest worn outside the body.

And the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute is testing the effectiveness of "The LifeVest."

Thousands wear the device and the Pittsburgh-based manufacturer says it expects the number of patients using the technology to double this year. Steve Mort reports.

Framing head-on studio shots

2009-07-22T15:55:00.013-04:00

As solo reporters and videographers, many of us are often required to shoot interview subjects head-on, rather than the traditional interview format where the subject addresses a reporter sitting to the side of the camera.

In pre-taped packages, the traditional looking interview usually involves the subject occupying approximately a third of the screen and looking off to the side.

But the head-on shot can be used for various reasons, for example if the interviewee in your package is in a remote location, or if you are shooting a tape-sync which will be used as an as-live remote interview.

However, I have seen some extraordinarily badly framed head-on shots, so I thought I'd write a little blurb explaining how I try to shoot them. As usual this is not a definitive how-to, as I'm sure you can tell. Rather it is just my favored method:

1) Make sure you give the subject plenty of headroom. There isn't very much room for error in this part. For this kind of shot you do not want to chop of any of the subject's head, but you also don't want to give them too much head room.

2) Remember to leave enough room at the bottom of the screen for the lower-3rd caption. Bare in mind the size of the lower 3rd used by the outlet you are shooting for. Here is an example above that I shot for Newsmax TV. You can see that I have given the interviewee a little bit of headroom but left plenty of space for the caption.

3) Make sure you pay attention to your background. Don't situate your subject in front of anything too distracting, or an object that will appear to be protruding from the person's body.

Sometimes according to the style of the outlet you are shooting for, you may need to use a blank background. In this case, the client favored a plain background rather than a room. I used a sheet which I then lit from one side using a Lowell Pro light. This gave the background a nice texture and prevented the subject casting a drop shadow.

4) Make sure to center the interviewee correctly. This is particularly important if the station you are shooting for uses a split screen showing the anchor and interviewee.

Personal profiles in news stories

2009-07-21T22:43:00.002-04:00

I've just wrapped up a story for Voice of America on the use of video games as teaching tools in American classrooms.

You can see the complete story here.

"In the last two decades, American students have fallen behind in critical subjects like math, science and reading. In 2005, the U.S. ranked ninth among some industrialized nations in the percentage of students graduating from secondary school.

American education officials are searching for novel ways to stimulate learning again. One tool that is getting some attention is the use of video games.The National Education Association says some schools across the country are now incorporating video into learning."

For this story, the fact that it's about a video game helps immensely with the question of b-roll. I used a mixture of provided digital files containing footage of the video game, and my own screen shots which I filmed from a flat screen panel to avoid strobing. To get the best results shooting a computer monitor I film the screen slightly dark and then brighten the picture when editing. I find this helps bring the colors out nicely.

But the more important point is to do with the scripting. It's one of those pieces that really requires a personal profile - no matter how short. Here I use a student that takes the course covered by the video game. Personal profiles are often key to humanizing a story so that viewers can relate to it.

Below you can see another example of this in a story I recently put together, also for VOA.

"Midwives are growing in popularity as the caregivers of choice among expectant mothers, with the number of midwife-attended births in the United States doubling between 1991 and 2008. Fueling the trend is the shortage of obstetricians and the low-cost of midwife services for women with no health insurance."

As you can see from this example, profiling subjects can be a useful way to make a story interesting and colorful when you have very few pictures to work with, as in this case.

Many news pieces require a personal story. If you're responsible for setting up interviews for your own pieces before shooting them, it's something worth thinking about.

FSN staffers get Emmy nod

2009-07-14T18:53:00.005-04:00

Two of my colleagues here at Feature Story News (Simon Marks and Denis Levkovich) have been nominated for an Emmy for their work on covering the terrorist attacks in Mumbai for The Newshour with Jim Lehrer on PBS.

OUTSTANDING COVERAGE OF A BREAKING NEWS STORY IN A NEWS MAGAZINE:

Executive Producer
Linda Winslow
Senior Producer
Michael Mosettig
Producers
Denis Levkovich, Daniel Sagalyn
Correspondent
Simon Marks

Here is a sample of Simon's reporting from India:

Covering crowds, traveling light

2009-07-14T18:33:00.003-04:00

When you're a one-man-band reporter, traveling light is essential. This is especially true when out covering events with large numbers of people, such as protests, vigils etc.

I have included a story here that I produced for the Pan-Asian satellite network, Channel NewsAsia, on the Michael Jackson memorial in Los Angeles. I covered the event for several international radio outlets too. Clearly, the footage from inside the Staples Center is from the pool feed, but the material shot outside among the crowd is my original b-roll.

In the piece I use a couple of wide-shots filmed from an elevated position. This gives a reasonable idea of how big the crowd is (not very big), followed by mostly tight-shots of faces. The key to this story is the color - trying to demonstrate to the viewer the colorfulness of the characters there.

In cases like these, there is no need to insert into the script one's own views of the Jackson fans. Let the pictures tell the story. It is what it is. This is always a good lesson, plus helps keep down time.

For this shoot, all I took with me was a stick mic, camera, tripod and reflector - that's it. It was a sunny day so no need for lights. It was also a quick turnaround for air so there was no time for a major production.

Business Week weighs into online premium debate

2009-06-29T13:16:00.000-04:00

An interesting story relating to the debate about paid content in online news has just been written by Jon Fine at Business Week.

Fine writes: "Expect the ecosystem of the Web to start feeling a little different once the summer slips away. Publishers, stung by an economic downturn and ongoing disappointment with online ad revenues, will begin charging for at least some of their Web content. Eager to help make this happen are two proposed e-commerce systems, Journalism Online and ViewPass."

You can see the full article here

I have posted on this issue before, mentioning Rupert Murdoch's believe that premium content could be on its way to online news sites.

It's harder to make money if you operate these online services, not only because you haven't been able to charge for them so far, but also because you can't command the same advertising rates for a banner ad as you can for a full-page splash in a paper

The important question for those of us in the video field is, how will this impact us? Up to now, it has been far less lucrative to produce material for internet news outlets and online newspaper websites than traditional television. They have no money to pay a lot for video.

But as dead tree news outlets look to find a way out of their financial misery, premium content online is looking more likely. If this model works, and the revenue coming to these sites is substantial, should videographers be able to command more money?

Using tight shots as illustrations, avoiding unnecessary moves

2009-06-18T01:27:00.008-04:00

I've written in the past about how I dislike wide-shots. Well it wont come as surprise to those of you who read that post that I enjoy using tight or close-up shots.

While a wide variety of shots is usually required in a news piece, most times a package can be made significantly richer with the incorporation of close-ups whenever possible.

I've watched many news packages on television - mostly, it has to be said, on local shows - that use virtually no tight-shots at all. Such shots often take time and patience to construct and frame properly which may be one reason why they're not used.

I'm going to use a piece that I just produced for AFP Television on cowboy churches in North America. AFP's usage policy does not allow me to embed the video here, so to see the piece you will need to click here and it will take you to the relevant YouTube page.

You'll notice that the story starts with a mid-shot rather than a typical wide-shot. The barn was nothing to look at and would have made a really tedious opening picture. But immediately after the opening shot, I get into the tight-shots - firstly of the preacher himself, then his congregation.

Throughout the piece, I use tight-shots. Other than a handful of mid-shots, most every other picture is a close-up. When a story is rich in color, which this one is, tight-shots take the viewer much closer to what you're trying to show. It adds character to the story. People's faces are expressive - you get a much better feeling for who the people are that you're shooting than you would if you simply used a series of wide-shots. I think it makes it personal, in a good way.

Here are a few keys to shooting and using tight shots effectively:

1) Make sure you have something to show. Random close-ups of not very much wont work. Close-up shots for the sake of it are silly. Use them when you want to illustrate something, like the expression on someone's face, or what they're wearing. Here you will see I used a tight-shot of a pair of boots to illustrate the Western clothing that people had on.

2) Frame it up correctly. Because you are using the whole screen, make sure you're thinking about the dimensions of your finished project. If you're shooting in 16:9 but producing a 4:3 project (as was the case with this story), be sure to shoot 4:3 safe when doing tight-shots, otherwise part of your subject will be lost.

Also, be creative with your framing. Don't always assume you have to shoot the subject of the tight-shot so that it appears in the middle of the screen. Use your judgement about what looks good. You'll see that most of the face close-ups that I use are on either the right or left third of the screen. Make sure you use a mixture of left and right so you can cut them together easily during editing and avoid jump cuts.

Get imaginative with your framing and you'll soon figure out what you like.

3) Use a shallow depth of field. You're using a tight shot to show something to the viewer. Don't distract the viewer with lots of surroundings. Open the iris fully and adjust light using filters, shutter speed and gain. If your shots are a little over-exposed due to the wide iris setting, you can fairly easily adjust during editing. Blurring the background really helps the subject of the shot to pop out of the screen.

4) Tighten up your interviews. You'll see I use fairly tight framing for the interview subjects too. This is a personal preference of mine, but I just really don't want to see a whole lot of the person speaking, except their face - the bit that the noise comes out of! Generally, wide interview shots look messy. But if you do go tight like I do and you're shooting your own interviews, make sure you keep checking the viewfinder - your interviewee may only move a couple of inches, but that's enough to completely screw up your framing.

If you watched this piece closely, you might have noticed that I didn't use any moves such as pans, pushes and pulls. I don't mind moves if they actually illustrate something or are used to break up the monotony of really boring b-roll. But just using moves for the heck of it is dumb. In my humble judgement, this piece just didn't need it. You have to ask yourself; 'what am I pulling out to reveal?' or 'when I pan over there, what am I panning to?' Don't just use a move for no reason.

There are lots of ways to bring what you see first hand to the viewer as effectively as you can, but the tight-shot is one of my favorite tools. If you're a journalist, you're a story teller, so tell a story. If you're a videographer too, you get to use the power of pictures to tell a story. What could be better than that?

Taking a teleprompter on the road

2009-06-15T19:06:00.003-04:00

As a one-man-band reporter there are many pieces of gear that you simply must have to do your job. But there are other things that you don't necessarily need to have, but might be useful. One item that might fall into the latter category is a teleprompter.

I've helped jerry-rig a teleprompter to an HDV camera on the road in the past. It's not necessarily easy. In any case, I think that a good and experienced reporter should, usually, be able to work without this particular aid when in the field.

That being said, there is an interesting article on this subject over at videographer.com called "Prompting on the Go: Tech Options for Mobile Teleprompting."

In it, the author James Careless writes: "Showing reporters and anchors in the field delivering news as confidently as in the studio adds a cachet professionalism to any news broadcast. Today, this technology has been miniaturized to work with DV and other small-format cameras and is appropriate for more than just newscasters. The polish offered by teleprompter-supported presentation is now within the grasp of anyone shooting video in the field."

It would interesting to hear the experiences of any solo journalists/videographers who use a teleprompter when traveling.

How to create the illusion of a large variety of shots

2009-06-13T00:52:00.002-04:00

Because some readers come to this blog for tips and techniques, I thought it might be helpful if I occasionally posted some news videos that I have produced for TV outlets. So from now on when I complete a story that merits talking about, I will post it here.

Today I'll talk about a piece I produced just this week for Voice of America. It's on US immigration benefits available to rich foreign investors. You can read the text story and download the video here at the VOA website.

This story is my favorite kind to do because it was pretty much, what I call, a one-shot deal. Those are the stories you can put together in one location at one time - no need to keep going back, no need to travel to multiple locations to shoot interviews or gather b-roll. I did do one additional interview in a different place, but very nearby. When you're a one-man-band who makes money according to how much you produce, these are the best kinds of stories to knock out because they're quick.

In this story, the bulk of the b-roll was of a resort - and not particularly visually compelling. So against my instincts, I opened the piece with an edited-down sequence from a promotional video made by the resort. I chose to do this because the upsound really said what I wanted to say right at the top.

There are interviews with two spokesmen for the resort. I did not need to interview both as they both said the same things, but using clips of two different people to make separate points can really keep the pace going on a short to medium length piece.

The interview locations were fairly challenging. In the first soundbite, you will notice that the speaker is inside. In the second, outside. This is just to keep up the variety. For the inside interview I simply used a fairly plain kitchen backdrop with a short depth of field to blur it. For the outside interview it was a very sunny day and the subject was in the shade. To remedy this I used a powerful light on his face, and boosted the mid-range spectrum in post production to bring out the subject without burning-out the background. In my experience, it's better to focus on keeping the background under control during the shoot, and lightening the face in post-production, rather than trying to darken a background in post-production while keeping the face illuminated.

To set-up the third soundbite (the lawyer), I use a lot of establishing shots in his office. Generally, I dislike boring office set-up. In this case, I didn't have many pictures from elsewhere, so I made sure I had a variety of set-up shots and cutaways to chose from.

Because the resort itself was not televisually that interesting, I was forced to use some file to cover part of the piece; generic GVs of Shanghai and Beijing, and fairly recent b-roll of immigration lines at Houston international airport. I prefer not to use library shots, but in this case there simply wasn't enough original AND interesting b-roll to sustain a 2:30 piece, even though I shot well over an hour of material.

Report: DTV transition figures from Nielson

2009-06-04T19:46:00.021-04:00

TVB - televisionbroadcast.com - has an interesting story on preparations for the transition to DTV across the US. Below is a cutting from the article by Deborah D. McAdams.

The full piece can be seen here.

"Nielsen issued numbers today indicating that households are preparing for the DTV transition at a rate of around 100,000 per week. Currently, around 3.1 million households would lose TV service if analog transmissions ceased immediately, around 200,000 less than the estimate of two weeks ago.

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Nielsen says this figure, comprising 2.7 percent of U.S. TV households, represents those that rely exclusively on the over-the-air delivery of television. If the preparation rate holds, roughly 2.9 million households will lose TV reception on June 12 when more than 900 TV stations across the country will stop broadcasting in analog.

Among demographics, African Americans represent the highest ratio of unprepared households with 5.4 percent. Hispanics are next with 4.7 percent. Among Asian households, 3.2 percent are unprepared. Five percent of households headed by folks younger than 35 were not prepared compared to 1.5 percent for those over 55.

Market-by-market, Albuquerque-Santa Fe, N.M. has the highest rate of unready households with 8.4 percent, an improvement of only a fraction of a percent since May 1. Dallas-Ft. Worth is next with 6.37 percent Unreadiness, also just a slight improvement since the first of the month. Those markets most prepared, with less than one percent of households not capable of receiving DTV signals, include Providence, R.I./New Bedford, Mass.; Oklahoma City and Baltimore."

TVB is a great website for comprehensive news about the broadcasting industry.

She works hard for the money, so hard for it honey.

2009-06-04T15:30:00.009-04:00

I just found this interesting video at provideocoalition.com. It seems to explain the problems that freelance videographers often face when it comes to getting paid:

This raises an interesting question - why do clients often feel in a position to barter with videographers when other services usually have a fixed fee or price list which noone would think to question?

Of course, videographers are not the only ones who have to deal with these kinds of negotiations. There are plenty of other professions that involve the same sort of thing.

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But videographers are providing a very tangible product in a specific period of time. The only answer I can come up with is that we, collectively, make our own lives difficult by not having adequate rate cards. In addition, I think that because so many people claim to be videographers and/or editors, there is so much competition that many feel unable to turn work down when a client offers an insufficient amount of money.

This is a problem of technology. Nowadays anyone with a camcorder and Mac can call themselves a videographer and set-up a production company. A lot of these companies are just terrible. As the video says, it's analogous to the difference between a swanky restaurant and a taco stand in terms of quality. But most people in PR or outside the video community do not generally understand what a good video production looks like. Therefore, they do not understand why some videographers charge more than the taco stand guy!

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I saw an abysmal promotional video last week, but the client who paid for it was clearly very happy with it. It's a frustrating part of life for those of us in this field.

She works hard for the money, so you better treat her right!

The one-man-band salesman

2009-06-03T01:08:00.011-04:00

On this blog, I focus a lot on the technical side of being a one-man-band reporter. However, most of us in this field also need to be journalists in the traditional sense. We have to find stories and we have to write them.

I've had several emails recently asking for some tips in this area, so I thought I would tackle one of the most useful skills to have involving writing - pitching story ideas to editors.

If you're a freelancer this is a particularly helpful skill to have. But even for those of us who work for news agencies, being able to pitch up stories to commissioning editors at client networks is important.

This post is not to going to suggest the types of stories you should be pitching. This will always vary from client to client. You should be aware of the kinds of stories and video your customers are interested in. But what I am going to do is list a few suggestions that might help you get a higher number of pitch acceptances.

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1) Give the pitch a catchy title of about two or three words - a sort of headline. It's a nice teaser.

2) One of the crucial things to remember before you pitch a story is that news directors and those who work on assignment desks are often very busy. They are not going to have time to read something lengthy from a stringer sending them a story idea. For this reason, it is absolutely critical to get to the point immediately in your pitch. Think of your pitch as a lead-in to a story, complete with top line to hook the reader/viewer in. In this case, the audience you are writing for is the person you want to commission your story. Spell out the story in the first line - in fact, spell it out in the first few words.

Here is an example of a top line to a pitch I recently wrote:

"A police force in Florida has begun deploying paragliders in its fight against crime." It is short and to the point. Don't try to be clever and dance around the subject. Write it just like a script - hitting the story should be the first thing you do.

Secondly, keep the pitch very short - no more than four very short paragraphs. No busy commissioning editor is going to read more than that. Think of how journalists in newsrooms look at press releases. They will look at the top two lines at most. Sell the story quickly. If the interesting stuff is far down your pitch, noone will see it.

3) Include in your pitch something that will make a journalist interested. This is the NEWs business, so generally the stuff you try to sell should be NEW: Point to why it's new, how it's different from other stories that have already been done, explain how your story will highlight a new trend, talk about how it applies more broadly - say, on a national or international level. Usually, these basics apply to any type of story you are trying to sell.

4) Your pitch should include a brief line talking about what you plan to include in the piece. Don't promise specific interviewees unless you already have them lined-up. But talk generally about which elements you will include, such as the b-roll you plan to shoot or pull from your library. In TV, making clear that you plan to use interesting pictures is absolutely crucial.

Here is an example:

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"The story will look at how the Cuban-American community is receiving the shift in policy from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. The story, which will include lots of footage shot by FSN inside Cuba, will look at how Cubans on both sides of the debate in the US are greeting the possibility of talks between the two nations."

5) Pitch stories that are easy to shoot. The first stories you should try to sell are the ones that you can complete quickly, preferably in one shoot. These are the most economical ones to do because they take less of your time, and will probably net you the same income as a piece of the same length that took a week to produce. Give an indication in your pitch of when you might be able to deliver the story. Make it a realistic target date. Don't promise something you can't deliver.

6) Make clear that you are open to suggestions. An editor may like a story idea, just not your proposed treatment of it. Show willing to work with the person who commissions items, and offer to be flexible on how you go about tackling your story.

7) Give it a shot! Even if a story doesn't particularly interest you personally, pitch it anyway - within reason. Whoever looks at your pitch may like it. If it's an easy story to do, it's worth pitching. I have lost count of the number of times I have suggested stories that leave me cold, only to have them enthusiastically commissioned by clients.

These are the general rules I go by. As ever, they're not the bible. If anyone else has any useful advice to add in this area, lets hear from you.

News Videographer: Shoot in HD where possible

2009-06-02T00:33:00.001-04:00

A couple of months ago I wrote a piece about why it is important to shoot in high definition even if you plan to down convert to SD when you edit. Here was the original post.

My points mainly concerned the positive quality benefits of shooting in HD of HDV even when producing a standard definition project.

However, Angela Grant over at the excellent News Videographer blog - one of my favorites - has revealed that she too always shoots in HD using a Sony HVR-Z1U. She gives a couple of strong reasons for doing so. Among her points are:

"For me, I always wanted to shoot in HD because it gave me the choice of pulling framegrabs for publication in the newspaper. Also, it’s nice to have the choice to process your video as either HD or SD. Plus, this is the format of the future. Why buy outdated technology? You may as well join the bandwagon now, and not later."

Angela often does as I do and captures her HD footage in SD. But she suggests capturing in HD and converting during export if you have time.